By the time of his death in 1946, few who worked on stage could rival William Stratford Percy’s professional achievements. He had been performing for over 50 years, and by his own account, had taken hundreds of roles—in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom.1 He designed and painted sets for numerous plays, and in time, evolved to be a skilled landscape artist. He wrote short stories for newspapers and finally, four well-received travel books. Towards the end of his career, he appeared on British radio, and at least once, on early (live) British television. On his passing he was remembered as a ‘thoroughly conscientious actor who could always be relied on for consistently sound work’.2
The archives of the Australian Performing Arts Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne holds a special treasure relating to Will Percy. It is a well-thumbed scrap book that once belonged to him, which made its way into the collection long after Percy had died in England in 1946. It is an eclectic mix of the types of documents actors once liked to keep to record their career; newspaper reviews, programs, original scripts and contracts. This volume appears to cover mostly the period 1900—to about 1912. The greater part is concerned with a tour of South Africa in 1903–4, when Percy travelled there as a member of Tom Pollard’s Opera Company.
A page from Will Percy’s scrapbook
Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Will Percy with images of his successful comic characters superimposed
Image from the Will Percy scrapbook. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.
Usually billed professionally as ‘W.S. Percy’, he had been born Stratford Strettle Percy in Melbourne on 23 December 1872, and was named after his godfather, well-known city auctioneer Stratford Strettle (1845–1919). He gave several explanations as to why he used only his initials W.S. as part of his stage name, but by the 1920s it also usefully distinguished him from British stage comedian Billy Percy. Neither of his parents had been on the stage—his father William Graham Percy was an Irish-born saddler, his mother Christiana nee Lawrenson was from Tynemouth in England.
The family ran and lived at their saddlery business on the corner of Dudley and Spencer Streets, West Melbourne, amongst all the service businesses benefiting by being close to, but not in the actual city —carriers, coachbuilders, cabinetmakers and the like. Unfortunately, William Graham Percy died in 1875, leaving Christiana with young Stratford and an even younger brother to care for. In 1881 she remarried—to George Henry Murch, a blacksmith, and moved to Albert Street, Port Melbourne. Here, Stratford and his brother attended the nearby Nott Street school. Tragedy struck again in 1888, when Christiana succumbed to dropsy.3 It appears likely that by this time, young Stratford was working at Port Melbourne’s major employer—the Swallow and Ariell biscuit factory.4 He had also begun to adopt his late father’s name and increasingly styled himself William Stratford Percy, although during his lifetime he was usually known as Billy to friends.5 Of his childhood we have little information, except that later in life he recalled his favourite game was playing ‘Ned Kelly’, but being short, even as a child, he usually had to play ‘the hateful part of one of the Police’.6
Will Percy with the Pollards 1891–1905
A great lover of the theatre from an early age, years later he recalled that his favourite comedian was William (Billy) Elton. He owed his big break on stage to J.C. Williamson, who had first auditioned him in Melbourne in late 1891.7 After his rendering of ‘Ho! Jolly Jenkin’, a song from Arthur Sullivan’s Ivanhoe, Williamson felt so confident about the young man’s abilities that in late 1891 he recommended him to Tom Pollard.8 At the time, Tom Pollard was re-establishing a Lilliputian Opera Company—in the style of the original successful troupe run by James Pollard between 1880 and 1886. With Williamson’s active support and armed with the rights to perform popular works, Tom Pollard collected talented juvenile performers from all over Australia and New Zealand. The Pollard performers were young, but also slight and short—W.S. Percy was only a little over 1.5 metres tall, or 5 feet.9 However, it was hardly a ‘lilliputian’ company by age—most of the new performers were in their mid-teens—while Will Percy was 19 years old. The Pollard’s repertoire comprised many comic operas that had been toured by the original Pollard company in the 1880s. Predominantly of British origin, the emerging Edwardian genre of musical comedies with their ‘carefree atmosphere, robust humour and sophisticated but catchy melodies’ found willing audiences all over the British Empire and in North America.10
Percy’s debut performance as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance in Dunedin, New Zealand, in August 1891, was famously a failure–something he acknowledged himself.11 In fact The Otago Daily Times described his rendering of ‘For I am a Pirate King’ as ‘lifeless’.12 Tom Pollard apparently took some convincing that Will Percy was worth keeping on, but Williamson insisted, and soon his judgement was shown to be correct.13 Two months later, the troupe had reached Poverty Bay in New Zealand’s North Island, and Will Percy was acquitting ‘himself in a most creditable manner’ in the role, and his rendition of the Pirate song was reported to be ‘splendid’, although the local newspaper correctly identified that Will Percy ‘was no juvenile’.14 By November, the company had started a tour of Australia, and there was no looking back on his career. Six months later they were performing The Mikado through regional towns of New South Wales and Victoria, to considerable acclaim. The leading male actors were particularly singled out for enthusiastic comments in reviews, including 16-year-old Harry Quealy, a shoemaker’s son from Brisbane, who played the Mikado; 14-year-old Alf Stephens, a carpenter’s son from Melbourne, who played Ko Ko; and Will Percy who played Pooh Bah.
For twelve years, Tom Pollard took the company around New Zealand and Australia, with an expanding repertoire and sometimes the addition of new faces to the lineup. In June 1896, Pollard gave up all reference to his troupe being Lilliputians or Juveniles—after all, by that time some performers like Will Percy were now in their twenties.
The boys of the Pollard company playing in a novelty cricket match in 1903. Note the variety of characters and ethnic ‘types’ they were made up to play.15
Will Percy scrapbook, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
It is beyond the scope of this article to critique the musical comedies of the era, and their ongoing popularity with colonial communities. However, there is now a body of literature tracing the success and evolution of comic operas and musical comedies across the anglosphere between the 1890s and 1920s.16 These studies remind us that, amongst other things, this very popular genre of theatre often reinforced notions of ‘Britishness’ for the imperial diaspora, while sometimes reminding audiences that other ethnic groups were not a part of it. Thus when Will Percy dressed up to play Wun-Hi, the classic racist stereotypical Chinese character from The Geisha, in Brisbane in April 1901, local papers reported his act as extremely droll, because he spoke ‘lovely pigeon-English’. He effectively portrayed ‘all those peculiarities which pertain to the average Chinaman [sic]’.17
Will Percy’s success in comic roles is central to his story. In Peter Downes’ words, the roles he took might be regarded as ‘custom-made’ to suit Will Percy’s comic style.18 Downes cites one New Zealand newspaper’s fulsome tribute to Percy:
Perhaps there is no man in New Zealand who has made so many people laugh as Mr W.S. Percy … He is as popular behind the scenes as he is in front. He is an indefatigable worker and puts his whole soul into any part that he takes up. To show the persevering character of the colony’s favourite comedian, it may be stated that he often spends hours in thinking out gags.19
Reviews of Will Percy’s performances were usually positive, often effusive, and it was clear that by 1900 he was held in very high regard, especially in New Zealand—which the Tom Pollard troupe increasingly regarded as their base.
Will Percy designed the program cover for this Pollard company charity cricket match and fete in Dunedin, March 1903
Will Percy scrapbook, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Designed by Will Percy, this program cover for The Geisha probably dates to April 1901, when the Pollards performed in Brisbane.20
Will Percy scrapbook, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Further cementing Percy’s connection to New Zealand, in May 1902 at Dunedin, he married fellow performer Jessie Ramsay, the youngest of a family who had migrated from Scotland to New Zealand, and sister of Jeanne Ramsay, a popular soprano. After a send-off with a Māori war cry, and a very brief honeymoon, it was back to performing.21 Will Percy, the young man who had lost both parents, now had a new family who embraced him—as well as audiences who loved him. A highly successful benefit concert of In Town held in Dunedin on Friday 13 June raised £121 for the newly married couple. We know this because Will Percy kept the account of the evening’s takings in his scrapbook. Downes also includes a copy of Percy’s single-page 1900 contract with Tom Pollard. His weekly salary by then was £10 per week.22
Will and Jessie at the time of their marriage. Unidentified New Zealand newspaper article, 1902.
Will Percy scrapbook, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.
In March 1903 the Tom Pollard troupe, now rather grandly titled the Royal Australian Comic Opera Company (almost certainly to distinguish themselves from the recent tours of South Africa by two other branches of the Pollard family) embarked for a twelve-month tour of South Africa. The company’s repertoire was a string of well-known musical comedies—The Gay Parisienne, The Casino Girl, The Geisha, The Messenger Boy and In Town—clearly as popular with expatriate South African audiences as they were in Australia and New Zealand. However, the Australian pantomime Djin Djin, or the Japanese Bogeyman was chosen as the opening show in Cape Town, where it too was a hit, with Will Percy again singled out for acclaim. One critic at the South African Review complained that even on a second viewing his sides still ached from watching Will Percy’s ‘antics’ as Tom Wallaby.23 Percy’s scrapbook traces the company’s route through South Africa, which included the loss of costumes in a disastrous fire at the Theatre Royal in Durban, in late October 1903—when Will Percy’s skills as an emergency set painter were presumably put to the test.24 They were back in Western Australia by March 1904, but over the next few months, several members of the troupe departed, including Will Percy and Jessie Ramsay. Will had been with Tom Pollard since 1891 and now, aged in his early thirties, he almost certainly felt it was time to try something new.
Designed and illustrated by Will Percy—the Program for New Zealand Night at His Majesty’s Theatre Johannesburg, 3 September, 1903. There had also been an Australian Night on 30 July. The inset photos are of Tom Pollard and his brother William O’Sullivan.
Will Percy scrapbook, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Cast lists for J.C. Williamson Royal Comic Opera productions in 1906 and 1907. Alf Stephens and Nellie Wilson had also been Pollard performers.
National Library of Australia, Prompt Collection, vol. 8
Will Percy with J.C. Williamson 1905–1913
In late 1905, after a short holiday in New Zealand, Will Percy joined the J.C. Williamson Royal Comic Opera. The repertoire of this company as they toured the major cities of Australia and New Zealand, was of course, very familiar. J.C. Williamson had the rights to a string of new musicals—including The Girl from Kay’s, The Orchid and The Cingalee, but there were also some old favourites such as the popular The Belle of New York, that had been presented by Pollards before.
Evidence of Will Percy’s extraordinary ongoing popularity is found not just in the many very personable interviews he gave in the 1900s, but also in his surviving J.C. Williamson contracts, which show how highly ‘the Firm’ valued him. In March 1909, Percy’s salary was listed at £17 per week. By July 1911, it had risen to £25 per week. As a point of reference, only a few years before, the Harvester Judgement (1907) had set the Australian basic wage at £2 and 2 shillings.
By the time Will and Jessie Percy had left Australia in late 1913, it seems many of the country’s theatrical correspondents had interviewed him. The well-paid life of touring for J.C. Williamson in Australia and New Zealand’s major theatres seems to have suited Percy well and there was a strong sense that he was a contented man. He was a keen cyclist,25 collected stamps and painted 26 and he read widely.27 He also had a reputation as a temperate man, who loved his wife and daughters, drank little and avoided ‘blue’ humour.28
Throughout his Australian career, Will Percy acknowledged the debt he owed to producers J.C. Williamson and Tom Pollard as professional mentors. In 1909, he nominated Grattan Riggs (1835–1899) and George Lauri (1861–1909) as major influences on his comic style. Riggs was a US-born actor who worked consistently in Australia and New Zealand and specialised in comic Irish characters. Will recalled Riggs’ ‘Irish Detective’ as character work he particularly admired.29 George Lauri was an English-born actor with a significant reputation in musical comedy. Percy worked with him in the Royal Comic Opera Company after 1905 and took on some of his roles, as Lauri’s mental health failed.
Will Percy the writer
There is another dimension to Will Percy, the popular comedian, that is less well known. In early 1906, Will Percy became involved with C.J. Dennis’ new satirical weekly paper The Gadfly, providing illustrations and funny anecdotes. Percy later described the paper as an ‘experiment’—the paper closed after only a few years.30
One of Will Percy’s cartoons for The Gadfly31
Displaying a creativity that became a feature of his life, sometime in 1911 Will Percy entered a screenplay competition run by West’s Pictures. According to film historians Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper, over two hundred entries were received, but Will Percy’s story won the £25 prize. The resulting film, entitled All for Gold or Jumping the Claim, was made that year. Directed by Franklyn Barrett, Pike and Cooper describe it as a modest box office success. The plot concerned a stolen gold claim and attempted murder. The characters included the hard-working hero Jack Cardigan and his sweetheart Nora, and the villainous Ralph Blackstone—all very familiar characters from contemporary drama. At about 40 minutes in length, the plot was neatly and happily wrapped up after an exciting boat trip across Sydney harbour and a car race with a train.32 Unfortunately, as with so much of Australia’s early cinema, the film is now lost, and only a few frames have survived. There is no evidence that Percy acted in the film, but he took some pleasure from its success.33
All that remains of Will Percy’s All for Gold are a few newspaper advertisements, such as this one. The film was released in Australia, New Zealand and possibly in the UK.34
Only a year later, Percy himself appeared in the leading role in the filmed comedy short Percy Gets a Job. Unfortunately, this film is also lost and we know nothing about it today. It was released in April 1912, and like many of the comedy shorts of the time, was probably a quickly filmed program-filler, based around one or two gags, that Percy may have written himself for use in a stage routine.35 There are no references to the films in the Percy scrapbook.
Will Percy is not known to have written for film again, but he continued to write occasionally for the stage. In 1930, for example, he wrote the script for the touring revue Larks. As late as 1945, the British magazine Picturegoer carried one of his short, written pieces.36 Percy’s scrapbook also contains various pieces of writing, however as these are unattributed, it is difficult to be certain these were his own.
As we will see, in the mid-1930s he wrote and illustrated four successful books, published by Collins, partly inspired by his travels in Britain.
To be continued
Endnotes
1. Sunday Times (Sydney), 23 June 1912, p.27
2. The Stage (London), 27 June 1946, p.4
3. A term to describe oedema, or swelling due to fluid retention, usually caused by organ failure
4. The Age (Melbourne), 30 August 1941, p.4
5. His younger brother had been christened Isaac Newton Percy, but adopted Joseph as a first name
6. W.S. Percy (1934), pp.59–60
7. W.S. Percy (1934), pp.160–161
8. Downes (2002), p.82
9. In 1916, Punch (London) described him as ‘the midget comedian’. 20 January 1916, p.34
10. Fraser Charlton (2025) Edwardian Musical Comedies website
11. Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney), 13 October 1909, p.34
12. Otago Daily Times (New Zealand), 15 August 1891, p.3
13. Downes (2002), pp.81–82
14. Poverty Bay Herald (New Zealand), 1 October 1891, p.2
15. Otago Witness (New Zealand), 18 March 1903, p.36
16. See for example, Tobias Becker (2014)
17. Brisbane Courier, 26 April 1901, p.6
18. Downes (2002), p.159
19. Gisborne Times (New Zealand), undated, cited in Downes, p.159
20. See Brisbane Courier, 26 April 1901, p.6
21. Otago Witness (New Zealand), Issue 2515, 28 May 1902
22. The Inflation calculator at Reserve Bank Australia estimates this to be A$1800 in 2024 values
23. Undated South African Review, c. May 1903. Will Percy scrapbook, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.
24. Birmingham Evening Mail (UK), 4 May 1933, p.14
25. The Theatre Magazine (Sydney), 1 June 1906, p.10
26. Sunday Times (Sydney), 23 June 1912, p.27
27. Table Talk (Melbourne), 28 April 1910, p.8
28. The Sun (Kalgoorlie), 19 June 1904, p.12 and Evening Star (Dunedin) 3 August 1922, p.2
29. Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney), 13 October 1909, p.34
30. W.S. Percy (1934), p.201
31. The Gadfly (Adelaide), 8 August 1906, p.22
32. Pike & Cooper (1980), p.35–36
33. Sunday Times (Sydney), 23 June 1912, p.27
34. The Age (Melbourne), 11 November 1911, p.21
35. Pike & Cooper (1980), p.47
36. The Picturegoer (UK), 4 August 1945, p.7
References
Gillian Arrighi & Victor Emeljanow (eds), Entertaining Children: The participation of youth in the entertainment industry, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
Tobias Becker, ‘Entertaining the Empire: Theatrical touring companies and amateur dramatics in colonial India’, The Historical Journal, Cambridge University Press, September 2014
Fraser Charlton; EdMusCom, The Original Edwardian Comedy website, https://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/fraser.charlton/index.html Accessed 14 May 2025
Peter Downes, The Pollards, Steele Roberts, New Zealand, 2002
Gale Research Company, Who Was Who in the Theatre, 1912-1976: A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, directors, playwrights and producers of the English-speaking theatre, vol. 3, I-P. Detroit, 1977
W.S. Percy, Strolling through Scotland, Collins, London, 1934
W.S. Percy, Strolling through England, Collins, London, 1935
W.S. Percy, Strolling through Cottage England, Collins, London, 1936
W.S. Percy, The Empire Comes Home, Collins, London, 1937
Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper, Australian Film 1900-1977. A guide to feature film production, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1980
J.P. Wearing The London Stage 1910-1919: A calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, second edition, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Plymouth, 2014
J. P. Wearing, The London Stage 1920-1929: A calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, second edition, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Plymouth, 2014
