Lil Hawthorne was an American singer and comedienne, born in 1877. After various childhood acting roles she headed for the variety stage, aged fourteen, as one of the Three Sisters Hawthorne. There was a fashion for ‘sister’ acts at the time but, unlike many, the Hawthornes were three real sisters. They came to London from New York and in June 1898 the Music Hall and Theatre Review enthusiatically proclaimed they achieved ‘an instantaneous success’. One of their successes was in an operetta The Willow Pattern Plate performed at the Oxford, the Tivoli and the Pavilion – all London halls.
Despite their popularity, two of the sisters returned to America while Lil tried her luck as a solo performer. In 1900 she was starring on the Moss and Thornton circuit travelling to South Shields, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Evening Dispatch described her as ‘the original warbler of several world-known medleys’ adding that she had a sweet voice with due regard for modulation. Sweet Rosie O’ Grady was her most popular song with another favourite being I’ll be your Sweetheart, a song my grandmother sang after a glass or two of Guinness. Reviews suggested she marked a step forward in the entertainment of the music hall, being both charming and refined. The owners of the halls were struggling to cast off their less than savoury image and Lil appealed to their vision of the future. She was also a popular principal boy in pantomime for some years.
In 1899 Lil married John Nash who became her manager and they later became involved in the case of Dr Crippen and Belle Elmore, an aspiring music hall performer but with little talent. Lil Hawthorne and Belle Elmore were both members of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild where Belle was treasurer. They became friends and the two couples would visit one another and dine together. The Nashes were visiting America when Crippen’s secretary, Ethel Le Neve, visited Melinda May, secretary of the Ladies Guild and gave her a letter. The letter was written by Dr Crippen saying that Belle had gone to America owing to the illness of some relatives and that a new treasurer should be elected for a few months. Nothing was received from Belle herself.
On their return Lil Hawthorne and her husband were told the story of Belle’s illness and death in America. They were worried by the turn of events and John Nash tried, unsuccessfully, to find out where Belle had died and where she was cremated. By this time Ethel Le Neve had moved into the Crippen’s house and was wearing some of Belle’s jewellery. Others in the music hall world were worried and Vulcana, the strongwoman, had approached the police with her fears. John Nash talked to Crippen and was so disturbed he took a taxi straight to Scotland Yard.
Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve were arrested en route to Canada on an ocean liner with Ethel Le Neve dressed as a boy. They were posing as father and son but aroused suspicion and the newly invented telegraph was used to relay the information to Scotland Yard. Human remains were found buried in the basement of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, the Crippen’s home. Crippen was found guilty and given the death sentence while Ethel Le Neve was exonerated. Lil Hawthorne and John Nash gave evidence at the trial in 1910 and in 1911 the Treasury authorised payment to them of £100 to cover expenses incurred and loss of earnings. A few years later they moved to America where Lil Hawthorne died of heart problems in 1926, aged forty-nine.
Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive and the Monomania collection.
Minnie Cunningham was a music hall singer and dancer, best remembered for featuring in a painting by Walter Sickert. She was born in Birmingham in 1870, the daughter of music hall comic singer Ned Cunningham. He was well-loved and successful, being described by the Birmingham Gazette as the ‘greatest comic singer in the world.’ His daughter started her music hall career after his death when she was ten years old. Minnie Cunningham tells us she began as a male impersonator and sang her father’s songs, although reviews of the time don’t mention male impersonation, only her singing and dancing. She moved from the provincial halls to London where she performed at the principal halls of the day.
painter Walter Sickert by the poet and music hall critic Arthur Symons. Both men were smitten by the popular artiste and Sickert arranged to paint her portrait. The figure of Minnie Cunningham was painted from life in Sickert’s studio in Chelsea in 1892. For this painting she stood on a raised stand as if she were on stage but when asking her to pose for a later painting Sickert writes that he had built a proper stage ‘six foot square, with steps up to it.’ The background is thought to be the Tivoli on the Strand in London where Sickert had seen her perform. The painting was originally entitled, Miss Minnie Cunningham ‘I’m an old hand at love, though I’m young in years.’ This was one of her popular songs at the time and while singing it she dressed as a young girl which made the performance more daring. The painting became known as Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford. It was exhibited for the first time at the New English Art Club in 1892 to a mixed reception, with a reviewer in the Pall Mall Gazette writing ‘The red dress of Minnie Cunningham glows with refined richness in its setting, but the proportions of the figure and the feet and hands seem altogether absurd.’ The subject and setting were just too shocking for many at the time and it was said by some to represent degradation and vulgarity.
contract in which she was engaged as principal girl in the Jack and Jill pantomime at £30 a week. She refused to wear the costume for her part saying it was too short and offended her standards of decency. Discussions with management were unsuccessful, often ending in tears. Eventually
Dolly Mitchell was a young Scottish roller-skater who teamed up with her American teacher, Harley Davidson, to give displays in rinks and music halls. Advertised as the greatest skaters in the world and giving a wonderful exhibition of trick, fancy, acrobatic, graceful and artistic skating. They displayed over £1,000 worth of gold and diamond medals won in competition
and had this publicity photo taken by Léo Forbert’s studio in Warsaw. Ella writes on the back of the card ‘
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.
Into the Limelight 