Panto time!

As I have mentioned before in a previous post (see Strictly Music Hall) my grandmother, Winifred Griffiths was a professional singer. Her talent as a soprano was spotted at a young age and she toured with the Carl Rosa Opera Company.

But after a few years, she left opera behind to follow a different career path, performing in variety acts at repertory theatres all over the country, including pantomimes.

Here she is as the Fairy Queen, both panto and date unknown.










She appears in the photograph below in a production of Babes in the Wood, performed at the Hippodrome in Birkenhead in 1927. (I have another newspaper cutting of an almost identical curtain-call scene from the same year, but this time in Belfast.)

Babes in the Wood, Birkenhead Hippodrome, 1927

But I could do with your help here. The column accompanying the photograph reads, "Another gifted singer is Miss Winifred Griffiths, who makes a demure Maid Marion."  Maid Marion? Call me a traditionalist, but there looks to be way too many flashy head-dresses and posh frocks amongst the outfits for her to be dressed in a modest shift and wimple, as one might expect, so I have no idea which one is her! Any suggestions as to a likely Maid Marion?

Having recently subscribed to The British Newspaper Archive I've been on the search for mentions of Wyn (as she was generally known) in the press so I was delighted to find a review of her performance playing the squire's daughter in Little Red Riding Hood at The Hippodrome, Preston in 1931., "a decided asset to the musical side".

In a report in the entertainment industry's The Era, during the same panto season, she's described as "lovable and sweet".

I also found mention of my grandfather, Herbert Henry Coules Colley, in his guise as "theatrical artiste" under his stage name, Ken Barton. (I wonder whether she called him Bert or Ken?)

Ken's speciality was comedy and regularly played the part of the pantomime dame.

In a clipping my gran had cut out of the Dorset Echo, in 1931, his appearance in Little Red Riding Hood in Weymouth earned the comment, "...no one in the company could have been better chosen to impersonate Granny Matilda than Ken Barton, whose clever make-up deceived a good many."

But, as usual, I'm left with a mystery. According to The Sunderland Echo and Shipping Gazette, Wyn is quoted as saying that she had once been the principle soprano with another opera company in additional to Carl Rosa, alleging that she played in The Bohemian Girl with the O'Mara Company, which I understand was a well-known Irish Opera Company. (Ironically they were running an advertisement in the very paper in which I read Wyn's interview.)

Courtesy of British Newspaper Archives

Her stay at Carl Rosa was legendary in the family but I don't remember her or anyone ever mentioning the O'Mara company before. Why would that be?

Either I've just discovered something new about my grandmother's career or... it's a case of not believing everything you read in the papers!

So, as ever, there's more research to do to establish the true facts...





Finally, a big thanks to all of you who have dropped in on my blog during the year and added your comments. I look forward to welcoming you again in 2016. Until then...

Have a very  

Merry Christmas 

and

 Happy New Year. 

Top of my mystery list

While I'm deeply immersed in mysteries of the fictional kind, as I beaver away writing the next Esme Quentin novel, I'm stacking up a few real mysteries of a family history nature which I plan to investigate once this first draft is in the bag.

I'm sure this young woman has a tale to tell. I can see by the initials on her epaulettes that she was a member of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in World War I. I know her name is Nora from the signature in the corner but there after it gets tricky.

The notes accompanying the photo say she was the daughter of Hilary and Alice Griffiths but according to the records I have, their daughter was called Edna and was born in 1910, making her only 8 years old when this photo was taken. So, some significant detective work required there before I even start!








Another mystery on my long term hit list is that of my great aunt, Mary Ann Diggory or Annie, as she was called.

Annie walked out of the family home in 1904 when she was only 16 (shortly after the photograph on the right was taken).

No one heard from her again. Until, in her 90s, shortly before she died, she contacted her younger sister Edith, my grandmother.

I know Annie became a nurse and that she trained at Redhill hospital in Surrey before returning closer to home and living in Shrewsbury. But what was she up to in the intervening years?




The flamboyant Herbert Henry Coules Colley, my grandfather, born in 1871, known by his stage name as Ken Barton, has always been something of an enigma.

According to family lore, he joined Robson's Theatrical Company and travelled to South Africa. The story goes that he became ill and had to stay behind in Johannesburg when the company went on tour. He ended up, as naturally you might if you were a theatrical artiste and performer, as... an officer in a private mounted police force! Really? Now that's something I must get to the bottom of!

image courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

And finally, having written about the Purle family (see Purles of Wisdom, Part 1) and their association with toxophily (i.e. archery), I was contacted by a present day manufacturer of archery equipment who, as an admirer of Harry Purle, the subject of my second post on the Purles (see Searching for Harry), had engaged a genealogist to research the family.

It seems that the name Purle may well be derived from the Purlewents, a well-to-do Somerset family prominent in the 17th century.

A quick check on Somerset's County Records catalogue threw up some interesting hits, so a trip to Taunton for a dig around in the archives looks to be the next stage of that particular journey.


But all that's for another time. For now, I must get back to my fictional secrets and writing the next Esme mystery!