In the 1911 census, John and Marian can be seen in Hackney, with their two daughters, and Marian’s widowed sister Alice, with her daughter Maud Woolnough (b 5 August 1878). Except those retained for the 3 1/2 weeks of Teddy’s operetta, A Will With A Vengeance, which replaced Sullivan’s piece on the bill. I suppose some of the forty walked on in the main piece, the decidedly successful Crutch and Toothpick, as well, but after 18 performances, most of the famous forty were out of a job. Well, Edgar Bruce lavishly advertised a chorus of forty, under Teddy Solomon, for the Easter 1879 revival of Stephenson’s little musical comedy. There is no reason why John shouldn’t have played with such a troupe, but there is no evidence, that I can find, that he did.Īnd so, to the theatre. And there is no reason why he should not have, at the same time, partaken of amateur dramatics.Īs for the minstrel ventriloquy, there were many troupes covering Britain, sporting vents from the starry Lt Walter Cole or Alex Davis downwards. Healy senior worked as a manager in a pawnshop, and the young John began his working life following in his father’s footsteps. His parents were an elder John Healy (1820-1901) who was not born in Ireland, either, but in St Giles, and his wife Sophia Elizabeth Mackway (1823-1886), from Pentonville. He was registered in the second quarter of 1854, but 25 March is a perfectly possible birthdate, as the quarters do overlap. Probably at 4 Charles Street, in the Hackney Road, like his brother. John Mackway Healy wasn’t born in Ireland. Alas, that one is published and printed, so I can’t get J W Turner’s period of moonlighting under another performance name in. I had some things that he hadn’t known, and he had a mystery-solver that I hadn’t sorted out. This week, I heard from the direct descendant of one of the 100 artists whom I biographized in Victorian Vocalists. Since this IS a blog, and not a published book, I was able to go back and tack those bits in! When I published the contents of a Gaiety girl’s scrapbook, on this blog, before gifting the book itself to Harvard, what was my surprise to promptly hear from her family! With extra bits of gossip. In other cases, I have been thrilled to chase a mystery to its end for someone. I have always done my best to help, although queries of the kind ‘my great-aunt was in the chorus of The Dancing Years, I don’t know by what name, can you find her?’ are a bit hopeless.
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