Ella Parker

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(Did you mean the Canadian Ella Parker?)

(January 1, 1916 – February 20, 1993)

Ella Parker, right, with Sadie Shaw at RePetercon, 1964. From Forry Ackerman's collection.

Ella Anderson Parker was a Scottish-born London fan active from 1958 to the early 1970s. She was a conrunner and fanzine editor, and a member of OMPA, IPSO, the BSFA and the Science Fiction Club of London. She chaired Loncon II, the 1965 Worldcon. During the early 1960s she was a central figure in London fandom, hosting weekly meetings at her home, The Penitentiary. Rob Hansen described her as the "most important" British fan of the 1960s.

While there is some doubt about her date of birth – see below – Parker certainly came to fandom relatively late in life. She was of the same generation as the earliest British fans while her fannish contemporaries were typically twenty or so years younger than her. Jim Linwood recalled "She always treated us Youngfans like adults", though, per Bruce Burn's memoir, she tended to play a somewhat maternal role to them, and they sometimes rebelled.

She dated her fannish birthday to "three weeks before Easter in 1958". Jim Linwood believed she first contacted Archie Mercer after seeing something in a prozine and Mercer referred her to the then weekly London meetings at The Globe. She attended a meeting in March 1958, described by Ken Bulmer in Steam 15 (Summer 1958). It seems Parker was in company with another woman, perhaps not a fan herself. Bulmer contrived to involve them in conversation with his wife Pam, and they revealed they were on the point of going home, unsure they were in the right place.

Parker then attended Cytricon IV, the 1958 Eastercon in Kettering, where she seemed immediately at home if occasionally unfamiliar with fannish practices. She and Bobbie Wild went out in search of tea on the Saturday morning and Parker was nearly run over by a hearse. She was present for the meeting that led to the formation of the BSFA, and she became a founder member (number 17). Wild wrote in Femizine 10 (September 1958) that Parker 

has the makings of a Trufan except for one thing – you have to stand over her with a blunt instrument before she will put pen to paper.

She soon overcame that reticence. The following year, she took over Orion from Paul Enever. It placed third in the Skyrack Readers Fan Poll for Best Fanzine of 1959 and won the next year. Parker ceased publication of Orion in 1962 after its 29th issue. That year, she won the Skyrack Readers Fan Poll for The ATom Anthology (narrowly beating her own Orion!)[1] and once more a year later, in the new category for Fan Personality of the Year. She joined IPSO in 1961 and, despite an initial reluctance, OMPA in 1963, publishing the apazine Compact. She also served as UK agent for Starspinkle from late 1963.

In October 1959 at the inaugural meeting of the Science Fiction Club of London Parker was elected its chairwoman. From March 1960 she hosted twice-monthly meetings of the Club at her home, 151 Canterbury Road, Kilburn. The flat was known as "The Penitentiary", a pun based on Parker's Pens. In August she added a BSFA open house on Friday evenings, a practice that continued when in 1963 she moved to a flat in a new council highrise at 43 William Dunbar House, Albert Road, taking "The Penitentiary" name with her.

Parker was on the committee for London (Eastercon), the 1960 Eastercon. There she was elected BSFA's Secretary for a year and served as editor of several issues of BSFA Newsletter in 1960 and 1962, also taking over editorship of Vector for two issues (16 and 17, 1962).

In summer 1960, Parker confided in a few friends that she hoped to attend Seacon, the 1961 Worldcon in Seattle, and had "a workable scheme for [this, which] was: 'save like mad.'" For context, few UK fans had attended an American Worldcon at this point as the trip was comparatively expensive, and those who had done so had either had a professional involvement in the community (Bert Campbell), been funded through TAFF or its precursors (Walt Willis, Ken Bulmer, Ron Bennett, Eric Bentcliffe), or both (Ted Carnell). Parker "insisted from the start that the scheme [hers, above] should be kept secret, so that she would not be dependent on fannish charity" (Skyrack 32, May 1961). Nevertheless, the Parker Pond Fund was launched at the LXICON in Easter. The first (and, in the end, only) installment of her trip report, Parker's Peregrinations, was voted ninth Best British Fan Publications of 1962 but won as Best Fanzine Report.

Parker's fannish involvement diminished after Loncon II, even to the point of becoming to a degree reclusive. She did attend Eastercon 22 in 1971 but it was to be her last. In 1972 she travelled to Florida for the launch of Apollo 16 and enjoyed it immensely, and in 1973 she hosted June and Len Moffatt on their TAFF trip as documented in The Moffatt House Abroad.

Ansible 79 (February 1994) brought the news, relayed by Ethel Lindsay, that Parker "entered a hospice and died last year."

In 2020, Rob Hansen expanded Parker's trip report, adding accounts by various fans of the rest of her trip and including letters from Parker herself. This was published as the Ansible Editions ebook The Harpy Stateside (the original subtitle of Parker's Peregrinations). A fanthology, The Compact Ella Parker, also assembled by Hansen, was published in 2022 with a biographic Afterword added in February 2025.

Personal Life[edit]

Ella Parker was born in Scotland and reportedly raised in an orphanage with her brother Fred. Her birth date of January 1, 1916, while being cited on the official record of her death, is likely conjectural. January 1 was often used where there was no official record and Parker later said that all records had been destroyed in a fire at the orphanage. The pseudonymous London fan Geoff Lindsay thought she may not have known herself when she was born. Jim Linwood wrote that "Bruce Burn deduced from her passport that she was 39 when she visited America in 1961", suggesting that either one of them was very bad at maths or her passport showed a date of birth of 1922. Burn also wrote that "she was in her later thirties or early forties" (when he knew her in the early 1960s, suggesting she might have indeed tried to pass as several years younger) and "Her first name was Isobel, but she didn't like it and adopted the diminutive" (this does not seem substantiated elsewhere).

Parker said she was brought to London by her mother when she was 12 so perhaps 1928. She and her brother lived at 151 Canterbury Road, Kilburn from at least 1946, moving to 43 William Dunbar House in early 1963. The change of address was reported in Skyrack 49 (February 4, 1963) and repeated in 50 (March 4) as apparently not everybody had got the message.

According to Jim Linwood, "Ian McAulay courted her for a while and even proposed marriage" (this would be around 1960).

In her early years Parker worked in cafes and hotels, and during the Second World War as a bus conductor. Later she worked in catering and, after getting a typewriter for fannish purposes and learning to type, as a copy-typist. In 1970 she was working for the sf publisher Dennis Dobson.

Remarkably, we now know[2] that the sibling relationship between Ella and Fred was a fiction. They had in fact married in 1941. However, at some point they decided to present as brother and sister and seemingly lived as such for decades, to the point that Ella was recorded as "sister" on Fred's death certificate. Nothing in the fannish record indicates why they did this.

Fanzines and Apazines:

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

Links

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  1. ↑ Skyrack 42 at gostak.co.uk.
  2. ↑ Information confirmed in personal correspondence with family members in February 2025. See "Afterword" in The Compact Ella Parker.
Person 1916—1993
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