A few weeks ago I posted a fascinating document from the 1880s: a music-hall agent's 'availability list' with his clients and their prices displayed for the delectation of some unknown manager. I had great fun finding out who these mostly unknown-to-me folk were and, with notably the help of Leigh Ireland in England, managed to suss out the identities and careers of many of these bread-and-butter performers of the late Victorian era,
https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-1886-music-hall-agents-price-list.html
I'll return to that list some day, for a second search, but in the meantime, I wanted something else to play with, and I found this.
I realised, straight away, that this was going to be a much harder job. There were very few artists on this vast bill of whom I had even heard. And who was Mr Sutch who could raise such an enormous number of folk to take party in what seems to have been a Benefit show for his good self?
A quick zoom through the company showed up immediately that this was a very local show. Most of the participants lived, like Mr Sutch, in the purlieus of Battersea, Walworth and environs. Professionals, semi-professionals, occasional professionals, not-quite-professionals ... and very largely comic singers and serio ladies ...
Well, Mr Sutch was a pianoplayer and pianotuner. Henry Alfred SUTCH (b London 14 June 1856; d London 18 April 1939), son of a bootmaker, Henry Sutch, and his wife Eliza née Israel. So I guess he was Jewish. Married to Jane Matilda née Woodman, father of a torrent of children ... Professionally, he can be seen but little (I feel he may have tuned more than played), but he succeeded in getting a piece of music published by FD&H ..
I also spot him as pianist at a Music Hall Artists Railway Association do at Battersea Town Hall where the topbiller was Dan Leno and Walter Norman from the Horns bill was assistant stage manger; and at another of the same later in the year, at Holborn where the name of Fred Garrick appears. I spy him ('the well-known South London pianist') advertising in the 1890s, in the South London papers' for 'musical societies, clubs, smoking concerts' and as a fixer. He seems to have played selections from the shows (The Geisha, Belle of New York) and accompanied. He was still at in 1912 ...
So, where do I start with the rest? The ones I already know of, I think. I have no idea who the Madames are, but the girls are all striving professionals of the middle-to-lower rank.
Alice CLEVELAND was a sleigh-bells and xylophone artist. She was, at the turn of the century, a member of Madame Lloyd's Choir troupe, where I encountered her in an earlier article. She was active from 1895, into the early 20th century (for a while in a duo with a mandoline player named Tina Volp) ... Alas, I have no photo of Alice and her bells, but here is Christina from Harputley, Lancs ...
A thorough, if modest, professional was tenor singer Arthur COURT (b Lambeth 1864; d 1 Braemar Ave Wimbledon 9 April 1922) who has crossed my path as a backbone member of the Broughton Black parties. Son of William Thomas Court, carver and gilder, and his wife Sarah née Buckle, he began as a barrister's clerk, but by 1891 he was married (Emma Kate née Cousins) and working as a singer on the piers. From 1895 he was connected both with Black, and the indomitable Walter George's Entertainment performing operettas and concerts (Love's Magic, She Stoops to Win, The King's Command. Katawompos, Uncle Samuel &c) and he was still urveying a Concert Party in 1909.
I'm not quite sure why Miss Maud FRANKLIN was thought worthy of heavy-type billing above the other half-dozen serios. Her billing 'from the Principal Halls' was a lot of rot. The suburban-metropolitan Halls at which she appeared for some half dozen years were the locals: Gatti's, the Washington Palace of Varieties, Battersea ... but she did travel: Ramsgate, Margate, Douglas, Leicester, the minot Manchester houses, Stroud, Hanley, Leeds ... later it was Bristol, the Promenade Pier, Ramsgate .. in 1903 she is still about in South London 'a nice voice and knows how to dance'. One of the innumerable song and dance girls of the era ... a bill-stuffer.
Kate [Charlotte] EPLETT (b Shoreditch, 12 January 1878; d Uxbridge 2 December 1960) was another of the type, noticed for her 'very smart stepdancing'. Father was a musician, Frank Thomas Eplett, mother Kate née Sands. She, too, appears to me eye first in 1895, and by the end of the year is engaged at Morton's in Greenwich. She, also, played at Gatti's, with Leno, and in the major provincial cities -- Newcastle, Birkenhead, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull -- up to her marriage to Frank Frohn Street in 1904, and even after. Apparently she later dubbbed herself 'Katie Kemp' for a while, but she worked as an actress until the Great War.
Ivy LORENE from New Brighton (I think) was a durable performer, who went through several incarnations. 'Rising young serio' at Bootle in 1891, burlesque actress at the Livepool Star (agent out friend Mr de Vere briefly), 'serio and dancer' 'The Glittering Gem with her routine 'The Bright Moonlight', 'Serpentine dancer', 'serio-comic songstress', pantomime player, 'comedienne and top boot dancer' and according to her 1904-5 Belfast manager 'the Great Ivy Lorene'. I have no idea what her real name was. I have on idea from where she came or went. But the 'sprightly little serio' decorated the provincial halls for some 15 years before vanishing.
Alice ALTON was another serio, who spent half a decade mainly on the bills at Gatti's. Step-dancer, ballad vocalist ... I see she also played at the Bedford .. Well, there was an Alice Maud Alton who worked as a domestic servant in Battersea, married a plumber ..
Miriam COHEN was a South London girl. I see her at the Royal Albert in 1897, and giving a concert at the Horns, (April 1898)before she went to play in South Africa, with decided success. She appeared, on her return, in panto at Bradford but then disappears again, possibly to Canada. Or marriage.
Maud TERRY I know little of, but she achieved a bit more than the other girls. I suppose she is the 'Little Maud Terry' of 1892. And afterwards I see her (or a homonym) as a dancer in odd places before she turns up at Chatham in 1898 'of the Palace, London'. Maud did a bit better, briefly, than her run-of-the-mill consoeurs. She went on from this concert to feature in pantomime at Edinburgh, and then to play good comedy soubrette parts in the tours of the successful musicals The Dandy Fifth (Polly Green) and Little Miss Nobody (Trixie Triplet). Thereafter, I see her in pantomime .... Who was she? Don't know.
As I imagined, the three Madames were not young serios. They were new to me. But all three were confirmed favourites, as ballad singers, at local smokos and music-clubs.
Madame Bromell (contralto), we are told, was 'an artist well known in South London' in the later 1880s andright through the 1890s, with a repertoire including 'The Lover and the Bird', 'Love's Old, Sweet Song', 'The Gift', 'In Chimney Corner', 'The Soldier's Dream', 'On Venice Waters', 'Sweet and Low', The Wishing Well', 'Sunshine and Rain', 'The Song that reached my heart', 'The City of Rest', 'The Winter Story'. I see her on a number of occasions singing with some of the gents on our list. Also with a Mr Bromell. I don't know why she was a Madame. My candidate is Sarah Ann Bromell née Mayes, wife of an engineer, who died in 1902 .. lived in the London Road .. but it's a guess.
Madame Atkinson (soprano) was around from 1894, with 'The Holy City', 'Dolly's Revenge', 'Star of Bethlehem', 'Ora Pro Nobis', 'Asthore', 'The Valley by the Sea', 'Angus Macdonald', 'Daddy'. She seems to have quit the South London area latterly and removed to Hampshire .. unless she were the Madame Atkinson (contralto) up in Nelson .. or the singing Madame A in Wales ...
Madame Bowler Johnson (mezzo-soprano) comes to view in 1892, already 'well known in South London', with the same sort of 'ballad vocalist' repertoire. By the 1900s, she was seen as far afield as Woolwich, and I spot her still in the Southwark area in 1909. Who was she ...?
The only other lady on the programme is a 'thought-reader' performing an act with her husband. Ethel Mary INGLEFIELD (b Petersfield 3 May 1872; d Lewisham, 8 October 1939) and [William] Sidney GANDY (b East Stratton x 12 March 1865; d Worplesdon 12 February 1912) lived at Kennington Oval, so they were locals too. They were music-hall and seaside performers, with a range of skills. Ethel's thought reading, Sid's ventriloquism with a doll named Ebenezer Twiddlepump, mandoline duets ... Sid died after a fall from his horse at the age of 47.
The other black-type billing goes to the 'champion clog dancer' Will POWELL (b Walworth 1867; b Calais 19 May 1915) who thoroughly deserved it. Powell, a local Walworth boy, had a fine career as a song-and-dance man, which reached well beyond home ground. He played frequently in the London halls -- the Hammersmith Varieties, the Royal Albert, Canning Town, the Bedford in Camden Town, the Marylebone, Gatti's, the Middlesex, the Washington in Battersea, the Eastern Empire in Bow, the Metropolitan ('Ding Dong', 'I'm a Johnny') -- as well as throughout the provinces, usually with his wife, serio 'Kate Williams' (WILLIAMS, Louisa b September 1869; d 1942) also on the bill. The couple had a bundle of children, but lost several, before Will became casualty of the Great War, dying of his wounds in France in 1915.
The Hudson-Barber Pierrot Mandolin-Banjo Band is beyond me. I see they played on the lawns at Alexandra Palace in 1900, otherwise zilch. As for Wormwood and Scrubbs ... they were a song and dance act, seemingly amateur, whom I spot only in a smoko at Towcester ('Two tramps', 'Strolling down the Strand') and in concert between 1895 and 1898 in South London ... They apparently did a boxing and dance act.
Which leaves us a baker's dozen or more of gentlemen ... where to start? At random ...
Arthur BLOUNT was the stage name of Percy Walter TURCK (b Pimlico 24 November 1877; d 19 Bennerley Rd, Battersea 23 January 1953) son of a theatrical advertising man, William Turck and his wife, Louisa. An 'acceptable comedian' and 'eccentric vocalist' ('Underneath', 'I don't intend to try', 'I'd like to travel in other climes'), he was another local who strutted his stuff at the Washington et al, and even turned up on the bill at one of Arthur Lloyd's Benefits. Married to Clara Mary née Lemmer, he was the father of one Leslie Blount Turck (31 March 1911).
Arthur [Phillip] COXFORD is pretty surely the chap born in Dalston in 1867, who attended the London College of Music, and began appearing in concerts around Fulham, Walthamstow and Walworth around 1890. So he's probably the Arthur Coxford 'banker's clerk' in the 1891 census. I spot him singing at Arthur Court's concert in 1891, at Brixton, Dulwich, Peckham, Camberwell, Streatham et al with a stout bass-baritone repertoire ('We're Homeward Bound', 'On Guard', 'Honour's Call', 'The Adrmiral's Broom'. 'True as the Compass', 'The Deathless Army', 'The Alarm'). He is 'of 13 Parkhouse Street, Camberwell' in the early '90s. In 1901 he is at 53 Lugard Rd, Peckham with his wife Clara Frances née Cousins and their daughter Marjorie, and he is a stationer's assistant. However, he has started another sideline: as a lyricist. And not just a wannabe lyricist: he words were set by such as Maude Valerie White ('When you return') and Frank Moir ('Shepherd of Love'). About 1903 Arthur's work took him to Ilford where he lived until his death 23 October 1924. And look! Finally the connection!
In the Victorian era names were not exclusive or copyright. Thus, artists with the same moniker were apt to turn up, at the same time, and sorting one from the other can be difficult. Here, for example, we have a Walter HOWARD. It simply cannot be the well-known comedian and banjoist from the Mohawk and Moore and Burgess Minstrels. Yes, he fell on hard times before his death, following a stroke, in 1905, but not so hard as the be billed below Miss Frankln. Then there was Walter Howard the actor ... Ben PHILLIPS is another in the case. There was Ben the sporting fishmonger, Ben of the boxing world and the Kennington Social Club, Ben from the East End Abrahams family ... Our Ben can be seen in 1896 in South London, with Henry Sutch playing his accompaniments. In 1898 he is purveying 'imitations of prominent music hall stars', notably Eugene Stratton whose 'Little Dolly Daydream' was his pièce de résistance. I see him down Kennington way, in the late 1890s, with George Swayne, Miriam Cohen, Stratton Lowrie, Mrs Bowler Johnson, Mrs Atkinson and - ahha! Walter Howard jr -- oh! I think it's the fishmonger! 191 Kennington Road ... fourteen children .. son Isidore Phillips 'variety artist'. Born Hoxton, 1850 .. father fishmonger in Berwick Street .. of 140 Lambeth Walk ...
Well, the improbable is not impossible. So I tried Stratton LOWRIE, he who staged the concert. He was for a quarter of a century to be seen and heard in the evenings of the South London musical societies, but that name? Well, his real name was indeed Lowrie, but he was William James LOWRIE (b Newington Butts 19 April 1868; d London 9 July 1929). His first job was as as a warehouseman, his first appearances as a comic songster occurred about 1896, by 1901 his day job was as a chemist and druggist's storekeeper, and his list of local engagements well-stocked ('Things he had never done before', 'Grown-up Children's Games', 'Woman's Ways', 'Father's Box of Tools'): the Trinity Musical Society, the Dante Society, the Doric Society, the Ruskin Musical Society, the Paulet Musical Society, the Non Pareil Music Society. He was Hon Sec of this, and organiser of that, teamed with Ted Bentley and others promoting concerts. I guess in the end it became too much. He went into the real music halls ... as a waiter. Perhaps he hoped the star would drop down dead, and the management would cry 'where's the singing waiter'. In 1921 I see him still performing in the kind of venues in which he had been seen a quarter of a century previously ...
What's become evident as I épluche this list is that, while the girls are striving music-hall artists of little envergure, and the Madames are ballad singing matronae, the chaps are largely amateurs or slightly-professionals with another, basic source of income. Which makes them all the more difficult to weed out. But I may as well try. I think they are probably going to be more in evidence in the odd suburban smoko notice than in real life.
George [W] SWAYNE seems to have had a good go at professionalism. I see him ('descriptive vocalist') with 'Vento's Varieties', down at Portsmouth in 1891. He is certainly in evidence in South London in the later nineties, alongside others of the local players including Messrs Revealy or Reevely Long (by any other spelling), Walter Norman and Charles Clarke. After 1903, I see 'the popular South London vocalist' no more. Apparently he was a tenor of sorts ('When the sweetest flower dies') but tending to the comic. Ot not. Who was he ..?
Yes, I've seen Tommie HAWKINS down Battersea way, and the occasional glimpse of the rest of them -- not to mention the other 42 unnamed 'stars' ... but hey! this was music-making and local entertainment in its wonderful days ... before the advent of electric music and television ... when Entertainment was not a pub drag mime, but the boyos having a great night out being 'Bohemian'. And, gee, Mr Sutch got his 'Grand March' played, and his son a showing ... and I hope he didn't accompany nearly a hundred performers ... ah no. There was a 'full band'.
Well, that was fun.
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