Ormsby may refer to

People[link]

• Alan Ormsby (b.1944), American director and screenwriter
• Brendan Ormsby (b.1960), English professional footballer
• Eric Ormsby (b. 1941),US poet and a man of letters
• Frank Ormsby (b.1947), Northern Irish poet.
• John Ormsby (1829-1895), nineteenth-century British translator
• John Ormsby (Pittsburgh) (1720-1791), soldier and pioneer land developer of western Pennsylvania
• John William Ormsby (1881-1952), English recipient of the Victoria Cross
• Kristian Ormsby (b.1980), New Zealand rugby union player
• Len Ormsby (1890–1983), American racecar driver
• Mary Ormsby (b.1960) Canadian associate sports writer
• Stephen Ormsby (1759 - 1844), U.S. Representative from Kentucky

This page or section lists people with the surname Ormsby. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.

Places[link]

United States

• Ormsby, Minnesota
• Ormsby, Wisconsin
• Ormsby County, Nevada
• Carrick (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, neighborhood formerly known as Ormsby or the Ormsby tract

United Kingdom

• South Ormsby, village in Lincolnshire, England

Other[link]

• USS Ormsby (APA-49), Ormsby-class attack transport ship

See also[link]

• Ormesby St. Margaret
• Ormesby St. Michael

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Alice Magdalen Sarah Ormsby Gore (22 April 1952 - c. 17 April 1995) was a British socialite.

She was the youngest daughter of William David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech and his first wife Sylvia Thomas. She became engaged to guitarist Eric Clapton but never married. She died of a heroin overdose in 1995.

Teenage years[link]

Time magazine reported on Friday, 12 April 1968 that Lord Harlech would be sending his "15-year-old daughter, Alice Ormsby Gore, to Manhattan's Dalton School for the coming spring term. Alice will stay at the East Side apartment of a family friend, John Hay Whitney, former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's."^[2]

Eric Clapton[link]

Later in 1968, Ormsby Gore was to encounter guitarist Eric Clapton. There is some speculation as to how they met. One account gives credit for the introduction to Ian Dallas in 1969 when Alice was 17.^[3] However, Clapton in his autobiography gives the credit to interior designer David Mlinaric in 1968. Mlinaric was completing some work on Clapton's house, Hurtwood Edge, and had taken Ormsby Gore along with him.^[4] David Mlinaric was part of a group of aristocratic hippies who hung out around London in the 1960s and was friends with Alice's siblings, Jane, Julian and Victoria Ormsby Gore, the older children of Lord Harlech, who had been British ambassador to Washington during the Kennedy era.

The couple announced their engagement on 7 September 1969. In 1970 Ormsby Gore moved into Hurtwood Edge with Clapton. Clapton had started using heroin quite heavily in an attempt to get over his continuing obsession with George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd and Alice inevitably also became hooked on the drug. In his autobiography Clapton says “Alice came back to live with me, and she started using too”.^[4]

Time magazine reported their intention to marry on Monday, 16 March 1970^[5]

“Rock Guitarist Eric Clapton, 25, son of a bricklayer, may soon marry Alice Ormsby Gore, 17, daughter of former British Ambassador to the U.S. Lord Harlech—with her father's blessing. "She has gone to see him in New York," said Harlech, "and if they want to get married it is entirely their own affair.”

The couple did not marry but stayed together for five years. Clapton maintains he was not in love with Ormsby Gore but she was deeply in love with him. In Ray Coleman's book CLAPTON she says, “Maybe because I was only seventeen I wrongly thought of it as mutual. My extreme youth made any rational analysis of the situation impossible.”^[6]

Clapton broke the engagement and ended their relationship for good after recovering from his heroin addiction with the help of Ormsby Gore's family.

Death of her brother[link]

In 1974, aged 22, Ormsby Gore found her elder brother, Julian Ormsby Gore (33), dead in his apartment from gunshot wounds, an apparent suicide.^[7]

Final years[link]

Ormsby Gore's father (William) David Ormsby Gore died in a car accident in 1985. He was succeeded by his youngest son Francis Ormsby Gore, 6th Baron Harlech as his eldest, Julian Ormsby Gore, committed suicide in the 1970s, see above.

Alice Ormsby Gore died in poverty, found dead in a bedsit in Bournemouth, Dorset, having taken six times the fatal dose of heroin.^[8] The syringe was still in her arm.^[9]

The Independent (London) reported on 21 April 1995, the day before her 43rd birthday:^[10]

Lord Harlech's sister, Alice Ormsby Gore, 42, who was once engaged to the rock guitarist Eric Clapton, died after taking a drug overdose at her flat, an inquest in Bournemouth, Dorset, heard.

References[link]

External links[link]