An old showbiz photo: "Famous funny juggling folk" (1904)

.
This came up on ebay today. Who were they, I wondered ...

Well, it wasn't too tricky. Faintly, on the verso, was scribbled Radford & Valentine. Yes, but I was still none the wiser. I had to go a-delving.

Radford and Valentine trod the music-hall stages of Britain (and, regularly, the Continent) for a quarter of a century, and they were considered good value as an amusing middle to bottom of the bill act. And their act ... basically, they were jugglers. I think he might have started out as a 'character comedian' (spotted at the People's Hall, Oldham in 1895) and she as a song-and-dance juvenile, but they were established as a pair by 1904, when 'Valentine' was fifteen, and they purveyed their act as 'the jolly festive jugglers' right through till to ... well, I spot them last performing in Bristol at the end of 1928 ('the jolly juggling jesters').

Who were they? Well, finally, they were a married couple. The wed in 1913, after nine years as a team. 'Valentine' was Miss Eva Brilliant (b New Cross 10 May 1890), the daughter of a Polish tailor. 'Harry' was ... well, we don't really know. He married as Henri (sic) C Radford. He died under that name, too. He even joined the Freemasons in 1905 under that name, and enrolled as a voter in the 1930s under that name. But no man of that name appears in the British birth records, nor in the censi of 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911. Was he foreign, or was 'Henri' (he was known as 'Harry') just an affectation? I have no answer. Except that the Paris press referred to him in 1910 as the 'celèbre fantaisiste américain'. When he died, in 1938, at Southwark (annoyingly, just before the 1939 census!), he was registered as 57 years of age. Henri Charles Randolph. 

So, the career? In 1904 see them at Nottingham (billed as 'famous' already!) and Manchester's Ardwick Green, in May 1905 and again in 1906 at Barrasford's Alhambra Paris ('Avec Radford et Valentine l'emballement est à son comble, rire davantage est impossible') and at Toulouse Bijou Concert, in 1906 again at Manchester, and 1907 at the Oxford Music Hall and the South London. In 1908, Nottingham reported 'appearing at the foot of the bill . some clever juggling, the manipulation of indiarubber balls being especially skilful, while the pair manage to create a great deal of mirth in thecourse of an act which has the merit of originality'. That year they appeared again in Paris, on a bill which featured a sketch by Les Seymour Hicks.

In London, they played the Pavilion, under Wilkie Bard, and the Metropolitan, the Paris Alhambra called them again in 1910 ... and so it went on. The 'maniacs of mirth' ... 'they introduce some neat juggling with humour as a prominent note, whilst the stage noises and effects are unique' ...

In 1920 I spot them at the Bristol Empire under Cecilia Loftus, at the Paris Olympia under Raquel Meller, in 1923 he is 'Happy Harry Radford', in 1924 they are in summer season at Bridlington ... in 1928 they are creeping to the lowest parts of the bill. Old hat, maybe, but still good value.

In the 1930s,after a long and full career, they retired to Spelthorne. Harry seems to have died there. Eva, if I am not mistaken, lived fifty further years: surviving to the age of 98, and died only 1989.

Addendum: Joe Carl White has come up with evidence of Harry and Eva performing in the USA in 1907... accompanied by a certain amount of American-style publicity and gimmicks. I wonder where else they got to ...

Strangely, this mocked-up photo is dated as 1904 ...