Just found my notes from a recently ended mini-exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery about the “Gaiety Girls”, a term that originally applied to actresses at the Gaiety Theatre, but was later broadened to cover all Edwardian musical actresses.

I was particularly taken by Olive May. Not especially good-looking from her photo, but she obviously had “it”, managing to marry twice into the peerage, being Lady Victor Paget from her first marriage in 1913 to divorce in 1921, and the Countess of Drogheda, after marrying the 10th Earl in 1922. She was most famous for her role as Doris Bartle in Leslie Stuart’s Peggy. She sang “The Lass with a Lasso”, roping in a bevy of chorus boys. Her aim was obviously good.

Also from the Handbook:
From Shadwell’s Epson Wells, 1676:
Lucia: “I have vow’d to spend all my life in London. People do reallly live no where else; they breathe and move and have a kind of insipid dull being, but there is no life but in London. I had rather be Countess of Puddle-Dock than Queen of Sussex.”

Since it is now officially tomorrow I can put up another post …

Abchurch Lane, off Lombard St, in which I have an interest for another reason, was the home of Mr John Moore, “author of the celebrated worm-powder”, of whom Pope is said to have written (I’m having problems believing it):
“Oh learned friend of Abchurch Lane,
Who sett’st our entrails free!
Vain is they art, thy powder in vain,
Since worms shall eat e’en thee.”
from Handbook of London: Past and Present, 1850, P. Cunningham.

Yes, I’m back from my 17th-century sedition, and got some nice pieces for that. But I was particularly taken by C. Jeaffreson, editor of the Middlesex County Records (Old Series) who wrote in 1892 …
“at a time when countless gentlefolk of good birth and high education are sustaining themselves as teachers, artists, medical practitioners, legal practitioners, government clerks, private secretaries, journalists, tradewomen, hospital nurses without losing … their ancestral dignity … a lady of title … would think twice and for a third time before she accepted the position of keeper of the county jail.” (p. xxiv, in the 1972 edition)

He was talking about the case of Mary Lady Broughton, “widow” and “Keeper of the Gatehouse Prison” (in Westminster). On 29 August 1670 she was accused of “wittingly and wilfully” suffering Thomas Ridley, who was in her custody on the charge of stealing a silver cup worth 25 shillings, to escape. There’s no subsequent information and the good Mr Jeaffreson concludes the case ends there.

Now I notice this is my 5th post for the day: enough already! I’m going away and not coming back, at least until tomorrow; 4,000 words to write in the meantime …

Australia is headed for another term of conservative government, in fact with a swing towards the discredited, morally bankrupt, reactionary regime.

I was thinking of all the Bangkok taxi-drivers, not usually known for their knowledge of international affairs, who were horrified by Howard’s “America’s deputy sheriff in Asia” comment. The international damage, not to mention the national, will take decades to repair, if indeed it is repairable.

I’m off to the London archives to chase down some 17th-century slander against the king and government; hopefully that will cheer me up.

A puzzle from the Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Feb-Dec 1685:

July 16: Christine Audler, “a rebel” is taken into cutody by the keeper of Newgate. (p. 265)
July 17: “To Captain Richardson, Keeper of Newgate Prison, Warrant to deliver the bodies of Christine Audler and Garrett Garrowe, prisoners in his custody, to Henry Evans, messenger” to bring them before the Earl of Sunderland. (Secretary of State)