Imagine adelaide, a small but bustling city, remote from Australia’s eastern capitals. In the 1860s a daring young man swings on a trapeze, then makes a complex revolution on the horizontal bars. Men and women roar with laughter as he balances a rolling globe on his feet. In 1888 a teenager thrills the audience as she walks up a deadly ladder of glittering swords. Her father wrestles and boxes, and juggles. In 1899 a small girl sings on a vaudeville stage, working alongside professional entertainers three times her age. In 1905 her cousins, lithe gymnasts and fearless jockeys, turn acrobatic tricks and ride around the ring. All is sparkles, sequins, and sweat. Who are these astounding people, and where have they learned these skills?
Worley-Barton performers, c.1905. Courtesy of the Barton family.
Origin Story
The performers described above were members of the talented Worley-Barton circus and vaudeville performing family. South Australia may not appear, on the face of it, to be very likely to produce a host of circus stars. Comprising about 7% of the national population today, nineteenth century South Australia was supremely conscious that it was ‘looked down upon by her more wealthy neighbours, and sometime sneered at as having no ideas beyond the growth of wheat or the raising of copper ore’.1 But at least we were free of the ‘convict stain’.
As described by circus historian Dr Mark St Leon, until the late 1870s at least South Australia lay outside the main corridor of intensive colonial circus touring activity that stretched from central Victoria, through the eastern half of New South Wales and into south-eastern Queensland. Our roads were good (by the standards of the time), and the towns were acceptably close together, but getting here across the thousand miles of rough, dry land separating us from the east coast was the hard part.2 So, with the big national and international companies rarely making the considerable effort required there was a captive audience desperate for entertainment.
Enterprising locals could tap this market and make good, if their offering was interesting enough. Some were born with the requisite skills, some were self-taught, and others learned at the feet of talented masters. An early innovator was gymnast Joseph Irons Worley, whose hard work kick-started the family’s multigenerational successes under the names of Worley, and later, Barton. The Worley-Bartons worked the deeply interconnected Australian entertainment industry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (what I dub the ‘greasepaint network’) to their considerable advantage. Their achievements during the boom decades of live performance, the 1870s to 1910s, were almost entirely forgotten but they deserve recognition as South Australia’s premier early circus family, with a story that would eventually encompass over 100 years of public performance.
The Greasepaint Network
The lifeblood of entertainment in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the labyrinthine web of connections between circuses, athletic acts, vaudeville shows, stage managers, actors, singers, dancers, and theatrical troupes. There were thousands of performers in hundreds of troupes, all competing for the public’s coin. Players moved from troupe to troupe, as temperament, romance, convenience, finances, fashion, or necessity dictated, so the line-ups on offer were always new and different. Everyone knew, was related to, had worked with, loved or hated, owed money or their big break to, everyone else. Joe Worley partnered with Raphael, who was employed by Montgomery, who worked with Wirth, who rode with Barlow, who clowned with Hall, whose son sang with Friedman, who worked with Tudor and appeared with Worley’s daughters, and on and on it went.
Hindley Street c.1868. State Library of South Australia Acre 71 collection, B-1884. The Worley boarding house was just off to the right of the photo.
West End Boy
The Worley story started in Adelaide’s ‘west end’, at one of the city’s most unusual sights, Joe Worley’s famous outdoor gymnasium. This dynamic and exciting fixture operated from the 1860s and was part educational establishment and part public performance. Described in fond remembrance as ‘a free, out-in-the-open show, patronised by all and sundry’ it had tricks and antics that could not be beaten.3 There might be a man running backwards, a wire-walker carrying a man on his back, a trapeze artist, boxers, students training on Roman rings and horizontal bars. Men would be gathered nearby, surreptitiously wagering a few pence on the skill of a young gymnast, or raucously cheering the outcome of a sparring match. Some would be waiting to attempt a walk on the slack rope, much to the amusement of their friends.
Proprietor Joe Worley was small and slight, but very strong in both body and will. He claimed, hyperbolically, to be the first tightrope walker in the Southern Hemisphere, although may have been using first to mean premier or best; he also claimed to have been a very young India Rubber Boy for Sanger’s Circus in London in the early 1850s.4 This was plausible, if not likely, and at least it was a good story to tell.
Program for Sangers Circus, c.1860
Tibbals collection, ht4002679, Ringling Museum
After migrating in 1856, Joseph spent his formative years at his mother’s boarding house on Hindley Street. Always physically active, he was probably one of the thousands of children who thrilled to watch Burton’s National Circus at one of its visits in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Joe excelled at athletics and swimming and may have received acrobatic instruction from schoolteacher Mr Leschen, who had a trapeze and horizontal bar constructed near the Worley home.5 Leschen’s provision of these lessons suggests the importance in Adelaide of ‘rational recreation’, the contemporary term for physical hobbies and pursuits that were morally ‘improving’ for members of the working class (in contrast to the ‘degrading’ pursuits of drinking and gambling, which caused considerable anxiety among politicians, priests, and public servants).6 Leschen would become well-known for his role as instructor at the 1862-formed Adelaide Gymnastics Club, which catered to men from the city’s booming middle class, and met at rooms just around the corner from Hindley Street.
Joseph was one of two enterprising youngsters who, in early 1864, inspired by the recent demonstrations of ‘flying man’ Bartine and the Wieland Brothers of Burton’s Circus, erected their own small trapeze set-up in front of Worley’s.7 He was not quite 15, but already a canny operator, and was soon renowned for performing at this street-side show. At 17, Joe was a member of the Gymnastics Club, stunning observers at Club events, where (though being considered a ‘mere child’) he was praised for his ‘daring and dexterity’.8 He may have even been one of those demonstrating for HRH Prince Alfred in late 1867. This was heady stuff indeed.
Worley’s outdoor trapeze was quickly joined by horizontal bars and a slack rope set-up, and the customers began to roll in. Joe had famous compatriot in local man John Morcom, later known professionally as Vertelli, ‘The Australian Blondin’. Morcom’s younger brother Sam had often competed with Joe in swimming tournaments, and both families were well-established on Hindley Street. Vertelli’s nephew relayed in 1930 that the acrobatic star ‘chiefly learned’ his tightrope skills at Joe Worley’s open-air gymnasium, an indication of Joe’s talent and good reputation.9 Vertelli achieved international success over his long career, from early highlights of crossing Adelaide’s Waterfull Gully and Tasmania’s Cataract Gorge on a tightrope, to a stupendously impressive feat crossing of Niagara Falls, as well as performing in dozens of cities around the world, from Japan to the United States.10
Vertelli crossing Waterfall Gully, 24 August 1865, sketch by W.A. Cawthorne
Mitchell Library collection, State Library of New South Wales. Cawthorne was Joe’s aunt Georgiana’s husband. Is Joe one of the young men at the left of the picture?
Hard Yards
According to Adelaide sportsman ‘Cyclops’, remembering after Joe’s death, Worley was one of the acrobats who toured South Australia and beyond as Vertelli and Company in the late 1860s.11 Several of Joe’s gymnastic students reportedly joined Burton’s Circus and they too travelled far and wide.12
By the time Vertelli left Australia in 1875 to pursue international stardom in Europe, Joe was back in Adelaide, working hard to grow his open-air show, which moved from the boarding house front yard to a larger plot of open land nearby. A young friend, fruiterer and part-time athlete Walter Charlick, was his assistant.13 As a free show Worley’s Gymnasium took advantage of a booming interest in gymnastics, both shaping and being shaped by the developing physical culture movement, which celebrated the athletic pursuits and healthy manliness thought necessary to build successful modern societies. As advances in technologies granted more leisure time to South Australian working men and boys, they increasingly turned to competitive physical activities.14 The advantage of Joe’s place was that, unlike the Gymnastics Club and others, it required no membership fee, special clothing, or social connections.15
It wasn’t just working men who frequented Joe’s place. Many prominent citizens (including future premier G.S. Kingston, future mayor Fuller, and budding police magistrate Gepp) could be seen keenly watching the action and may have quietly taken advantage of Vertelli’s early side gig as an unlicensed bookmaker, or ‘walking tote’.16 This was risky but could be profitable, making Worley and Morcom some extra income. There were plenty of punters: Adelaide’s population was surging, and the Worley boarding house was doing fine business, bringing in a wide array of migrants and miners, teamsters and teachers, agricultural workers and performing artistes, many with cash to splash. Gymnastics and associated acrobatics were fashionable, a little racy, and becoming ubiquitous. Performance of the sport for money was less respectable and could have the undercurrent of being a bit of a flim-flam. Gymnastics had even appeared in political commentary during the 1860 American presidential campaign as a critique of candidates’ willingness to compete through popularity more than policy positions.17
Louis Maurer, ‘The Political Gymnasium’, 1860. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Joe Worley also took every opportunity to develop his own local show, performing at venues and events big and small. Charitable gathering, Hibernian society picnic or a sports meeting to celebrate one of ‘aeronaut’ Thomas Gale’s spectacular balloon ascents, Joe got his name out there. His gravity defying demonstrations took a fashionable French turn, as ‘air volante’ (flying air, trapeze) and ‘globe la spunule’ (faux French for spinning globe).18 Competitors and compatriots began to abound as other gymnastic and acrobatic locals learned at Joe’s school or from his example, rapidly rising through the ranks and booking gigs. These included Manson and Hore of ‘The Blondins’, Manson being another of the local lads Joe knew from his swimming days, and the Gilbert Brothers, local trapeze duo and possibly former pupils. The Gilberts worked with Wilson and Murray’s circuses, both of which visited Adelaide in the mid-1870s.19 During these years Joe performed, taught at his outdoor school, and managed a nearby private gymnasium, which offered lessons for gentlemen keen to dabble in the physical arts. Still, times were often tough, and with a growing family to feed he had to underpin his showbiz efforts by working as a railway porter.20
A change came in the 1880s, with Joe’s business blooming as his reputation and contacts grew. He had also turned his hand to wire-working and metal-trading, useful to supply his performing friends and for his own use. South Australia’s constantly rising population began to draw more frequent interstate and overseas acts and circuses, some of which Joe joined as a local guest star: ‘Look out for Joe Worley, champion bar performer’ proclaimed advertisements for Filewood’s in 1884.21 Buoyed by these appearances Joe was finally able to marshal enough money, connections, and helpers to form his own travelling sideshow and novelty act, becoming ‘Professor Worley’ and no longer playing the second fiddle.22 Sometimes styled as ‘Worley’s Circus’, or ’Worley’s Athletic and Wrestling Troupe’, the group advertised acrobats, clowns, wrestlers and boxers (Joe, friends, and pupils, playing multiple roles, no doubt) as well as monkeys.
One novelty South Australians could not get enough of was Japanese acrobatics, and Worley’s began working with two young boys from the Kodama (sometimes Kadamo, Katama, etc) family, who had come over from the eastern states. There had been numerous Japanese troupes touring Australia since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, including the Great Dragon and Tycoon troupes. The arrival of the Kodamas marked the start of a longstanding relationship, as performers with this surname would partner with the Worley-Bartons until at least the 1920s.
Carte de visite of the Royal Tycoon Troupe of Japanese, photographed in Adelaide by Saul Solomon c.1874
Courtesy Shane Le Plastrier
We can get small glimpses behind the scenes at Worley’s, and of the dangers inherent in theatrical performance, through newspaper reports. One threat was fire, ever present when under gas illumination, and often deadly in seconds. Tragic conflagrations which killed performers and audience in Brooklyn, New York, and Rouen, France, received international press coverage: closer to home Joe was involved in an 1886 near-miss during a benefit for unemployed men:
[Professor Worley] was on his back spinning a large globe on his feet, when he missed the sphere, which rolled down the stage till it met the footlights. The ball was stopped, but one of the burners was broken, and a large flame was seen by the audience. The people in the stalls immediately rose, but Mr. Clinton [a host] assured them that there was no danger, and all chance of a panic was averted.23
Litigation was a different sort of peril, as in an 1885 court case against Joe Worley brought by one of his performers, Austrian strongman and ‘iron jaw’ Josef Hayek (sometimes Hajek). Hayek entered into an agreement to join Worley on a country tour, but Joe and Josef fell out, and Hayek refused to go on unless he was paid in advance. The inference from court reporting is that Joe had been somewhat miserly in paying Hayek for his services earlier in the year, and Hayek had perhaps got a better offer elsewhere. In response to Hayek’s demands Joe confiscated the Austrian’s dumbbells, preventing him from jumping ship to another troupe. Hayek won his suit and Joe had to pay 30 shillings and costs.24
A more successful business relationship was with T.P. Hudson, owner of Garner’s (formerly White’s Assembly Rooms and later the Bijou Theatre) on King William Street. Joe and the troupe performed dozens of times at this prestige venue, and Hudson was a very useful friend indeed. He would provide further connections to Joe and other members of the Worley clan through his ‘Surprise Party’ group, which was stuffed with international talent, and alternated seasons in Adelaide with touring Australia, India, China and Japan. The greasepaint network was in full effect at Garner’s.
Hudson’s Bijou, formerly Garner’s Rooms, c.1892. State Library of South Australia, B-13272.
When not at Hudson’s the Worley gang often set up at the bustling East End markets, using connections made through Joe’s gymnasium colleague Mr Charlick, whose family owned a large business there. Other popular venues were the Academy of Music, and the Jubilee Exhibition Halls and roller-skating rink. The troupe were favourites at Glenelg and Largs Bay for the Proclamation Day celebrations, where Joe’s ‘singular powers’ on the horizontal bar ‘quite satisfied’ the eager crowd.25 Swimming, walking, and footraces were held at these gatherings, often adjudicated by none other than James Morcom, Vertelli’s brother.26 Of course, there were plenty of wagers to be had.
Worley’s Athletic troupe didn’t just stay close to the city, touring South Australia’s regional towns throughout the 1880s. They did several years sterling service taking their wagon of wrestlers, boxers, and acrobats to numerous South Australian agricultural shows, which were recognised as being great money-makers.27 The great circus maestro Philip Wirth, whose family show started out touring these smaller venues, called the agricultural shows ‘gold mines’ for performers, as country folk keen to see novelties from the wider world eagerly handed over their cash. Sniffing a chance at a different sort of gold mine, Joe formed a combination with other gymnasts and took a wagon to South Australia’s remote Teetulpa goldfields in early 1887, where a brief boom had attracted over 5000 diggers to the area.28 Blisteringly hot in January, this was a very short but likely profitable run.
Keeping it in the Family
A contributing factor to the continued blossoming of Worley’s in the late 1880s and 1890s was fresh blood in the line-up, as other Worleys took to the ring and stage. In June 1888 Joseph’s eldest child Caroline was billed as ‘the only female sword-walker in existence’, at just 11 years old.29 She likely learned this dangerous and exciting turn from the Kodama boys, who had demonstrated it at a performance at Garner’s in 1887.30
Female sword walker
Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 17 April 1897, p.820
Children were an important part of circus, sideshow, and performing life, and some made their first public appearances well before they went to school, assuming they attended much at all. Indeed, schooling would be a perennially thorny issue for the Worley troupe at this time, with Joe in court several times for neglecting to send two of his younger children to school. He was repeatedly fined and served short gaol sentences for the offence in 1891 and 1892.31 This was his dilemma: he needed to keep the Worley’s offering fresh and exciting, and the troupe needed to travel across the colony to get the best pitches, but compulsory school attendance made this tricky. He also needed to keep his day job as a wireworker on the boil, servicing fellow artistes as well as selling his tricycles, dog tags, and other merchandise to the public.
The answer would come over the course of the 1890s, in the fortuitous form of family. Joe’s brother Francis Worley had several enterprising teenage and young adult children, and these had begun entering the world of greasepaint, sawdust, and spangles. Likely drawing on Joe’s connections, and to gain useful experience, his 15-year-old nephew Frank Worley Jnr toured Queensland with Wirths Circus around 1890 and may have even gone with them to New Zealand in late 1890. Frank’s older brother Walter, a jockey and sometime comedian, made inroads in the South Australian equestrian and vaudeville circuits, while youngest sibling Alfred was also involved in the horse trade. Around the same time, their sister Mabel began singing at Adelaide theatres, working with a variety of vaudeville acts, including Paddy Myhill, a friend of Joe Worley’s from Garner’s. This new young generation of the family was talented and were quickly building good reputations. Joe could now begin to think about passing the rigours of travelling life onto them, as he was nearing 50.
Marriages could solidify but also destabilise connections. In 1894 Joe’s daughter Caroline (occupation ‘public singer’) married Joseph ‘Joey’ Raphael, the contortionist son of famous South American circus rider Gambor Raphael. The happy couple may have initially met when Monsieur Raphael was playing in Adelaide in 1893, with Montgomery and Moreny’s circus. Raphael was a name long familiar to Joe, as Gambor was one of the stars of Burton’s who appeared in Adelaide during Joe’s childhood. In April 1894 Joey Raphael joined Joe Worley and their South African friend Richard Walduck in forming a circus together, although this only briefly flowered. Perhaps a budding romance between Caroline and Joey contributed to the termination of the partnership, as Mr Elder soon replaced Joe Worley, and the circus left South Australia, presumably with Caroline in tow. When she married Raphael in New South Wales several months later, she had a letter of permission from her mother, not from her father: I suspect that Worley did not initially approve of the match. Raphael would later be a staple of the family show, so a reconciliation must have occurred eventually.
Joey Raphael carte de visite c.1876
Courtesy Dr Mark St Leon
Around 1892, young Frank Worley returned from his sojourn with Wirths, a wealth of experience under his belt, and a hunger to perform in his belly. He married Matilda Wislang, the daughter of a German blacksmith, and the couple took in her trio of young brothers, who became acrobats in the family show. Frank tried working with various outfits, including the Souquet Brothers troupe, performing with them at Hudson’s Bijou late in 1896. Although Souquet’s two small tigers and three bears were not on their best form, a reviewer thought the eldest Wislang boy would make a ‘capital contortionist in time’ and the man was a ‘first-class gymnast’.32 Joe’s niece Mabel also married, finding herself an enterprising fellow named Henry Hawkins, who joined the family with a phonograph in tow. He partnered with her brother Frank to form the Darcy and Bartolo Variety Troupe, while Mabel and her small daughter both pursued vaudeville fame using the alias of Darcy.
It was when the Worley cousins combined their powers and experience with Joe’s legacy, connections, and equipment that the family’s most successful offering was born around 1897: Barton’s Circus.
Life on the Road
Joe handed the reins of the travelling show to his nephews, Frank, Alfred, and Walter, although he kept his hand in by training youngest daughter Grace in the arts of sword-ladder walking and globe-running for performances at vaudeville theatres and fundraisers. With their recently adopted nom de arene of Barton, the younger Worleys would be spending much of the next few decades under canvas.33 Their first recorded appearance, as Barton Brothers’ Circus, was at Dawson, in South Australia’s mid-north, in June 1898. The new show was small, but very welcome in the back lots and paddocks of the colony. The ensemble consisted of Frank, his wife Matilda, their toddler son Roy, Alfred and Walter Worley, Joey Raphael and Caroline, possibly other friends or hands, and Frank’s sister Mabel, as well as at least two of his junior brothers-in-law, the Wislang boys. Their program was a mix of horsemanship, some clowning and acrobatics, maybe some comedy turns, and always plenty of music. Small outfits had to drum up their own promotion, quite literally, with the family band parading down the main street of town before they set up. Old friends would greet them, and children were particularly keen to see the action arrive. It was a thrilling sight for all.
Barton’s Circus toured the length and breadth of South Australia, with occasional forays into the eastern states. They cemented their place in the ‘greasepaint network’, working with other shows and families as necessary, and forming profitable relationships. In 1900 Barton’s played at Port Adelaide with the Coleman trapeze group, old hands at circus arts and long connected with Harmston’s Circus. The Colemans included the famous Weatherlys: Pinky Weatherly, mother of the troupe, was born Clothilde Coleman. Reviews in the Advertiser noted Frank and Matilda Barton as the stars of the ring, Frank excelling as ringmaster and lead rider, and ‘Madame Barton’ riding, walking the slack-rope, and ruling the silver wire.34 There was trapeze work and parallel bars, equipment that was no doubt made and maintained by Joe Worley’s skilled hands. The young Wislangs provided contortionist action, and Frank’s 5-year-old son Master Roy Barton, ‘the child wonder’, amused all as the smallest rider. Caroline Worley Raphael did club swinging and other athletic feats, while her husband did hand-balancing, clowning and chair acts. Completing the family ensemble was Caroline’s youngest sister Grace, who did sword-walking and ball-rolling, emulating her father in previous years and iterations of the troupe.
Courtesy of the Barton family
Winding down
The turn-of-the-century flourishing of the Worley-Barton troupe saw Joe draw back from performance life. His daughters and their cousins were soon well-established with Barton Brothers and followed the bright lights to Melbourne, Sydney, and far beyond. Joe kept his wire-working business and found time to act as a temporary honorary secretary of West Torrens Football Club, covering for a cousin.35 However, as the 1900s wore on, and without the circus to ground him, things gradually fell apart. Joe became notorious on the streets of Adelaide, now and then arrested for drunkenness and other public order offences.
Frank and Alfred took Barton Brothers’ Circus to New Zealand for an extended tour in 1910, and Joe felt their absence keenly. He had trouble keeping body and soul together, and from 1911 was in and out of Adelaide’s Destitute Asylum, leaving to seek work or go to hospital, returning weeks or months later when money, luck, or connections had run out.36 In 1914 he fractured his shoulder and was bedridden for some time, and the year after was back in gaol, this time for theft.37 Even so, Joe never forgot his showbiz roots when given half a chance, harking back to his glory days and performance ways in court when defending himself on a 1918 charge of indecent language. He made the court laugh with his account of the tram accident that had caused his outburst, commenting that if he had not been ‘a bit of an acrobat’ he might have been seriously injured.38
Joe Worley’s final reminiscences were captured in a swan song newspaper interview with the News in 1926, when he was a resident at the Magill Old Folks Home.39 He regaled his audience with stories gleaned from his youth, and possibly from the youths of friends and colleagues too. He told the ‘India Rubber Boy’ tale, claimed to have toured the Commonwealth and crossed Launceston’s Cataract Gorge on a bicycle of his own design (feats performed by Vertelli), and to have been in a circus marooned for weeks in Queensland floodwater. This last anecdote sounds suspiciously similar to one told later by Phillip Wirth, discussing his exploits of the 1870s, but maybe they were both there, connected through the greasepaint network.40
Joe Worley might have walked the wire between truth and tale in showbiz, but his hard work and dedication to his craft can be in no doubt. His experience and expertise with wire and word laid a firm foundation upon which the next three generations of Worley-Bartons built the family show. The final days of Barton’s, by then called the Follies, came in the 1950s, but descendants of Joe’s nephew Walter Worley stayed working sideshows until the early 2000s. More than a century of entertainment is a legacy anyone could be proud of.
And for more about that tall tale, you’ll have to read my book! [ https://scholarly.info/book/three-ring-circus/ ]
Endnotes
1. ‘The Overland Telegraph’, Gawler Times, 30 August 1872, p.2
2. Mark St Leon, ‘Talent in the tent’, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, Vol. 3, No. Supplement, November 2023, p.91
3. ‘Rhantregwnwyn’ reminisces for the Evening Journal, 24 June 1916, p.13. The pen name references the cottage on Hindley Street where Robert Thomas, proprietor of South Australia’s first newspaper, lived. The person behind this pen name was likely a Thomas descendant and probably knew Joe Worley well.
4. News (Adelaide), 26 June 1926, p.1
5. Register (Adelaide), 16 December 1916, p.5
6. Rachel Vorspan, ‘“Rational Recreation” and the Law: The Transformation of Popular Urban Leisure in Victorian England’, McGill Law Journal, 45-4, 2000, pp.891, 2000
Commentator ‘Nestor’ wrote a letter supporting rational recreation to the Adelaide Observer in 1845. Adelaide Observer, 25 January 1845, p.3.
7. South Australian Register (Adelaide), 18 January 1864, p.2
8. South Australian Register (Adelaide), 26 February 1867, p.2
9. Chronicle (Adelaide), 20 November 1930, p.52
10. ‘Vertelli’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertelli
11. Sport (Adelaide), 6 May 1927, p.2
12. Observer (Adelaide), 1 July 1916, p.32
13. Chronicle (Adelaide), 20 November 1930, p.52
14. Molyneaux, D, 2009, ‘Disciplining Recreation in Colonial South Australia: Constraints, Controls and Conventions’, PhD thesis, University of Adelaide
15. The Adelaide Gymnastics Club cost a guinea to join and admission was by ballot. South Australian Register (Adelaide), 6 August 1862, p.1
16. Evening Journal, (Adelaide), 24 June 1916, p.12; Sport (Adelaide), 6 May 1927, p.2
17. https://campaignrhetoric.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/political-cartoons-in-the-1860-presidential-campaign-visual-depictions-of-presidential-candidates-as-performers-devin-scott/
18. Evening Journal (Adelaide), 22 December 1877, p.1
19. South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 31 August 1871, p.2
20. South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail (Adelaide), 29 June 1878, p.8
21. South Australian Register (Adelaide), 21 May 1884, p.1; South Australian Advertiser, 21 July 1884, p.1; Evening Journal (Adelaide), 21 July 1884, p.1; South Australian Register (Adelaide), 21 July 1884, p.1
22. Naracoorte Herald (SA), 17 November 1885, p.3
23. South Australian Register (Adelaide), 6 April 1886, p.7
24. South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 26 November 1885, p.7
25. Evening Journal (Adelaide), 29 December 1886, p.7
26. Adelaide Observer, 2 January 1886, p.34
27. South Australian Register (Adelaide), 2 September 1887, p.7
28. Express and Telegraph (Adelaide), 10 January 1887, p.3
29. Express and Telegraph (Adelaide), 16 June 1888, p.1
30. South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 4 July 1887, p.4
31. Evening Journal (Adelaide), 2 May 1890, p.2; State Records of South Australia GRS 2414, 1891/193
32. Evening Journal (Adelaide), 12 December 1896, p.4
33. The family use of Barton dates at least as early as 1896, as evidenced by Mabel Worley’s record with the State Children’s Department, which noted that she ‘passes as Mrs Barton’ and performed on stage with her child. State Records of South Australia, GRG27-1-1896/213
34. Advertiser (Adelaide), 1 December 1900, p.11
35. Express and Telegraph (Adelaide), 21 February 1903, p.2
36. State Records of South Australia GRG 28/5, Adelaide Destitute Asylum register, vol. 7
37. State Records of South Australia GRG 78/49, Adelaide Hospital register, 1914/3409; South Australian Police Gazette, 7 July 1915, p.235
38. Port Adelaide News, 7 June 1918, p.4
39. News (Adelaide), 26 June 1926, p.1
40. West Australian (Perth), 9 September 1931, p.10
