In the days before digital recordkeeping, identities could be fluid, particularly in the arts. These articles explore the stories of the sometimes elusive performing artists working in early twentieth-century Britain, and the nineteenth-century origins of the forms of entertainment that brought these artists to Britain.

Ten Series

Wata-san: Identifying ‘Sussie Wata’, a Japanese actress active in Great Britain, the USA, and France in the early decades of the Twentieth Century.

Ten: The complicated and much-mythologised relationship between turn-of-the-century Japanese stage magician Tenkatsu and her mentor Tenichi.

Fireflies: The intersecting lives and careers of four Japanese actresses who found themselves in London at the outbreak of the First World War. The second article in the Sussie Wata series.

Cuckoos and Nightingales Series

Rivers and the Black Swan: The rise and fall of the Black Swan Trio, African American stars of Late-Nineteenth Century English Music Hall.

Cuckoos and Nightingales: The strange history of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ Shows in Great Britain and the artists, black and white, caught in their orbit. Featuring the Bohee Brothers and Cassie Walmer.

Messrs. Broom and Carey: The journey of African American blackface minstrelsy in Great Britain from caricature to musical innovation.

A House of Refuge: For some performers, blackface was more than simply makeup; it was a mask for them to hide behind. Such was the case with Orville Oscar Pitcher, a white performer of blackface minstrelsy who had a 50-year career in the English halls.

Resources: African American blackface minstrelsy family tree.

Frontier Series

On the Frontier: The messy life of John Ojijatekha Brant-Sero, Canadian First Nation activist, actor, and fantasist.

Song of Hiawatha: Three stars of the English Music Hall with North American Indian identities that ranged from the exaggerated to the complicated and outright fabricated.

Aquarium Series

The stories of some of the British-born performers and managers whose lives intersected with and influenced or were influenced by the lives of the performers featured elsewhere on this page.

They See Nothing at All: Charles Morritt, theatre manager and illusionist, a man with more vices than virtues, crossed paths at different times with the Bohee Brothers, Frank Craig, and Frank Broom. This is his story.

Rifle Nell: Reconstructing the life of Rifle Nell Lynch, music hall markswoman, a performer with a fabricated frontier backstory.

Pictures in Smoke: Ormonde and Carmen Penstone, music hall illusionists who based their on-stage personas in part on those of genuine East Asian stage magicians like Tenkatsu.

Black Heart: ‘Raven Cody’ claimed to be the son of Buffalo Bill Cody. He was not. He was Bradford grifter Sam Gale, and his wild west act was the front for a disturbing fraud.

Banner: Detail from a Yoshio Markino illustration for a souvenir programme for the 1904 production of Darling of the Gods. Author’s own collection.