Canterbury's Women: HOKITIKA TO HOLLYWOOD!

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I didn’t realise I was opening a can of fireworks. After starting my little series of ‘Canterbury's women’ with Lucy Saxton, I was cruising around looking for a second lady to ‘play with’ and … well, I found several nice looking ladies photographed by C19th Christchurch studios, but alas! always with no clue whatsoever as to their identity.

 

Sometimes there’s just a smidgin of a clue. I honed in on this one, because my mother’s maiden name was Welsh, but when I looked again, the item had been withdrawn. I wonder why.

(PS two days later she reappeared!)

So, I looked into the photographer, Nelson K Cherrill. Globe-trotting Mr Cherrill only pitched camp for five years (1876-1881) in Cashel Street, Christchurch, before scooting off back to England and Europe, so it is surprising that there are so many of his snaps around. And here was one with a name! Alice Rose Eyton. Should be easy enough to find. Oh! And look, her little brother, Cecil Robert, too.

Little did I know, when I started to investigate, that there were a good few other brothers and sisters (so, where are their photographs?), heaps of tales – from suicide to murder, to fraud, to – horror – rampant journalism and to showbiz – and I guess I had better start this from more or less the beginning. I’m sure I’m not the first person to do this: maybe someone else has done it before and better. But they haven’t got the baby snaps!

Robert Henry Eyton was born in Wrockwardine, Shropshire, and christened there 7 January 1845. He had at least five sisters, and a couple of brothers, but given the profusion of later Eytons, I’m not going there. Father was Thomas Campbell Eyton (b Willington, Shropshire 10 September 1809; d Eyton, 25 October 1880), banker, JP, and all that. Mother was Elizabeth née Slaney. And Robert and his brother attended Rugby school (see 1861 census) and Trinity Hall, Cambridge University … The family can be seen at Wellington, Shropshire in the 1851 census. They have a household with eight servants.

Thomas Campbell Eyton

Well, some time between what seems to have been a very brief 1865 venture at Cambridge and the first half of 1866, R H Eyton left England for New Zealand. One wonders why. And on 28 August 1866, he married another new immigrant, Eleanor [Josephine Maud] Fosbery, daughter of Francis George Fosbery, of Curraghbridge, Limerick, and his wife Sarah Eleanor Wilhemina née Smith, in Auckland… did they meet on board the outward-bound Mary Shepherd heading, with 114 souls, to found an ill-fated new colony at Kawakawa in the Bay of Islands ? … or later? Anyway, they wed, within months of arriving, in Auckland, and the breeding began. 

I have tried to sort the children out. I have noted Hugh Slaney (b Parnell 1869; d Melbourne 27 October 1926), Arthur Fosbery (b Parnell 2 April 1870; d Drummond St, Melbourne 16 June 1885), Charles Fosbery (b Parnell 24 June 1871; Los Angeles 2 July 1941), Vere Campbell (b 1872; d Hospital Street, Greymouth 31 January 1873), our Alice Rose (1874-1929) and Cecil Robert (1876-1923), Keith (d Armagh Street, Christchurch 25 December 1877) … and there was/were more yet to come. 

The Eytons moved frequently, either in function of Robert’s ‘work’ as a journalist, or something else, and he apparently gambled on his facile pen and on ‘investments in mining’ to make him a living. All the while producing more and more babies. But Robert seems to have been a bit of a clot. He got into financial straits, passed 9 or 10 bad cheques in Nelson, and ended up fleeing to Melbourne, where he was dragged to court and attempted (?) newsworthily to commit suicide. 

But he was drained of his laudanum and ended up back in New Zealand, for the nonce at Greymouth, then Hokitika. 

We can more or less follow Eyton’s unstable career by the birthplaces of his children, so we know that, about 1877, the family left Hokitika for Christchurch where Robert became sub-editor on the Christchurch Press;

By 1880 they had removed to Ashburton where he joined the respected Howard Charles Jacobson (1841-1910, Stories of Banks Peninsula) in leasing the Ashburton Guardian, and meddled in public affairs. Eleanor was singing in local concerts. But, typically, the business partnership didn’t last long: Mr Jacobson went on to head the Akaroa Mail and Mr Eyton scooted off to Australia. I sight him in Hobart, in Adelaide, in Melbourne … Eleanor and her four children seem to have traipsed with him. But her husband was up to his old tricks:

However, like the bad penny, he came back, and 20 March 1882 Eleanor gave birth to a little Veronica Fosbery Eyton at Macquarie Street, Hobart. And then we see Robert ‘of Bathurst Street’ buying 500 shares in a Tasmanian tin mining venture. And Eleanor singing, again, in the local concerts. Until, in March 1885, Robert had another shot at suicide. Hanging rather than poisoning himself, this time.

So, Mr Eyton (‘formerly sub-editor of the Mercury and editor of The Tasmanian News’), and his long-suffering family, left town for the umpteenth time. One child couldn’t take it. Sickly, fifteen year-old Arthur died. Four months later, Robert got his wish, and, after suffering an ‘apoplectic fit in Adelaide’, joined his son in his Melbourne grave. ‘After life’s trials and torments’. ‘He leaves two sons’ quoth the press. Three, actually: Hugh, Charles and Cedric. But also two daughters, Alice and little Vera.

And at the inquest, the dirty washing came out … epileptic, chronic alcoholic ..

In 1886, Eleanor remarried. Her new husband was the much younger Mr Robert Bentley Shires Nightingale (b Melbourne 5 June 1860), licensee of the Bohemian Club Hotel, Swanston Street. She took up running the Goulburn Valley Hotel, Bourke Street East, sold up her nine-room boarding house in Drummond Street, took on the Regatta Club Hotel, and in the meanwhile son Charles stepped (March 1887) into the limelight: ‘Victor’s Athletic Hall: An interesting item was the Graeco-Roman wrestling between Eyton and Barrows. The first named, who is a pupil of Prof Miller, is only a lightweight but ..’. ‘Young Charley Eyton’ was at the beginning of the first of his successful careers, as a wrestler, a club-swinger, a living statue, a sometime actor ...

The next to make the news was our baby, Cecil. Sixteen year-old Cecil (or Robert as he, for the moment, preferred) had gone off the rails at an early age. He seems to have been a very thick and loose cannon. He fancied himself a wide-west bushranger, but he wasn’t very good at it and ended up being arrested amid a storm of newspaper reports. He must have calmed down eventually, because I see him still living with mummy in 1910. Between one Robert and another, Eleanor seems to have been a pretty forgiving lady.

The law didn’t always forgive her. She had a few public house brushes with the licensing authorities, and seems to have given up on beer-selling.

The girls would gain their renown from saner activities. Alice followed in father’s footsteps and took up writing. Vera turned to singing and the theatre.

Alice started writing for the Sydney Mail in about 1897, and was part of Melbourne’s ‘Bohemian’ circle until, in March 1902, ‘the young Sydney journalist’ left for overseas. She ended up, after a stint in Britain, in California and, in 1909, the Los Angeles Examiner reported ‘Miss Alice Rose Eyton sister of Charlie Eyton, manager of the Burbank Theatre has written her first play and had it accepted by Sanger and Jordan'.

As for Vera, I see her in 1898-9, ‘pupil of Mr Louis Grist’, expending her ‘pleasant light soprano’ in Sydney concerts, before, in 1900, she went on the professional stage. In 1901 she announced her departure for Europe and a Farewell concert. ‘Her frock was more impressive than her voice’ opined the press. 

When next heard of she was reportedly in Edinburgh, allegedly engaged for the pantomime, The Invisible Prince, as Princess Ivy. And then, with rather more exposure, in 1903, as co-respondent in the divorce of Sydney-born Mr John Mackenzie-Fairfax. She married him in 1906. But it doesn’t seem to have lasted. By 1911 he is back with his parents, professing to be a 40 year-old author and ‘single’.

Charley’s career, hitched profitably to the Morosco organisation, first in theatre and then in films, ran smoothly and prosperously, his marriages to three (successive) silent film actresses – Anna Cole, Bessie Harrison and Kathlyn Williams -- rather less successfully. He gave a leg up to little sister Vera who seems to have turned up in Hollywood about 1912, calling herself ‘Vera Doria’, with a husband, Juan de la Cruz, and a heap of tales about her brilliant successes as a vocalist and actress in Europe.

 Funny, I can’t find a single mention of her in Europe, though I do see her in the stage production of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz in America. Anyway, Charley put her in the pictures, where for six or seven years she vamped her way successfully into international ‘fame’ in supporting roles, before disappearing from filmic view. She also appeared in the Morosco musical So Long, Letty. I see her sailing from Shanghai in 1920 with a dramatic company as Vera Doria or Eyton (tiens! So she never became Vera de la Cruz! Shame.) and yes! And, what? There she is in Kiangsu, China 15 December 1921 becoming Mrs John Snodgrass. In 1930 she seems to be ‘Mrs Richard Black’. And there, I think, I will leave her. Oh, when she died 22 June 1957 in Los Angeles county, it was as ‘Eyton’. 

I’m saving our two ‘babies’ for last, so I’ll tidy up Eleanor first. At some stage, Eleanor and followed the family to Los Angeles. I see her there in the 1910 census, with Alice and Cecil. I see her referred to as ‘of the Panama Apartments’, I see her tripping to Europe in 1912 and returning, bringing Vera. And I see her death notice the following year (28 March 1913). So she never saw Vera become a success at last. But she saw Charley, and she saw Alice. Her obituary read:

Sidney? Who is Sidney? Cedric in disguise? Madame de la Cruz we know about. Hugh I’d rather forgotten about. Robert the husband is still alive? Yes. But he’s gone back to Australia (or never left it), where he died in 1925. And what is Alice doing in Costa Rica?

Alice Eyton von Saxmar

Alice, after some years in England, had become a successful part of the Hollywooden industry, turning out scenarios, film-scripts, adaptations … an altogether more successful writer, indeed, than her much noisier father. You can read a list of some of her projects in the works of such historians as David Haliwell. She married a fellow film-writer, Alabama-born Robert von Saxmar (8 September 1911), and apparently lived happily at Hollywood’s 6353 Yucca Street, up to her death 3 November 1929, from burns received in a party-costume accident.

And poor, dumb Cecil Robert, the baby bushranger? He’d run home to mother. And yes, he called himself ‘Sidney’ now. ‘I was an accountant in Australia and now I’m working as a hotel clerk’, he said in court. A doorman, so the registers say. Oh yes, in court: he couldn’t keep straight. He apparently married an actress named Edith Burke, and next thing was up for attempting (it ran in the family!) a miserable, can’t-cope suicide. Ineffectually, of course. Then he married the cashier at the local cinema, and ended up a few months later back in court charged with bigamy. So he probably did run to Mexico. He died in San Francisco 19 November 1923. Presumably of naturalish causes. Oh dear, what a failure: and he was such a cute baby.

A little PS abut Hugh, the Eyton who didn’t go to Hollywood. Educated at Christ’s College, Christchurch, he spent some years in Devonport, Tasmania, where he practiced as an accountant, and he grew up to be a seemingly solid member of the Yarra and Prahran business community and society. Starr-Bowkett Permanent Land and Building Society. In 1892 he married Miss Florence Tempest Nightingale and fathered a Constance, a Florence, and an Elizabeth Mary.

Oh, he didn’t wholly escape the family demons. In 1906 he was described in the press as ‘a mining speculator’. Why was he in the press? Because a married woman from Devonport who was ‘residing with’ him at temporary lodgings at 40 Grattan Street, Carlton, committed suicide. Shot herself. She wasn’t an Eyton, so she succeeded.

When Florence died 15 July 1934 at 31 Cromwell Rd Hawksburn she was listed as sister of William (NZ), Robert, George and Richard (dead) and John Septimus (USA). Surely Hugh didn’t marry his mother’s husband’s sister! My gosh, he did!

Enough. Who would have thought two wee baby pictures from Cashel Street would have led me to all this!

Oh! These items have been withdrawn too. There must be a Nelson K Cherrill fan on the prowl. Never mind, they're preserved here for posterity.

Women of early Canterbury: number one

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Yes, it’s always dangerous to announce a series. They have a way of fizzling out after a few episodes. But this idea appealed to me, so I’ll at least start …

SAXTON, Lucy Harriet (b Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire 21 January 1843; d Harewood Road, Papanui, Christchurch 8 October 1926).

Lucy photographed in Matlock circa 1860

Lucy Saxton was not a notable. She was merely a woman who, like so many others, came from Britain, to the colonies, in the 1870s, and there made a life for herself, of a rather different kind than that to which she had been accustomed. She came, it seems, alone. But she came to join her elder brother, in the unlikely purlieus of Robinson’s Bay, Akaroa, where he had settled a decade earlier and established himself as a farmer, sawmiller, landowner and one of those worthies who seem to be on every local board and committee. In his case, from the Duvauchelles School Committee, as chairman of the local library and the Ratepayers’ Association, to the Akaroa and Wainui Road Board, as Licensing officer for Okain’s Bay and Akaroa, a Justice of the Peace, e tutti quanti. Lucy would become one of the schoolteachers in Duvauchelles (adjoining Robinson’s Bay), and otherwise seems to have occupied herself with charity works. She’d had practice.

Lucy, brother George Henry (b Darley 14 Sept 1836; d Karori, Wellington 18 September 1914), and sisters Ann Elizabeth (b Darley 29 December 1837; d 10 April 1869) and Mary (b Darley 19 May 1839; d Matlock 29 July 1876) were the children of the Reverend Solomon Cadman Saxton, formerly curate of Darley north and south, and then perpetual curate of St James’s, Hill, Sutton Coldfield (b Matlock 17 April 1796; d Hill Parsonage 28 August 1859). Yes, a minor provincial clergyman of the type so dear to Mrs Gaskell. Solomon, educated at Cambridge, doesn’t seem to have been of any noteable lineage. His brother, George, was the Matlock pub keeper, his four sisters, three, at least, eternal virgins, lived long lives as ‘fundholders’ until, latterly, obliged to take in the odd paying guest. Solomon, of course, being a clergyman, married (Elizabeth Cardwell) and bred, though rather less exaggeratedly than most Victorian clergymen: just four surviving children, before Elizabeth died (24 December 1874 aged 36), when Lucy was only months old.

Matlock Baths

Solomon, as his position demanded, remarried. His bride (13 December 1848) was one Mary Knott, daughter of Richard of Northamptonshire, and apparently still on the shelf at rising 50. I suspect she fulfilled most of the duties of a curate’s wife, principally the housekeeping ones, without producing any more children.

And then, in 1859, Solomon died. In 1861, Ann is working as a governess and Mary can be seen with her two younger stepdaughters, living in Leamington Priors. Or rather, not seen: ‘mother absent’ noted the census. Yes. I imagine so. Before long, Mary would remarry and disappear from her ‘family’s’ life.

Four ‘orphans’. George moved first. From his education at Christ’s Hospital, and whatever he had done since, he emigrated. When? I first see him in Akaroa in 1865. Nearly 30 years of age. And a sheep farmer! Do they teach drenching and dagging at Christ’s Hospital?

Ann moved next. She got married. The gentleman was by name Henry Crawford, and of him I know nothing. Alas it was a fatal marriage. She died within two years, I am guessing in childbirth.

So, by the time of the 1871 census, we have just Mary (30) and Lucy (27), helping the elderly aunts with their genteel lodging house in Matlock. But then, all that fell apart. Sister Mary died at 35, auntie Alice had died in 1869, now auntie Mary Ann died at 84, and auntie Harriet in 1877 …

I imagine that, some time around now, as the last Saxton standing in Matlock, Lucy decided to join brother George. As maiden sisters did. I hope, after the parsonage at Hill, she was prepared for Akaroa. ‘Miss Saxton and the Misses Williams have thirty pupils at Robinson’s Bay’ wrote the local paper in 1881 …

I see, in 1896, Miss Saxton still in Robinson’s Bay ..

Well, in 1902, George got into the usual farmer troubles, a host of dead and stolen sheep, and he ended up filing for bankruptcy. His main debt was to … his sister, who had obviously been filling his monetary gaps for some years. I wonder where her money came from. Anyway, he may have been looking after her, but she had also been looking after him. So, now, after nearly four decades, the Saxtons left Akaroa …

In 1911, Lucy is recorded as living at Geraldine ‘Waihi Terrace, spinster’, by 1914 she is back in the city, at 299 Tuam Street, where she stayed for a number of years, seemingly sometime in the company of Miss ?Mary Kiver, who took ‘decorative classes’ for the Horticultural Society … I see the two of them donating regularly a pound or a guinea to various war and patriotic charities (Sailor’s Day, Navy War Fund Appeal, British and Foreign Sailors Society, Soldier’s Christmas Fund, Prisoners of War Appeal, Jubilee Memorial and Queen’s Statue Fund ..).

So, I don’t imagine Lucy was entirely alone. Or was she? George, who died in 1914 (18 September, The Terrace, Karori) had had a number of a not very durable wives, and a number of children therefrom, but oddly, when she herself died, in 1926, Lucy named as her executor Mr Harry Anderson, engineer, Christchurch agent for the firm of Reid & Gray, of Dunedin, manufacturers of farm implements …

Lucy’s ashes lie in the graveyard of St Paul’s Church, Papanui. In the same road as her last home.

It’s a long way from St James’s Hill, Sutton Coldfield. But papa’s 1835 church, described in its time as a brick building of no particular architectural interest,  has been rebuilt a couple of times since her day. And this one looks more appealing, anyway … oh! It’s Grade 2 listed …! And nestled in the shadows of a mega-Mitre and the Northlands Shopping centre .. well, I shall visit her when I get back to town. Your tombstone, as seen on the billiongraves website, looks as if it could do with a bit of tlc …

Post scriptum. I rarely go into Christchurch, but this week I needed to, 'on official business'. My friend, Dawn, drove me home, and as we tootled down the Papanui Road, I told her the tale of Lucy. And so Dawn took me to the church, just metres off that self-same road. Beautifully kept. Now, how to find her? No one here. Man mowing grass. They usually know everything. Ah! the office is in the adjoining building ... well, here goes! Lou, the church secretary, scanned the records. Yes! The index told us that Lucy was indeed here. Over to the map ... funny, she's not between the two numbers where one expected to find her. Outside, the three of us scoured the relevant area. We scoured for a good half hour. No Lucy. How disappointing. Surely they wouldn't destroy a relatively OK [listed] stele where even fragments are kept. Earthquake? Sadly, we left...

I've just had an email from Lou. Found! This is the church, so no 311 doesn't necessarily come next to no 310. Yes, she is there all right. Plumb on the end of a row, right on the perimeter, next to the tennis court! And she looks, if anything, better than in the billiongraves photo!

I have rung Decra-Art (who are apparently the reference in such matters in this area) to ask what it would cost to re-do the lettering ...   THAT much? Ah, well, my pension is coming. I think Lucy will have to have a bit of a brush up.

Shakespeare’s Greatest Musicals: ‘Bid me discourse’

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Funny the things that cross your mind, at cocktail time on a Thursday, while watching the sun go over the pink horizon …

Shakespeare. Yes, he. Willie. With whom I have never been able wholly to get to grips. Perhaps seven years of age was too soon to try to get into the plays. I did try. And the results were half-fig, half-raisin. I mean, no one cannot love A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And I played Prince John in half of Henry IV as a teenager. But I failed English II, aged 18, for pointing out to my tutor, in a typical Kurt essay, what I perceived as the faults in As You Like It. And A Winter’s Tale at the RSC would have sent me to sleep, except that I was there ‘officially’. However, my brother finds it one of the best Shakespeare plays. So, maybe it’s me. Anyhow, Willie is enshrined as a – even THE -- Theatrical Monument, and who am I to think, quietly, that he nodded much more often than is admitted.

When you are a Literary Monument, these days, and your copyright is flown, you can suffer from the most awful fate known to creative man. Your works get ‘musicalised’. Some authors escape this treatment. Balzac (give or take The Music Man) has somehow got away clean. His (my opinion, again) English and not-nearly-as-good equivalent, Mr Dickens, has not: but only at the price of some kiddie routines. And, oh Lord! Does anyone else remember ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do now than I have ever done’ Dum dum dum. At London’s Palace Theatre. Victor Hugo drew lucky with Les Misérables at the same theatre, but has been plunged into more ghastly hunchbacked musicals than  I could count …

Which brings us to Willie. In my Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre I listed a large bundle of the failed attempts to musicalise (as opposed to operaticise) the works of Willie. What a dispiriting list it is! I don’t mean things like West Side Story, which only use one idea and plot element from one play. I mean a genuine attempt to make a musical or light opera out of a straight, real, Willie-play. Like they did to make the unjustly neglected Lock up Your Daughters from Fielding’s Rape upon Rape.In period, in style – not in white face with balloons and motorbikes – well, I’m thinking! I’ve just re-read my own article …

But, oh damn. In that article, I missed the best and most effective musical-theatre Shakespeare works ever! Why? Because I didn’t look back far enough in time … 

In 1819, 1820 and 1821, the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, put on their usual diet of ‘opera’ and plays. Shakespeare, as ever, much featured. But this season, they decided to add a full score of music, mainly for the benefit of the theatre’s vocal stars Maria Tree and Kitty Stephens, to each of the plays. Which meant, of course, a wee slimming of the bulging text …  House music-director, Henry Bishop, was put to the job of composing and arranging the music and, typically, he composed more than he arranged. Rightly so! The results were splendid.

The Comedy of Errors was the first to get the treatment (11 December 1819). I don’t have the text, but the critics basically said that they thought that the more of the play that was cut out, the better. ‘We cannot conceive that Shakespeare wrote this play with any satisfaction …’. But it went down well. Bishop’s settings of Shakespeare’s poetry, as sung by the duo of divas, caught the town. I have eleven titles, doubtless there were more, that were slipped into the text, but they include ‘Take, o take those lips away’ (from Measure for Measure), ‘As it fell upon a day’, ‘It was a Lover and his Lass’ (from As You Like It), ‘Come live with me and be my love’, ‘Lo, here the gentle lark’. 

The favourite numbers headed, in their newest shape, for a thousand cottage pianos and endless concerts. Details to be found in Christopher’s Wilson’s new book, Shakespeare and Music.

The recipe was obviously worth following up, and on 20 November 1820 Covent Garden opened their new production of Twelfth Night with a grand cast (Viola: Maria Tree, Olivia: Miss Greene quickly replaced by Emma Love, Malvolio: William Farren) and one helluva score. Miss Tree’s best solo, ‘Bid me discourse’, was a singular triumph, and became a soprano standard for a century. 

Twelfth Night was followed up by The Two Gentlemen of Verona, with Miss Tree as Julia. And with two more major hit songs: ‘Should he upbraid’ and a version of sonnet 26 ‘When in disgrace with fortune’, as well as ‘Full many a glorious morning’ and ‘O how much more’..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCARikPFsQw

There’s actually a very stilted and antiquated version of ‘Upbraid’ on youtube, sung by Frieda Hempel. A new one would be an improvement. Or maybe Melba’s ‘Discourse’?

Covent Garden’s productions were vastly successful, and they launched their ‘hit show tunes’ all round the world. Songs that would survive a century as concert items and theatrical interpolations, until tastes and modes in vocal music changed, and the bravuras of Bishop, Arne and co gave way to more modish bravuras, from ‘Mein Herr Marquis’ to ‘Glitter and be gay’.

It will be exactly two centuries very soon, since these huge hit versions of Shakespeare’s plays, with music by an internationally celebrated English composer, were first produced. I’d love to see the UK National Theatre or the RSC restage them, to mark the event … or maybe even Covent Garden. Back where they were born 200 years ago … 

Bumby of the Bull's Head, Sale. A boozy tale.

I have enjoyed doing this little piece. A nice change from my deeply serious theatrical biographies.

As usual, it started off on e-bay. Still slightly asleep, and partaking of Flick’s eye-opening Botero coffee from the Sandbar Café, next door, I cruised past a photo labelled ‘Maggie Bumby of the Black Bull..’. At least, that’s what I read. The Black Bull? My way-backest Scots ancestor ran the Black Bull at Dyce, Aberdeen! But that was 200 years before photography and anyway, I’d read – as one does – what I’d hoped to see, not what was really there. It wasn’t the ‘Black Bull’ it was the ‘Bull’s Head’ in Sale, Manchester. But by that time I’d taken a fancy to pretty Maggie and decided to investigate her a little. Here she is …

Maggie Bumbv, barmaid at the ‘Bull’s Head’. But not just the barmaid, the pub-keeper’s eldest (?) daughter. We’ll get on to the question mark later.

Thomas Bumby was a Pendleton man, born in 1841 and bred, the son of John, a cotton-weaver and his wife Sarah, of 3 Borough Street. He worked initially as an ‘overlooker’ and a warehouseman, he married local Caroline Clarke in 1864, and they began a Victorian-sized family. Maggie arrived a few months after the marriage (17 November 1864). Oddly, there seems to be another daughter (his? hers? theirs?), Cissie, pre-dating the marriage who doesn’t appear in the records… but there were plenty of children thereafter. William, Elizabeth Ann, John Frederick (born ‘an idiot’), Annie, Clara, Walter, Tom, Christopher, Carrie, Percy …

Now, when one finds a photo, such as that of Maggie, on e-bay, one always does a search for the photographer for ‘unidentified’ folks from the same source. And look what I found! Eldest brother Willie (x Charlestown 25 March 1868), Willie: the only one of the family who disappears from my ken after this photo. I must search Australia. Ah! It may be Canada ...

And babies Carrie (Mrs Charles Edgar Walton, b 1881) and Percy (b Sale 11 December 1883; d Hartshill, Stoke on Trent 20 May 1959). 

Thomas clearly got tired of ‘overlooking’ and he got into the booze business. In 1871 he is at 9 Ellor Street as a ‘beer retailer’. There were a few of those around, it has to be said! At no1 of the same street a Mr Purcell was retailing beer as well, and Timothy Henshall’s Butcher’s Arms wasn’t far away. In 1873 and 1876 Thomas was retailing his beer from 2 Railway Street, Brindle Heath, but it seems to have been 1879 when he took over the Bull’s Head Hotel at no 2 Cross Street, previously the fief, for seven years, of a Mr Robinson. This photo of the building has 1879 on its pelmet, so did he rebuild?

Anyway, the Bull’s Head proved solid, as the area around it was pulled down or blitzed ... it’s always the pubs and the churches that survive! ... and eventually Thomas would hand it over to his son, Tom … It was said that he had run it for 33 years, but I think that may be an error. I think maybe 23. Anyway, long enough. Thomas died in Blackpool, at Highfield, 108 Waterloo Rd, on 9 November 1909.

And Maggie. She married fruit salesman David Kelsall (d 1 Clifton Villas, Ashton upon Mersey 13 May 1915) 'of Turn Moss, Stretford', and had two sons, Tom Foster (1897-1951) and David Clifford (1903-1977) … I wonder which of them got the family photos. Which in the end got chucked, and found their way to e-bay.

I see the widow Maggie in 1939, living at 1 The Grove, Thornton Cleveleys with her brother Tom, now a milk and cream salesman, and Lillian his wife … 

But the Bull’s Head carried on, after the father and son Bumby had finished, and the ‘developers’ had had their ghastly 1960s go at the surrounding area. It’s still there. Yep. Pubs and churches survive! No2 Cross Street might have a tacky highway before it, these days, but it’s still the Bull’s Head. Still active. 

https://www.facebook.com/BullsHeadlSale/

And I hope they read this! These photos (photographer: J Ingham of Sale) really belong on their walls.

Or the walls of one of the descendants of the below-listed Bumby family

[Cassie] b Pendleton 1863

Maggie b Pendleton 17 November 1864; m David Kelsall fruit-seller. Sons Tom Foster Kelsall, David Clifford Kelsall. d Manchester 25 October 1956.

William b Pendleton 1868 x Charlestown 25 March 1868. Educated Knutsford Inferior. Could he be the WB of the Supply and Tender Board died at Malvern, aged 60 28 March 1919.  No. The age is wrong. Seems to have emigrated.

Elizabeth Ann b Pendleton 24 January 1870. Home address: Broad Street. Father an ‘overlooker’. married Fred Marston (1868-1905), commercial clerk 'of Southport’ 19 June 1893. Remarried Albert Hergest Hill 'grocer'. d Southport 9 October 1955.

[John] Frederick b Salford x 29 November 1871; d Macclesfield August 1891. C91 idiot in asylum.

Annie b Pendleton 1872. Seems to have died 1891.

Clara  b Pendleton13 September 1873 Home address: 2 Railway St Brindle Heath. Father: ‘beer and wine retailer’ m Arthur Turnbull 'civil engineer' 1898. 2 sons Leslie Clarke and Reginald Langford Turnbull. C11 Monks Coppenhall, Cheshire. 1939 at The Grove, Thornton Cleveleys with Tom and wife, and Maggie. d 1960.

Walter b Pendleton 21 June 1875; d 12 Shelwall Lane, Latchford 22 May 1914. Alas, not ‘the famous ex-Swinton and Lancashire rugby football captain’. C11 living at the Bull's Head with brother, Tom. Listed as 'feeble minded'.

Tom b Ashton under Lyne 1 June 1877; d Blackpool 1945 m Lilian Rostron Meadows (d Cheadle, 17 October 962) C11 proprietor of the Bull’s Head 2 Cross Street.

Christopher b Ashton under Lyne 30 January 1879; d Blackpool 12 Feb 1921 m Mary Edith Salisbury, upholsterer

Carrie b Sale 29 September 1881 cotton spinner m Charles Edgar Walton 1912 d Crewe December 1964

Percy b Sale 11 December 1883; d Hartshill, Stoke on Trent 20 May 1959 ‘of 6 Clive Ave, Baddeley Green’ In C11 hotel proprietor Swan Hotel, Sandbach. M 1912 Bertha Orr. C1939 licensed victualler 10 High Street, Hanley w son Jeffery Orr b 3 Nov 1913 mgr second son son Jno Chas (b 24 December 1920; d Stoke 1974)

By the way, the vendor of these great 'local history' pictures is Barbara8644 in Darlington, England. They are just a few pounds each ...

Thanks Barbara, for a nice wander through C19th Lancashire.

Other photos by Mr Ingham on today's ebay included these:

I thought this just might be a Bumby. But though its the same photographer the back card is different..

Too young?

This little German lass is identified on her verso. Gertrud Helene Emilie Breland. No relation.

Oh dear ... I don't think we want HIM!

 Post-scriptum: thanks to this wee piece, the photos have found their way back to the Bull's Head, and now adorn its walls.  Hurrah!  And these have come back, from the local archives

A Mythical Musical Marriage

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This is a study in two parts. I wrote and posted the article first in 2018, but this week I found some more information, so I'm updating it.

'In 1885-7, the odd newspaper, mostly in America, starting referring to the successful British singer known as Irene Verona as ‘Mrs Fred Darrell’. Handsome Fred was just as successful, as a comic and comic opera tenor, as Irene was as a soubrette, but … well, I hadn’t sussed him as the marrying kind. He was a lad of the Bohemian clubs, mingling with some of the more unusual and eccentric male characters of the theatre world, but, well stranger things have happened. So I thought, since I was tied to my bed in an empty room, like Andromeda tied to the rock, by a nasty bout of food poisoning (my cooking!), I might as well tackle this question.

The first thing, of course, was to find out the parties’ real names. Got one, so let’s start with her.

VERONA, Irene [BARTRAM, Verona] (b Pancras 13 September 1860; d Brighton, 1947)
Father: William Henry Bartram (d 1876) musician; Mother: Amelia née Brown (b Wingfield, Suffolk; d 13 Monnery Road, Islington 21 November 1923).
Married, 19 November 1877, to William Fuller, 'actor'… both ridiculously described as 'of full age' ..

Yes. Well there’s a bit of a tale there, I feel. Verona’s first job in the theatre was at the good old Polytechnic Institute, which mixed lectures and mechanical extravaganzas in a highly popular entertainment. But, normally, the Polytech only billed its lecturers and its few featured players, and the company didn’t get a mention. So we don’t know exactly when ‘Lotti Verona’ joined up. An American biographical note says 1873. I doubt it. Anyway, it must have been by 1877. Because, one day, a reviewer did mention some of the figurants by name, and there was ‘Willie Fuller’. I don’t think he figured very long, and I don’t think was an ‘actor’ very long, and I don’t think he was a husband very long. By the 1881 census, Verona is back home with mother, and calling herself by her maiden name. Off stage. On stage, she had become ‘Irene Verona’ and was well under way.

At Christmas 1879, she was cast as Ganem in The Forty Thieves at Charles Bernard’s Prince’s Theatre, Manchester. Mr Bernard ran good touring comic-opera companies, and Verona quickly moved into the part of soubrette Serpolette in Les Cloches de Corneville. She played her role in the provinces and then in London’s West End. At the Globe Theatre, 10 September 1881, the role of Grénicheux was taken up by a young tenor who had been playing it for the last three years in the provinces. Mr ‘Fred Darrell’.

Both of the young people worked well over the next years. Fred played the title-role in Edward Solomon’s hit comic opera, Billee Taylor, all around Britain, and even into Europe. He featured in the tenor role of the London triumph Rip van Winkle, and went on the road with W J Hill in his favourite three-hander (music: Solomon), Crazed. The lady member of the little troupe was … Verona. She too, had been doing well. She had appeared as the soubrette, Beatrix, in Manola, toured and played panto for Bernard, starred at the Alhambra in The Golden Ring and Der Bettelstudent and even taken part in the variety musical The Bunch of Keys…

But then Fred got a particularly key job. The American soubrette, Lotta, visited Britain and appeared at the Opera Comique in Nitouche, and Fred was hired to play her lover, Fernand de Champlâtreux. Lotta clearly agreed with the press verdict (‘good looks and pleasant tenor’ ‘thoroughly satisfactory’) and swiftly hired him the accompany her back to America. America liked him a lot (The Little Detective, Musette etc): ‘He is one of those actors whom we will not, if possible, allow, to return to England’. Well. He did. And Verona too. He did stints for McCaull, Kate Claxton, Lydia Thompson, The Little Tycoon company, and then joined Verona who was starring in Edward Rice’s revival of Evangeline. In April 1887 the two departed for Britain together, ‘on board the Servia’, and this was when the marriage rumours started in earnest. They would soon have to stop.

In England, Fred – who was becoming very much a musical-theatre wheeler-dealer -– brokered a production of Pepita with Verona starred, while he played in Fun on the Bristol, As in a Glass and Bridget O’Brien at the Opera-Comique, but then Mr Rice called, again, from Boston, and off they set. Verona played Finette in The Pearl of Pekin (Fleur de thé) in America and Canada, dragged out her Evangeline and The Corsair, Fred was seen in Vernona Jarbeau’s Starlight and in The Queen’s Mate (aka Pepita).

But Henry Leslie was staging Teddy Solomon’s vast panto, Cinderella, at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London. So back to England, again, for Verona to play the fairy, Quicksilver … Fred seems to have contented himself with occasional performances of good, old Crazed. And his agency firm at 22 Elm Tree Road. And, doubtless, a few nights out with Teddy and the boys.

Now, April 1891 is coming up. Census day. This will answer a few questions! But, no. In October 1890, Verona left, once more, for America, to play for the dreaded Mike Leavitt in the musical melodrama The Spider and the Fly. And I don't find her listed ...

But one thing I do find is a baby. If Fred and Verona had ever been an affair, they weren't now. The father of Verona's baby was an East India merchant's clerk from Muswell Hill, blessed with the resounding name of William Whitaker Hunt. I see him, in 1888, singing in a programme at Southsea's Clarence Pier. The baby, born 16 July 1891 in Manhattan, was even more resoundingly christened William Dudley Waldorf Hunt. It couldn't cope, and died 6 October 1892.

Verona stayed on in America, this time, for six years (Puritania, Arcadia, Aladdin II, Lost Stolen and Strayed etc), during which time Fred appears to my eyes, only in London (Pepita). And I can’t find either of them anywhere in 1890s censi. Just Verona’s 53 year-old mum, all alone … As for Mr Hunt, he doesn't seem to have hung around. In 1900-1, Verona is calling herself 'Mrs Hunt', and 'married', whether rightly or not. I think not. She even defiantly advertised in the trade press as 'Mrs W Whitaker Hunt'. But in 1900, Mr WWH had married elsewhere ...

Fred died suddenly, in London’s Charing Cross Hospital, 17 July 1898. Not quite 50. But Verona was just reaching the peak of her career: she fell into the world of the newly-fashionable Edwardesian musical-comedy, and over the next fifteen years she played the famous ‘Connie Ediss’ character roles in the most important musical-comedy touring companies, the length and breadth of Britain –The Circus Girl, the Runway Girl, The Silver Slipper, The Orchid, The Spring Chicken, The New Aladdin, The Quaker Girl, The Girl on the Film etc. In 1918, she was still touring, in the farce Oh! I say! Some career! Nearly half a century on the stage.

It seems Verona never remarried after splitting from wee Willie. Looking at the 1939 census of Brighton, I see she has gone back to being Mrs Verona Fuller. Nearly 80. Not really time to marry again at 80. But … where is the death record? The only one that I can find that fits is a Verona Pritchard, died aged 91 in 1951 and it's not she … So: Barham, Fuller, maybe Darrell?, Hunt, Fuller again? And that’s not counting Fred’s real name. Ah! Got her! Irene V Fuller, died Brighton aged 88, in the last months of 1947 ...

When leads me neatly into my next and last puzzle. Fred. No marriage, not ever, with all the help such a certificate brings. No 1891 census. But an 1881 one which is reasonably, I feel, reliable. In 1881, Fred was on tour with Billee Taylor at Cheltenham. We know it’s him, because he’s rooming with the company’s md. He says he is 30. OK, ish. And that he was born in Bristol. OK, ish. He’s at Teddy Solomon’s death bed as ‘Darrell’, and his own death cert (filled in by whom?) says his name was Frederick George Darrell. Well, the third unit isn’t true … but the first two? So, off to Gloucestershire. (What a nice thought!)

Frederick George born Bristol 1850. Only four of them. The only one I can make fit is Frederick George Date b 15 December 1849, Stapleton Road, Bristol … by Thomas Date out of Hester Chinn. In 1871 he’s in St Decumans, with an aglab uncle, being a cordwainer … and then seen no more. Under that name, at least. So is he the ‘Mr Darrell’ who turns up, the following year in amdrams in London? 

Well, Mr Darrell, recognizably, our Mr Darrell, is finally and openly visible as Leofric in the panto Lady Godiva at Sanger’s, at Christmas 1875, before he moves to the Folly Theatre (md: Edward Solomon) and the start of his long stint in Les Cloches de Corneville, then Billee Taylor … and away we go.

Well, I can’t provenly tell if Mr Darrell is Mr Date. I haven’t any alternative to offer. Yet. But I’ll take 100-1 against Mr Darrell or Date being the legal spouse of Miss Barham by any other name! De facto? Well, what would I know?

PS I see Mr WWH in the 1939 census too. With his wife. He says he is a stock exchange insurance clerk. Life clearly got less exciting once he gave up the stage ... He died the following year, leaving a son and the daughter. This son got clobbered with the name William Roderick Wulfstan Hunt (1910-2002).