Abstract
This chapter reflects on the historical context in which music-hall performers worked and considers the lyrics of comic songs as popular reflections on women’s lived experiences during this period. The term ‘serio-comic’ is further examined to determine the range of performances that were described using this under-researched soubriquet. These included serious issues being presented as comedy and potentially ‘unspeakable’ material being presented in ‘arch’ ironic ways to avoid censorship. Public perceptions of women comedians—particularly the reputation of the serio-comic—are examined in the context of the changing relationship of the music-hall industry to the press, moral reformers and the London County Council. A micro-history of serio-comic Ada Lundberg is included in this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
Maggie Duggan (1860–1919), music-hall performer and actress.
- 2.
- 3.
The 1861 census had confirmed that the majority of the adult population in England and Wales were women and that overall marriage rates were falling. This led to something of a moral panic dubbed the ‘Woman Question’ or the ‘Surplus Woman Question’ (Papers Reprinted from The Examiner 1872; Laurence, Maltby & Rutherford (eds), p. 14; Davies p. 46; Jeffreys 1985; Levitan 2008).
- 4.
Figures from the Knebworth House archive (knebworthhouse.com) and Bruce Rosen’s Victorian History Blog (vichist.blogspot).
- 5.
Salaries in music-hall were higher than in the theatre. One 1892 article in The Music Hall noted that one reason the halls were ‘stigmatised as immoral’ was because, unlike the theatres, they paid women ‘respectable salaries that place music-hall ladies above the necessity of having to resort to immoral courses to earn a livelihood’ (April 30 1892, p. 8). It is also worth noting that performers were apt to exaggerate their earnings as part of their marketing strategies.
- 6.
F. Anstey was the pseudonym of novelist and journalist Thomas Anstey Guthrie.
- 7.
Jenny Valmore (b. 1865) serio-comic performer.
- 8.
Two years later Verney was disgraced when he was arrested for the procurement of a young woman for ‘immoral purposes’ (The Times, May 7 1891, p. 9).
- 9.
Earlier concerns were raised about the morality of music-hall entertainments and the need for censorship (The Era Sep 30 1877, p. 4; Pall Mall Gazette, April 22 1879, pp. 11–12; Morning Post, April 25 1879, p. 7).
- 10.
The LCC operated under the control of the Progressive Party, which held power in the metropolitan area until 1907.
- 11.
These policies were motivated at least as much by self-protectionist public order concerns as by solicitous interest: ‘Our safety, the security of society, of our homes and families, in the long run, are concerned with the form in which they take their recreation’ (Fuller 1875, p. 717).
- 12.
Such clauses in performers’ contracts were central to the dispute between artists and proprietors which resulted in the 1907 Music Hall Strike.
- 13.
- 14.
The Music Hall Proprietors Protection Association was formed in 1860. Members included most of the most influential proprietors of the largest halls.
- 15.
The total population of London at this date was around 6 million.
- 16.
The police also attended the annual licensing committee meetings to provide information about specific applicants and their venues (Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, August 4 1889, p. 10).
- 17.
These decisions were later reversed by hefty-majority, full-council votes and all three licences were granted with conditions.
- 18.
The management of the Oxford told the committee, notes: ‘It was a practice at the Oxford for the artist to read over her song to the manager before she sang it. The case in question was a regrettable exception to the rule’ (Pall Mall Gazette, October 3 1889, p. 4). The following week, Tilley vociferously defended her reputation and insisted that there was nothing objectionable about the song. She told The Leicester Daily Post that the Oxford did not ask her for her lyrics before she appeared at the hall as they knew they would be insulting her to do so (October 16 1889, p. 7).
- 19.
Nellie Navette (1865–1936) was a serio-comic performer. She became well known in 1893 for her ‘Floral Electric Dance’ in which she danced in a dressed decorated with electrically lit flowers (The Daily News, January 30, 1893, p. 2).
- 20.
Butler frequently criticised upper- and middle-class men who usually attacked the lower classes for society’s ills. She blamed the double standard of their privileged ‘licentiousness’ rather than the sex workers they exploited and called for a change in the law (see Jeffreys 1995, p. 9).
- 21.
See THMC minutes LCC/MIN/10,803 (1894); Pennybacker (2005, pp. 162–163).
- 22.
For example, The Era (March 17 1894, p. 16) reported on a TMHC member’s complaints about a female performer’s objectionable skirt dancing at Collins’s Music Hall in Islington.
- 23.
As they became more established many performers specialised as sentimental or comic singers or became identified with a particular type of character or song, others preferred to maintain a variety of tone and style in their acts.
- 24.
- 25.
Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette (2017/2018), Natalie Palamides’ Nate (2016–2019) and Bryony Kimmings’ I’m A Phoenix Bitch (2018–2020) are examples of this kind of contemporary solo work by women.
- 26.
‘Coster’ comedians based their characters on cockney market stallholders or costermongers, who were very common on the streets of London and had a distinct culture and dress code and were known for their creative use of slang. Kate Carney (1869–1950) was known as the ‘Coster Queen’ (Baker, p. 163). Gus Elen and Albert Chevalier were the most famous male coster comedians.
- 27.
- 28.
See Music Hall The Business of Pleasure (1986) edited by Peter Bailey for a selection of essays on the evolution of the halls from independent venues to large nationwide chains controlled by syndicates.
- 29.
Rosalind Gill notes the ‘ironic’ resurgence of usage of this term in twenty-first-century popular culture (2007, p. 160).
- 30.
According to Marion, this phrase emerged after an impromptu comment she made at a Variety Artists’ Federation (VAF) meeting in 1908 stating that when she did not get work it was often because she refused to kiss agents (Gardner and Atkinson 2019, p. 130). Subsequently, she was asked, alongside several other performers, to give evidence about the treatment of women within the industry at a VAF meeting with the LCC.
- 31.
Performances in which men and women appeared as ‘living statues’, often on turntables on which they held a series of poses resembling well-known classical statues and other works of art. They became infamous as erotic representations as the performers often appeared in close-fitting costumes which—in the right lighting—could be mistaken for nudity.
- 32.
In Greek mythology Momus is the personification of mockery and satire, and later a figure of wit and fun and social criticism and commentary.
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Beale, S. (2020). Sentiments Unwomanly and Unnatural: Moral Ambiguity, Censorship and Public Perceptions of the Serio-Comic Performer. In: The Comedy and Legacy of Music-Hall Women 1880-1920. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47941-1_2
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