Born: 12 October 1936, United Kingdom
Died: 26 March 1998
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Frances Foad
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Cathy Hayes. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
MacCurtain, Frances (née Foad) (1936–98), speech therapist and voice coach, was born 12 October 1936 in Belfast, the only daughter of the two children of Roland Foad, chartered accountant, and his wife, Betty. Her father was a financial director in various government bodies involved in the steel industry, and in the 1960s he played an important part in fixing the price of steel. The family moved from Belfast when she was quite young, and she grew up in Surrey. Having qualified as a speech therapist in 1959, she carried out clinical research in the area of phonetics and voice quality for most of her subsequent career. Her first appointment was in Manchester. Although in 1961 she married John Anthony (Tony) Connor , a poet, with whom she had two boys and a girl, she continued her clinical work and later took on some lecturing at Manchester Polytechnic. The couple divorced in 1979 and she married Austin MacCurtain, though she later also divorced him.
MacCurtain obtained an M.Sc. in phonetics from University College, London, in 1979 and was appointed the same year to head a research team investigating laryngectomy measurement at the Middlesex Hospital. This resulted in several publications on pharyngeal and anatomical factors affecting laughter and singing. During this time she also completed research for a doctoral degree and in 1982 became the first person in Britain to receive a Ph.D. in speech science from University College, for her thesis ‘Pharyngeal factors influencing voice quality’. By this time her public profile was increasing, with appearances on the popular BBC television science programme ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and lecturing in America and at the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Her research interests in imaging and measuring voice function had attracted commercial attention and, together with IBM, she developed a computer – the IBM Speech Viewer – for use in speech clinics. In 1988 she left research and founded a successful company called VoicePower (later renamed Zarbo), where she trained business executives to control their voices when under pressure, in order to make more effective presentations.
MacCurtain was confident and charming, qualities which informed her success in business. In her youth she had wanted to become an actress but later adapted readily to her career as a speech therapist, where the interaction between speech and personality remained a lifelong interest for her. She died in April 1998.