Today's subject attracted me because it has an Australian connection, so -- since I am now the possessor of an ancestry.com subscription -- I went a-delving therein to see if I could clarify the rather messy little bundle of bits of 'fact' to be found about the lady on the www.
This is Miss Emma Jane NEWMAN, comedienne and singer. He story is brief and not complex, but the family historians have made a really bad, full-of-falsehoods mess out of it. Ancestry trees give her birthdate at anywhere between ... 1829 and 1841.
1829 is correct. Emma was a daughter of a Pimlico boot and shoemaker, William Newman, and his wife Betty nee ?Strotch. They had a lot of children, too many of which died as infants or young. In 1834, William 'of Manor Gardens' had five of his children christened in a batch lot at St Luke's Chelsea. Their births ranged from 1822 to 1833. Emma Jane was very neatly and precisely noted as having been born on 5 November 1829. I imagine this mass christening was due to the fact that baby Albert Alfred was not a well infant and died a few days later.
I see William and Betty with three daughters -- Lydia, Emma and Ann -- their ages all rounded up to '10' at cottage number 3, Elizabeth St, Belgrave, in 1841. So far, I have not succeeded in winkling them out in 1851. Had Emma yet gone on the stage? It seems not. In 1845 Lydia left home to marry one John Arthur Speed (Emma witnessed the marriage)... don't know about Ann ... but I don't spot Emma in the theatre listings until 1859, aged 30. And by then she is Miss Emma NEVILLE.
How can I tell if she is the plain 'Miss Neville' playing in Shakespeare in the amdrams with the Printers' Dramatic Society, at 57 Dean Street in 1852? Or the one al Bolton winning fine notices later the same year? The Birminghan New Theatre in 1854? At the Marylebone Theatre 1856 is 'the first appearance of Miss F Neville' in My Grandmother's Pet. Plain Miss Neville is supporting Ira Aldrige in the provinces, and another ('ballad singer') is appearing for a lengthy engagement at Sheffield's East Parade Concert Rooms and the Old London Apprentice Concert Rooms. Wot? There's a more likely one, in parallel, at Weston's Music Hall in December 1858 'in other parts' alongside such splendid vocalists and Emma Pearce and William Parkinson? Another Miss N, simultaneously, as Fairy Queen in the Newcastle panto ... and oh no! a fourth one down with Nye Chart at Brighton! Playing Desdemona ('overweighted') and alongside the Alfred Wigans and other visiting 'stars'. Ahha! This looks good 'We regret to hear that Miss Neville, a young actress of considerable promise, is about to leave the company having accepted an engagement with Madame Celeste at the Lyceum. Gotcha. The Brighton one is she. And she's been at Woolwich, and the Surrey for Leigh Murray's Benefit ...
So, with her prénom now firmly affixed she was installed at the Lyceum, playing the Fairy Good Humour in King Thrushbeard and singing a duet with Julia St George. And on 19 Janaury 1860, she became the second Mrs George Patrick Loder.
She stayed at the Lyceum playing in The Wept of the Wep-ton-wish, in Pets of the Parterre with Lydia Thompson ('sings several pretty ballads', music by George Loder), Handy Andy, Chrystabelle and appeared at the Strand (Appearances, The Volunteer Ball) before the couple emigrated to Australia. George halready travelled gto Australia as md to Anna Bishop. Perhaps they didn't really intend to emigrate. But neither of them would ever get back to England. They arrived on the Vortigern in January 1862 'engaged for the Theatre Royal' and made their first joint appearance in an Entertainment entitled The Old House at home (1 February). They subsequently as Mme Ella Henderson to the act, and from timeto time another performer such as the juvenilr harpist Edith Molteno.
In 1863 they visited New Zealand playing the Entertainment, and the following year again when Loder became conductor of the Lyster Opera Company. Emma was in the company. However, they eventually retired to Adelaide, where Emma taught singing ... until the typus hit. Emma went under. She died on 5 December 1867, aged 38. George, already suffering from ill-health and alcoholism, followed, days after a Benefit which he was unable to sit out. He died 15 July 1868.
Some years later, a grave marker was erected over their unmarked resting-places in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide. It is perhaps the source of some of misinformation surviving! 26 years old, be damned!
Tidy-ups:
I haven't gone into the career of George Loder, or any of those others of the Loder families who were part of English music for so long, and to such good effect. That has been done already by other hands.
This is Emma's article.
The Newmans? Lydia seems to have been the survivor of the ones I know of. After deing divorced by her first husband for constant screwing around, she married the artist Lionel Charles Henley (17 December 1862). I believe that was something of a surprise. He was a little younger than she, and I had thought his propensities were all the other way. Anyway, she had several Speed children, and .. seemingly a Ralph by Henley .. and seems to have died in 1903 ... a much better lifespan than her siblings..
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