Over the past few years, both for my book and for the G&S Archive, run by David Stone, I have dived deeply into the 'who was' of many of the early performers of the Gilbert and Sullivan 'operas'.
I've accomplished a few minor miracles of identification, most of which are detailed on this blog, suffered some cingling defeats, and had a lot of fun.
One of the reasons for collecting all this historical information is that fellow scholar/researcher, George Low, is preparing a new edition of the G&S fact-finders' bible, fondly known as 'Rollins and Witts'. He's been at it, microscopically, ever since I've known him. It's a big job.
Anyway, George has been the third corner of our triangle since I started this exercise. And it was he who, last week, noticed that I'd strayed from my self-imposed 'nineteenth-century-only' area, into post-Victorian years. And he sent me a list of folk on whom facts and dates were needed.
Well, George, I've had a go. I can't answer some of your 'maybe' questions, but I've uncovered the three main ?????s : Mr Hindmarsh Jamieson, Miss Mabel Burnege and Mr George Whitehead (with photo!).
Here goes.
George [Richard] Hindmarsh JAMIESON (b Edinburgh 11 October 1871; d Lismore, NSW 25 July 1953). Son of William Jamieson and his wife Elizabeth. After his term with the Carte organisation, Jamieson emigrated to Australia (1907). He appeared in both amateur and professional theatre, in concerts, and taught music in Kogarah and later Lismore where he died at the age of 52.
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| Jamieson and small friend |
Mabel [Sarah] BURNEGE (b St Sepulchre, London 22 September 1880; d Bray Villae, Berks 2 July 1972), daughter of warehouse manager/provisions merchant Robert Burnege and his wife Emma Lindsay Martin. After her Carte career she appeared in featured roles in such musicals as The Islander (1910), The Laughing Husband (1913) and The Belle of Bond Street (1914) and visited American to play in Night Birds (1912). Sometime thereafter she married a Mr SAVORY but, by 1939, she is a widow, in Hitchin, living with Amy F Batchelor actress.
George [Daniel] WHITEHEAD (b New York 1 May 1870; d Sydney 29 August 1923) Son of Daniel Whitehead of Charleston, Mass and his wife Margaret. Attended Harvard University. Six foot-plus bass singer, who appeared in England as 'Brown from Colorado' in The Shop Girl (1898). He subsequently joined the minor 'National Opera Company' (Brunone in The Prentice Pillar), and the remnants of the Carl Rosa (Don Jose in Maritana). He was seen as Billy Breeze in The Belle of New York, and covering Bertram Wallis in that gentleman's concert group. He married Cartesian Joan Keddie (qv) and soon after left for America and, in 1908 for Australia where he had an appreciable stage career. Also, it seems, another wife.
PS Here is one more. Interesting chap. Herbert Reginald SLEIGH (b Islington 10 February 1895; d Hounslow 1975). Son of John Hamilton Sleigh and his wife Isabella née Marshall. Photographer, singer, WW1 in the RAF, moving picture technician ...
Addendum: Well, George lured me out of my Victorian paddock, and, while I was there, he slipped me four early 20th century sopranos to identify and clarify. I haven't quite put a gravestone over two of them, but George, here is the fresuky of today's delving.
Olive [Reid] TURNER (b Middleham, Yorks 23 November 1892; d Leyburn 26 May 1970) was a tad tricky because there are several Olive Turners floating around in pre-war years, However, our one was the daughter of solicitor's clerk James Turner and his Scots wife, Christina, a young teenage pupil of Agnes Larkcom at the RAM, where she was decorated with several awards, before going straight into leading roles with Carte. There is a tale that she cracked on a high note, walked off, and never went on the stage again. Which means that the Olive singing lead roles in amateur productions (San Toy, Florodora) in the war years is not she. But she advertises as being 'of the D'Oyly Carte and the Prince of Wales Theatre' so ....
She did not, however, stop singing. She appeared in concert regularly (where a violent vibrato was remarked on), appeared frequently on radio, and took of the composition of ditties and even a couple of musicals. She died, unmarried, in her native Yorkshire in 1970.
Louise TRIMBLE (GITHENS, Mary Louisa) (b Philadelphis 23 October 1882; died 1972). George apparently has an obituary. Anyway, She was the daughter of William H Githens and his wife, Mary, and she raught music and sang in the quartet of the first Baptist Church before marrying Mr Larry Trimble, filmmaker and dog trainer, with whom she crossed to England in 1915. Mrs Trimble promptly took up leading roles with Carte for six months, but the job was merely a step to greater things. She assumed the name of Louise TRENTON for a career in opera of which there remains evidence in her recordings of Wagner operas (Brangaene to Florence Austral's Isolde, Woglinde, Sieglinde et al). She also sang The Princess in the performances of Stanford's The Travelling Companion given at Bristol.
She had one daughter, Janet ka Zilliacus, by Trimble before he waltzed off to other 'wives'. Mother and daughter can be seen in London's Clifton Hill in the 1939 census. Ah, I see, she died under her stage name in 1972.
Elsie [Mary Martha] CORAM (b Islington 21 December 1891; d Gate Cottages, Chorley Wood 2 January 1969) was another who mislaid her husband. But George hints that it may have been her fault. Anyway, she was the daughter of analytical chemist Henty Conrad Coram and his wife Kate Julia née Kerslake) and she married Henry William Claudius Norris, assistant musical director for Carte, in 1914. She had a fair career in mostly secondary roles (see archive) and then, in 1922, was hired for a gig in Shanghai and Yokohama as leading lady in a J C Williamson troupe. She and Cartesian tenor, Gordon CROCKER (b Bedminster 17 February 1887; d London 3 April) sailed east 1 September, and they returned in June 1923, having delighted the locals with The Mikado.
I don't know if it is Crocker with whom she is supposed to have had an affair. He was a married man with a child. Anyway, the marriage with Norris was apparently over, and he disappeared into Canada. They were allegedly divorced in 1929 and he remarried ..
Crocker went home to his wife, and became a bookkepper/clerk, Elsie sang in concert and on piers for a number of years into the 1930s. In 1940 her 21 year old son by Norris was lost at sea on the SS Lancastria.
I had the most problems with Marjorie STONE. But I don't give up easily :-) She was born in Bournemouth, tick. She married one Archibald Ronald Macintyre. So that means she is the Helen(e) Margery Stone who didn't seem to fit. Daughter of Harry and Elizabeth (née Lambert) Stone and born 16 March 1888 in Christchurch. And died 11 December 1971 in Bournemouth. I got there, but it took a Bournemouth paper to put the seal on it.
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| Marjorie Stone |
She joined Carte after a number of years singing in concerts and amateur dramatics around Hampshire, and after a few more ventures (The Wags) went back there where she broadcast and played in amateur productions. I see her as the Fairy Queen in 1930, as Carmen no less in 1932, singing 'My Hero' in 1933.
Right, George, I'll take on some more, but NOT post-WW1 :-)
OK. A few more bits!
[Victoria] Blanch SYMONDS (b Dock House, Milwall 5 January 1859; d London 1910) Daughter of John Symonds, metal merchant, and Emma Dalton née Brown.Taught music from her teens and her venture on to the stage seems to have been brief.
John William Maunsell STRINGER (b Dublin 22 May 1883; d London 1934). Son of Henry Stringer and Jane Christian.
Clarewnce [James] SOUNES (b Lambeth 1855; d Surbiton 21 October 1921). Son of James Sounes, die sinker and later heraldic artist. In 1893 he married Maria Alice O'Neill, which I imagine is how he became extremely rich, for she was the daughter of an army contractor.
Constance STANHOPE [TOBIAS, Eliza Constance] (b 51 Cleveland Square 19 February 1860; d Joannesburg 5 February 1892). Daughter of Edmund Myer Tobias and his wife Adeline Miriam née Alexander. Spent a busy nine years in 'comedy, drama and comic opera', which included a trip to America with Charles Wyndham and, in 1888, another to Kimberley's goldfields as leading lady for the local Queen's Theatre. In South Africa she even launched into management for a month's season in Johannesburg. But South Africa proved fatal to her, as to so many other visitors. She went down with peritonitis, but persisted in returning and disease got her. She died unmarried. She did not marry John Amory Sullivan (who married someone else), and pace the family historians she was not the '[Stella] Constance Stanhope née Markham' 'singer' who soon swapped singing for a life of waitressing. She was Lizzie Tobias of Cleveland Square.
Walter [?George] SUMMERS (?b Bristol 1867; d Balham 22 February 1905) seems to have been the child of another Walter and a Margaret. But maybe not. He had a multicolored theatre career: in the second half of the 1880s and early 1890s, he is playing stalwart heroes and character leads in drama (Not Guilty, Driven from Home, Devotion for a Life, The Miser's Will, The Octoroon, Round the Ring, The Village Forge, Underneath the Gaslight) taking time out, each Christmas, to appear in comic parts in pantomime, with a stock of comic and popular songs. In 1890, at Bath, he got in 'The Bogie Man' in 1892 1892 at Bristol he was 'Perkin Popcorn' singing 'The Man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo'. He took a tour with the Blighted Bachelors combination, sharing the comedy with one Walter Passmore, and went on to replace Shiel Barry in Les Cloches de Corneville and tour as Frollo in Miss Esmeradla wirh Madge Rockingham. In 1893, he played in the Manchester panto, Goody Two Shoes, before joining the Carte establishment.
Subsequently, he favoured writing, directing and theatre management over performing. He took the New Theatre, Barnstaple for a season. But he principally turned out pantomime scripts for Yorkshire's Robert Arthur and others. He also ventured into the music hall sketch world (The Sultan of Ranogoo). In March 1904 a Benefit of his of his Lichfield pantomime was put up .. and then the man who was everywhere was suddenly nowhere. I cand find only one provincial paper which records the death of poor Walter, aged 37, in Balham, the next year.
Ernest RIDGWELL (b 20 March 1883; d Ealing 1963)
married
Dorothy Kate BROWN (b 29 December 1888; d Hillingdon 8 July 1980)
He continued to work as a singer into the 1920s, before reconverting as a wool machinist.
Edward William BURGESS (b Marylebone 24 July 1839; d London 1891) Son of Edward Benjamin Burgess and Sarah née Hobbs. Originally worked as a house painter before becoming a chorister. He apparently married Mary Anne Susannah Racine, and had issue.
Mary (Marie) [Carmichael] BELTON (b London ?1867-1872; d Torquay 28 December 1955). Daughter of barrister Richard Carmichael Belton and his wife Mary Ann née Lewis. For many years a music teacher (see North Cray 1914), in later years she married D'Arcy Wentworth Reeve, who died within the year.
Sophie FARQUHARSON [SMITH, Sophia] (b Islington 1844; d Bexley March 1916)
A daughter of the famous and eccentric basso Robert Smith, known in two hemispheres as 'Farquharson' and his wife Sophia née Butterworth. Her younger sister Alice [Margaret] also made a career, in opera, as a supporting soprano. I see them together in J S Tanner's Opera company in 1884, alongside Sophia's husband W O Billington.
A daughter, Margaret Billington became a music-hall performer.
Sophie had a number of siblings, brothers and sisters, but I see no Annie amongst them.
Henry BURNAND (b Croydon 7 September 1879; said to have died 1950) The 16th child, so it is said, of Lewis Bransby Burnand and his wife Louisa Jane née Davies. A supporting tenor with Carte 1906-7, and subsequently in the Beecham Company at Covent Garden (Ghost in Raymond Roze's Joan of Arc). My last sighting of him is in 1923, touring as Peachum in the Lyric, Hammersmith, version of The Beggar's Opera. He married in 1913 one Louisa Perrott, but the union seems to have been of short duration.
Hugh Carlyle PRITCHARD (b Denbigh 1871; d Derby 26 November 1939). Sang in concert in Wales from the early 1890s. His stint with Carte is the only stage job I have found for him, but he was still singing in concert in 1905. By 1911, he was employed as a travelling salesman, and just before his death in 1939, he was working as a railway clerk. His wife was Annie H Marshall.
Edward Alfred PUTTEE (b Aldington, Kent 1872 x 13 October; d Howden, Yorks December 1950). Son of Alfred Puttee of HM Customs and his wife, Emily née Terry. Worked as a commercial clerk into his 30s, then as an organist and music teacher. His venture into the Carte came in his forties. In his fifties (1924) I see him 'of 16 Villiers Rd, Southall' arriving from Kingston, Jamaica, with a theatrical troupe including one Mary Alice Liddell. He married Marion Adelaide Goldsack, three children.
William Hugo Penderell PRICE (b Sherborne, Dorset 21 July 1870; d ?)
He suffered from the windy nomenclature because he was the son of a provincial clergyman, Hugh Penderell Price, and his wife Mary. He was singing in his twenties in modest concerts (I see him at Derby in 1896 singing Handel, and in 1902 doing a Messiah in Ilfracombe), and the archive has deniched him in several roles after his Carte period.
He is listed in the 1939 census as an inmate of a hospital in Finsbury ....
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