Katie Lawrence was born in 1868 and is first mentioned on the music hall stage in 1883 with first appearances at the South London Palace and the Windsor Castle Palace of Varieties in Woolwich. At the South London Palace punters could avoid the crush by entering through a newly available side door for only threepence extra per person! In November 1883 she appears in an advert in the Entr’acte as Jolly Katie Lawrence, a pupil of J W Cherry. The advert describes her as a dashing serio and dance artist who has enjoyed great success at the Middlesex every evening. J W Cherry was a composer and opened a ‘Music Hall Academy’ giving singing lessons to hopeful music hall artistes. Marie Kendal was also a pupil who went on to great success.
In an interview in the Era in 1893 Katie Lawrence talked of starting her career as a child actress and studying dance at the academy of Madame Katti Lanner, who was herself said to have trained at the ballet school of the Vienna Court Opera. In 1887 the Empire Theatre of Varieties opened in London’s Leicester Square and Katti Lanner became the ballet mistress working with the resident company which could have provided a connection between the two. We do not hear if Madame Lanner felt music hall life was a step down the ladder of success. Katie Lawrence was often praised for her dancing and during an extensive tour of Australia in 1889 her butterfly dance was encored again and again with her skirts taking the part of wings ‘so curiously do they seem to be part of herself’.
Things were going well for Katie in 1887 as a notice in the Era states that she was taking a holiday in Paris and would not resume business until October 31st. This was probably placed by her agent, George Ware, who was known as an astute judge of talent. He also managed, among others, Nelly Power and Marie Lloyd. In 1892 Katie had her big success with a song ‘Daisy Bell’ written by Harry Dacre which touched on the new and modern topic of cycling. Those of us who know the song today think of it as ‘Daisy, Daisy’ or ‘A bicycle made for two’. It’s worth saying that in music hall days a catchy chorus and a simple melody was a must so that the audience could keep the tune in their heads as they left the theatre. The performers could only hope that their songs would become a hit which would secure future bookings.
Around 1903 Walter Sickert painted Katie Lawrence at Gatti’s, a music hall built under the arches of Charing Cross station, but she seems not to have been enamoured with the artist’s work. At one point Sickert offered her one of his music hall paintings but she said she wouldn’t have it – even to keep the draught out from under the scullery door.
‘Daisy Bell’ became a huge success in the States as well as this country and Colin MacInnes in his book Sweet Saturday Night tells us that Katie was able to build Bell House near London Zoo. This happy state of affairs did not last as gradually Katie Lawrence’s name dropped off the bill of the more prestigious music halls. She found work in smaller halls and remained popular in the Midlands but experienced hard times despite her previous popularity in London, New York and South Africa. There is mention of Marie Lloyd giving her a helping hand at this time and it could be true as they had shared an agent and had often been on the same bill. Katie Lawrence died in Birmingham in 1913 where a benefit concert had been arranged for her and her name was on the bills for an appearance at a local hall.
Thanks to British Newspaper Archive, Sweet Saturday Night- Colin MacInnes, Marie Lloyd, Queen of the Music Halls – Richard Anthony Baker
with a barrel organ. The card on the barrel organ reads ‘Molly O’Morgan’. The young woman is staring out from the photograph as if she has a story to tell. There is a story of Molly O’Morgan, the daughter of an Irish mother and an Italian organ-grinder father, who had dark brown hair and laughing eyes. It is said her mother died when Molly was young and she and her father left Ireland with a barrel organ and monkey to take their chances in Europe. Molly would dance while her father played the barrel organ and the crowds were charmed into parting with their coins. They travelled from city to city and eventually arrived in Monte Carlo where Molly’s fortunes changed. She was noticed by Duke Medici-Sinelli, an elderly widower, who naturally enough was also rich and charming. The Duke arranged for Molly to appear at a theatre and in the way of fairy tales she immediately became a star. Molly and the Duke married and unkind rumours suggested she was a gold-digger although the couple seemed devoted to each other. When the Duke died Molly did not marry again but came to Monte Carlo every year and stayed in the same suite in which she and the Duke had spent their honeymoon. She was said to live in Hungary with a distant branch of the Duke’s family.
‘I was extraordinarily pretty’ states Caroline Otero in her autobiography My Story and this much is true. Music hall singer and dancer, courtesan and gambler, La Belle Otero lived a life of extremes and exaggerations that would raise eyebrows today. She claimed her mother was a beautiful Andalusian gypsy, Carmen, who danced, sang and told fortunes. Such was her beauty that a group of passers-by including a young Greek army officer, gazed at her in admiration as she was engaged in the unromantic task of hanging out the washing. The autobiography makes much of the courtship and devotion of the young man and tells of his death in a duel with Carmen’s lover. It is more likely La Belle Otero was born into a poor family in Galicia in November 1868 and given the name Augustina although she adopted the name Caroline at a young age. As a child she was sent away to work as a servant and is said to have been raped at the age of ten. It’s no wonder she gave herself a more romantic beginning.
who found her work as a dancer in a Café. She moved up the scale from theatre to theatre, starring at the Folies Bergère , collecting and discarding admirers and lovers. It is said men fought duels over her and left themselves penniless after showering the object of their affection with flowers and jewels. A writer in The Sketch in 1898 reports that Mdlle Otero came on to the Alhambra stage in a salmon-pink dress covered in diamonds and turquoises with her fingers heavy with rings, the dress setting off her pale complexion and black hair to great advantage. The diamonds, worth millions of francs, were tokens of the esteem in which she was held by her admirers. The writer goes on to say that ‘most performers humbly seek the suffrages of their audience; La Belle Otero, whose equipment is in many respects inferior, from the artistic point of view, to that of her competitors, demands them as a right.’ 
Otero was adept at self publicity and in 1902 the Paris correspondent of the Express writes that an engineer in Brussels was constructing an airship for her ‘by means of which she hopes to make a triumphal entry next August into Biarritz.’ She was worried it could be dangerous and so the balloon was to be dragged along by a car attached by a thin wire. If there was an accident she could ‘descend to the car by means of a rope ladder, which she will have tied in to the airship. The airship will float gracefully above the automobile at a height of 100ft.’ Mistress to ambassadors, princes, including the future Edward VII, and nobility throughout Europe, La Belle Otero scandalised and fascinated society in equal measure. Her weakness was gambling and she lost vast sums of money at the tables, sometimes her own and often her admirers’ fortunes. The Tatler tells us that in 1909 police raided a gambling club in Paris and found fifty women and ten men. On further investigation another woman, Caroline Otero, was found in a cupboard.
In Victorian and Edwardian society women were often portrayed as the weaker sex but music hall was another world altogether and audiences flocked to see women of prodigious strength full of confidence in themselves and their right to perform. One such was the Great Athelda, born Frances Rheinlander in Manchester, who performed on the music hall stage from around 1912. Athelda was reported to have made her debut in Buenos Aires in December 1911. She was also known as the miniature Lady Hercules and Britain’s Beautiful Daughter.
It held around 2000 people and had five bars, refreshment rooms, lounges and promenades, warehouses, stabling and a large open yard. Before the grand opening a journalist from the trade paper, the Entr’acte, remarked that the facilities for dispensing liquors are very considerable while an advert for musicians states that evening dress and sobriety are indispensable. There was to be an orchestra of eighteen musicians, all to be experienced in the variety and circus business, and a first violin, piano, cello and bassoon were needed to complete it. In July 1901 first-class acts of all kinds were directed to write immediately to secure their bookings.
Ada Reeve was born in London in 1874 into a theatrical family and she made her debut at the age of four in the pantomime Little Red Riding Hood at the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel. Using the name Little Ada Reeve she continued to appear in plays and pantomime to great acclaim. Her elocution was said to be ‘peculiarly free from Cockney taint.’ In an advertisement in the trade paper, the Era, in May 1884 Little Ada Reeve announced she was at liberty for speciality and Christmas for the principal child’s part and was said at ten years of age to be a singer, actress, dancer, reciter and drum soloist.
Ada Reeve continued to work as an actress on stage and in film. Her last stage role was at the age of eighty and she appeared in her last film at the age of eighty-three. She died in 1966 at the age of ninety-two. She had that special something which audiences responded to and in this clip we can see that charm and hear that voice, still clear in her eighties. She is talking to Eamonn Andrews after an appearance on the television show This is your life.
Into the Limelight 