Florrie in the New Century
While popular musical tastes were constantly changing during the first four decades of the twentieth century, resulting in the steady decline of music hall, its offspring ‘variety’ continued to prosper, accommodating several new musical fashions, all of them vigorously promoted by the newly popular media of recording and (later) radio.
So while Florrie Forde continued throughout her career with her particular brand of chorus song, around her emerged various forms of jazz (ragtime, New Orleans, Dixieland, swing etc), together with changing styles of popular musical theatre (Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Ivor Novello, Noel Coward etc). And with those new forms, new styles of singing, including the growth in popularity of crooners. Alongside these new musical styles, there was a growing divide between supposedly highbrow and lowbrow forms (and audiences), with Florrie’s music seen to be decidedly low.
Photo by Dobson Ltd., Liverpool
In the new century, Florrie’s years followed a familiar pattern: seasons performing at usually multiple music halls in London, alternating with provincial tours in the towns and cities of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland; a summer season at Douglas, Isle of Man, immediately followed by a week or two usually at the Palace at Blackpool Tower; and a Christmas season in pantomime. Interspersed in her calendar would be days spent in the recording studio (and later radio and film studios) and occasional weeks of vacation. Florrie was always clear that she achieved her sustained success through constant hard work.
In the years between the beginning of the new century and the start of the First World War (at the end of July 1914), Florrie not only returned regularly to perform at the London music halls and the provincial theatres at which she had previously appeared, but also at a very wide range of new venues.
Alhambra Theatre, London, 1901, from a postcard
ebay
In London, many of her new venues were in the inner and outer suburbs, usually the poorer rather than the more well-heeled ones, including Hippodromes in Rotherhithe, Willesden, Ealing, Richmond, Ilford, Putney and Lewisham (many of the theatres designed by the brilliant Frank Matcham). And in central London she added Gatti’s in Westminster Bridge Road and the Royal Holborn among others.
Billy Williams
Albert Whelan
In June 1900 Florrie performed in a benefit at the Alhambra for the widows of Australasians killed in the war in South Africa. Other Australians on the bill included sopranos Lalla Miranda and Rosa Bird, contralto Maggie Stirling, violinist Johann Kruse, dancer Saharet, and artists Percy Spence and Rossi Ashton. Among the audience were Madame Melba (who had paid five guineas for her box) and the great singer-actor-director Emily Soldene.
Over the years, Florrie had a reputation for helping other Australian music hall performers as they arrived in Britain. In books on the great years of the form, she is regularly linked with two others as top stars—both born in Melbourne—Billy Williams and Albert Whelan.
Billy Williams had arrived in London late in 1899, quickly establishing himself as another popular singer of chorus songs—‘the man in the velvet suit’. He first appeared on a bill with Florrie at the Camberwell Palace in May 1903 and in 1906 she is reputed to have introduced Billy to her record companies, initiating for him a major new career opportunity. Among his many hit songs was ‘When father papered the parlour’ of 1910. Like Florrie, he and his family later moved to live at Shoreham near Brighton on the south coast, where he died in 1915.
Albert Whelan arrived nearly two years after Williams—in October 1901—and did not appear on a bill with Florrie until May 1906 (at the Camberwell Palace). Clearly, he had established himself as a star performer without her assistance – and by 1905 he had already recorded one of his most famous songs, ‘The Whistling Bowery Boy’. Florrie and Albert appeared together occasionally, but in 1917 they topped the bill together at the Palace in Salford, and again in 1921 at the Palace in Blackpool.
In the new century, while touring (a week at a time), again Florrie went back to all the provincial cities she had performed in previously (with many theatres still owned by Moss Empires and managed by Oswald Stoll), now adding a whole range of smaller cities and towns all over Britain. Some of these might now seem quite surprising—for example Birkenhead, Salford, Ayr, Ashton-under-Lyme, Dewsbury, West Hartlepool and Chatham. Wherever there was a venue, much appreciated by audiences, Florrie would be there.
Sheet music for Down at the Old Bull & Bush
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Flyer from 1907
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
In 1904 Florrie introduced the first of her songs which was to become both a major hit and a stayer over decades in British popular culture, ‘Down at the Old Bull and Bush’. It had been commissioned the year before by a major American brewing company as ‘Under at the Anheuser Bush’. It was successful and noticed by London-based song pushers, who realised that it needed to be anglicised (as the brewery was not at that time known in Britain). In the event, the new words were provided by another Australian, Percy Krone, who was both agent for Florrie and cohabiting with her in Brixton, apparently as man and wife. More on Percy and Florrie later.
Now based on a well-known pub in Hampstead, ‘Bull and Bush’ rapidly became touted as Florrie’s ‘latest success’ when she performed at the Hippodrome in Blackpool in prime holiday season in August, and by December, featured in that year’s pantomime at Derby, Little Red Riding Hood, the local paper noted that it was a ‘really good old-fashioned pantomime song’ that had the potential to be ‘well remembered’. Already in 1904, Florrie recorded her ‘Bull and Bush’ (with orchestra) for the Gramophone Company at their studios at 21 City Road in central London.1
While star music hall artists like Florrie were well rewarded, at this period lesser lights were treated by managers of syndicate theatres far less generously, and early in 1907 there was a strike called by the Variety Artistes Federation aimed at improving terms and conditions for the rank and file. It started at the Holborn Empire in January and became widespread across London. Among the leaders of the action was top star Marie Lloyd, but performers at Oswald Stoll’s theatres chose not to be involved, among them Florrie Forde, who was performing in Cinderella for impresario Francis Laidler at his Prince’s Theatre, Bradford, at that time. The dispute was resolved in February.2
Leading up to the war, there followed for Florrie a steady stream of new songs that became both hits at the time and long-term stayers: ‘She’s a Lassie from Lancashire’ in 1907; ‘Oh! Oh! Antonio’ (1908); ‘Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly’ (1909); ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’ (1909); ‘Flanagan’ (1910); and ‘Hold your hand out, naughty boy’ in 1913.
‘The World’s Greatest Chorus Singer’
Aside from sheet music sales, as gramophone ownership grew swiftly, each of these songs was released on record sung by her around the time that she introduced them into her act. It was important for Florrie to have access to the most promising new songs, so she maintained close relationships with leading publishers in London’s Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street, among them Lawrence Wright and Bert Feldman. It was Feldman who introduced Florrie to ‘Tipperary’.
Where possible, Florrie organised sole ownership for songs that promised success, one of these being ‘Bull and Bush’, but the reality of the music hall was that new songs that struck a chord with the public were often sung by many artists, Florrie among them. ‘Hello, hello, who’s your lady friend?’ and ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’ were both popularised by Mark Sheridan, and ‘She’s a Lassie from Lancashire’ by Ella Retford.
It was in 1907 that Florrie first adopted the tagline that she was to use throughout the rest of her performing career: ‘THE WORLD’S GREATEST CHORUS SINGER’. This was no small claim in an era awash with chorus songs and chorus singers. Florrie was very clear concerning her approach:
An audience doesn’t take much invitation to cotton on to a good chorus, especially in one of these waltz numbers. It’s more difficult to get them to join you in a ballad chorus, and in this respect I was rather pleasantly surprised at the way the audience took up a very pretty ballad I sang in the Isle of Man. It is called ‘The Garden of Roses’.3
The Royal Garden Party at the Palace Theatre, 1912. Florrie is the first from the left, three rows from the top. From The Sketch (London), 3 July 1912.
A first Royal Command Performance held at a public theatre with the king (George V) present took place at the Palace Theatre in London on 1 July 1912, the bill crowded with music hall acts of the day. Florrie was merely there to sing in the national anthem along with 142 others in the finale, but this was more than the great Marie Lloyd, who was not even invited. Contemporary reports of the event lament the lack of true music hall spirit.
Although there were many future Royal Variety events, Florrie was not to appear again before 1935 which took place at the London Palladium—in its finale, ‘Cavalcade of Variety’, with some three dozen others. Her last appearance at a Command performance was in 1938 (before George VI), also in a finale. Among the others in it was comedian George Mozart, who had first appeared with Florrie on bills in 1897.
The Great War and After
When war with Germany started and Zeppelin bombing, principally of London, arrived (from January 1915), Florrie Forde’s pattern of performances changed as a consequence. There were to be more weeks, particularly in the north of England and Scotland, and less weeks in London. In fact, Florrie did not return much to London until May/June of 1918, when she did weeks at New Cross, Walthamstow, Tottenham, East Ham, Finsbury, Stratford, Chelsea, Euston and Brixton. And she returned at that time to the South London in Lambeth, where she had performed on her first night in the capital in 1897.
The major hit song, virtually from the start of the war (28 July 1914) was Jack Judge’s ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ and from the start Florrie was credited as its ‘original singer’. In reality, it had been first sung in public by its composer, but the publisher Bert Feldman had persuaded Florrie to sing it during her summer season in July-August 1913 at the Derby Castle ballroom at Douglas, Isle of Man (first performance 21 July 1913). There she taught audiences to sing the chorus, but for some reason she did not much like the song and dropped it. Nevertheless, according to Feldman, it ‘swept into favour in the North of England … becoming extremely popular’. And with the advent of war, it became ‘the song that inspires our soldiers … a good marching song … [that] took Boulogne by storm.’ 4
The Blackpool Palace, 1900s, from a postcard. amounderness.co.uk
Florrie swiftly re-adopted ‘Tipperary’ into her act everywhere and it became sung ‘in restaurants, theatres, music halls and on piers.’ Even German prisoners of war took it up.5 By November 1914 Florrie was singing it to wounded servicemen in Dundee Eastern Hospital, ‘greatly appreciated by the soldiers.’ 6
From December 1915, Florrie included a new song, ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag’ into her new pantomime ‘Jack and Jill’ at the Palace Theatre (part of the Blackpool Tower complex). Again, it was destined to become a popular marching song for the soldiers.
It remains something of a mystery as to why Florrie did not record either ‘Tipperary’ or ‘Pack up your troubles’ until 1929, and then only in truncated form in a medley. Perhaps she felt she did not need to.
Following the cessation of hostilities, Florrie immediately returned to her usual annual schedules, but with the happy return of longer seasons in the music halls and variety theatres of London. Much of the provincial touring was, as before, at Moss Empire theatres. And the seasons in the capital were substantially with London Syndicate Halls (now managed by Walter Gibbons, son-in-law of George Adney Payne, who had succeeded Payne in the company after his death in 1907).
‘The Original Singer of Tipperary’. Photo by J.P. Bamber, Liverpool.
Sheet music for ‘Good-bye Dolly Gray’
However, the interwar period saw a rapid decline in the music hall. There was increased competition—from the continued growth of the recording industry, from radio and from cinema, all of which new media Florrie Forde engaged in. And from 1919 there was the spectacular arrival of new music from America—jazz in its various forms and offspring—starting with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. The ODJB billed itself as the creators of jazz, but in reality they were followers not leaders and consisted of five very white Americans. They caused a furore in Britain and soon there were British imitators, including a multitude of dance bands.
And there was a decisive move from traditional alcohol-fuelled music halls with tables and chairs to variety theatres with proscenium arches and fixed rows of seats. Music hall would never be the same again. Many of the old stars had gone, many of the famous halls closed.
Florrie herself went through a period of experimentation and change, and in 1916 and 1920 she tried out her first ‘revues’—entitled Midnight Revels and Confusion. The revue form still required several performers—but implied some form of connective tissue between acts as opposed to performers simply following each other at roughly ten-minute intervals. But these were not the big names of pre-war years, and so presumably cost a good deal less, with a larger cut going to the headline star and organiser, in this case Florrie Forde.
For Florrie, the revue format took a major step forward in February 1923 when she introduced Cameos of 1923 ‘a bright revue on topical subjects’—which was written by Reg Bolton and produced by Florrie. The cast included comedian Bolton and Stella Esdaile, sister of her old colleague from Australia, Florence Esdaile.
Photo by J.P. Bamber, Liverpool
By this stage of her career Florrie was trading on her old hit songs. After the Great War, with musical fashions changed, for her successful new songs were harder to find. But there were two exceptions—‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’ in 1920, and ‘Yes, we have no bananas’ three years later. ‘Bubbles’ was a massive hit song, sung and recorded by many, while ‘Bananas’ was if anything even more popular. Composed by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn, it was published in America in 1923, but swiftly also established itself as a major hit in Britain, sung by all and sundry and adopted by Florrie Forde as a centrepiece of her shows. ‘One day it was unheard of—the next day it just happened,’ said its British publisher, Lawrence Wright.7 She seems to have first introduced it in her act in her midsummer performances at the Derby Castle ballroom at Douglas, Isle of Man.
At the Palace in Plymouth in August, Florrie went on to introduce an on-stage competition—for the best imitation of Miss Florrie Forde singing the chorus of ‘Yes, we have no bananas’. There were five pounds in prizes, these to be presented by Florrie. So successful was this innovation that Plymouth was followed by Ayr, Glasgow and Edinburgh. At Leeds in October, in addition to the competition, Florrie also sold bananas for charity, and on 24 October she performed in the Floral Hall at Covent Garden, auctioning bananas, in order to raise funds for nearby Bart’s Hospital.
Flanagan and Allen and Aleta and Florrie
If one searches online for the comedians Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen, there is usually just a single sentence referencing their work with Florrie Forde—their CVs are dominated by their later work with the Crazy Gang. In reality, they came together under the guidance of Florrie and worked with her over nearly a ten-year period.
Chesney Allen first appeared with Florrie at the Finsbury Park Empire in London in a pantomime, Robinson Crusoe, in December 1921—at that time he was in a double act, Stanford and Allen. He had been performing with Stanford for two years, and they were booked again by Florrie for 1923–24 pantomime, Cinderella, which opened at the Alhambra in Bradford in December. Also in that cast was principal girl, Cinders, played by Aleta Turner. While Stanford and Allen provided ‘droll business’, Aleta Turner ‘brought the house down’ with her singing.
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When Cinderella closed, having toured widely, Aleta Turner and Stanford and Allen continued with Florrie in revue through 1924 until they came together again in Florrie’s pantomime of 1924–25, Jack and Jill, which started in December at the Palace in Blackpool.
By this stage, Turner, Stanford and Allen were firmly established in Florrie’s company, and together they opened a new revue, Here’s to You, at the Grand in Bolton on 30 March 1925. That show toured continuously around England before moving on to the next panto together, Robinson Crusoe (which opened at the Alhambra in Bradford again).
However, at some point Stan Stanford must have fallen out of favour and was replaced when Here’s to You re-opened in March 1926 by the twenty-nine-years-old Bud Flanagan, now coupled with Chesney. Had Stan fallen out with Chesney? Or with Florrie? Or was it simply because Bud was the more talented? This little group—Florrie, Aleta, Bud and Chesney—were to form the core team in all their performances together until 1932. Their new revue in 1930, The Non-Stops, premiered at the Tivoli in Hull in February and carried the little team through theatre after theatre in the following months. In October Florrie adopted a new hit song, one of the last before the onset of the Second World War, ‘When you’re smiling’.
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Aleta Turner had come from Cleethorpes (near Grimsby on the Lincolnshire coast) and had little onstage experience when she was auditioned—‘so nervous’—in 1923 by Florrie. She married Chesney Allen in 1925, having been onstage together for two years. Florrie’s second husband Laurie Barnett was best man at their wedding. Chesney had been born in Brighton in 1894 and was articled in a law office in his youth, before turning to the stage, initially as an actor in rep, then turning to variety as a comic straight man. Their marriage lasted until his death in 1982, he claiming that he owed everything to Aleta.
Flanagan (right) and Allen
Born at Whitechapel in the East End in 1896, Bud was initially named Chaim Reuben Weintrop, the son of Polish Jews. There are two versions of his renaming for the stage: his version was that Flanagan was the name of a disliked sergeant in the war; the other is that Florrie encouraged him to use her father’s surname. Perhaps both are true. At twelve, Reuben (Bud) was on stage for the first time as a conjuror at the Cambridge Music Hall in Bishopsgate.
While they were with Florrie, she was the star. But when they moved on from her in 1932, Flanagan and Allen were to become perhaps the most beloved of variety performers, famous for their gentle wit and their songs, which included ‘Underneath the Arches’, ‘Run, Rabbit, Run’, ‘We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’ (also sung by Florrie) and ‘Shine on Harvest Moon’.
However, Chesney Allen was professionally much more to Florrie than simply a talented performer. Starting with the new, long-running revue, Us, in March 1927, Chesney co-produced the show with Florrie. In it, Bud was the Crook and Chesney the Flash Crook. This was followed—with Florrie and Chesney co-producing again—by Flo and Co, which ran through the remainder of 1928 until the Xmas pantomime Jack and Jill intervened, returning to run through 1929.
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And Chesney had a third important role for Florrie: for some years he operated as her manager (although exactly which years these were I have as yet been unable to identify). Clearly he had a talent for management, moving on to take up that role with a theatrical agency and with Flanagan and Allen’s best-remembered lineup, the Crazy Gang.
It is possible that a motivation for Flanagan and Allen to move on and find new work was that in the summer of 1932 Florrie was unwell and did not perform from mid-May to late-July. During that time, she had a major operation after which she went home to recover, only to have to return to hospital a second time. She then recovered not at home, but in a nursing home at Hampstead. By 29 July she was back performing again—at the Isle of Man.
Isle of Man, Blackpool and Pantomime
From 1900 until 1939, Florrie performed two to four weeks each July-August at Douglas, the main town in the Isle of Man, followed by a short season at the Palace at Blackpool Tower. There, with the exception of her 1901 season (when she was at the Palace Theatre in Douglas), she sang at the ballroom at the Derby Castle, the sole star performer at each evening’s ball. The only gap over four decades was during the years of the First World War, when travel to the island was prohibited. She was to become a beloved feature of the season there, entertaining constantly changing holidaymakers, many of them from nearby Lancashire.
Derby Castle
Florrie’s cottage at Niarbyl
From the start, Florrie became devoted to the Isle of Man. The key to it was the air, Florrie wrote:
Draughts of it make the old feel young. The miserable become merry. The saddest of souls break the silence with song. The confirmed invalid takes a new lease of life. And class distinctions are swept aside.
This is perhaps as close as we may get to understanding the underlying purpose of Florrie Forde’s life and work.
Two of Florrie’s most famous songs—‘Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?’ and ‘Flanagan’—both of which might be seen as Irish, in fact celebrate the Isle of Man. They were composed by C.W. Murphy with lyrics by Will Letters. And, of course, ‘Flanagan’ references Florrie’s original surname.8
At the Derby Castle ballroom, the years went by without a hitch until 1929, which Florrie described as ‘the worst year I’ve ever known’, with numbers of holidaymakers down. Curiously, that summer season was two months before the onset of the Wall Street Crash and the ensuing Great Depression.
At some point, probably around 1923, she rented and stayed at a remote cottage at Niarbyl on the other side of the island, taking an extra week’s vacation there—the whole stay ‘combining business with pleasure’. Clearly, her stay on the Isle of Man each year represented for Florrie the greatest pleasure.
By the time that Florrie Forde came to her first pantomime in Britain, she had already had a major taste of the form back in Australia—in George Rignold’s The House that Jack Built at Her Majesty’s in Sydney in December 1894—starting at the top as Principal Boy, a role she was to perform regularly over the following decades.
As noted, her first panto in Britain was Cinderella in December 1898 at the Shakespeare Theatre at Clapham in southwest London. She was twenty-three. It was a theatrical form (suitable for whole families) that had grown in Britain out of the Italian commedia dell’arte in the 18th and early 19th centuries, which included storytelling, improvisation, songs and much laughter, and including a range of stock characters—a pair of young lovers (Harlequin and Columbine), plus the girl’s father and several comic servants.
Essentially, the Principal Boy in panto, Prince Charming. had grown out of Harlequin, but in Britain he was usually performed by a young woman in tights. This was the role that Florrie inhabited, a slender young thing in 1898, over the years gradually filling out to 18+ stone (115 kg) but still wearing the tights.
And Florrie Forde was not alone: from the late nineteenth century, British pantomimes had usually included celebrity music hall stars, among them her regular colleagues on the halls’ bills—Harriet Vernon, Dan Leno, George Robey and others—a tradition that has persisted. In recent years, when Sir Ian McKellen was in the media as Widow Twankey and Mother Goose.
The 1898–99 pantomime season in London was perhaps unique in employing four leading Australians to play Principal Boy in four different productions: Nellie Stewart as Dick Whittington at Drury Lane; Florence Young also Dick at the Grand, Fulham; Sophie Harris in Cinderella at the Princess of Wales, Kennington; and Florrie Forde also in Cinderella at the Shakespeare, Clapham.9
Photo by Albert Sachs, Bradford
Florrie was booked to perform Cinderella again in the following two years—first at the Grand in Newcastle-on-Tyne for the Christmas season 1899–1900, and then in Glasgow in 1900–01, which she cancelled. Was she ill? It seems not, as she performed constantly through that Christmas season into February, playing (weekly) a series of Moss Empires venues in northern Britain and Ireland (Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Belfast and on).
Aside from the House that Jack Built and Cinderella, over the years Florrie was in altogether a dozen different pantomimes, many of them repeated in different productions: Little Red Riding Hood, Babes in the Wood, Jack and Jill, Robinson Crusoe, Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty, The Forty Thieves, Puss in Boots, Queen of Hearts and Aladdin.
Florrie starred in pantomimes for three seasons under the management of George Bryden Phillips―first in 1901–02 opening at the Prince’s Theatre at Portsmouth, then the following Christmas season at the Shakespeare in Clapham, followed in 1904–05 by the Grand at Derby.
Then between 1906 and 1911 Florrie’s pantomimes were presented at theatres in Yorkshire owned by impresario Francis Laidler—widely known as the King of Pantomime—mostly at his Prince’s Theatre in Bradford (Cinderella in 1906, Little Red Riding Hood in 1908, Babes in the Wood in 1910), but also at his Theatre Royal in nearby Leeds (Babes in the Wood in 1909, Cinderella in 1911).
However, Florrie decided in 1912 that it was time to mount her own productions, but she was contracted to Laidler for the coming years, so she asked him to be released from the contract and he graciously agreed. Florrie was so pleased that she ran a substantial advertisement in the newspapers thanking him.
For two years (1901–02 and 1902–03) Florrie’s Little Red Riding Hood shows had opened in the south of England (first Portsmouth, next year Clapham) before going north (York then Bordesley in Birmingham and Leeds). This pattern set the precedent for Forde’s pantomimes becoming touring shows, and from 1912–13 (when she launched her first post-Laidler pantomime, Babes in the Wood, written by comedian Gilbert Payne) through to 1932–33, her pantomimes would progress across the two to three month period to anything between three and eleven different cities, in the earlier years exclusively in the north of England and Scotland, but in the later years also including weeks in the poorer suburbs of London (at the Alexandra Stoke Newington, the Empire Kilburn and the Hippodrome Ilford).
The principal girl to Florrie’s principal boy from 1914 to 1917 was singer and dancer Flora Carlton, ‘the Dainty Australian girl’, who was in fact Florrie’s niece, daughter of her eldest sister, Emily Brown (née Flanagan).
For the two seasons 1934–35 and 35–36, Florrie’s pantos reverted to being performed at a single theatre—first in Brighton, then at the Lyceum in London, before touring again in her final years until 1939–40, when she stayed put at the Shakespeare in Liverpool. 
Elisabeth Kumm collection
To be continued ...
Endnotes
1. 21 City Road is now a Tesco Express mini-supermarket
2. ‘Managers in a small way: The Professionalisation of Variety Artists, 1860-1914’ by Lois Rutherford, 106-11, in Peter Bailey, Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure (1986)
3. Cutting (1910, no source or date), Edwards/Flanagan Scrapbook 1 (Templeman Library, University of Kent); ‘Garden of Roses’: Johann Schmid/JE Dempsey, 1909
4. Daily News (London), 4 September 1914
5. The Stage, 24 September 1914
6. Dundee Courier, 20 November 1914
7. Bexhill-on-Sea Chronicle, 11 August 1923
8. C.W. Murphy wrote many songs popularised by Florrie, among them ‘She’s a Lassie from Lancashire’, ‘Oh! Oh! Antonio’, ‘Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?’, ‘Hold your hand out, Naughty Boy’ and ‘Flanagan’; Murphy died in 1913
9. British-Australasian, 5 January 1899
Note on Images
Unless otherwise indicated, items are from the Edwards and Flanagan collection, now part of the Frank Van Straten collection, Theatre Heritage Australia
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Acknowledgements
Thanks (for help of various kinds) to Christine Davies and colleagues (Templeman Library, University of Kent), Elisabeth Kumm, Tony Locantro, Tony Martin-Jones, Penelope Upward, Sophie Wilson
