Masks and Faces by Janet Muir

Author:Janet Muir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Harry Braham, music-hall, theatre, variety, silent film, acting, stage, comic songs, Christy Minstrels, minstrelsy, Victorian
ISBN: 9781909183544
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2014
Published: 2014-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

Harry’s songs were often topical: The Danger Signal was written in response to the death of a signalman on the London to Southampton railway line

Harry’s songs, as with those of most music-hall artistes, were always topical. His song ‘The Danger Signal’, for which he composed the music, was written in reaction to the tragic story in May 1881 of railway signalman Samuel Gunner. Gunner was working at his signal box and had operated the red signal at Sheerwater, near Woking. A mail train from Southampton to London stopped on seeing it. When the signal did not change for some time, the passengers started to call out, asking what was wrong. The fireman of the steam-train got out to investigate and found poor Mr Gunner dead in the signal box, apparently from a heart attack. If he had died while the signal was on green, there might have been a catastrophic crash.

The morning was fine as a Signalman went

To his post on the South Western line.

Little thinking that ere that bright May day had pass’d

His post he would have to resign.

But on comes a train ’tis the London day mail

To stop pages mostly a stranger

It dashes along ’till it nears Gunner’s box

When ’tis stopp’d by the signal of danger.

What’s wrong was the cry, but they got no reply,

That silence seem’d stranger and stranger,

They sought him and found Gunner dead at his post,

With the signal hand pointing to danger.

In the early months of 1882, Harry was still mainly appearing at various halls in London including the Temple Hall of Varieties, the Star, and the South London Palace, but he could not have failed to have seen where Lizzie was appearing, as the newspaper The Era was the only paper for music-hall artistes to keep up-to-date with their profession - indeed, it was a matter of pride to be seen with the paper because it showed you to be a ‘professional’.

If Lizzie looked for Harry’s name, did she feel emotional? She had, after all, spent eight years with him. She would be able to see he was having his own successes and on 15 April he appeared in the annual comedy festival at the Great St James’ Hall in Manchester.

The music-hall world always came to the aid of one of their own when help was needed, and on 22 April he starred with many other well-known artistes including Marie Loftus, all of whom gave their services free at the Town Hall, Shoreditch, for a benefit for the songwriter and comic vocalist Arthur Lloyd, who had just been made bankrupt when his venture in opening the Shakespeare Music Hall in Glasgow failed. Lizzie was not on the bill.

In July, Harry appeared at another benefit - this time at the Cambridge for Nelly Power who had sustained a severe head injury during a performance in Birmingham. Nelly (1854-1887) was a very popular singer and actress who mimicked George Leybourne and other ‘dandies’ and who was also in pantomime with Vesta Tilley. The song ‘The Boy

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