Quick Facts
Biography
Edith Parnell (1913-1938), known to friends as Bunny, was a Welsh swimmer and journalist who died aged 25.
Life
Edith Parnell was the daughter of Mr and Mrs F. R .Parnell of Penarth. On 15 August 1929, aged 16, she became the second person to swim the Bristol Channel, swimming from Penarth to Weston-super-Mare. She remains the youngest person ever to have made the crossing.
She later became the first woman reporter for the Reuters News Agency in Paris and London, and the first woman editor of a Sunday newspaper. She was later editorial manager of Higham's advertising agency.
She married the journalist Hugh Cudlipp in April 1936, though the marriage was not a success. She was simultaneously in love with Tom Darlow, editor of John Bull, and kept up an affair with him. She died in childbrth on 13 November 1938, after a Caesarean in a Harley Street Clinic.