A glorious family album c1864: Dowie and Michell

 

From time to time, one comes upon a collection of family photos (not my family) which are for sale on ebay, not as a collection but individually. Sad to split up a collection with connections, but ...   Occasionally, I try to stick them back together again and preserve them here. Especially when I find a bundle like the one that will follow, where the vendor has had the kindness and feeling to state which items come from the same source. Thank you puzzlepixie 

These photos are labelled as relations (?) of one David Dowie.  Mr Dowie (b Camberley 7 November 1832; d Tunbridge Wells 4 October 1886) was a well-off gentleman, the son of a Scottish merchant, James Dowie and his wife, Lilias née McAndrew. 1 October 1865 he married Jane Michell, eldest daughter of a Steyning brewer, farmer and coal merchant, George Michell (1811-1888) ... and here begin our photographs. For George had five surviving daughters and two sons ...

Here is George himself 

This is 'old Mrs Michell of Steyning'. George's wife, Eliza née Westwood, died 5 December 1859. 1859?  She was only 48. And rather pre-photograph. Could this be George's mother? Yes, Mary née Turner died 22 November 1869.

This is no 1 daughter Jane, Mrs Dowie (b Steyning 7 December 1837; d Hastings 3 January 1887)

This is daughter no 2, Bertha (b Sudbury 10 December 1840; d Hove 3 April 1917)

no3 Catherine (b Steyning 14 May 1844; d Hove 28 Februay 1929)

no 4 Margaret (b Steyning 30 April 1846; d Blackheath 11 December 1915)

no 5 Alice Mary (b Steyning 1 November 1847; d Steyning 5 November 1930)

We also have a photo of the youngest child, and second son, George Burgess Michell (b Steyning 18 June 1852; d Hove 22 December 1929) ... he looks about ten or twelve here, which would help date the photo for us ..

We know that the photos date from post 1861, when George's elder brother, Edward Westwood Michell (b Sudbury 2 July 1839; d Steyning 30 August 1861) died, aged 22. And-pre the death of old Mary in 1869. Which places these, I think, 1864.

George Michell's family tree had, from its six twigs, three caduque branches. Bertha, Catherine and Alice Mary remained unmarried. But sisters Jane and Margaret married in a double wedding ..

And if Jane had but one child (Alice Evelyn, Mrs Hutchins), Margaret had no less than ten (and Mr Camroux a few bankruptcies), and George four (wife: Edith Rosina Edghill).  But that generation doesn't seem to make it to the collection, not even Alice Dowie (d Southsea 26 June 1941) ...

So, I leave the Michells and search elsewhere in the collection. Dowies, obviously. Siblings. Brother James Dowie (1828-1897)? Sisters Mary Gray Dowie (1828-1910) and Lilias Dowie (1830-1892)?

OK. Here's Mary. Married the Revd Henry Paul Measor 29 August 1854, vicar of Kingston on Thames. One daughter. He died  December 1866, and she remarried (8 August 1869) the widowed Henry Smith JP of the Hall, Ellingham (1834-1910). One son.

Mrs Measor. Here she is ..

And wot! 'Mrs Dowie, mother of James, mother of James, Mrs Measor, Mrs Christy and David'.  So this is Lilas McAndrew! Brilliant. Er ... Mrs Christy is evidently sister Lilias.

Here's the vicar of Kingston

and here his successor as husband to Miss Dowie

Lillias (Mrs Joseph Fell Christy)

and Mr Christy

And, ah! Some little Christys! Ethel (1863-1906) and Amy (1860-1918)

 

And lastly brother James (b Camberwell; d 1 April 1897). James became an army contractor, married Mary Ellen Bischoff (b Hackney 1838; Guildford 10 March 1913) ...

Here she is!

And James

and, apparently, both of them, playing chess, with ... kibbitzers

and this I guess is David himself ...

It's a splendid family album. All of those  photos are from the very stem of the family tree c1864.

But there are more photos in the bundle. Even the odd Dowie ... Kenneth and wife and daughter, Jessie, all from Liverpool. Don't know where he fits in, but will look .. 

Mrs Winter, baby Winter, Mabel Winter

Reverend Bayley and Jane

Reverend J Trocker

Miss Kirkland (seems to have something to do with James and Aylesbury)

Mr and Mrs Cawson

Jane Whittington 'father's sister'

enough for one day ... cocktail and laZboy time ...

J T Dalton: the Soldene baritone to whom Fate was unkind.

 

Ethan Crenson's folder of photos gave forth another treasure, to set alongside Ada Moxon. Another sometime member of the Soldene troupe whom the archives and libraries of the world had failed to render up to me ..

This is James Totty Dalton. Born 18 January 1846 at the schoolhouse, Penn School, Lower Penn, Wombourne, Staffs. He was born at the schoolhouse because his father, James Totty Dalton sr (1812-1874), was the resident teacher. His mother was Mary Ann née Woolley.

Tracing his early career is a little difficult, as there were a number of 'Mr Dalton's circulating in the mid-1860s. There was one at the Philharmonic Music Hall sing tenor in operatic selections with such well-known folk as Charlotte Grosvenor, Grace Armytage and Orlando Christian and a certain Mr McDavitt, whose beauteous daughter would travel across the world with Emily Soldene.  Then there's one acting at the Surrey soon after, but I think he is a Henry Dalton, one at Lyceum with Fechter and Vestvali, one with Ryder at the Haymarket ... is he any of these? My guess is, 'no'. For when he provenly comes into play, he is very much a chorus and tiny bit player. Perhaps the James Dalton of the Kensington Park Amateur Dramatic?

When John Hollingshead opened the Gaiety Theatre at Christmas 1868, he engaged a small group of utility players to carry spears, sing choruses, speak the occasional line, understudy etc. Mr Hollingshead knew his oats: among the original groupe were Irishman William Ledwidge (later to find fame as Wm Ludwig, operatic bass) and the fine acting tenor William Terrott. Was J T Dalton an original? I don't see him on a programme until February 1870 when he appeared in The Waterman at a semi-pro matinee. Thereafter, he appears on the programmes in small parts in Aladdin the Second, The Quaker (Farmer Easy), Barbe-Bleue (secretary), Cinderella the Younger (first porter). And he married. 'Maggie Harrison' (recte: Margaret James from Glamorgan) was a dancer in the Gaiety company and but 19 years old.

When the company visited the Crystal Palace with a repertoire of operettas and a pantomime at Christmas 1871, JT was Orchobrand in Ali Baba. During 1872 he fulfilled his functions at the Gaiety in everything from Arrah na Pogue to The Critic, and got his chance in the occasional matinee (The Wager).

In February 1873 Hollinshead sent out a seven-month Gaiety tour, headed by Annie Tremaine and Dick Beverley, and JT (as he was now billed to avoid an homonymity with the character in The Ticket of Leave Man) rose up the cast lists in Barbe-Bleue, La Grande-Duchesse (Puck), Les Brigands (Barbavano) et al. He returned to the Gaiety (Snae Fell) but was soon out on the road again, and remained at the Gaiety until the end of 1873.

Apprenticeship done, he joined Mrs Liston's La Fille de Madame Angot playing Larivaudière, and Jonathan Plupersson in Les Cent Vierges, toured with Joseph Eldred's company and Alfred Young's company as Larivaudière and as Grabuge in Geneviève de Brabant, which roles he repeated the following year the something called the 'Premiere Company' before being summmoned to the Phil for another round of Larivaudière. In 1876, he appeared in the comic opera Pom at the Royalty, before his favourite role hoisted him to the classiest Angot of them all: star Emily Soldene.

He would pretty surely have become a regular Soldene player. He completed her 1876 tour and in November travelled to America with her. Maggie's final illness led him to withdraw mid-tour. She died 9 August 1877 in Cleveland, Ohio.

JT joined a Strakosh Company touring in Canada. and 27 August 1877 joined fellow Englishmen 'Ellis Ryse' and Brookhouse Bowler to make up the Holman Family Troupe, performing opéra-bouffe and comic opera. The Holman productions were decidedly tailored to suit the company, and when he appeared as Corcoran in HMS Pinafore, alongside Sallie Holman, the dramatis personae included someone named Auntie Petite. And 2 July 1879 he married the company's star, Miss S Holman (b 23 June 1849; d 8 June 1888). The following year she, too, fell prey to consumption, and had to leave the stage for much of the next five years.

JT played with the Grayson Opera Compant (Pinafore 'on real water', Pippo in La Mascotte), and with a Haverley troupe (Colonel in Patience ) before in 1883 the Holman's 'reorganised' and produced a musical comedy named Bubbles and a musical version of Uncle Tom's Cabin in which he played St Claire. Then in 1886 at Le Roy, NY he fell down some stairs 'in the dark' and broke his collarbone. The company disbanded. And then Sallie died.

Over the next few years, he took the odd jobs in summer season, and around London, Ontario, where what was left of the Holman family resided, but turned to teaching music up till his death in 1901.

It had been a personal life with many a trial, and a professional life which had effectively fizzled out, largely for family reasons. Who knows what might have been the lot of James Totty Dalton had he been able to continue on to Australia and back to England with the Soldene company. Alas, poor Totty.

ADA UNCOVERED! or the postscripta of publication.

When you have spent more than twenty years researching and writing a book, when you have lived and breathed the life of your biographee day in, and day out, trudged round the world from library to library, and to ephemera shops from Hampstead to Hokitika to Hitchin, I think you have a right to be proud of the vast, thickly-illustrated, 1500 pages that are the result. It's done. No one could ever do it more doggedly, in more (primary-sourced) detail, I thought ...

Then someone invented the Internet.

And, as I hav'n't stopped investigating anything and everything relating to the lady who was my companion for so many years, while I research the lives and works of many of her theatre contemporaries ... comes a time, fifteen years on, when you come upon something and sigh 'bugger, I could have done with that snippet, or with that photo' for the Book. It's not that I've made errors (as far as I know) but things that, 20-30 years ago, I dubbed unsolvable, I have now solved and occasionally a treasure turns up.

Well, my newest treasure is named Ethan Crenson. He lives in the US of A. And he is a great x 2 or 3 grandson of the splendid Charley Campbell, Emily's leading man. Ethan has got quite a bit of Charley's Nachlaße and he has ever so kindly shared it with me. And allowed me to use it. I used his photo of the man himself (original cast of Trial by Jury) in my last book ..

and yesterday he sent me some more pictures from a mostly unidentified folder ... I went off like a train-whistle.

Emily's 'tour of the world', one of the highlights of her career and an historical undertaking, started out from England.

3 November 1876 her troupe set out from Liverpool with an effective including femininely herself, one soprano, one sister, one wardrobe mistress and ten chorus girls/bit part players/dancers/etc. And an intermittent feature dancer.

Well, the book (Volume I) includes photos of soprano 'Rose Stella', of sister 'Clara Vesey', of principal dancer 'Florence Slater' (who married the conductor), of the glamorous 'Cissie Durrant' who married Heaps of Money, of Eugenie Nicholson (Mrs Charles Campbell), Julia Barber ('wife' of the stage manager), Nellie Beaumont and Marie Ferrara. Which left me with Ada Moxon, Una Brooke and Annie St George (wife of a male chorister). Others, such as Alice Norton (photo got) were temporary additions. But the main changes came when, after a July season in San Francisco, the company set out for Australia. Eugenie went home, the Americans stayed in America, and two locals, Ella LeFevre and Mattie Daniel (photo got) topped up the chorus.  So, Moxon, Brooke, St George, Le Fevre. Four needed to make up the set.

From today it's three. Amongst the better-known portraits -- from Emily herself to Elsie Cameron (affectionately inscribed) -- was one seemingly labelled ADA MORON. Gotcha girl! After 30 years ..

Having such a beautiful picture, I thought she deserved a new effort at 'identification', so I dove into the bowels of the Internet ... nothing. Then I checked my decades-old notes. Boy, I was thorough in those days!  And I found what I was after. 'Ada' stayed in Australia, and in 1883 married what I now know was a fellow supporting operatic performer, George Ernest Haswell, of Liverpool. 

Ada, herself, was no Ada. She was Elizabeth Moxon TOMLINSON, born Leeds 16 April 1849, 
daughter of painter John Hirst Tomlinson (d 16 May 1877) and his wife Rebecca née Simpson 'of North Cave'. I see that in the 1871 census she was already listing herself as 'actress', but she doesn't appear in my periscope till she joins Emily in 1876. She remained with the Soldene company throughout the whole of the tour, but when Emily returned to Britain, she -- like several others of the company -- stayed in Australia. She played with George Musgrove's company in a series of comic operas between 1880 and 1883, there met and married Haswell, and then joined Emelie Melville's troupe, playing 'as cast' in an even wider repertoire of pieces (Patience, La Mascotte, Fatinitza, The Royal Middy, La Périchole, The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore, La Belle Hélène, Giroflé-Girofla, Maritana, La Fille de Madame Angot, Madame Favart, Olivette) in Australia and a hectic and too often financially fatal tour from Calcutta and Bombay to China, Japan, Manila as the company took on various shapes, sizes and managements. 

This shoestring affair lasted, however, some four years, but the papers reported that Ada and George had 'got away' and were playing with a Mikado company in America. I see the couple next playing with the company headed by Florence Seymour and Willie Walshe (1889), and then with the Montague-Turner combination, and when Soldene tried again, too late, to play Sydney again, Ada was in the chorus (1892). She also played small parts in the George Walton season which replaced that production (Mrs Dingle in Skipped by the Light of the Moon). My last sighting of her is in 1894, playing the character part of the Marchioness in Maritana and Sally Fox in Martha with Montague and Turner. Her husband is the Alcade and 'a servant'. And then I lose her.

I assume that the George Ernest Haswell (how many of them can there be?) who set up as a merchant in Auckland in 1896 is our George. If it is, he had a wife named Ada Forgie who died in childbirth in 1904. So I suppose our Ada has gone. Ah! Is she the Ada wife of George E Haswell who died 15 June 1902 'buried at Purewa'?  George lived in Auckland for the rest of his life and died there 2 September 1922. 

Her grave says she was 50. Well, a little more!  RIP Ada. Now maybe I should have a go at Una?

Blogger me!

Here's Una!

Nestling in the collection of my old chum John Culme ...!

Unfortunately I don't know her story. She became a Soldene chorine as early as 1873 and fulfilled five years as a step-out girl with Emily's companies. She stayed in Australia after the end of the enterprise in 1878, and worked steadily with all the important managements for the next five years, after which I see her no more. She made the news -- or the gossip pages -- only once that I can see, when she and Fanny Morrell got involved somehow (or alternatively) with the young manager, George Musgrove (1881) during the record-breaking production of La Fille du Tambour-major. Since Una was still working with Musgrove and Williamson in 1883, I imagine there was no harm done.

Una never got beyond step-outs, but she was much liked, and in 1912 (25 August) when the Sydney Sun featured a group of stage beauties of the past, there was a grainy picture of Una! 

So, where did she come from? Where did she go? Who was she? I'm not there yet!

And now it's two!  Here's Annie!!!! Annie ST GEORGE [MANSFIELD, Annie Elizabeth Augusta] (b 28 July Lambeth 1853) daughter of a warehouseman's clerk George Augustus Mansfield, and sister to brochette of singing-dacing 'St George' girls. She travelled the world with her chorister husband, Joseph West, playing with Soldene's companies up to 1885. 

Emily: a little shaft of starlight

 

It has been a horrible, horrible couple of months. Yes, Wendy and I, having escaped the much-mediatised 'Covid', both came down with its virulent successor, the Jacinda Ardern flu. And as if that weren't enough, there has been one trouble after another in every department of my life. 

Brother John's car exploded in Leicestershire, and when I tried to send him money to buy a replacement, the bank Fraud Squad closed down my account. Twice. The onward going battle against Ms Ardern's agents continued. She has used the former Dun and Bradstreet (private debt collectors) to threaten those who have challenged her illegal charges with expensive lawsuits (at public cost) while she goes off on her 'rainbow tour' ...  and that's just the beginning. Coping with the faceless horrors heaped on one - especially the elderly - in the 2020s is terrifying. Getting aid to fight the lying, cheating bastards is either impossible or expensive. 'Officialdom' sends you threats or faits accomplis by email, with a no-reply address and a telephone number. So you ring the telephone number: press this button, that button, 'we are helping (!) somebody else, please hold'. So you hold and hold for 30 minutes until the voice says 'we're not available' and you get cut off. Today I await a parcel by courier from town. Email saying 'we tried to deliver ...'. I rang the parcel's sender. The parcel was awaiting collection from them. Scam.  Why? And all this while, suffering from this dreadful flu and its aftermath, I have had two TIAs. It has been too much. I can't cope with 2022.

I called my lawyer and titivated my will. I wondered for how long I would have to not-eat (I have lost 1/10th of my bodyweight) before I went to sleep and didn't wake up. I couldn't write ... so there was pretty well nothing cerebral left in life ... then this week the winds came, and blew over three mature trees, crushing fences and rails .. and the rain, turning our tidy paddocks into a quagmire ... the creek behind my house burst its banks ..  Wendy worked on, how she did it, I know not. And, while she did, the kittens kept an eye on me and the strychnine bottle ... and the whisky bottles. They napped quite a bit.

From my bed, I can see the night sky. Glowing moon, and patterns of stars. Russalka, Vetter aus dingda, Lionel Monckton, Don Maclean ..  'Golly', I though 'I could do with a little bit of starlight'. 

I mustn't paint a unblemishedly hellish picture of the last months. A little bit of light has shone on us. We were introduced to Heather, who came and started on the cleaning of the Palace of Gerolstein. Oyyyyy! She is now part of the family. But the big boost for our hearts and souls was ... EMILY!

I chronicled the splendid debut of our little filly ...

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2022/05/may-day-debut-of-little-emily.html

before the dreaded lurgie struck us. She followed up with two unlucky runs where she finished just out of the money, and then the real racing season closed and activity shifted to Addington Raceway, which has, these days, appropriated to itself all the 'winter' racing. So masked and woollied up, we headed for town. With rather better luck in the running, she finished a sound third and then ... then came my attack of the lurgie. So I wasn't at the track to see her follow up with another good third place ...

Next time up, she drew the extreme outside, was forced to tail the field, pulled out in the home straight and started her run ... when ...  she stopped. Driver Jimmy had lost his steering. Incomprehensible. And still uncomprehended, by everyone. ... Six races with perfect manners then, this. Was she ill? No. She was bouncing round her paddock the next day. Something had to be wrong. But ... well ... try again and see ... 

I was at the nadir of my 'recovery' period. And to make things much, much worse, Murray Edmonds, Emily's and our trainer, since forever, had just been taken into hospital with a brain tumor. I didn't feel much like going to the racetrack. But my friend Robin (whose horse had won a few days previously) said 'you have to go, to support Murray and Emily'. So off we set, me glamorously clad in an outfit (!) by Warehouse out of Ohoka Market, to Addington Raceway.

We joined Frank, John and Jan, and Auntie Faye at our 'usual' table by the ground floor bar window. Ground floor is pretty well my limit, and, anyway, in the turmoil, I'd left my walking stick at home. Didn't want to risk going among the horses. So, Wendy and Faye went to visit the wee girl ... while I sipped a warming black beer and gazed at the screens. The tipsters had been pretty lukewarm about Emily, so I wasn't surprised to see her on about the third or fourth line of betting ('multiples option'). But, as I watched, something odd happened. She began to creep up the board until -- good grief -- she was favourite!

Why? There was the 5-year-old debutante With Purpose, a daughter of the grand race mare, Some Direction, Rakero Warrior whom the tipster described as 'impressive', Mighty Logan who the same feller described as 'classy', while we were rated merely 'multiples option'. Someone knew more than I did!

Driver Tim got the wee girl safely away and headed for the lead on the first bend. And she threatened to pace and then galloped. Tim gave her a whack and she immediately became sage again, but was back in the field. With Purpose, left in front, didn't live up to her name and dawdled along so Tim gave Emily another tap, and she zoomed around the field to take the lead!  

'It would have been easier 600 metres earlier' ironised the commentator!  Well, they never looked like catching her ...

She won, from her Edmonds stablemate, Ha'penny Bridge, with Tim looking over his shoulder ...

In a quarter of a century of racing, and 54 wins, I have never won a race at an Addington full-scale meeting. The après-race hospitality was delightful ...  The evening would have been a wild success, except ... Murray was not there. He watched, with his wife, from his hospital room ... while Brett, his caretaker for the nonce, led the jubilation on course ... and I in my Warehouse-best costume ..

But it was a shaft of starlight in an otherwise black, black sky ...

And like the light of those 4am stars, it didn't last.  Emily has gone sore and is out for a spell. Murray's tumour was diagnosed inoperable and he is now undergoing chemo and radio treatments. To have some peace of mind, I gave in and paid the goverment their unearned income, and guess what: they immediately send me more demands ...  The prime minister is determined to get back from 'her' citizens the money she has wasted on panem e circenses and rainbow tours. They still owe me the unrightfully held-back pension payments from COVID days. New Zealand 2022 ... it's getting more and more like Germany 1940 ...  a country going backwards with an megalomaniac driver at the wheel ... 

Sigh. Thank goodness for the Emilys and the Murrays of this world ... get well soon, my dears. We need you good guys and good girls around ...

PS John's money got through at last ... and he's spent it! Suitable vehicle for a little brother of 72?

PPS; Murray died very soon after. See blog.  https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2022/10/yesterday-evening-wendy-and-i-lost-one.html

Emily was denied her rightful place in the Oaks field by HRANZ and/or the Metropolitan (as if there were no other!) Club ... see blog ... 

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2022/11/kurt-of-gerolstein-horse.html

disasters have been happening on the home front weekly ... see blogs ... 

London's first 1000th night souvenir merchandise

 

Our Boys 

The first play ever to notch up 500 consecutive nights in London's West End eventually ran for 1382 performances at the Vaudeville Theatre.

This week, I came upon this interesting piece of merchandising marking the 1000th night on 19 February 1878 ...

Now, I don't know the play intimately, but the plot has the conventional 'stern' fathers (one aristocratic, one in the butter trade) of two feckless young men who each falls in love with the girl (one an heiress, one her poor cousin) intended by position and money for the other.  A bit of French farcical business with auntie's bonnet ... and that's really it. Of course, it was what went into that frame which made the play the record-breaking hit that it became.

The best roles were, naturally, were those taken by the theatre's managers, David James (as the untutored nouveau riche), and Tom Thorne as the aristocratic sprig in love with the poor cousin. Both of course were still there on night 1000 and well beyond ..

Nice ... but .... one, two, three ....

Starting from the left we have Cicely Richards as Belinda (standing), Sophie Larkin as Miss Clarissa Champneys, the auntie with the bonnet (seated), David James as Perkyn Middlewick, William Farren as Sir Geoffrey Champneys, Kate Bishop as heiress Violet Melrose (seated) and tall Tom Thorne as Talbot Champneys. All original cast.

Kate Bishop

However, by the 1000th performance Charles Warlhouse Garthorne (brother of W H Kendal, ie Grimston) had taken over the part of Charles Middlewick ... and where is Mary Melrose? If the right-hand lady is supposed to be she, why is she 3/4 back on? I'm pretty sure it is not the original Amy Roselle who, in any case, would have had the right to a display equal to that of Miss Bishop. But there are only four women in the cast ...

Well, on the bottom of the card someone has pencil scribbled ... why, they're initials. Almost illegible but ... yes CR=Cicely Richard, SL=Sophie Larkin ...  and, ahha, CGW. Charles Warner. 

And ?N W.  Ah-ha! Miss Nellie Walters (a member of the Vaudeville Company) persisted on the bills during the run. I think we have an understudy situation. Which would explain why her face is hidden.

Given the amount of shekels James and Thorne made from the play you would think they could have afforded an up-to-date photo for this occasion: Garthorne, Bessie Hollingshead. Or maybe this wasn't Official Merchandise? Just a souvenir stuck together by an entrepreneur ... 

Heigh ho!

Tom Thorne

Thorne and James

PS

Some excellent photos of The Girls, the play with which the Vaudeville and its managers followed up their huge success surfaced this week on e-bay.  As you can see, the cast was in large part the same. William Farren as the heavy man, Thorne and James as the young men in the story and Kate Bishop as one of the girls; Cicely Richards playing another maidservant, Sophie Larkin as another older lady. Mr Garthorne is back as the Lord in the affair ..  The other young lady is Marie Illingworth, and the small parts are taken by Messrs L Fredericks and J W Bradbury, of the theatre's company.