…the performance concluding with a new spectacular mace drill, invented and produced by Messrs Broom and Carey.[i]

The high-energy entertainment delivered by black performers of blackface minstrelsy from the late 1870s until the turn of the twentieth century was marketed as ‘The Big Black Boom’. It centred on the use of brass and bass drum-led marching bands to supplement the traditional minstrel show musical accompaniment of tambourine, banjo, and bones, and although the innovation of a white manager of African American blackface minstrel troupes, ‘J.H. Haverley’,[ii] it was inspired by a show-stopping routine by one of the most famous black performers of blackface minstrelsy of the day, the irrepressible Billy Kersands.[iii]

The model (and name), complete with on-stage circus-inspired acrobatics and drill and marching, would be adopted by the many troupes inspired by and spun off from the Haverly troupe, including those like the McCabe and Young Minstrels and Hicks and Sawyer Minstrels organised and led by African Americans.[iv] In this way, the Big Black Boom would become a training ground for many African American musicians, band leaders, and composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton among them—and in time, lead black entertainment away from its minstrel roots to its ragtime- and jazz-infused heyday.[v]

In 1881, Haverly brought the Big Black Boom to England when he led his Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels on a hugely successful tour of the English halls.[vi] However, it would not be until a second generation of African American music hall artists began to arrive in England in the late 1880s that English troupes could really begin to engage with this innovation in minstrel entertainment. Two of the key figures in this movement were performer and creator Frank Broom (1870–1899) and his partner and possibly, cousin, Charles Carey (1867–1901). Both would die tragically early deaths, like many of their contemporaries, but not before, both together and separately, they had made pioneering contributions to British public life.

The grotesque four, Kersands, Jackson, Eldridge and Broom, was a gem in negro minstrelsy, both in the dancing and music. The programme is fine throughout, and it was carried through from beginning to end without a break. The boys are all artists, and Eldridge and Broom, as contortionists and acrobats, are wonders.[vii]

By the age of 17, Frank Broom was already starring alongside the titan of the first generation of black performers of blackface minstrelsy, Billy Kersands (1842–1915). A hugely talented comedian, Kersands has, it must be acknowledged, left a contested legacy. He was in his day the highest-paid blackface minstrel in America—earning sums that most African Americans could only dream of—however, agains this, his on-stage character was that of the ‘coon’, the feckless ne’er-do-well caricature created by white performers of blackface minstrelsy to ridicule African Americans, and publicity images of Kersands with his famously large mouth opened in a huge grin became the basis for racist depictions of people of colour for decades to come.[viii]

By 1887, the year that Frank Broom first starred alongside Kersands, Kersands had been a star for over two decades. He was also among the earliest black performers of blackface minstrelsy to appear in England.[ix] In 1865, following the end of the American Civil War, a number of troupes of African American blackface minstrels all going by the name “Georgia Minstrels” emerged. Although their promoters made much of the fact that they were ‘genuine’ blackface minstrels and not the ‘burnt cork variety’ (i.e., genuine men and women of colour and not white people in blackface make-up), in this early period, their acts were necessarily modeled on those of the white performers of blackface minstrelsy who preceded them, as this is what white audiences were paying to see. So these troupes followed the so-called ‘Christy Minstrel’ model established by white promoter Edwin Pearce Christy of a three-part performance that consisted of a ‘tambo and bones’ musical performance overseen by an interlocutor, followed by first an olio—a straightforward variety bill with one act appearing after another (albeit in, at this stage, all in blackface)—and then a finale comprising a one-act play usually with a plantation setting and ‘festival interlude’ (songs and dances).[x]

Among the various Georgia Minstrel troupes, one was led by pioneering African American manager and performer Charles Hicks, who had previously managed arguably the first of these troupes, the [white-owned] Brooker and Clayton Georgia Minstrels; another was led by white promoter W.H. Lee. Englishman Sam Hague saw the Lee combination in New York and, recognising its potential, bought out Lee (who remained as manager) and took the troupe to England, where it was billed initially as the ‘American Slave Serenaders’. Its undoubted star in this period was an African American man of small stature, Thomas Dilward, known for opaque reasons as ‘Japanese Tommy’.[xi]

By 1870, the Hague troupe, now billing itself as Hague’s Georgia Minstrels, had lost many of its original African American members, and Hague had been forced to hire white performers in blackface to replace them—a poor substitute, as even he realised. It was against this background that Hague took the ultimately disastrous decision to incorporate into the troupe a group of African American performers left stranded in Europe at the end of an unsuccessful tour. These performers were the Hicks and Height Georgia Minstrel troupe, which was managed by Charles Hicks and starred Bob Height (Robert Henry Height 1846–1881). Billy Kersands was one of the troupe’s comedians. Hicks, Height, and Kersands starred alongside Thomas Dilward and other members of the Hague–Hicks combination for the next year; then, in June 1871, to Hague’s fury, Hicks staged an internal coup and decamped for the USA with Height, Kersands . . . and Dilward.[xii]

Before following Kersands back to the USA, it is worth noting that within two years, Bob Height would be back in England and back performing with the Hague Minstrels. However, in general, for Hague, it was a case of once bitten, twice shy, and he made no further active attempts to recruit fresh American talent, relying instead on native, i.e., white performers. This decision was cemented by the early death of Bob Height from tuberculosis in 1881, aged just 35.[xiii] At the same time, Hague recognised that white English performers in blackface were a poor imitation of the black American original and so developed a form of programme that would in time become known in England as ‘Black and White Minstrelsy’, a show that would start with black performers, or white performers in blackface, giving a traditional minstrel opening before switching to those same performers performing their individual variety turns in the olio in their ‘natural complexion’, before finishing with a play-based blackface finale. As it now made no sense for the performers in the olio to dress as if they lived on a plantation in the antebellum Southern United States, Hague also introduced costumes based on top hat and tails.[xiv] After a tour of the United States by the Hague Minstrels in 1881, the latter innovation would become a feature of the Big Black Boom, and it would be in top hat and tails that George Walker and Bert Williams would take African American entertainment into the twentieth century with their pioneering Broadway show ‘In Dahomey’.[xv]

On his return to the States, Hicks tried again to make a go of leading his own Georgia Minstrels, now featuring Kersands, Height, and Dilward. However, this was again a financial disaster. In later life, Hicks would suggest that this was because white minstrel troupe managers conspired with theatre owners to deny bookings to black-led troupes.[xvi] In 1872, Hicks was forced to sell his interest in the troupe to white tavern owner Charles Callender, staying on as manager. Callender was a man of ambition and set about expanding the troupe while retaining Kersands, Dilward, and Height at its core. However, he was also a man who never met a contract he wasn’t prepared to break, and within a year, Kersands and Height led a walk-out (possibly instigated by Hicks) due to unpaid wages. As stated above, Height went back to England, as did Thomas Dilward.

Kersands remained in the USA and tried to make a go of things on his own. He failed (perhaps because of the same blacklisting that Hicks had fallen foul of) and was forced to return to the Callender troupe. Although he would from time to time break away to appear with other troupes, notably that centred on the Hyer Sisters, two of the many classically trained singers of African American heritage who because of the prejudices of the time found it easier to make a living in the world of minstrelsy than on the opera stage[xvii], he would always return and was still be with the troupe when it was bought out by Haverly in 1878. By then, Kersands had added to his act a performance centred on the comical bashing of a big bass drum. It is this show-stopping routine that can be credited with sowing the seed of the Big Black Boom in Haverly’s mind.[xviii]

Although Kersands was the undoubted star of the troupe that Haverly took to England in 1881,[xix] tenor Wallace King ran him a close second; the banjo-playing brothers James and George Bohee were also standouts[xx] (I will return to the Bohee Brothers later). Within a couple of years of the Haverley troupe returning to the US (without the Bohees, who remained in England), Kersands would again strike out on his own, taking Wallace King with him. This troupe under the Billy Kersands’ Minstrels name (and for a brief period, managed once more by Charley Hicks) was more of a success than his previous attempts, lasting until 1887, and included Isaac Jones, a future member of the Black Swan Trio, in its number.[xxi] However, by 1887, Kersands was once more in need of the financial stability that came from being employed on a salary by others; he briefly rejoined the original Georgia Minstrels, sold by a cash-strapped Haverly and now under the control of the Frohman Brothers, before leaving once more for a longer-term engagement with Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels where he shared top billing alongside George Jackson, Billy Eldridge…and Frank Broom.[xxii]

Whatever became of Frank Broom, he of the box coat? Frank Broom was a minstrel, an acrobat and a gentleman. He was the first man we ever saw wear a box coat and was also one of the most finished acrobats that ever turned a back flip-flop.[xxiii]

That we know so few verifiable facts about the life of Frank Broom before he joined Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels can be laid at the door of his early death. Even the facts that we have, taken from official records—that he was born in 1870 and Charles Carey was his cousin—on close examination amount only to statements made by Charles Carey when he registered Broom’s death.[xxiv] We cannot even be sure that Frank Broom was his real name. That this is such a loss to history is evident from contemporary reviews of his performances and the fact that at least one commentator, looking back from the dawn of the twentieth century at the history of black performance in the nineteenth century, regarded his brief career, particularly his partnership with William ‘Billy’ Eldridge (1873–1901) in Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels, which lasted only a few months, to be one of the highlights of the era.[xxv] This is all the more remarkable because Eldridge and Broom were only teenagers at the time of their debut—14 and 17, respectively. (After his partnership with Broom, Eldridge would go on to success as a comic actor with long runs, alongside his wife Jennie, in the theatrical productions ‘The Derby Winner’ and ‘Oriental America’ before his equally untimely death in 1901, aged just 28, following the onset of physical and mental health issues.[xxvi])

The Broom and Eldridge act was built around acrobatics, a staple of the Big Black Boom school of minstrelsy, and ‘acrobat’ would remain a key part of Broom’s billing for the rest of his career. However, although he starred alongside Billy Kersands, arguably the progenitor of the Big Black Boom, in the Richard and Pringle troupe, it wasn’t until 1890, after he re-debuted with the larger McCabe and Young’s Georgia Minstrels, that he was able to experience the Big Black Boom in full effect.[xxvii]

African American entrepreneurs Daniel Webster (D.W.) McCabe and Billy Young had been appearing in blackface troupes for nearly 20 years by the time they created their own combination.[xxviii] They followed closely the Haverly’s Genuine Colored Troupe formula—up to and including adopting the ‘Big Black Boom’ label[xxix]—and a highlight of their show was what was billed as the ‘Drum Major’s Dream’[xxx]—a marching band mace drill-themed act that Frank Broom would adapt for English audiences later in his career. The star of their show in the 1890–1891 season was Tom McIntosh (1840–1904), another veteran of the Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrel troupe that travelled to England in 1881, and a comedian second only to Billy Kersands in popularity (and salary).[xxxi]

Another feature of the McCabe and Young show carried over from the Haverly model was the prominent role of female impersonators. This was also true of Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels, and the two troupes would at different times feature the same performer in this role, African American female impersonator and ‘wonderful contralto’, the ‘Great Gauze’ (Willis Gauze), who would eventually find his way to Europe and then on to Australasia.[xxxii] Thomas Dilward—‘Japanese Tommy’—was also known for being adept at both male and female roles;[xxxiii] in the latter, he was likely tutored by the undoubted star female impersonator of the period, white performer of blackface minstrelsy, Francis Leon (known professionally as simply ‘Leon’), while a member of the Kelly and Leon troupe in 1864.[xxxiv]

Like Haverly, McCabe and Young also placed a strong focus on the size and quality of their orchestra and band—W.C. Handy would lead the band and Jelly Roll Morton would be a featured piano player in the troupe’s later years.[xxxv] One of the features of the use of the band that McCabe and Young took from Haverly was mounting a street parade whenever they hit a new town.

One such occasion led to one of several brushes with the law that the troupe had in this period, brushes that are illustrative of the challenges that touring African American performance troupes faced in this period. In March of 1891, the members of the marching band were arrested in New Jersey for holding a parade without a permit. Just over a year earlier, while on their way through Illinois, several of the troupe’s members briefly faced a much more serious charge of having stolen $600 for a fellow train passenger while he slept—they were only released when it was revealed that they had won the money from their accuser in a card game; he filed false charges because he was a commercial traveller and the money he had lost was the company’s not his. Even more chillingly, in 1889, one of the troupe was accused of trying to kidnap a little girl in Iowa; he fled for his life. A few months after the 1890 train incident, D.W. McCabe was the one seeking legal redress, suing the proprietor of a Kansas hotel for refusing to allow members of the troupe into the hotel’s dining room. The same proprietor had also refused entry to the Hyer Sisters and their troupe.[xxxvi]

Having bailed out the members of their band after their brush with the law in March 1891, the McCabe and Young Minstrels continued to New York for engagements in Brooklyn. It was there, in mid-April 1891, that Frank Broom left them, signing up for a tour of Europe with the former manager of the Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels, William Foote. The star of this new combination was the African American prima donna Madame Selika (Marie Diggs Williams, 1849–1937),[xxxvii] but by the end of May, it also included several members of another African American minstrel troupe, W.S. Cleveland’s Colored Minstrels: George Tichner, Robert Jackson…and Charles Carey.[xxxviii]

Uproariously funny gymnastic exhibitions were given by Palmer and McLain, while the song and dance by Williams, Preston, Carey, and Brewer were far above the average.[xxxix]

Before partnering with Frank Broom in England, Charles Carey was never high enough in the bill to rate many mentions in the press. By March 1891, which is the date of the earliest definite reference to his presence in the Cleveland troupe,[xl] he was already 23—far older than Frank Broom when he debuted, which suggests that he may have served a long ‘apprenticeship’ as a non-featured performer before making it into a featured role (and the press). It is even possible that he and Broom worked together in Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels and/or the McCabe and Young Minstrels, and his presence in the troupe just wasn’t mentioned in the press. However, it is also possible that they did not work together before joining the Foote troupe on its way to Europe. It is even possible that, despite Carey’s later claim to be Broom’s cousin, the two had not even met until they joined the Foote troupe. At the time of writing, we do not know for certain. Later events would show that Carey had talent enough to be a star but it is certain that Broom was the more talented and more driven of the two—at least, when it came to stage work (later I will explore an off-stage role in which Carey excelled)—and would always feature more prominently in press write-ups of performances in which they both certainly appeared.

The boat that was to take the Foote troupe to Europe, the Zaandam, left on 29 April 1891; the day before it was due to sail, according to newspaper reports, Frank Broom married Maud ‘Cliffer’ (Clifford?) in a ceremony that took place onboard the ship in New York harbour; both the bride and groom were said to be from New York.[xli] Alas, that is as much as I have been able to find out about this marriage. There is no trace of a ‘Maud Cliffer’ in public records available online. There was, however, in 1900, a Maude Clifford, a 30-year-old African American woman and widow whose wedding took place in 1891, living in Buffalo, New York; but there is no evidence that I know of to identify this Maude Clifford with the Maud Cliffer whom Frank Broom married on board the Zaandam. It is even possible that the whole event was a hoax cooked up by Foote to stir up publicity prior to the troupe’s departure for Europe. All that can be said with any confidence is that there is nothing in any press reports or official records from Frank Broom’s time in England that mentions the presence in England of a wife.

The tour itself was a disaster; within a month, the New York Clipper would be reporting that Broom was in England and expected to return to the US, and McCabe and Young Minstrels, in July. Some years later, a columnist, unaware of Broom’s death in England in 1899, would ponder in print what had happened to him, writing, ‘…the last we heard of Broom he was in Bremen, Germany, where Footes Minstrels were disbanded.’ There was a report in the US press in July 1891 that the troupe had arrived in Hamburg, Germany, ready to give a series of performances; however, in the circumstances, it seems that this report may have been published some time after it was sent.[xlii]

Broom did not return to the US in July.[xliii] Instead, by September 1891, he, Carey, and other members of the disbanded troupe had found work in Scotland.

The songs are contributed by Messrs F. Broom, J. D. Johnson, Robert Jackson, C. Carey, G. Tichner, F. Ball, Freddie Newmann, and J. G. Stephens. An acrobatic act is given by Messrs Broom and Carey, while Mr G. B. Lee gives some clever imitations of birds, beasts, etc.[xliv]

Bowes & Farquharson’s American Slave Troupe appears to have existed for only as long as its September 1891 engagement in Glasgow lasted, but, as we will see, it would have an impact far out of proportion to its short existence. Its roster also gives us the best indication of who, in addition to Frank Broom and Madame Selika, had travelled to Europe with William Foote. The report quoted above, from the Glasgow Evening Post, is the first time we see Frank Broom and Charles Carey’s names in print together. However, as can be seen, by this time, they had already formed a double act. From the description, it seems likely that this was an act modeled—by Broom—on the Broom–Eldridge double act of several years earlier. We cannot tell if it was something that was conceived as part of the Foote Minstrels’ show or if it was something the two men put together in the months between the disbanding of the Foote troupe and the debut of the Bowes & Farquharson troupe. Regardless, it was an act that the two would perform for the rest of their short lives.

One man who took careful note of the Bowes & Farquharson troupe’s debut was budding impresario, Tynesider Andrew Roberton (1861–1926), the soon-to-be proprietor of the grandly named Andrew Roberton American-European Original Coloured Operatic Kentucky Minstrels.[xlv] Roberton (note the spelling; it is sometimes erroneously given as ‘Robertson’) must have liked what he saw (or heard about—we cannot be entirely sure he was in the audience himself) as, by the end of that year, he had put out a call in the press for performers for his proposed new minstrel troupe and listed the performers he particularly wanted to hear from.

WANTED, Clever Coloured Ladies and Gentlemen and First-class Minstrel Talent in all Lines […] Harp, Cornet, Bass, Flute, Trombone, and Drummer […] Should like to hear from Major Carr, Frank Broom, Robert Jackson, Charles Carey, and George Tichner.[xlvi]

A quick comparison between this list and the list of performers given in the Glasgow Evening News report on the Bowes & Farquharson combination shows that everyone that Roberton wants to hear from is mentioned in the latter, except Major Carr. However, the use of the military title tells us that this Carr was a band leader,[xlvii] and if we look at the rest of the advert, we see that Roberton was particularly interested in assembling a quality brass band—he wanted the Big Black Boom—so it is likely that Carr was the band leader for Bowes and Farquharson and, by extension, William Foote.

By the time that Roberton placed his ad (mid-December 1891), Broom and Carey, at least, had already found alternative engagements and had, in fact, secured bookings well into 1892. The first of these was with the Bohee Operatic Minstrels.

I have written extensively about James and George Bohee elsewhere;[xlviii] however, it is worth repeating some of their story here as far as it relates to the second generation of black performers of blackface minstrelsy. The brothers were born in Canada but raised in the USA. Virtuoso banjo players, they performed for various minstrel troupes in the USA in the 1870s, culminating in an engagement with Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels, which saw them travel to the UK on the 1881 tour that featured Billy Kersands and Wallace King.

The reception that the troupe received convinced the brothers (most particularly, James, the business brain of the partnership) that there were opportunities open to them in England that were not available back in the USA. So, when Haverly returned to the USA in 1882, the Bohees remained in England and opened a Banjo Studio (in Leicester Square, London). The toast of society, they gave lessons to the great and the good, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, supplemented by performances at variety theatres and private parties. All was well until 1887, when George was declared bankrupt due to gambling debts.[xlix]

With a new and urgent need for a new source of revenue, the brothers assembled a new minstrel troupe and took it on the road. This first troupe was small—just six performers (including the Black Swan Trio[l]) and the Bohee brothers; all artists of African heritage—but its reception by English audiences convinced James that a larger troupe more obviously in the Christy Minstrel mode would prosper even more. From the late 1880s until its dissolution in 1897 following the death of James Bohee, the troupe provided employment and stage experience to a host of black performers of blackface minstrelsy. However, to retain its [white] audience, it also embraced the stereotypes of the blackface minstrelsy, including presenting life on the plantations of the Southern US states as one of happy slaves singing while they worked.[li] In time, its ranks would also include white performers—although in this, James Bohee took inspiration from Sam Hague and abandoned the use of blackface by white performers for the olio portion of the performance.[lii]

Broom and Carey remained with the Bohees for only a short period in this initial engagement, but they would be back with the troupe almost a year later, which, as we will see, would give Frank Broom a chance to exercise his creativity. The pair finished 1891—the most momentous of their lives to date—appearing in that most English of institutions, pantomime (‘The Bricklayers’ at the Royal Canterbury in London[liii]). They spent much of 1892 touring the English and Irish halls, initially as a double act but later in the year, as a trio with Charlie White, another Bohee Minstrels regular.[liv] This led to all three rejoining the Bohee troupe toward the end of the year.[lv]

As we have seen from the quote that opens this piece, it was in this second engagement with the Bohees that Broom and Carey created a ‘mace drill’ (sometimes referred to in this press as a ‘silver mace drill’). This is almost certainly a variation on the ‘Drum Major’s Dream’ that Frank Broom performed while a member of Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels.[lvi] And, as much as the press described the mace drill as Broom and Carey’s ‘invention’, we can say that this was largely the work of Frank Broom, either remembering what he had been taught, or, perhaps even restaging something that he had created—we can suppose from the respective ages of Broom and Eldridge when they performed their double act (17 and 14) and the ways that both their careers developed, most especially, the fact that Broom would go on to stage manage a minstrel troupe (see below), that Broom created that act. Thus, it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that he created the Drum Major’s Dream for Richard and Pringle, too. Although I acknowledge this is speculation.

This introduction of something so quintessentially an element of the Big Black Boom shows the extent to which the Bohee Operatic Minstrels were evolving away from their roots as an ensemble of singers and string-based musicians. It is also a rare example of the creation of an element of the troupe’s programme not being credited to James Bohee, and speaks to the confidence and ambition of the 22-year-old Broom that he could make such a strong impression on the famously stern James Bohee (who was 48 in 1892).[lvii]

Broom and Carey remained with the Bohees until the Spring of 1893 and then returned to touring the halls as a double act or as a trio with Charlie White.[lviii] In May, the three performers were in Liverpool. And there, Charles Carey got married.

Charles Carey’s bride was Edith Constance Emma Lewis, 23, a policeman’s daughter from Lancashire. Carey gave his name in the marriage register as ‘Charles Cornelious Cary’ [sic], his age as 26, his profession as ‘acrobat’, and his father’s name and profession as James Cary, ‘restaurant keeper’.[lix] Frank Broom was one of the witnesses. Subsequent events would show that the couple would set up home together in London, although for much of the time up until Carey’s early death, Carey would be on the road touring. We can, however, point to evidence that the couple would enjoy brief periods of settled life at least across the summers of 1895, 1896, and 1897, as I will outline below.

The next significant event in the lives and careers of Broom and Carey would be their recruitment—finally—by Andrew Roberton into the Kentucky Minstrels[lx] in Autumn 1893.

The second part of the programme is particularly worth seeing. There is Mr Arthur Elliston, who burlesques a prima donna. There is the silver mace drill, in which Mr Broom smartly takes his squad through all sorts of tricky evolutions, the maces meanwhile whirling about in all directions […] Messrs Frank Broom and Carey do an acrobatic song and dance, the former putting in some marvellous somersaults.[lxi]

It is with the Roberton minstrels that we really see Frank Broom come to the fore. As the quote above shows, Broom and Carey brought the mace drill they had introduced while with the Bohees into the Kentucky Minstrels. More than this, Broom was billed as the troupe’s stage manager and credited with being a major contributor to the performance.

The American silver mace drill is quite new in this town. Frank Broom took the leading part, as he did in most everything. In fact, Frank Broom is almost a [minstrel] troupe rolled into one, everything he did, he did well.[lxii]

It is worth remembering that Broom was still only 23. By this stage, his talent and stage presence had progressed to the point that, within a couple of years, he would be able to hold the stage as a solo performer, billed as ‘America’s leading coloured comedian and specialty performer’.[lxiii] Before then, across 1894 and early 1895, Broom and Carey would follow their by now standard model of alternating engagements with a large combination—in this case, the Kentucky Minstrels—with tours of the halls as a double act. However, across the late spring and summer of 1895, for the first time since their arrival in England four years earlier, we see Broom’s name appear on the bill without Carey, both in performances with the Kentucky Minstrels and as a solo act touring the halls.[lxiv]

Where was Carey in the spring and summer of 1895?

In London, enjoying married life. And playing baseball.

Then [Fullers] responded with a neat eight, for which, Carey, a “coloured” player of exceptional strength and judgment, was mainly responsible.[lxv]

The subject of attempts to promote the game of baseball in England in the late nineteenth century is one that I tackle at length elsewhere,[lxvi] and largely outside the scope of this work. For our purposes, it is enough to know that in the mid-1890s, the standard-bearer for baseball in London was the London Baseball Association (LBA), an organisation whose members and players were, for the most part, ex-patriate Americans from the business and—critically for us—entertainment worlds. American comedian R.G. Knowles was one of its leading lights, and fellow music hall artists like Eugene Stratton, Albertus, and Albert Le Fre played alongside Knowles in a team called the Thespians. In the 1895 season, Le Fre and Albertus would also turn out for a team organised by and named after London-based American confectioner William B Fuller. The catcher for the Fuller team was a player of colour called Carey, one half of a fearsome battery with the 1895 season’s premier pitcher, Ruggles. Carey is shown in a photograph of teams from the LBA alongside the Derby baseball team published in Windsor Magazine in November 1895[lxvii]—as far as I am aware, this is the oldest known photograph showing an integrated team in any English baseball league or cup competition.[lxviii] It is included in the gallery at the end of this article.

To my eternal frustration, I know of no publication that provides a given name or even an initial for Carey, the catcher for Fuller’s team. However, based on the make-up of the LBA (strong presence of music hall artists), the fact that—unusually—Frank Broom performed without his usual partner Charles Carey across the spring and summer of 1895, and the fact that we know from later official records (e.g., the 1901 England Census) that Charles Carey and his wife Edith lived in London, I believe that Carey and Charles Carey were one and the same.

To the above, admittedly circumstantial evidence, we can add more, admittedly still circumstantial evidence, and that relates to known examples of black performers of blackface minstrelsy playing baseball. By the 1890s, the Big Black Boom troupes had a well-established pattern of promotional activities whenever they arrived in a new town, consisting of a street parade followed by ‘a challenge baseball game, with members of the troupe squaring off against the local community's best.’[lxix] In 1891, the McCabe and Young Georgia Minstrels had a baseball team, while Cleveland’s Colored Minstrels had two—the latter at a time when Charles Carey was a member (May 1891).[lxx] In 1888, the Hicks and Sawyer Minstrels famously played local teams on a tour of New Zealand in games that were headline news in the country.[lxxi] In addition, there is a recorded instance of African American players playing baseball in England in the 1890s, and those players were all music hall artists.[lxxii]

I think we can say, at the very least, that the circumstantial evidence points to Carey and Charles Carey being one and the same. If this is the case, then Charles Carey will have made a major contribution to integrated sport in the UK. It would also mean that the photograph in the Windsor Magazine gives us the only image I know of of either Frank Broom or Charles Carey.

By the autumn of 1895—the end of the baseball season—Carey was back performing with the Kentucky Minstrels, leading the mace drill, and back performing his double act with Frank Broom (although Frank Broom also continued to honour (prior?) solo engagements).[lxxiii]

Carey would have a quiet 1896 professionally speaking (although a busy 1896 baseball season, I believe, turning out for two teams[lxxiv]). Meanwhile, that year, Broom toured solo or partnered with Charlie White in the Kentucky Minstrels.[lxxv] However, the pair would be back working as a double act in 1897, alongside Frank Broom’s blossoming solo career. Another notable change is that, unlike the previous two years, Carey, the music hall artist, performed some engagements in the late summer as well as the other seasons of the year. It is noticeable in this regard that Carey, the baseball player, turned out for Crystal Palace in the 1897 summer baseball season, but can only be found in games played in the early summer, and only playing in left field, not as catcher, unlike in previous years.[lxxvi] It is also noticeable that this was the last season that Carey played in the London Baseball Association.

I can find only one performance by Charles Carey in 1898, a charity concert in March in London alongside Frank Broom. Meanwhile, Frank Broom was busy with his solo career for much of the year.[lxxvii] Although this may be the incorrect application of hindsight, given what we know of Charles Carey’s health a few years into the future,[lxxviii] it seems possible that his health problems had begun to manifest. However, it may also be possible that he was enjoying married life too much to tour. We know from those reports a few years in the future, that he put aside his music hall career to run a ‘billiards saloon’ at some point. This change may date from this time.

It is with some surprise, then, that, despite being the more active of the two and showing no obvious signs of ill health, it was Frank Broom who was the first of the pair to die, in mid-1899, aged just 29.

FRANK BLOOM, Coloured Artiste, just returned to London. Had to cancel all Continental Engagements owing to a serious attack of inflammation of the lungs, being laid up in Hamburg for two months. Address, 9, Bessborough-street, Pimlico, S.W.[lxxix]

DEATHS: BROOM.—July 13th, of consumption, Frank Broom, coloured comedian and acrobat. Aged twenty-nine.[lxxx]

Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), known as ‘phthisis’ in this period, was the cause of 1% of deaths in the UK in the 1890s; however, the prevalence was much higher in inner city areas, representing around 10% of deaths from all causes in the inner boroughs of London. At its most virulent, it could kill in as little as two weeks; however, patients could linger for much longer, even years.[lxxxi] As we have already seen, TB was the cause of Bob Height’s death in 1881, aged just 35. In 1899, it was Frank Broom’s turn, aged just 29, and in 1901, Charles Carey succumbed, aged just 34.

Charles Carey was the person who registered Frank Broom’s death.[lxxxii] This was July 1899. It is from this registration that we have the information—provided, it must be said, by Charles Carey—that Frank Broom was 29 and that he, Charles Carey, was his cousin.

Edith Cary reported her husband Charles’s death. This was December 1901. He was 34, she was 31. Edith would never remarry, nor return to live with her family in Lancashire, instead living alone in London, working as a shop assistant or tobacconist, until her own death in 1954. There were no children from the marriage. Charles Carey survived long enough to make his sole entry in the England Census in 1901, in the Holborn district; he listed his profession as ‘music hall artist’. He and Frank Broom were interred in the same grave.[lxxxiii]

Frank Broom and Charles Carey each made their own unique contribution to British public life in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Frank Broom was a creative dynamo who led the way in fully integrating the Big Black Boom into English blackface minstrelsy, in the process sowing the seeds for the appreciation for ragtime and jazz that would be shown by English audiences in the early decades of the twentieth century. Charles Carey, while not a talent of the same level as his partner and possible cousin, was his chief lieutenant and supporter and may—although the evidence is admittedly only circumstantial—have been the first player of colour in an English baseball team in a league or competition setting.

It is a tragedy that both men died so young and so far from the country of their birth. However, in Edith Cary, they had someone who could remember them both long after their passing and remember them as they were in their prime, wheeling and tumbling across the stage. Messrs. Broom and Carey.

Jamie Barras, May 2025

Resources

Minstrel Family Tree: a timeline of the careers of the principal artists discussed in this article.

There is a gallery of images relating to the content of the article following the endnotes.

[i] ‘The Bohee Minstrels’, Western Daily Press, 30 November 1892.

[ii] ‘J.H. Haverly’ was the professional name of Christopher Haverly: Frank Monaghan, "Haverly, Christopher". In Malone, Dumas (ed.). Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 8., 410–411, at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.425635, accessed 7 May 2025.

[iii] This account of the evolution of the Big Black Boom and the Haverly troupes is derived from accounts in the following:

1.        Robert C. Toll, ‘Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-century America’ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 145–148; at https://archive.org/details/blackingupminstr00toll, accessed 5 May 2025;

2.        Eileen Southern, ‘The Georgia Minstrels: The Early Years’, Inter-American Music Review, 2019, 10, 157–167. https://iamr.uchile.cl/index.php/IAMR/article/view/53523, accessed 6 April 2025;

3.        Mel Watkins, ‘On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor’ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 108–112, at: https://archive.org/details/onrealsidelaughi00watk, accessed 7 May 2025.

4.        See also the image at: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library. "Haverly's genuine Colored minstrels" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 5, 2025. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-c6d6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

[iv] Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, ‘Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz’ (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2002). These successor troupes would adopt the Big Black Boom label in their turn; see, for example, ad for McCabe and Young Minstrels, Fulton Daily Sun Gazette, 6 May 1890.

[v] See Note 4 above, first reference, and Vic Hobson, ‘Reengaging blues narratives :Alan Lomax, Jelly Roll Morton and W.C. Handy’, 2008.  Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

[vi] See Toll; Note 3 above, first reference, 204–206.

[vii] ‘Amusements’, Morning Press, 23 December 1887.

[viii] Billy Kersands and his contested legacy, see Watkins; Note 3 above, third reference, 113.

[ix] For even earlier African American performers of blackface minstrelsy in England, Like ‘Juba’ and the Alabama Minstrels, see: https://www.ishilearn.com/staged-identities-cuckoos-and-nightingales, accessed 6 May 2025.

[x] Robert E McDowell, ‘Bones and the Man: Toward a History of Bones Playing’, Journal of American Culture, 1982, 5: 38–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1982.0501_38.x

[xi] Dilward: See Watkins; Note 3 above, third reference, 108; and Josephine Lee, ‘BLACKFACE MINSTRELSY’S JAPANESE TURNS’, In ‘Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater’ (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), 60–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469669632_lee.8.

[xii] This account of the complicated story of the many Georgia Minstrels and the Hague–Hicks coup is drawn from Southern; see Note 3 above, second reference. Hague took to the press to attack Hicks for using the Georgia Minstrels name for his troupe on its return to the US, despite Hicks’ use of the name dating back to at least 1865: ‘Sam Hague Writes’, Daily Doings, 25 November 1871.

[xiii] Robert Henry Height’s death certificate, Manchester District, September 1881, digital copy obtained from the General Register Office, April 2025

[xiv] See Toll; Note 3 above, first reference, 152–154

[xv] See Watkins; Note 3 above, third reference, 160.

[xvi] See Toll; Note 3 above, first reference, 214.

[xvii] See Toll; Note 3 above, first reference, 210.

[xviii] This account is again taken from Southern; see Note 3 above, second reference.

[xix] It is worth noting here that Haverly had taken his United Mastodon Minstrels, featuring white performers of blackface minstrelsy, to England the previous year. It was the positive reception they received that convinced him to take the Big Black Boom to England the following year. See, for example: ‘Haverly’s Mastodon Minstrels’, Era, 8 August 1880.

[xx] For a review of a performance in England by Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels, see: ‘Haverly’s Colored Minstrels’, Era, 6 August 1881. It is worth noting that the performance included a sketch called ‘Recruits for Gilmore’s Band’, which, from the description, appears to be the sketch that Kersands created for the Georgia Minstrels centred on the bashing of a big bass drum, although the sketch was performed by other artists in the Haverly tour; see, for example, ‘Haverly’ Minstrels’ Morning Post, 1 August 1881.

[xxi] I tell the story of the Black Swan Trio here: https://www.ishilearn.com/staged-identities-rivers-and-the-black-swan, accessed 7 May 2025.

[xxii] Kersands back with the original Georgia Minstrels, early 1887:  ad, Attica Daily Advocate, 21 March 1887; with the Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels later the same year: ad, Times-Democrat, 25 September 1887. The story of the transfer of the original Georgia Minstrels from Haverly to the Frohman Brothers is told by Toll; see Note 3, first reference, 206–210.

[xxiii] I McCorker, ‘Minstrels, Comedians and Singers’, Freeman (Indianapolis, Ind.), 10 May 1902.

[xxiv] Frank Broom’s death certificate, Lambeth District, July 1899, digital copy obtained from the General Register Office, April 2025

[xxv] See Note 21, above, and: I McCorker, ‘Minstrels, Comedians and Singers’, Freeman (Indianapolis, Ind.), 5 April 1902.

[xxvi] Billy and Jennie Eldridge in ‘The Derby Winner’: ‘A Scenic Show’, Ottawa Daily Republic, 21 September 1895; in ‘Oriental America’: ‘Oriental America’, Intelligencer Journal,  December 1896. Funeral of Billy Eldridge: J. Ed Green, ‘Stage: Chicago’, Freeman (Indianapolis, Ind.), 27 April 1901. The latter is also the source of his year of birth (1873). It is worth noting here that ‘The Derby Winner’ and ‘Oriental America’ would both have London productions with casts that would include African American performers (although not the Eldridges).

[xxvii] Broom does not appear to have headlined any performances from late 1887 until August 1890—although this leaves open the possibility that he performed lower down the bill. His name first appears in association with McCabe and Young in August 1890: ‘Library Hall, Friday’, Tulane Advance-Register, 26 August 1890.

[xxviii] See Note 4 above, first reference.

[xxix] See Note 4 above, second reference.

[xxx] ‘The Minstrels Last Night’, Pick and Gad, 21 November 1889.

[xxxi] For more on McIntosh, see Abbott and Seroff; Note 4, first reference.

[xxxii] Great Gauze with Richard and Pringle’s: see, for example, ad, Charlotte Observer, 17 September 1889; with McCabe and Young: see, for example, ad, Belvidere Standard, 21 August 1889. See also the image at: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:24416700, accessed 8 May 2025, a period postcard that identifies Gauze as a ‘Canadian Indian’, probably incorrectly.

[xxxiii] Dilward in both male and female roles: see Lee; Note 11 above, second reference.

[xxxiv] For the story of Francis Leon, see Toll; Note 3 above, first reference, 142–143.

[xxxv] See Hobson; Note 5 above, second reference. It should be noted here that by the time that W.C. Handy joined the troupe its name had changed to Mahara’s Minstrels, Mahara being the troupe’s business manager who took control after McCabe and Young had a falling out.

[xxxvi] Arrested for holding a parade without a permit: ‘Minstrels on Parade’, Jersey City News, 7 March 1891; false charges of theft: ‘Turned the Tables’, San Franciso Chronicle, 18 January 1890; kidnapping accusation: ‘Iowa News’, Muscatine Journal, 6 December 1889; D.W. McCabe suing and Hyer Sisters also affected: Independent, 28 April 1890. The proprietor’s defence was that McCabe had failed to bring the necessary meal ticket from the hotel where he had been staying: ‘City in General: Wednesday’, Fort Scott Journal, 20 April 1890.

[xxxvii] The story of Marie Diggs Williams is told in her obituaries; see, for example, ‘Marie Selika Dies at 88 in New York’, The Afro-American, 5 June 1937. For an image of Selika, see: Maud Cuney-Hare, ‘Negro musicians and their music’ (Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, Inc., 1936), p. 222. Copyright not renewed., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39696390, accessed 5 May 2025.

[xxxviii] The reference to ‘by the end of May’ is an attempt to plug a three-week gap between the reported departure date of the Foote troupe for Europe—29 April—and the last known engagement of the Cleveland troupe that included McIntosh and Carey (‘Cleveland’s Colored Minstrels’, Evening Herald, 21 May 1891). As subsequent events show that the Cleveland troupe minstrels were with the Foote combination, they must have travelled on a later boat. See main text and notes below.

[xxxix] ‘Amusements: Cleveland’s Colored Minstrels’, Washington Post, 25 April 1891. That is ‘Carey’ is Charles Carey is made clear by the troupe roster given in the New York Clipper, 7 March 1891, where the name is fully spelled out, quoted in Abbott and Seroff; see Note 4 above, first reference.

[xl] See Note 38 above, second reference.

[xli] ‘The Minister was Uneasy’, Buffalo Enquirer, 1 May 1891. Entry for Maude Clifford, 1900 US Federal Census, Buffalo, NY district, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc., accessed 10 May 2025.

[xlii] The New York Clipper report is quoted in Abbott and Seroff; see Note 4 above, first reference. For the information on the troupe disbanding in Bremen, see Note 22 above. For the troupe in Hamburg, see San Francisco Chronicle, 5 July 1891.

[xliii] It is worth noting here that the McCabe and Young troupe would for at least the next five years use in its publicity a review dating from Broom’s time with the troupe that it would have placed in newspapers as if it were a review of a recent performance. That this was not actually Broom returned to the troupe is made plain by the wording of the review (‘…and Frank Broom treated the audience to some phenomenal tumbling and contortions’) being unchanged from year to year; compare, for example, ‘McCabe and Young’s Minstrels Tonight’, News Observer, 23 November 1892, with ‘M’Cabe’s Minstrel’s, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 2 September 1896.

[xliv] ‘Minstrels at the Waterloo Rooms’, Glasgow Evening News, 18 September 1891.

[xlv] Ad copy, Boston Independent, 7 May 1892. The ad also claimed, erroneously, that the troupe were ‘direct from America’. The years of Andrew Roberton’s birth and death and the fact that he was from Tyneside are reconstructed from his death report and that of his son and a search for his death record at https://www.freebmd.org.uk/, accessed 12 May 2025, using his death report as a guide. Andrew Roberton’s death report: ‘Births, Marriages, etc.’, Stage, 4 March 1926; his son’s death report: ‘Obituary: Andrew Roberton’, Stage, 17 December 1953. In the mid-1960s, it was reported that John Lennon’s grandfather and namesake, Jack Lennon, was an ‘original member of the Kentucky Minstrels’ (George Harrison (the reporter, not the Beatle), ‘Over the Mersey Wall’, Liverpool Echo, 19 December 1964). It has since been written that this was the ‘Robertson’ [sic] Kentucky Minstrels. However, in my view, this seems unlikely given that Jack Lennon a) was born in 1855, making him nearly 40 by the time the Roberton Kentucky Minstrels came into being; and b) led a very busy life in Liverpool (fathering 15 children in 20 years) leaving no time for touring the country with a minstrel troupe: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82342257/john-lennon, accessed 12 May 2025. It is far more likely that the Kentucky Minstrels mentioned was a local amateur troupe.

[xlvi] Ad, Era, 19 December 1891.

[xlvii] We know Carr’s full name from later reports concering the Roberton troupe; it was James Carr. See, for example, ‘The Kentucky Minstrels at Burnley’, Burnley Express, 7 October 1893.

[xlviii] https://www.ishilearn.com/staged-identities-rivers-and-the-black-swan and https://www.ishilearn.com/staged-identities-cuckoos-and-nightingales, accessed 11 May 2025.

[xlix] Bohee Brothers. Banjo studio: ad, Lady Pictorial, 21 October 1882. Appearances in the London area, see, for example, ad for the London Pavilion, London and Provincial Entre’acte, 12 October 1882. George’s bankruptcy proceedings: ‘Failure of One of the Bohee Brothers’, Evening News (London), 7 June 1888.

[l] See Note 47 above, first reference.

[li] In their later advertising, the Bohees would claim that their performances realised ‘the happy plantation life of the Old Southern States’: ‘Weddings, Entertainments, etc.’, Isle of Wight County Press, 17 June 1893.

[lii] ‘The Bohee Minstrels have abandoned the old order of things, and each artist appears in public in their natural complexion’: ‘The Bohee Minstrels’,  Gloucester Chronicle, 10 December 1892.

[liii] Ad for the Royal Canterbury, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 19 December 1891.

[liv] Carey and Broom as a double act in 1892: ad for Dan Lowrey’s Star Theatre, Irish Independent, 5 February 1892; with Charlie White: ‘Theatre Royal, Leamington’, Midlands Daily Telegraph, 22 March 1892. Charlie White in the Bohee Minstrels: Croydon Times, 26 July 1890.

[lv] ‘The Bohee Minstrels’, Weekly News, 27 October 1892.

[lvi] See Note 30 above.

[lvii] The most obvious evidence for James Bohee’s no-nonsense character is the court cases that former members of the troupe brought against him for unfair dismissal after falling foul of his famously strict rules (no drinking before a performance, no fraternising with men, etc.); see, for example, the case of Nelly Shannon and Maria Ewing: ‘Coloured Artists and Their Conduct’, Guardian (Newcastle), 20 July 1889; and that of Frederick Milray: ‘The Ventriloquist and His Employer’, Blyth News, 7 December 1894.

[lviii] See, for example, Broom and Carey, ‘The Middlesex’, Era, 5 August 1893, White, Broom, and Carey, ‘Liverpool: Haymarket’, Magnet (Leeds), 25 May 1893.

[lix] Certified copy of the marriage licence of Charles Cornelious Cary and Edith Constance Emma Lewis, Liverpool, 23 May 1893; obtained from General Register Office, April 2025.

[lx] It is worth noting that in this stage of its existence, the troupe was known as the Roberton and Holme’s Kentucky Minstrels.

[lxi] See Note 46 above.

[lxii] ‘Kentucky Minstrels at Boston’, Boston Guardian, 9 September 1893.

[lxiii] This was his billing for his solo act with the Kentucky Minstrels in 1896: see, for example, ad for Town Hall, Dover, Dover Express, 2 October 1896.

[lxiv] Broom and Carey: with Kentucky Minstrels in 1894: ‘Blackburn: Theatre Royal’, Era, 5 May 1894; as a double act: ‘Collins’s, Islington Green’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 17 August 1894. Broom alone: with Kentucky Minstrels in 1895: ‘Theatre Royal’, Birkenhead News, 6 March 1895; as a solo performer: ‘Chesterfield’, Era, 25 May 1895, ‘Amusements in Liverpool: Haymarket’, Era, 31 August 1895.

[lxv] ‘Baseball’, Daily Telegraph (Derby), 27 May 1895.

[lxvi] https://www.ishilearn.com/diamond-lives-behind-the-mask, accessed 11 May 2025.

[lxvii] Available to download bound up with other issues of the Windsor Magazine for the second half of 1895 here: https://archive.org/details/sim_windsor-magazine-an-illustraed-monthly-for-men-and-women_july-december-1895_2, accessed 11 May 2025.

[lxviii] I make the distinction ‘league or cup competition’, because there is an earlier photograph (from 1892) showing a team of baseball players formed of performers from the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show that includes John Yellow Horse Nelson, a man of North American Indian heritage. This team played two games against the Thespians in the summer of 1891, but these were ad hoc challenge matches. Music Hall and Theatre Review, 22 July 1892.

[lxix] Abbott and Seroff, see Note 4 above, first reference.

[lxx] Minstrel baseball teams: McCabe and Young, New York Clipper, 8 March 1890; Cleveland’s Colored Minstrels: New York Clipper, 5 May 1891. Both reports quoted in Abbott and Seroff, see Note 4 above, first reference. For Carey as a member of the Cleveland Minstrels in May 1891, see Note 38 above.

[lxxi] Tony Smith and David Green, 'Softball and baseball - Baseball in New Zealand', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/document/39660/the-hicks-sawyer-minstrel-baseball-club (accessed 12 May 2025).

[lxxii] Benny Mercer, William H Cheeks, (Mr) Shirley Liggins, and Robert Cropp: ‘Baseball: The Game in Manchester’, Sporting Life, 7 July 1898. Mercer, Cheeks, Liggins, and Cropp appeared together in various productions, notably in a two-part play with an all-Black cast, ‘Oriental America’ and ‘The Blackville Derby’, reviewed in Era, November 20, 1897, and Western Daily Press, November 30, 1897.

[lxxiii] Carey with the Kentucky Minstrels, late 1895: ‘The People’s Palace’, Wakefield and West Riding Herald, 7 December 1895; Carey with Broom double act, late 1895: ‘Swansea–the Empire’,  Music Hall and Theatre Review, 8 November 1895; Broom solo, late 1895: ‘Theatre Royal’, Workington Star, 29 November 1895.

[lxxiv] ‘Carey’ was catcher for the Jacob’s Oil and Dewars baseball teams in the summer of 1896; again, I believe this to be Charles Carey, living in London with his wife, Edith. See, for example, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 25 May 1896, Music Hall, 12 June 1896.

[lxxv] For example, Broom solo and solo with Charlie White in the Kentucky Minstrels: Derby Daily Telegraph, 5 May 1896, Bury Free Press, 19 September 1896.

[lxxvi] Carey and Broom performing together in 1897: ad, Eastern Post, 1 May 1897, ‘Amusements in Liverpool: Roscommon’, Era, 21 August 1897, ‘Sadler’s Wells Theatre’, Weekly Dispatch (London), 19 December 1897; Carey, the baseball player, played his last game that I can find with Crystal Palace in June 1897, although I acknowledge this does not mean that he did not play later games and this was simply not reported: ‘Baseball: Derby vs Crystal Palace’, Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 11 June 1897. Frank Broom solo: ‘Empire Theatre’, London and Provinces Entr’acte, 4 December 1897. It is worth noting that in the latter engagement, Broom was on the same bill as R.G. Knowles, founder of the London Baseball Association.

[lxxvii] Charity concert featuring both Carey and Broom: ‘Concerts’,  Music Hall and Theatre Review, 18 March 1898; Frank Broom solo, for example: ad for the Empire Theatre, Era, 29 January 1898 and 26 March 1898.

[lxxviii] This information is contained in a report written by an African American music hall artist working in London published in 1901: ‘Stage’, edited by ‘Woodbine’, Freeman (Indianapolis, Ind.), 14 September 1901.

[lxxix] ‘Advertisements and Notices’,  Era, 21 June 1899.

[lxxx] ‘Births, Marriages, and Deaths’,  Era, 22 July 1899.

[lxxxi] C. Jackson, J. H. Mostowy, H. R. Stagg, et al. Working conditions and tuberculosis mortality in England and Wales, 1890–1912: a retrospective analysis of routinely collected data. BMC Infect Dis 16, 215 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-016-1509-z, accessed 12 May 2025. In Bethnal Green, in the five weeks to 3 June 1899, there were 196 deaths, 25 due to TB: District Health Report, Eastern Post, 1 June 1899.

[lxxxii] See Note 24 above.

[lxxxiii] Digital copy of the death certificate of Charles Corneluis Cary [sic], Holborn District, 10 December 1901, obtained from the General Register Office, April 2025. The details of Edith Car(e)y’s later life can be assembled from the 1911 and 1921 England Census entries for E Cary, Lambeth and Brentford districts, respectively, and the 1939 England and Wales Register entry for Edith C E Cary, Wandsworth district, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc, accessed 12 April 2025. Charles Carey’s death was also reported in the Freeman newspaper in the USA: ‘Stage’ edited by ‘Woodbine’, Freeman (Indianapolis, Ind.), 18 January 1902. Charles Cary, entry in the 1901 Census, Holborn district, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc, accessed 12 April 2025. It is worth noting that Edith Cary is registered separately at another address in Holborn in the 1901 Census. The fact that she registered her husband’s death shows that they were still together, so the reason for this separation may have been related to his illness.