Ruth Harrison (10 May 1909 – 1991) was an English

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...

and

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . Cue sports, a category of stic ...

player. She won the Women's Professional Snooker Championship each year from its inception in 1934 to 1940, and again when it was next held, in 1948. She also won the Women's Professional Billiards Championship three times.

Biography

Harrison was born on 10 May 1909 in Lintz and was a coalminer's daughter (as was her fellow leading player Agnes Morris) and learnt to play at the institute in her village in County Durham. She entered the 1931 World Ladies Billiards Championship, which was the first time she had played against women, and won the tournament. She turned professional straight afterwards. When the Women's Billiards Association was formed in 1931, Harrison was one of the four professional players appointed to a committee to organise the professional championships, along with Margaret Lennan, Eva Collins and Joyce Gardner. She won the Women's Professional Snooker Championship each year from its inception in 1934 to 1940, and again when it was held after an interval of several years, in 1948. Harrison also won the Women's Professional Billiards Championship three times, in 1934, 1935, and 1939. Her break of 197 in the 1937 championship is still the women's world record break in competition.World Ladies Billiards Champions
World Billiards. Retrieved 19 August 2019. She received

coaching Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a ''coach'', supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. The learner is sometimes called a ''coa ...

from Willie Smith and Sidney Smith. Harrison qualified as a referee for billiard and snooker in 1937. She died in 1991, aged 82.England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007. Newcastle-on-Tyne; Volume: 2; Page:875. Via Ancestry.com. Retrieved 17 November 2019.

Titles and achievements

Snooker Billiards

References

External links

Sportshots No. 9 – Billiards – For Ladies!
British Pathe film segment featuring Harrison. {{DEFAULTSORT:Harrison, Ruth English snooker players 1909 births Female snooker players Female players of English billiards English players of English billiards World champions in English billiards Year of death missing Sportspeople from County Durham People from Burnopfield