The 1886 music hall: an agent's price list.

 

Many years ago, when I was a baby (ish) theatrical agent, someone invented the electric typewriter and I had what I thought was the novel idea of sending out Artist Availability Lists to managements. The electric typewriter could run off the same page(s) lots of time, you see. Novel? Hardly. A century too late. And today I came upon this 1886 example of an Availability List from the southside variety agency of 'Mr de Vere'. Wonderful piece of music-hall history!

I read through the list... and I recognised only two names!  Ada HERMINE (sometimes Herminie) a successful 'operatic vocalist' and Pollie BEAUMONT long-lasting soubrette.  So I thought I had better investigate. Was this a cheap-n-cheerful agency? Or were any of these acts good stuff.

Let's go for the most expensive act. £10 a week for HERR JULIUS KELLER. The antipodean wonder and phenomenon of 1885. What did he do, thought. This Australian with a germanic name? Well, he wasn't Australian. He was a genuine German. And 'antipodean' was here used in its original sense. Herr Keller was an upside down man. He apparently had paralysed legs, and his act consisted of doing everything normally done by legs with his arms!

Jules KELLER [KELLER, Barnett Jules] (b Fridrichshof, Dahme-Spreewald, Germany January 1866; d Salisbury 1 July 1906) grew up in England, and launched himself as a novelty act in 1885 as 'the pedo-manual phenomeon'. He was an entire success and progressed quickly to venues such as the Star Music Hall, Liverpool and the Westminster Aquarium ('the marvellous feats of this gentleman must be see to be believed'), thence to the Continent..

He married Bella Conrad in 1892 and his infirmity did not prevent his fathering two sons (Ira, Arthur) and a daughter (Adelaide). He was travelling from Brooklyn, USA (the home of his wife's family), via Plymouth, to London Waterloo, on the London and South Western Railway boat express, to begin his year's touring, when the train crashed leaving 27 dead. Jules was one.

'R[ichar]d TABRA' 'comic vocalist and dancer' and Annie STERN 'serio, ballad and dancer', came as a pair for £4.10s.0d. And, yes, they were husband and wife. Married 12 December 1883.

Dick was the son of comedy sketch performer 'Richard Leggett' and his wife Sarah, and his rightful name was Richard SMITH (1855-1928). His speciality was a routine entitled 'the growing lad' in which he 'grew' upwards as he sang. Annie was 'a handsome burlesque dancer'. In 1892, the couple left for the United States, Dick where became a shipping clerk. He died aged 73, and Annie (1861-1947) survived him by some two decades.

ROBZAT was another of those acrobatic names which covered the identity of a prosaic Englishman. This one apparently frequented Northampton, where, around 1876, he put together an act built around slack-rope work and juggling with partners who called themselves 'T Azella' and 'T Loretz'. A unicycle was soon included in their performance, and one rode the cycle on the wire whilst the other two hung beneath and juggled. Until July 1877, when the chain supporting their apparatus snapped and the men were catapulted to the ground. Mr Azella (a rather naive nom de gymnast, unless he belonged to the well-known Azella team) and Mr Loretz seem to have decided that enough was enough, and in 1878 Robzat reappears as a single. Billed variously as 'the Japanese juggler' 'the equilibristic marvel' 'with his performing pigeon, Billy, 'the Neapolitan wonder', 'the Royal juggler', 'the fire-enveloped wirewalker' and finally as 'chair equilibrist and valuter' (1904) he and his 'dexterous juggling with glass globes, knives and torches' were a solid item on music hall bills throughout the land. He seems to have adventured abroad but little -- I see him at the Paris El Dorado in June 1885 -- maybe because there was apparently (unless she's a typo) a wife at 27 Lambeth Rd, letting rooms...?  Anyway he seems to have been good value at £3.10s.0d.

Addendum: Gina Ambridge dug up this!

So! William James TAYLOR .. born 1854?  Here he is, in 1881, 'stage professsional' born Birmingham, aged 25, son of William, a railway/builder's labourer, and his wife, Mary Ann. So, born 1856? Split the difference?  1901 'professional juggler' in Birmingham aged 45, with his sister, Ellen, and brother-in-law Harry James Overton (m 1893).

Pollie BEAUMONT was around for a long time. I imagine her real name was not Beaumont, and I doubt if the other half of the Sisters Beaumont (Lizzie) was either. Anyway the Sisters seem to have got going in about 1879 (there was a Mr Beaumont, alongside them, too -- Beaumont and Howe 'negro comedians') and lasted until 1884. Pollie, thereafter, is a single. At a meagre £3 a week. She worked, as such, into the 20th century, and I see her in the Variety Veterans Home in Brinsworth House, near Twickenham, in the 1920s and 1930s ... I see her on many occasions in the 1880s advertised alongside Ada Hermin[i]e ..  sisters? girlfriends? ... more work needed.

Addendum: Leigh Ireland and Ken Doughty have winkled her out in the censi!  Mary Beaumont. Born Portsmouth. 52 and a widow in lodgings in Newington in 1911. 39 and single, a visitor in the home of another performer and his music-hall artist sister in 1901 ...  And I've found the two girls in 1881 in Southwark. Lizzie 24 and Pollie 22 singers ...  and I've found Lizzie's marriage in 1884 -- that's why the act broke up! -- to Fred Riley, music hall vocalist. Her real name was Elizabeth YOUNG born 24 August 1856 ... and she didn't have a sister named Pollie or Mary ... sigh! My original suspicions seem to have been right!

And Leigh has put the tag to the story! Good old findgrave! Herewith the grave of Mary Mitchell ka Polly Beaumont. Died 9 March 1937.

Rose COLLINETTI [JAMESON, Ellen Rosa] (b Blyth 1854; d Kensington 1909) was an extraordinarily versatile lass. Dancer, singer, equilibrist, musician .. she worked in all three capacities singly, or all at once .. proffering a skipping rope dance on a pedestal, and/or a refined mandoline, banjo or guitar performance.

She was the third child of an Irish musician, James Jameson, who had assumed the name of 'James Collinetti', and his wife, Louisa Georgina. So we can safely assume that she had nothing to do with 'the Collinetti Ohio Melodists' or the four 'Brothers Collinetti'. The parents may have been the Mr and Mrs Collinetti who can be spied working around 1860 with a repertoire of comic duets, and the blackface Collinettis who were on the same bill as Rose in Birmigham in 1874. Rose's older brother, James, also professed music -- was he the blackface boy? -- but sister Louisa was a shirt-seamstress.

My first sighting of Rose doing her pedestal routine is in 1873, at Paul's Concert Hall, in 1877 she ('a very clever and versatile young lady') was playing at London's Star Music Hall. Then at the Oxford, the Marylebone, and off to Edinburgh for pantomime ('charming mandoline playing and no less clever dancing'). Amid a welter of engagements, she appeared at the Holborn Royal ('I like to take a ramble in the morning', 'The Belle of Baltimore'), Deacons, the Cambridge, the Sun, the Westminster Aquarium ... in any or all of her capacities: at the Cambridge, she sang 'The Minstrel Boy', a serio song, played the guitar, did her dance .. all in one show. A decade later she was still advertising 'mandoline and banjo, American song and dance artiste and premier High Pedestal performer..'.  All that for £3.10s.0d! But I guess she was getting into the later stages of her career. My final sighting of her performing is in early 1891 ...

 I think Rose would have been better value than the £4 'Ethiopians' known as FIRTH and LACY. After diligent search I can find them only in minor engagements at Bury St Edmunds, Tring and Dunraven Castle.

'SAILOR' WARD was definitely worth £4 of anyone's money. He was the best and most authentic nautical vocalist in the land. 'The T P Cooke of the music halls'. And, advertisedly, a genuine sailor of fifteen years experience in the Royal Navy and the Merchant matinee. 'Bronzed, burly and bearded', 'the only legitimate sailor on the music-hall stage. But he didn't just look the part: he had a fine singing voice and could dance a mean hornpipe. Which he did.

He seems to have made his first appearances on the halls in 1879, at Crowder's in Greenwich ('Tom Bowling', 'Polly', 'Goodbye Jane'), and after a little stint with something named Rodney Golding's Entertainment, came on to the London scene at the Marylebone Music Hall early in 1880, then at the Holborn Royal. When the Surrey Theatre revived Black-Eyed Susan, they hired Sailor Ward to add verisimilitude to the occasion by singing 'All in the Downs'.

In the years that followed he was to be seen around the land, giving 'The White Squall', 'The Midshipmite', 'Jack's Yarn', 'We still hold the sway of the Sea', 'Our Sails Are Set' (each made up and dressed as a different tar), and dancing his hornpipe to delighted audiences. Between 1885-1886 he carried with him a certain Master Cleveland 'banjoist and top boot dancer', who may or may not have been a son. Or a cabin boy. In 1888 he played Ben Bolt in the Oldham pantomime of Robinson Crusoe. And by 1894 he was purveying a 'Lifeboat' song equipped with rolls of thunders and flashes of limelight.

For a couple of years he managed the struggling Stockton Grand (prices 2d to 6d), but he returned to London where I see him repeating his 'All in the Downs' and dancing his hornpipe in Black-Eyes Susan. In the new century he appears from time to time in South London ... and can that be he, in 1919, in 1923 ...?

Alas, in all that time I hav'n't succeeded in picking up either his real name, nor his home port ... nor a picture, nor a programme ... nothing, just a swodge of appreciative reviews. 

'Mons [Carl] TREGETOUR' (b Burnham, Bucks c 1855) was a shadowgraphist, a juggler, a would-be writer ... and, I fear, something of a run-of-the-mill performer. I spot him on the odd bill (Marylebone, Standard, Aquarium) in the 1880s and 1890s. Also in the 1891 census. I checked out the Charleses born in Burnham, but with no luck. £3 10s. Hmm.

The Sisters MERRYWOOD just may have been sisters. Eva and Grace. But their name certainly wasn't Merrywood. At one stage they called themselves 'the Dublin Belles', but when they went to Dublin they were 'England's Beauties'. So I have no idea of the truth. Eva came on the scene first. I see her singing and skipping-rope dancing, in 1882, at Hartlepool and playing in pantomime at Marylebone and Richmond to good notices. But, by 1884, the act is the Sisters Merrywood. And it is a decidedly successful act. Two 'ladylike little romps' of whom it was many a time noted 'we liked their dancing better than their singing', but whose popularity therewith didn't seem to suffer. They were noted as 'very merry' throughout England, Ireland and Scotland, in variety and pantomime, for three or four years before, in 1888, Grace withdrew.  

Eva, however, sailed on, as a serio song and dance girl. Soon, however, she was not really alone. She seems to have appeared on a bill, for the first time, with the 'magician' who called himself 'SANDRO VIO' ('the Wizard King' 'the youngest Wizard of the World') a sleight-of-hand artist from Hammersmith, at Kinsella's in Dublin at Christmas 1886. Monsieur/Signor Vio was, according to his say-so, British born of Italian and French parents. Maybe. Anyway, he mixed his 'escamoteur' act with an increasing amount of humour, and found a novel act when he became 'the American Necromancer and Exposer of Modern Magic' ('Mahatma Miracles') revealing how some of the easier tricks were done. He also purveyed a thought-reading act with a 'Mystic Zerbini'.

Alex is said to have married Eva at some stage, but since I know neither of their veritable names, I can't confirm that. But in 1894, I see her referred to as his wife. Or 'wife'.  Sandro was still working in 1914. I haven't see Eva out since 1895. Grace pops up in Dublin in 1892. Well, it is difficult when you don't know folk's real names.

Oh, I notice that on Mr deVere's list the girls are rated £4, and Sandy only £3.10s.  

Now the list includes a Miss Stella de VERE. She's rated, no less, at £8 for her 'Continental comedy princess and cosmopolitan quick-change' act. You don't have to be a wizard to suss that she is no Stella, no deVere, and that she is in some way related to the owner of agency.

Well, she was his wife. And this time, I've sussed out the double pseudonym bit. 'Mr Ernest de Vere' was actually Ernest BRISKER (b Islington 1854; d 62 Hogarth Road, Hove 12 August 1938), son of a Jewish Austrian commercial traveller, and a sometime singer turned variety agent. Ernie married, in 1879, another singer, Leeds-born Eliza Ann PULLAN, in Sowerby, Yorks. Yep, that's 'Stella'. Stella, alas, was not to have a long life. She died in Chelsea, aged 41, 21 January 1893. Ernie allegedly re-married another Elizabeth ka Violet (b 9 August 1877; d Hayling Island 1 June 1970) and bred ...

Ernest and Stella can be seen together in the 1881 pantomime at Middlesborough, but Ernest soon switched to the agency business, where he remained prominent for some twenty years. Stella seems to have had a regular career ... but £8?

I wondered why Stella was worth £8. What to say of The Musical GARTOS. Fifteen quid. OK, there were (at this stage) four of them, but ... really? So a triple 'seek' here. Who (1) were these folk, (2) what was/were their real name(s) and (3) why were they worth £15.0s.0d.  I've just dipped, but the answer to (3) is clear. YES! So here I go. Maybe tomorrow. 

It is tomorrow. And I'm not doing enormously well on the 'who' bit. But this is what I've found. 

This is from 1878. But the original Garto -- Harry Garto, nigger and musician -- goes back well before that. Just how far, I shall have to find out.

I shall take a wee stroll down to Walnut Tree Walk on the off chance. And there he is! Henry William Garto. In 1894, and 1896, still! In 1904 and 1907, there's Henry William Gatty.  Ahha! Could they be one and the same person? 1842-1909. YES!!!!!!

Henry William GATTY born Webber St, Southwark 1842, died Lambeth October 1909. Son of Frederick Thomas Gatty (1819-1877, painter and paperhanger) and Caroline Ann née Harmer (1820-1890). Married 30 March 1863 Dinah ROSSER ... children Henry Frederick, Theresa, Annie, Ada ... 

What more proof could I ask for! Gottim! Harry started off in his father's trade, and I see him first doing a blackface act with Peter Lawson in 1868. Now, I know Mr Lawson (b 1834), because he became a tenor chorister with, among others, Emily Soldene's company. At this stage, however, he was a 'negro delineator' 'tenor vocalist and tambourinist' and a former member of Albain's Coloured Opera Troupe with whom he had announcedly appeared before the Sultan at Constantinople. Advertised as 'negro comedians, instrumentalists and dancers from the Alhambra, London' they appeared at the Trevor Music Hall and at Leeds at the start of what was to be several fruitful years of teamwork, before Peter went off to sing opéra-bouffe around the world, and Harry went out as a single with his spesh: a concertina act, playing a normal sized instrument and a quarter-sized one. 'One of the finest English concertina players'. Harry developed his performance as 'The Demon of Music', 'the Funny Musical Momus' with other items and 'instruments'. He played 'Come Back to Erin' on a tea-kettle, imitated a whole military band with his concertinas, played 'an almost invisible violin' ...  in 1877 his son Harry dit Alfred joined him in a double act, as an array of bottles was added to the improbable array of twenty items from which the pair produced music.

Harry Garto

In 1883, the two girls joined the act, now yclept 'The Four Musical Gartos' as the team visited the Continent, appeared with Sanger's Circus, and increased their artillery to 50 instruments ...

Harry died in 1909. It seems he'd gone back to wallpaper and paint. Though I see 'The Three Gartos' were still active. But the 1880s had been their heyday, when they were, clearly, worth their fifteen smackers.

The SISTERS SCHOFIELD were a nice act. Pretty girls, pretty frocks, pretty songs and good step and clog dancing. Never top of the bill, just a pretty bill-filler. The words 'refined', 'ladylike' and 'tasteful' were used time and again to describe their act. No double entendres or highkicks here. 

They actually were sisters. The children of theatre carpenter William Schofield and his wife Lucy. They called themselves 'Laura' and 'Bella', they were christened Lucy [Laura] and Eliza. Lucy was born in Southampton in 1861, Eliza in Northamptonshire in 1862, which means they were only 12 and 11 when they went on the stage, billed as 'the best female clog dancers in the world'. 

The act lasted for 20 years, until Laura got married. She chopped five years off her age in front of the registrar and her husband, William Routledge (1 April 1893). Eliza, who witnessed the wedding obviously stayed stumm. Alas, it mattered not. In little more than a year Laura was dead, I imagine of the consequences of marriage.

Brother John, who for a season joined the sisters in an act, delivering comic songs, went on to a successful career as a comedian.

THE COLERIDGES were a sketch act. They purveyed the same 'sensational' sketch (Convicts 48 and 49) around England between 1880 ('variety entertainers') and 1896, adding to it at some stage another The Collier Boy. They were, clearly, not legitimately 'Coleridge', they were said to be man and wife, and I didn't have much faith in an ad that promoted Welsby L and Sophia Coleridge, But .... the L was for real. Mr Coleridge was rightly Mr LEMON -- see 1881 census -- allegedly born Bedford 1849 .. Mrs was Mary Sophia Lemon ...  I'm leaving it there!  £6? Nice work, if you can get it.

On to the other page. OK, this is the first page. With the acts available NOW. I suspect, the less saleable ones. A few as little as £2.10s.  

Do I investigate Mons Jules Poule (£7!) pigeon act? Or blackfaced Will Hicks, who comes along with a serio and a soprano ... £6 the lot? Alex Day, the cornet player in a job lot with a 'Marie Santley' serio .. £4 the pair ..  am I going to get into "Carleton Wentworth' at a whopping £6.10s?

Why not?

Jules POULE equilibrist, juggler ('pyramids of fragile articles', 'burning lamps'), plate-spinner, pigeon-charmer .. In the 1891 census he said he was born in Germany circa 1854, and he called himself 'Herr' when he didn't call himself 'Mons'. And advertise his act in Spanish. I see him first in Paisley in 1880. By 1894 he has an act with trained cats and birds. In 1895 I spot him in Olmütz ... 'salon-jongleur et malabariste' ..  

Will HICKS was said to be married to his soprano-serio 'Jenny RENFORTH'. I suppose 'Evelyn MASSEY' the 'high operatic soprano' who tagged along with them was somebody's sister, cousin or child. £6 for the three ...

Will first appeared, in Yorkshire, in 1874 billed as 'the great negro grotesque, musician and dancer with his wonderful soldier dog, [Little] Prim' and voted 'vastly amusing'. In 1876, he is on a bill with Jenny, with his act varied with 'whistle-pipe, fairy bells and concertina' and over the next decade they worked and advertised together, latterly with Miss Massey. In 1884 Will became secretary to 'Signor Durland' (eig George Thomas RUDLAND) at the Sunderland Star Music Hall, and after 1887 I see them -- and Miss Massey -- no more.

According to one webpage, Will was really named POLLARD and Jenny, MELLON. Maybe. But I can't find them anywhere under those names. As for little Prim, I wonder what he did and if it was the same canine from 1874 to 1886. I noticed a Will PARKER 'nigger, dancer ..' with a 'soldier dog'  'The Original Ole Mudder Gum' in 1872 ... 'laughable burlesque of the cannon-ball feat of Herr Holtum ...' 'The Nervous Nigger', 'Do You Want your chimney swept?' ... and wondered for a moment .. but no. He is still going when Mr Hicks begins ..

Another couple were Alex[ander] DAY and Marie SANTLEY. He a comic vocalist and one-armed cornet player, she a little sparky serio. He shows up in 1875 on the midland halls, she some three years later. They are said to have been married in 1878 or 1879, as they had a daughter 30 January 1880 in South Shields. I have yet to find proof. The only document I can find is the death of 'Marie' as Mary Elizabeth Day 14 March 1898 at 3 Gowland Street, South Shields ... 

Alex doesn't seem to have ever altered his act, Marie ran through a welter of songs with titles such as 'A modest young duck of eighteen'. 'One of the Hallelujah lasses', 'You're not good enough for me', 'Don't you go too far', 'Mary, Matilda, Maria', 'Bridget Maguire', 'I'm always a lady when it's my night out' or 'What will become of you I don't know'.

Ettie Margaret Rose Raynham, daughter of theatre-manager Walter Raynham also took the name of 'Marie Santley' for the stage in the 1890s.

CARLTON, WENTWORTH and LITTLE MAY (yes, comma between [Charles] Carlton and [Maud/Rose Wentworth) and their melodramatic domestic sketches, put together it seems latterly to allow May ('a talented child') to show her quadruple threat talents, seem to have lasted but a little while. Unless 'Little May' is the one of that name who played Charles Arnold's little son in Hans, the Boatman. I had the impression that that May [Hannan] was Arnold's actual daughter. Anyway, she's being Fritz when C&W are doing their 'pathetic little sketch' on the halls. Red Riding Hood and the Masher Wolf doesn't sound very 'pathetic'! Ah! But Light at Last was set in a reformatory.

Hmm. Little May EVANS .. later 'Miss Lily May'? Ahha! Miss Lily Algie ... or is it Lily and Algie ..? Lily May and Master George 'imitations of music hall celebrities'..

The adults had been around since 1882 (Caught at Last, The Sculptor's Studio, Alone in the World, Light and Shade), but I see them not after 1888. Not as a pair, anyway ... (warning, there is another Maud Wentworth, soprano .. another who was eig Laura Read) . Lily and Little Algie play the Babes at Grimsby, Maud and Lily can be seen in Leeds together in 1889 .. Oh! The Wentworth Combination in 1888 (Love v Law) and 1890 and 1892 .. Maud and Lily again .. and wot! Maud and George Algie? 'The Wentworths'. Still doing The Living Statue. With wot? Miss May and Miss Algie?  And by the mid-90s they are all beyond my ken ..

So, did something befall Charles? He's around in early 1888, but then .. gone ..

T B BRYDGE and Nellie ESTELLE did a sketch entitled Treachery and she recited 'The Tenth Hussar', they both sang. Then they briefly joined Billy West in a blackface comedy trio ...  In 1898 they were still purveying a sketch Domestic Squabbles, in 1900 The Charmed Necklet ... 

Thomas B Brydge (b Stockport 1845) and his wife Ellen A (b London) kindly turn up playing Aston on 1891 census night. And in 1871 he is Thomas B Bridge 'ethiopian artist' born 1842 with a wife Matilda aged 18 (b Ashby, Norfolk) ... 1881 he's 'vocalist' with Matilda.. Thomas Bold BRIDGE musician married, 1866, Elizabeth Hirst ... getting there! Married in 1883 shoemaker's daughter, Ellena Ann Crudgington (b Bacon St, Bethnal Green, 10 March 1854). I guess that's 'Nellie Estelle'. Oh, there they are, still 'actor' and 'dancer' in the 1911 census at 31 Waleran Buildings, Old Kent Road ...   Bless them! Real troupers .... I hope they saved those £4.10s-es.

The others? Well, Ada HERMIN[I]E by any other spelling and any other name, I'm leaving for now. She was a kosher 'operatic' vocalist, and I've tried through the years to sort her out, without success. Possibly Scottish. She flourished from 1867 to 1889, going from singing 'Qui la voce' and 'Ernani involami' to Scottish and Irish Ballads and, finally, billed herself as 'contralto' and 'characteristic vocalist'. She spent effectively her whole career in the music halls and, when she appeared in panto or pageant, as Britannia or Minerva, she stipulated 'singing ONLY'. I suspect she was large and clearly no actress. But her singing won her the accolade, from some, of being the best soprano vocalist in the music halls of her time. 'The Empress of Vocalisation'.

Addendum (no we hav'n't given up!) The amazing Leigh Ireland has unearthed a Herminie Ada Handley who I am convinced just fits the bill! Hermine Ada HANDLEY (b 19 Warwick St, Pimlico 23 April 1848; d 11 Sitwell Street, Derby 1 September 1899). Daughter of William Huntingdon Handley and his wife, Mary Ann née Davis. Both musicians. Lots of little Handleys. 

The chap who called himself Tom BOWLING and paired with Miss Rose WYNNE ...  surprisingly I unearthed them!  I'm not sure why a Scots-born, Irish/Yorkshire comic, who operated largely in Yorkshire and surrounds, and who had nothing to do, as far as I know, with the sea, would take for stage name the title of Dibdin's hugely famous nautical ballad. His real name was George Aytoun ATKINSON (b Leith, 14 March 1855) and he started life as a shipping clerk. In 1881 he married Rosina SIPPLE (b London 1859; d Liverpool 24 January 1906) 'balladist, serio-comic and comedienne'. Yes, that was Miss Wynne. They worked through the 1880s and into the 1890s, she, seemingly being the main attraction, latterly. In 1891 he is callling himself 'George AYTOUN'. In 1901 he is 'married' but no sign of Rose, in 1911 he is a widower.. and now apparently a theatrical agent, in 1920 he is in Prima Road, Kennington . ... 

TRILLO 'the refined and amusing ventriloquist'  19 Stanmer Park Rd, Battersea Park. 'Ventriloquist and mime'. 'Professor Trillo and his wooden-headed family' (1885) 'his comic ventriloquial figures' ...  His real name appears to have been Albert SHEARING ... and Gina Ambridge has sorted him out! Born, yes, as Albert Shearing, Alderholt, Dorset 1859; d Preston 1931. Originally a builder's clerk, married Sarah Ann Jelley, 7 children ... 

T[homas] H[enry] SPEARS was another Scotsman. He worked as a comedian through the 1880s and 1890s, both as 'Henry Spears' and T H, in the company of a variety of ladies to whom he professed to be related. He must have started performing a bit late in life, or changed his name, for in 1883, when I spot him at Ayr, he is teamed with one 'Peggy Pond', a juvenile 'mimic', who is said to be his daughter. (Wot! Spiers and Pond?). Around that time he is credited with a number of songs ('I don't much care about it', 'To please the men', 'Seventeen and never been kissed').

Next, he is working with one ballad-singing 'Marie Hiller', who is said to be his wife, then it's the 'Three Comical Cures' -- Henry, Marie and Maggie Spears. At one stage he is 'The Military Monarch' and Peggy is 'The Silver Queen', then it's the 'Spears Drawing Room Combination'. He is 'comedian and facial artist'. And there's a Lily Le Breton (oh no!) who is said to be his wife .. and a 'Harriet Le Breton' ... and now he's a ventriloquist? In 1896, he briefly became proprietor of the Limerick People's Palace.

So who were they -- Peggy, Marie, Maggie, Lily, Harriet ..? 

es? MISS Marie ... errr ... 'Joe Fredericks' was John Albert Frederickson, and he was still active as a music-hall comedian in 1905 ... ?died 1937  She was daughter of Henry Spiers, plumber, and aged 19. Dubious.

This one is more certain:

1891 Liverpool census  Thomas Spiers (sic) comedian 37 b Glasgow. Marie b Hull vocalist 30, Maggie 17, b Glasgow .. ahha!  Maggie=Margaret=Peggy????  So, born when TH was 20, and evidently not to Marie from Hull.

And Leigh has now come up with this!

1883

And this!

Marriage 22nd December 1887 Hull. 

Thomas Spiers, 33, widow, professional singer. Father’s name Thomas Spiers cotton spinner (that all fits) 

To Annie Maria Bamant or Bammant (depends who transcribes it) age 26, widow, fathers name John Hill.

Annie Maria Hill = Marie Hiller ...

And this!

"Thomas Spiers death April 6th 1926 age 73. It’s on findagrave. Stone erected in remembrance of members of the variety artistes profession. Twickenham cemetery. In 1921 he was resident in Brinsworth House."

De Vere clearly made his agency pay. He was around the scene for many years ...  I'm glad I had an electric typewriter ...