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Fellow contribution
Raymond Broadley Etherington-Smith (1877-1913) Oarsman. Surgeon. MRCS FRCS MA MB BCh Raymond Broadley Etherington-Smith was featured in the Vanity Fair issue of the 5 August 1908, as Man of the Day No 1131. His caricature, simply captioned ‘Ethel’, was the work of Sir Leslie Ward, ‘Spy’. In his autobiography Forty Years of Spy, Ward wrote, ‘the finest and handsomest young athlete I ever drew as an undergraduate was R.B. EtheringtonSmith, known to his intimates as “Ethel”.’ Vanity Fair noted that ‘Ethel started on the race of this life in 1877.’ He was the second son of JH Etherington Smith, an important legal figure who was appointed Recorder of Derby and a Bencher of the Inner Temple. He was also a member of the crew that won the 1863 Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Regatta. Following his father, Ethel was educated at Repton School, Derbyshire, entering in 1890 and leaving in 1893, apparently without distinguishing himself at work or at games.
He entered Trinity College Cambridge in 1895, and his first two years were comparatively uneventful, but in his third and fourth years he established his reputation as a first-rate oarsman. When he began to row, the University Club was torn by dissension and it was mainly due to Ethel’s charming gifts of character and wise guidance that Cambridge was able to come into its own on the river. In 1899, when Ethel was aged 22, he was president of the University Boat Club when Cambridge won ‘The Boat Race’ after nine consecutive defeats by Oxford. Ethel excelled in rowing, winning important events with both single scull and double sculls, the University pairs, and fours, as well as the eights. He was a member of the Leander Club, that, in 1896, had re-located from Putney to Remenham, Berkshire. The clubhouse continues today as the epicentre of the annual Henley Royal Regatta.
Photograph on the steps of Leander Clubhouse Henley 1908. Etherington-Smith in centre foreground, surrounded by members of his gold medal–winning crew and support staff.
The Leander Club (logo pictured above) celebrated its bicentenary in 2018, and retains the same rowing attire as seen in Spy’s ‘Ethel’. The original darker club colour of cerise, at some stage, and for reasons unknown, was changed to pink. Its symbol is the hippopotamus, King of the River. Ethel was Captain of the Leander Club on four occasions. He captained its United Kingdom eight, which won the gold medal for the rowing eights in the London Summer Olympics
