Obituary - Death of Pat Tormey - Jeweller and socialist

Published: 24 February 2011
by  TOM FOOT

PAT Tormey – the Hampstead jeweller and goldsmith who became a Somers Town socialist – has died. She was 69.

At a humanist ceremony in Golders Green Crematorium last Tuesday, her son Simon, a professor living in Sydney, recalled how his mother’s “interest in justice blossomed” after moving from Heath Street to the south of the borough. 

Mrs Tormey joined the Labour Party when she was 58 and was elected treasurer of the St Pancras branch. She resigned after Labour leader Tony Blair led the country into war in Iraq.

“As a family we were always stony broke – but we were usually happy,” he said. “My earliest memories are filled with parties, picnics and laughter. 

“The move to Somers Town in the early 1980s seemed to trigger a change in my mother, prompted no doubt by harder times and the harsher environment she encountered on our estate.

“I still marvel at how she found her way to the door of the Labour Party given her impatience with committees, bureaucracy and such like.”

Born in Edinburgh in 1941, Mrs Tormey moved with her family to Ireland where she enrolled at the Dublin College of Fine Art. It was there that she began working with metals and ran a business repairing students’ silver jewellery.

She ran away to Portugal with her lover, Frank, and later came back to Ireland where the couple married and had Simon. The family moved to Hampstead where Mrs Tormey became instantly recognisable for her “hats and zany, modish black clothes”. 

By the 1960s, Mrs Tormey had major exhibitions of her jewellery and sculptures in West End galleries. She counted Olwyn and Ted Hughes among her close circle.

Humanist celebrant Lillian Young, who spent time with Mrs Tormey in her last years, said: “Pat was known far and wide for her unique way of turning gold and precious and semi-precious stones into masterpieces of great beauty. She was, indeed, a wondrous goldsmith and a magical jeweller par excellence.”

Ms Young said Mrs Tormey felt “uneasy” and “guilty” about using gold brought out of the ground by “overworked, underpaid black labourers in South Africa”.  

She added: “Mild comfort came when a friend commented: ‘At least your way with this precious commodity gives the world objects of immense beauty’.”

Mrs Tormey became a gardener and after the move to Somers Town formed a co-operative tenants’ movement.

The co-op had four permanent staff and an office providing annual grants for management and maintenance. 

The poet Dylan Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night was read and the Internationale sounded out at committal.