#edwardian music hall

All pictures are of Bradford music hall artistes taken between 1900 and 1920

In a 1913 anonymous ‘autobiography’ was published, claiming to be the confessions of an Victorian music hall dancing girl, born in 1887 in Camden.

Although probably entirely fictional, the memoirs make tame reading. Apart from a trip to Spain, where the dancer is besieged by love sick 16-year-old Jose, there’s not a hint of loose behaviour. The main confession of this dancing girl is that theatrical life is actually a bit dull.

When she isn’t resting between jobs the dancing girl is enduring the “ordeal” of the music hall audition circuit, which sounds rather like a sinister Edwardian version of Britain’s Got Talent:

“Have you ever seen the crowd of anxious-looking women and girls waiting at the stage door of a theatre when the management has advertised for chorus ladies…a throng of expectant girls before the rehearsals of pantomimes, standing in the cold and rain of the dingy doors of the suburban or East-end theatres? More than once have I been one of those crowds.”

“One by one the aspirants for stage glory go before the brisk stage-manager, who is often too harassed and busy to appear polite or sympathetic “Let me try your voice/ Where’s your music?

"The trembling girl begins to sing at the piano. Perhaps by the end of the first verse the manager holds up his hand, and says “Thanks, that will do. I’m afraid you can’t sing well enough. Next please.

”…When you enter the theatre you find a crowd of artistes of all sorts on the stage. Some are already dressed and made up to go on. Everyone looks nervous. There is no joking or laughter; the performers talk in low tones in corners. In the dressing-room a number of girls and women are making up their faces.

“There is a faded woman, with dyed hair, trying to impart to her wan cheeks the bloom and attraction of youth with the aid of rouge, eyebrow pencils and powder. There are young girls who have never appeared on the stage. Some of these are in an agony of nervous fear, while others are absurdly confident of success.

"The room is overcrowded and close. There is a smell of grease paints and powder. One girl has forgotten her rouge; another has to run out and buy safety pins…The old hands are soon ready for the turn, and they go out on the dark stage and sit on any box or seat that is lying about the place. Meanwhile the stage manager is writing down names:

'Miss Nicely, are you there?’

The young lady clad in the tights and jewels of the 'principal boy’ comes forward smiling.

'You go on third, remember…Where are the Brothers Sleight?’

"Two knockabout comedians, in red wigs and quaint attire answer to the name. Then the gas is turned on and the footlights glitter, and, peeping from the wings, you see the directors taking their places in the stalls. They are a very ordinary collection of English gentlemen well-dressed and most elderly; but they appear awfully imposing, like a row of stern judges…

"The first turn is perhaps a conjurer; he is followed by a comic singer, and then I go on with three other girls, and we give our acrobatic 'number’. It is a terrible time. There is no applause, not a sign of approval from the keen-eyed gentlemen in the stalls. We come off hot and panting, wondering whether we have satisfied the directors. I peep from the wings and see the gentlemen talking about us. How I long to know our fate.”