She funded the Kinemacolor business established by her husband Charles Urban, helping it achieve global distribution as the first successful motion picture natural colour system.
[1] She was born in Milton, Glasgow, daughter of Polish-born languages teacher Anton Leon Gorecki, and his Scottish wife Margaret Brown.
[3] The family moved to London, where Ada ran a boarding house and her husband became a travelling salesman for cinematograph and optical firm Butcher & Sons.
I recall she usually had a box of liquor-filled chocolates and would leave me a few when she left with the mild admonition to her husband, "Now don't work too late dear.
[11] In 1932 she featured in newspapers when socialite Gertrude Gamble committed suicide by falling from a flat in Half Moon Street, London that Ada owned.
[12] She lost some of her fortune when she invested in the patent rights for a new form of metal bottle top that her husband wanted to exploit, a venture which ended disastrously.