Vera Tanner

Vera Tanner showed great promise from the moment she won her first Junior Sussex title as 12-year-old in 1919. Every year between then and 1928, she won a Sussex title as either a junior or senior. As a 15-year-old in 1922, she won the junior and senior southern area 100 yards freestyle titles, both in record times. Tanner obtained her first ASA podium in 1923, finishing third in the 220 free. She was second in the 100 yards the following year and was a member of the British 4x100 metres freestyle silver medal-winning relay team, with Florence Barker, Connie Jeans and Grace McKenzie, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. One of the members of the winning USA team was Trudy Ederle, who Tanner accompanied on Ederle’s unsuccessful attempt at swimming the English Channel in 1925.

Apart from finishing second in the ASA 440 yards and National Long-distance Championship in 1925, and the latter again in 1926, Tanner’s career suffered a decline. With another Olympics looming, however, her form picked up, earning her a second Olympic selection, and she won yet another 4x100 free relay silver medal, this time with Joyce Cooper, Cissie Stewart and Ellen King. Tanner also reached the 400 free final, finishing sixth. She followed her Olympic appearance by springing a major surprise in beating Cooper and King to win the ASA 100 yards title shortly after the Amsterdam Games, and in record time. Tanner also finished second in the ASA 220 and 440 that year.

Tanner toured South Africa with a Great Britain ladies team in 1929 and re-met Dupre Murrell, who she originally met at the Paris Olympics, when he accompanied the South African men’s team. Murrell and Tanner married in South Africa in April 1930 and she continued her career as a teacher at Grahamstown. She retired from swimming in 1934 but had taken up golf in 1931, and a little over two years later won the South African East Province Championship.

Tanner moved to Hong Kong in the late 1930s and worked for the Hong Kong Education Department. During the War, she enrolled as a nurse in the Auxiliary Nursing Service (ANS), and consequently missed the compulsory evacuation of women and children. She later became a Japanese prisoner-of-war, interned at the Stanley Camp in Hong Kong. She was released in 1945 and on return to England, married her second husband, lieutenant colonel Ned Curran.