Wimbledon's Pioneering Victorian Female Champions

As the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships begin this week, I decided to look at the lives and sporting careers of some of England and Ireland's pioneering female Tennis players from the Victorian era. 

Here are some of their amazing stories - just remember that these women all played Tennis wearing boned corsets, bustles and long dresses!

Maude and her sister Lilian Watson

Maud Edith Eleanor Watson MBE (9 October 1864 – 5 June 1946)

Maud Watson was an English tennis player and the first woman to be crowned as a female Wimbledon champion.

Born in Harrow, London, she was the daughter of a local vicar Henry William and Emily Frances Watson. At the age of sixteen Watson played her first match at the Edgbaston Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club. It was a successful debut, winning the singles competition by defeating her sister Lillian in the final and winning the doubles competition with her.

In 1884 Maud participated in the Irish Ladies' Championship and defeated the reigning Irish champion May Langrishe 6–3, 6–2, 6–2. She was also victorious in the mixed doubles tournament winning the title with multiple Wimbledon champion William Renshaw. Undefeated in tournament play, in 1884 the nineteen-year-old Watson won the first ever Ladies' Singles title at Wimbledon. Playing in white corsets and petticoats, from a field of thirteen competitors she defeated her sister  Lilian 6–8, 6–3, 6–3 in the final to claim the title and a silver flower basket valued at 20 Guineas.

1885 was a year of great success for Maud, who remained unbeaten in singles and lost only one set. Maud repeated her success at the 1885 Wimbledon championships. In a field of just 10 entries she easily won the quarter- and semi-finals and in the final defeated Blanche Bingley 6–1, 7–5. She successfully defended her title at the 1885 Irish Championships against Louise Martin. For two sets there was little to choose between them but in the decider Maud outstayed her opponent to win 6–2, 4–6, 6–3. In 1886, the year the Challenge Round was introduced for women, Bingley turned the tables, defeating Watson 6–3, 6–3 in the final to take the title.

In 1887 and 1888 Watson was handicapped by a sprained wrist which worsened with time. Her final competition came at the Edgebaston tournament in June 1889. She entered three events (doubles, mixed doubles and handicap singles) and won them all. While on holiday in Jersey she went swimming off the coast and nearly drowned. She was rescued with difficulty and suffered an illness afterwards which took a number of years to completely recover.

Watson worked as a nurse during the First World War for which she was rewarded as a Member of the Order of the British Empire. Maud Watson, who did not marry, died at Hammersmead House in Charmouth on 5 June 1946, at the age of 81.

Blanche Bingley Hillyard

Blanche Bingley Hillyard - 3 November 1863 – 6 August 1946

Born in Greenford in the London Borough of Ealing, Blanche Bingley was a member of the Ealing Lawn Tennis & Archery Club. In 1884, she competed in the first ever Wimbledon championships for women, and two years later she captured the first of her six singles titles. A seven-time finalist, Bingley's 13 finals remain a Wimbledon record as is the 14-year time span between her first and last titles.

Bingley's Wimbledon record suggests that she was the second strongest female player of her day, only behind Lottie Dod, who defeated her in five finals.

Once married to Commander George Whiteside Hillyard (in Greenford on 13 July 1887), Bingley was recorded with her husband's name and is usually listed in various records as Blanche Bingley Hillyard. At age 36, she again won the Wimbledon final and continued to compete until age 49, playing her last Wimbledon in 1913.

During her career, she also won the Irish championships on three occasions (1888, 1894, 1897) and the German championship, played in Hamburg, twice; in 1897, defeating Charlotte Cooper Sterry in the final in three sets, and in 1900 against Muriel Robb, also in three sets. Additionally, she won the South of England Championships at Eastbourne, then a major event, 11 times between 1885 and 1905.

Blanche Bingley Hillyard died in London in 1946. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.

Charlotte "Lottie" Dod

Charlotte "Lottie" Dod (24 September 1871 – 27 June 1960)

Chatlotte was an English sportswoman best known as a tennis player. She won the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Championship five times, the first one when she was only fifteen in the summer of 1887. She remains the youngest ladies' singles champion, though Martina Hingis was three days younger when she won the women's doubles title in 1996.

In addition to tennis, Dod competed in many other sports, including golf, field hockey, and archery. She also won the British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship, played twice for the England women's national field hockey team (which she helped to found, and won a silver medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics in archery. The Guinness Book of Records has named her as the most versatile female athlete of all time, together with track and field athlete and fellow golf player Babe Zaharias.

Dod was born on 24 September 1871 in Bebington, Cheshire, the youngest of four children to Joseph and Margaret Dod. Joseph, from Liverpool, had made a fortune in the cotton trade. The family was wealthy enough to provide for all members for life; Lottie and her brother Willy never had to work. Besides Willy, Lottie had a sister, Annie, and another brother, Tony, all of whom also excelled in sports. Annie was a good tennis player, golfer, ice skater and billiards player. Willy Dod won the Olympic gold medal in archery at the 1908 Games, while Tony was a regional level archer and a chess and tennis player. The Dod children received a private education by tutors and governesses.

In her childhood Lottie played the piano, banjo and she was member of a local choir. When Dod was nine years old, two tennis courts were built near the family's estate, Edgeworth. Lawn tennis, invented in 1873, was highly fashionable for the wealthy in England, and all of the Dod children started playing the game frequently. Tennis parties were occasionally organized and among the invited guests were future Wimbledon champions Joshua Pim and the brothers Herbert and Wilfred Baddeley. 

When she was eleven Dod joined the Rock Ferry Tennis Club in Birkenhead, Together with Annie, who was eight years older, Dod entered her first tennis tournament, the 1883 Northern Championships in Manchester, at age eleven. They had a bye in the first round and lost in the second round of the doubles tournament to Hannah Keith and Amber McCord, but won the consolation tournament. One journalist, Sydney Brown, noted that "Miss L. Dod should be heard of in the future".

 The following year, 1884, she participated in two tournaments, the Northern Championships, played that year in Liverpool, and Waterloo. With Annie she reached the doubles finals in both tournaments and with Tony she was defeated in the first round of the mixed doubles event at Waterloo. At the Northern Championships in 1885, she came to prominence when she nearly beat reigning Wimbledon champion Maud Watson in the final, losing 6–8, 5–7. Dod would win the doubles event (with Annie). Earlier she had won the first singles title of her career at the Waterloo tournament where she was also victorious in the doubles and mixed doubles events. These performances earned her the nickname "Little Wonder" in the press.

In 1886 Dod won the singles title at the West of England Championships in Bath where she defeated Watson in the final and ending the latter's run of 55 consecutive victories. That year she played tournaments in Liverpool (Northern), Cheltenham and Derbyshire but won no further singles titles. In 1887 Dod became an established first-class player, illustrated by the fact she partnered then seven-time Wimbledon doubles winner Ernest Renshaw at the mixed doubles event of the Irish Championships. She won the singles in Dublin defeating Watson in the final in straight sets.

She again won the singles title at the Northern, defeating leading players Louisa Martin, May Langrishe and Watson without losing a set and conceding no more than two games per set. Encouraged by these results she decided to enter the 1887 Wimbledon Championships. Only six competitors, not including Martin and Watson, had entered. Dod had a bye in the first round and easily advanced through the semifinal and final of the All-Comer's tournament to earn the right to challenge the defending champion, Blanche Bingley. She defeated Bingley in straight sets 6–2, 6–0, the second set lasting just ten minutes. At 15 years and 285 days she was the youngest ever winner of the ladies' singles championships.  During the match, Dod wore a metal-and-whalebone corset which punctured her skin and caused her to bleed as she played.

The two met again in the final of the 1888 West of England Championships. Although it was designated an "open" tournament, the officials made the remarkable decision to impose a handicap of 15 on Dod. She still managed to win against her opponent, now known by her married name, Blanche Hillyard. The Wimbledon final of 1888 was a rematch of the previous year, and Dod, this time defending her title in the Challenge Round, again emerged victorious (6–3, 6–3). During that year she won several doubles and mixed doubles titles with her sister Annie, May Langrishe and Ernest Renshaw.

Lottie Dod's style of play, then regarded as unorthodox, now seems notably modern. She was perhaps the first player to advocate hitting the ball just before the top of the bounce and to adopt a modern, albeit single-handed, racquet grip. Her ground strokes were reported by contemporaries to be unusually firmly hit by the standards of the time, but – like many female players of the day – she served underhand and only rarely employed spin.

Dod only entered one open tournament in 1889 (the Northern Championships, which she won), and failed to attend Wimbledon, much to the disappointment of her fans. Together with Annie and some friends, she was on a sailing trip off the Scottish coast, and didn't want to return in time for Wimbledon. This was followed by a complete absence from the game in 1890.

Lottie Dod

After failing to do so in 1889, Dod was determined to win Wimbledon three times in a row, starting in 1891. Although it was her only competitive appearance of that season, she won her third Wimbledon title by defeating Hillyard (6–2, 6–1) in the final of the All-Comers tournament. The reigning champion Lena Rice did not defend her title. 1892 saw Dod's first singles defeat in an open tournament since 1886 when she lost to Louisa Martin of Ireland in the second round of the Irish Championships. It was the last of only five losses in her entire tennis career and her only defeat after the age of 15. She continued the year strongly, culminating in another easy straight-set Wimbledon victory over Hillyard. Dod's last tennis season as a competitive player was 1893, and she played in just two tournaments, The Northern in Manchester and Wimbledon, winning both. On both occasions, she defeated Blanche Hillyard in three sets, despite a heavy fall in the Wimbledon final. Her record of five Wimbledon titles would not last for long, as Hillyard, after losing in the final to Dod five times, won her sixth title in 1900. Suzanne Lenglen broke Dod's record of three consecutive singles wins by winning from 1919 to 1923.

Apart from entering women's tournaments, Dod sometimes also played and won matches against men (who usually played with a handicap), and on one occasion defeated star players Ernest Renshaw and George Hillyard (the husband of Blanche) when doubling with Herbert Baddeley.

This was actually the all-comers final as Helena Rice did not defend her 1890 Wimbledon title, which resulted in the winner of the all-comers final winning the challenge round and, thus, Wimbledon in 1891 by walkover.

Although tennis would remain Dod's favourite sport, she shifted her attention to other activities in the following years. In 1895, she joined her brother Tony on a trip to the winter sports resort of St. Moritz, which was very popular with English travellers. There, she passed the St. Moritz Ladies's Skating Test, the most prestigious figure skating event for women at the time. Dod also rode the toboggan on the famous Sankt Moritz Cresta Run, and began mountaineering with her brother, climbing two mountains over 4,000 m in February 1896.

 

After a long cycling trip in Italy, Lottie and Tony returned to England, only to come back to St Moritz in November, now accompanied by their mother and brother Willy. This time, Dod took the St. Moritz Men's Skating Test and passed, as the second woman ever. She also competed in curling. In the summer of 1897, she and Tony again ascended several mountains, this time in Norway.

The sport of women's field hockey was still rather young when Dod took up the game in 1897. She was one of the founding members of a women's hockey club in Spital. Playing as a central forward, she was soon named captain of the team. Club matches in which Dod played were won, while losses happened only in her absence.

By 1899, Dod had made it to captain of the Cheshire county team, and represented her club at meetings of the women's hockey association for the northern counties. She first played in the English national team on 21 March that year, winning 3–1 over Ireland. Both English goals in the 1900 England and Ireland rematch were scored by Dod, securing a 2–1 victory. Dod failed to attend the match against Wales, suffering from sciatica attacks which kept her from sporting for months.

Although she had recovered by 1901, Dod would not play again in national or county matches. All members of the Dod family stopped attending sports events for a while after their mother died on 1 August 1901, and Dod apparently lost her interest in field hockey during that period, although she did occasionally play for Spital Club until 1905.

Few golf clubs allowed women to play around the time Lottie Dod first played golf at age fifteen. Unlike tennis, Dod found golf a difficult sport to master. By the time she got seriously interested in the sport, the Ladies Golf Union (LGU) had been founded, and women's golf had become a real sport.

Dod helped establish a ladies' golf club at Moreton in 1894 and entered that year's National Championships (match play) at Littlestone (Kent). She was eliminated in the third round, but Dod's interest in the sport grew, and she became a regular competitor in the National Championships and other tournaments for the next few years. In 1898 and 1900 she reached the semi-finals of the National Championships, but was defeated narrowly both times. In 1900, she also played in an unofficial country match against Ireland, which the English won 37–18.

Dod did not compete in golf in 1901, and hardly entered major tournaments in the next two years, but she did play in the 1904 British Ladies Amateur, held at Troon. She qualified for the semi-finals for the third time in her life, and won it for the first time. Her opponent in the final was May Hezlet, the champion of 1899 and 1902. The match was very close, and the two were tied after 17 holes. Hezlet missed her putt on the final hole narrowly, after which Dod grabbed an unexpected victory, becoming the first, and to date only, woman to win British tennis and golf championships.

Following her victory, Dod sailed to Philadelphia, where she had been invited by Frances C. Griscom, a former American golf champion, to attend the U.S. Women's Amateur as a spectator. Upon arrival, Dod found out the tournament regulations had been changed to allow for non-Americans to compete, and she was requested to compete. Her loss in the first round was a disappointment, but Dod persuaded several Americans to come and play in the British championships the following year.

In the week before these 1905 championships, three international matches were planned, starting off with the first British-American international match. Dod was the only British player to lose a match, as the United Kingdom won 6–1. Dod then played for the English team in a 3–4 defeat against Scotland and a 4–3 win over Ireland, although she lost both her matches. Dod was then eliminated in the fourth round of the National Championships. It was to be her last appearance in golf.

In the autumn of 1905, Dod and her brothers sold "Edgeworth" and moved to a new home near Newbury, Berkshire. They had been practising archery from the times before, but all three became more serious now and joined the Welford Park Archers in Newbury. As one of their ancestors was said to have commanded the English longbowmen at the Battle of Agincourt, they found this an appropriate sport.

Women's Olympic Archery Team 1908

Lottie Dod won her first tournament by 1906, and finished fifth in the Grand National Archery Meeting of 1906, 1907 and 1908. Dod's performances in the 1908 season earned her a spot on the British Olympic team. The field in the women's archery event consisted only of British women, but without the best archer of the era, Alice Legh. Dod led the competition,  after the first day but was surpassed by Queenie Newall on the second day, taking second place with 642 points to Newall's 688. Her brother Willy secured the gold medal in the men's competition.

In 1910, Dod came close to winning the Grand National, which would have made archery the third sport in which she became a national champion. Both Lottie and her brother William led after day one, but moved down to second on the final competition day. After the Welford Archers were disbanded in late 1911, the Dods' interest in archery faded, meaning the end of Lottie Dod's long competitive sports career.

In 1913, Willy and Lottie moved to a new house in Bideford (Tony had married in the meantime). When World War I broke out, Willy enlisted with the Royal Fusiliers, while his sister worked for the British Red Cross from November 1916 at Chelsea VAD Hospital and in a military hospital in Speen, Berkshire.

Dod wanted to be transferred to the war zones in France but was hampered by sciatica and never served as a nurse outside England. She did receive a Service Medal by the Red Cross for serving more than 1,000 hours during the war.

She then lived in London and Devon, and she never failed to attend the Wimbledon Championships until she was in her late eighties. After her brother Willy died in 1954, she lived in several nursing homes on the English south coast, eventually settling at the Birchy Hill Nursing Home in Sway, Hampshire. There she died, unmarried, at age 88, passing away while listening to the Wimbledon radio broadcasts in bed.

Dod was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1983.

Lena Rice

Helena Bertha Grace "Lena" Rice (21 June 1866 – 21 June 1907)

Helena “Lena” Rice was an Irish tennis player who won the singles title at the 1890 Wimbledon Championships. She is to date the only female player from Ireland to ever win a singles title at Wimbledon.

Lena Rice was born the second-youngest of the eight children of Spring Rice and Anna Gorde in 1866. Her family lived in a two-storied Georgian building at Marlhill, half a mile from New Inn, County Tipperary. When her father died in 1868, her mother struggled to manage the household. Lena learned to play tennis with her sister Anne in their large garden at Marlhill, and both girls entered the Cahir Lawn Tennis club.

Rice's first tournament outside County Tipperary were the Irish Championships at Dublin in May 1889. There she lost 5–7, 5–7 to Blanche Bingley Hillyard in the semifinals. In doubles competition, she reached the final partnering Hillyard, and in mixed doubles she won the title along with Willoughby Hamilton.

Later that year, Rice played at the Wimbledon Championships. She reached the final where she met Hillyard once again. She won the first set 6–4 and had three match points at 5–3, 40–15 and advantage in the second, but Hillyard managed to come back and eventually won 4–6, 8–6, 6–4.

The next year, only four players participated at the singles event at Wimbledon. After winning over Mary Steedman 7–5, 6–2 in the first round, her opponent in the All-comers final was May Jacks. Rice won 6–4, 6–1 and as defending champion Blanche Hillyard was pregnant and didn't enter the tournament, Rice won the title, the 50-guineas challenger trophy and a cash prize of 20 guineas.

After her 1890 Wimbledon title, there is no record of Rice ever again playing tennis at a tournament. As her mother died in 1891, it seems likely that family ill health prevented her from continuing her tennis career.

Rice, who never married, died of tuberculosis on her 41st birthday in 1907. She was buried at the New Inn cemetery, close to her parents, her brother Samel and her sister Agnes.

A Typical Victorian Tennis Match

Edith Lucy Austin Greville (née Austin; 15 December 1867 – 27 July 1953) 

Edith Greville was English female tennis player who was active from the 1890s until around 1920. She was married to fellow player George Greville.

Between 1893 and 1919 she participated 16 times in the single event of the Wimbledon Championships and achieved her best result in 1894 and 1896 when she reached the final of the all-comers tournament. In 1894 she lost to Blanche Hillyard in straight sets, winning just two games and Hillyard became champions as the title holder Lottie Dod did not defend her title. In 1896 she lost the all-comers final in three sets to Alice Pickering, In her last two Wimbledon appearances in 1913 and 1919 she also played in the doubles and mixed doubles events.

She won the singles title at the Kent Championships on six occasions (1894-97, 1899, 1900).

In 1894 she defeated May Arbuthnot in a three-set final to win the singles title of the British Covered Court Championships, played on wood courts at the Queen's Club in London. Arbuthnot failed to convert two matchpoints. The following year, 1895, she lost her title in the challenge round to Charlotte Cooper. From 1896 to 1899 she won four consecutive titles, defeating Cooper twice in the final. In 1894, 1899 and 1901 she won the Queen's Club Championships grass court tournament.

In 1896 she was a runner-up at the South of England Championships in Eastbourne, losing the final to Blanche Hillyard in three sets.

Charlotte Cooper Sterry

Charlotte Cooper Sterry ( 22 September 1870 – 10 October 1966) 

Charlotte Cooper Sterry was a female tennis player from England who won five singles titles at the Wimbledon Championships and in 1900 became Olympic champion. In winning in Paris on July 11th 1900, she became the first female Olympic tennis champion as well as the first individual female Olympic champion.

Charlotte Cooper was born on 22 September 1870 at Waldham Lodge, Ealing, Middlesex, England, the youngest daughter of Henry Cooper, a miller, and his wife Teresa Georgiana Miller. She learned to play tennis at the Ealing Lawn Tennis Club where she was first coached by H. Lawrence and later by Charles Martin and Harold Mahony. She won her first senior singles title in 1893 at Ilkley . 

Between 1893 and 1917 she participated in 21 Wimbledon tournaments. At her first appearance she reached the semifinals of the singles event in which she lost to Blanche Bingley Hillyard. She won her first singles title in 1895, defeating Helen Jackson in the final of the All-Comers event. In that match she was down 0–5 in both sets but managed to win in straight sets. 

In 1896, she successfully defended her title in the Challenge Round against Alice Simpson Pickering. Between 1897 and 1901 the titles were divided between Cooper Sterry (1898, 1901) and Bingley Hillyard (1897, 1899, 1900). The 1902 Challenge Round match against Muriel Robb was halted on the first day of play due to rainfall at 6–4, 11–13. The match was replayed in its entirety the next day and Robb won 7–5, 6–1, playing a total of 53 games which was then a record for the longest women's singles final. 

In 1908 as a mother of two she won her last singles title when she defeated Agnes Morton in straight sets in the All-Comers final after a seven-year hiatus and at the age of 37. She is the oldest Wimbledon's ladies’ singles champion and her record of eight consecutive singles finals stood until 1990 when Martina Navratilova reached her ninth consecutive singles final.

In addition to her singles titles, Cooper Sterry also won seven All-England mixed doubles titles; five times with Harold Mahony (1894–1898) [10] and once with Laurence Doherty (1900) and Xenophon Casdagli (1908).[c] In 1913 she reached the final of the first Wimbledon women's doubles event with Dorothea Douglass, 18 years after winning her first Wimbledon title.

She won the singles title at the Irish Lawn Tennis Championships in 1895 and 1898 - a prestigious tournament at the time . At the 1900 Summer Olympics, where women participated for the first time, Cooper Sterry won the tennis singles event. On 11 July 1900 she defeated Hélène Prévost in the final in straight sets and became the first female Olympic tennis champion as well as the first individual female Olympic champion. With Reginald Doherty, she won the mixed doubles title after a straight-sets victory in the final against Hélène Prévost and Harold Mahony. In 1901 she won the singles title at the German Championships, and in 1902 she won the Swiss Championship. Cooper Sterry remained active in competitive tennis and continued to play in championship events well into her 50s.

On 12 January 1901 she married Alfred Sterry, a solicitor, who became president of the Lawn Tennis Association. They had two children: Rex (born 1903) who was the vice-chairman of the All England Club for a period of 15 years during the 1960s and 1970s and Gwen (born 1905), a tennis player who participated at Wimbledon and played on Britain's Wightman Cup team.

Cooper Sterry had an offensive style of playing, attacking the net when the opportunity arose. She was one of a few female players of her time who served overhead. Her main strengths were her steadiness, temperament and tactical ability. Her excellent volleying skills stood out at a time when this was still a rarity in ladies tennis.

Cooper Sterry, who had been deaf since the age of 26, died on 10 October 1966 at the age of 96, in Helensburgh, Scotland

She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.

Alice Pickering (1860 – 18 February 1939 née Alice Simpson) 

Alice Pickering was an English tennis player who played at the Wimbledon Championships from 1895 to 1901. In 1896, she won the all-comers-competition at Wimbledon 1896, but lost the challenge round against Charlotte Cooper 2-6, 3-6. She again reached the all-comers final in the following year, but this time lost to Blanche Bingley. 

In 1896 she won the doubles competition at the Irish Championships partnering Ruth Durlacher.

Mary Louisa "Mollie" Martin (3 September 1865, Newtowngore, Ireland – 24 October 1941, Portrush, Northern Ireland) 

Mary "Mollie" Martin was a tennis player from Ireland. In 1898 she reached the final of the Wimbledon Championships, but was beaten 6-4, 6-4 by Charlotte Cooper.

She won nine singles titles at the Irish Lawn Tennis Championships.

In my next blog post I will be examining some early 20th century female tennis players from the Edwardian and post war era's. 

Ada Delroy – Australian Serpentine Dancer and Vaudeville Actress

MISS ADA DELROY

Ada Delroy, the adopted sister of Music Hall comedian James Bell, was born in Halifax, Yorkshire England. Taught dancing by Bell, and taken in by the theatrical family at the age of 12, she made her first ever stage appearance as Fatima in a professional production of Bluebeard - a big feature being her "Cobra di Capello" dance.

Often described in his day as a "Senegambian" comedian or a “blackface” comic, James Bell was raised in Lancashire, England, and went on to become a specialist on the Ethiopian castanets ("bones") while being equally adept at singing, dancing, banjo  playing  and  comedy sketch work.

James Bell and Ada Delroy toured Australia for two years with Harry Rickards Company in 1888 to 1890, before undertaking a two year world tour with Baldwin's Butterfly Company travelling through the USA, Middle-East, Far East, China, Japan, South Africa and Europe.  

ADA'S SISTER-IN-LAW

They returned to Australia in February 1895 under Rickards management, this time with Bells wife, Alice who went under the stage name of the "White Mahatma".  Madame Bell had been performing professionally for over 16 years. Her act was believed to have been advertised as "Somnomistic Dream Visions" and involved audience participation, whereby selected  individuals would write  down questions on folded  paper earlier in the evening  (which  they  retained).  She would then answer them later in the evening.  

By then a specialist Serpentine dancer, Ada Delroy was routinely billed as the world's greatest Terpsichorean artist when she established the Ada Delroy Company which made its debut in Singleton, New South Wales, in June in 1885. The initial line-up comprised of 12 artists including James Opie, Gertie McLeod, Tom Bergin and mesmerist Dr Richard Rowe. 

The troupe toured Australia and New Zealand in late 1897, then did a two and a half year world tour, returning to Australia in mid-1900. The company then remained in the Antipodes until around 1909, with its principals also appearing with Harry Rickards, James Brennan and the Conrad Power Company.

James Bell's last known engagement was at Brennan's National Amphitheatre, Sydney in December 1908. The following year he was appointed manager of the Melbourne Opera House by Harry Rickards. Ada Delroy's last known performance is believed to have been with Carroll's Vaudeville Entertainment in Melbourne in 1915. 

 A keen cyclist, Ada Delroy was often featured in cycling news during her Australian tours, and claimed to be the first lady cyclist in both Australia and Ireland. James Bell was a member of both  the NSW and Victorian cycling leagues and the theatre the company reportedly toured with 9 bikes during the 1890s.

Delroy and Bell married in 1908 following the death of Alice Bell the previous year.

Ada Delroy was also a land speculator in real estate in Perth in the mid to late-1890s, selling a parcel of land at Cottesloe known as the Ada Delroy Estate.

AUTHOR KAZ COOKE

Ada’s forgotten life story has now been brilliantly re-imagined and fictionalized by Australian author, Kaz Cooke. Read her new boook Ada and you’ll enter an all-but forgotten world of clairvoyants, greasepaint and curtain calls, where the glamour of the stage and the pull of touring on the road will instantly enthrall you. 

It all started when she came across a photo of a woman in a theatre scrapbook while researching a project at the State Library of Victoria on objects people wear to say who they are.

Kaz says:  In it, she’s wearing ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ – a giant hat, ostrich feathers, bows, braid, butterfly brooches, a giant diamond pendant and her name spelled out in diamonds. It was captioned ‘Ada Delroy’.

I found out she had been a dancer, singer and comedian with her own troupe, the Ada Delroy Company, and I began making a timeline of Ada’s travels and reviews of her shows, using the Australian newspaper archives the National Library of Australia’s digital collection, and the sister archive for New Zealand . Often it took scores of ‘reviews’ to piece together a whole act, sentence-by-sentence; here a name of the song, there a tiny description of part of a comedy sketch costume.

The plan evolved that I would write a novel about Ada’s life – and that everyone in the book, including Ada, would be a real person. I visited the family archivist of a branch of the Bell family troupe’s descendants. Joy Bell from NSW generously shared information on the Bell family, whom had adopted Ada after she was orphaned at 12 in a Lancashire mill town and put her in the family troupe. Joy had wonderful photos of the Ada Delroy Company on tour in India. Other photos were found at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the State Library picture collections, and on one miraculous occasion, on Pinterest.

At the Library I could ‘order in’ from the collection and look at objects from Ada’s era: a 19th century wedding gown (mauve) in two pieces, jewellery, an actress’s back-stage travel iron  (heated by a reservoir of methylated spirits that you would light with a ‘vesta’ match or a flaming twist of paper transferred from a dressing-room fireplace). No wonder so many theatres burned down in those days!

I was amazed to see online all the digitized pages of a scrapbook kept by Ada’s rather bonkers boss during the early 1890s, Professor Baldwin. This was a record of the Baldwin tour with the Bells when Ada debuted her signature Serpentine dance in England. Ada stole all her dances from Loïe Fuller, who became a famous star at the Folies Bergères. The scrapbook is part of the Houdini collection at the Harry Ransom Centre, at the University of Texas in Austin. More ferreting in the State Library of Victoria turned up the gas bill for the backstage and stage lights from the same year Ada performed at the Bourke St Opera House Tivoli theatre in 1895.

Official archivists in Auckland helped me decipher a relevant, scandalous 1912 divorce case’s exhibit letters, written in a dreadful hand, in purple, soluble pencil and smudged with tears (or whiskey). I consulted modern experts on genealogy, tuberculosis, larrikins, tin-silk frocks and sea slugs. That was all part of the fun for me, flexing my old journalism muscles and just satisfying my own curiosity. 

I read novels of the time, and histories of clairvoyants, spiritualists and ‘black-face’ minstrel entertainers, and consulted slang dictionaries for Lancashire and 19th century theatre, Australianisms of the day, and the theatre history books by Aussie experts Frank van Straten and Mimi Colligan.  

I looked at photos and read accounts of steam ship and carriage travel, and Melbourne places, faces and vaudevillians from 1888 to 1910. My nephew George was dispatched to the State Library of WA to find the original brochure advertising the auction of land called the Ada Delroy estate; that’s how we found out Jimbell St in Perth, which still survives, is named after Ada’s husband, Jim Bell.

I was lucky enough to jump a discount flight to New York with 12 hours to spare so I could watch a performance by choreographer and dancer Jody Sperling, who interprets the dances of Loïe Fuller, wearing re-created and constructed Serpentine costumes. I was able to speak with her about how Ada might have felt performing those original dances in the costume made from 100 yards of silk. Later, I visited the dressing room under the Theatre Royal in Hobart where Ada once changed into that costume.

I convinced a shopkeeper at the Block Arcade in Melbourne to let me down into the catacombs underneath to explore, so I could set a scene there. I didn’t want to stop researching, but with a head full of images and facts and ideas, after two years of research, it was time to write.

I didn’t use every photo or reference everything I’d read or investigated, but it all combined to help me imagine my way into Ada’s life and give her a voice. I hope I’ve done her proud.

 

Ada is a show girl and a storyteller with a sense of humour and a lot of things to say. Ada is a funny, yet poignant novel about an extraordinary woman who made the very best of everything life threw at her. 

You soon fall in love with her for speaking the way she does:

‘It’s not every day a handsome young man appears on your doorstep to ask if you’re a respectable woman…’

Kaz Cooke brings Ada Delroy and her famous vaudeville troupe back to life while telling us the backstage tales of how she entertained royalty, and the general public alike with her witty jokes, illusions, and breath-taking dances.

‘I had a diamond pendant near as big as an emu egg off the Maharajah of What's-His-Name. They named a racehorse after me, and a pigeon and a potato soup on an Orient steamship.'

‘I’ll tell you what I loved about being a theatrical. You’re a custodian of magic, a purveyor of glamour, a repository of mystery. You’re someone.’

'I was enchanting, and indefatigable, and dainty, and all the other words they find to avoid saying 'beautiful'. The word they used the most was 'piquant'. Makes you feel like chutney.' - Ada Delroy

A former reporter and cartoonist, Kaz Cooke is also the author of the bestselling books Up The Duff, Kidwrangling, Girl Stuff, Girl Stuff 8–12, Women’s Stuff, and the children's picture books Wanda Linda Goes Berserk and The Terrible Underpants

Find out more  www.kazcooke.com.au

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The Extraordinary Life of Mrs Violet Van Der Elst:

VIOLET VAN DER ELST

Violet Van Der Elst was an ordinary working class girl from Feltham, near Staines in West London who became a successful, and very wealthy, business tycoon in the early 20th Century. 

She used much of her self-made fortune to help fund various political and philanthropic causes and was an outspoken social reformer, who was well-known for campaigning against the death sentence. 

She led a very eccentric lifestyle and lived in a lavish country house which she renovated and filled with all forms of art and furniture. A great lover of culture, she was also an occultist book collector, a writer, publisher, and a musical composer.

VIOLET THE WRITER

Today her life story is not very well known and her many achievements have faded into obscurity - so on that basis, she seems to be a perfect subject for her very own potted biography here.In her heyday Mrs Van Der Elst was regarded as one of the most colourful eccentrics of the 20th Century but she was born Violet Anne Dodge on 4 January 1882 in Feltham, Middlesex, England, to working class parents John and Louisa Dodge. 

Although she stated that her father was a coal merchant, census records actually show him to be an Agricultural Worker in 1871, a Garden Labourer in 1881 / 1891 and a labourer in a Timber Yard in 1901. On her maternal side, Violet claimed to be the descendant of an Elizabethan seadog named Sir Guy Goundry, who was killed raiding Cadiz, in Spain. Her mother’s maiden name was Gundry, but my own research into her mother's ancestry has not shed any light on the elusive Sir Guy at this point! It would not be out of character for Violet to "embellish" some of her life-story, as we shall discover.

Violet came from a large Victorian family and was the second youngest child. John and Louisa Dodge's first two children had died in infancy in 1867 and 1868. Violet's older sister Rosa Mabel  was born in 1870, followed by Edward John in 1872, Samuel Robert in 1875, Lillian Florence in 1877, Charles William in 1879, Violet herself in 1882 and Ella Louise in 1887. 

VIOLET'S FAMOUS CAR

Violet's older brother Edward Dodge decided that his future lay in the Army. He joined the Rifle Brigade in 1890 when he was 18. His Army records describe him as being 5ft 3 inches tall, with blue eyes, brown fair complexion and eyebrows that met in the middle. After two years training in England, Edward was then posted overseas to East India, Hong Kong and Singapore. He spent another year back in England and married Sarah Boyman on 7th August 1899 in Feltham. 

He was called up again on the 28th November 1899. He served out in South Africa fighting in the Boer War during the Relief of Ladysmith. He was killed in Action on 29th February 1900 at Pieter's Hill aged 27. He was the first of Violet's siblings to pass away.

Violet first job was as a scullery maid, then she had very brief stage career. In 1903, when she was 21, Violet married 34 year old Henry Herbert Arthur Nathan, a civil engineer from Wanstead, Essex, who was known as "Harry". 

In 1910 her father John passed away, followed by her brother Samuel in 1915. Samuel Dodge had been a bakers boy who then became a Pastry Cook, His first wife Fanny died just a year after they were married. Violet lost her brother Charles in 1922, then her mother died in 1923, and her sister Ella died in 1925. It is no wonder with so many deaths in her family that Violet later became fascinated with spiritualism.

Not one to sit back and be a contented housewife, Violet had began making and selling her own cosmetics, creams and lotions - using her kitchen to manufacture her products. She ended up founding a company that developed the first brush-less shaving cream for men. It was called "Shavex" and today the brand is worth millions.

Subsequently Violet became a very successful business woman and was especially concerned with the marketing of all her products. She personally oversaw every single detail of any advertisements that were created .

As an employer and boss she was always a force to be reckoned with. Violet sacked her aristocratic young secretary Lord Edward Montagu for embezzlement, after he had been arrested.

ADVERT FOR SHAVEX

She replaced him with 19-year-old New Zealander Ray Winston, whom she sacked and reinstated on a daily basis.

Four months after her first husband died on 15 November 1927, she married Jean Julien Romain Van der Elst, a Belgian who had been working for her as a manager but who was also a painter, traveller and composer. In 1934 he too died suddenly and it was in his memory that she dedicated the rest of her life to campaigning for the abolition of capital punishment.

She gained publicity from her vocal campaigns against capital punishment, and was a regular sight outside courtrooms, prisons and places of execution, stepping out of her chauffeur-driven Rolls to protest, chanting, “Abolish capital punishment” and These men must not hang,” into a microphone., while the planes she'd hired to pull black banners saying “Stop the Death Sentence” flew overhead.

An imposing figure, weighing 15 stone and always dressed in black, Violet’s highly visual and well organised protests also saw her gather hordes of sandwich-men on the ground, all accompanied by a brass band playing the Dead March in Saul.

VIOLET GETTING ARRESTED

She employed direct action tactics such as leading the crowd in song and breaking through police cordons. These were not only designed to engage and include the crowd that was present, but also to grab the attention of newspaper readers and the press. Her approach to campaigning made deliberate use of spectacle and, coupled with her direct action techniques, can be understood as a form of post-suffragette militancy.

Violet set up her own newspaper called Humanity, and published evidence which she believed proved that condemned people were innocent. She was often arrested or taken to court for slander. She is commonly regarded as the woman who fought the hardest for the abolition of capital punishment in Britain.

Having amassed a huge personal fortune through her businesses she purchased Harlaxton Manor, in Lincolnshire in October 1937. She rescued the 1830s building when she bought it for £90,000 after seeing an advertisement in Country Life Magazine. It had become derelict and faced being demolished. It had been rumoured that the Duke of Windsor had tried to acquire it, while his Grandfather, Edward V11, had also tried to buy it as a summer palace.

GRANTHAM CASTLE

She renamed it Grantham Castle and restored the interior, filling it with antique furniture from Buckingham Palace and Rufford Abbey, adding the large marble fireplace in the front entrance hall, and the Great Hall’s crystal chandelier which she claimed was the largest in the world. When she moved in, she also introduced electricity to the manor and added many new bathrooms.  She opened the house to the public, collected a library of over 4000 books, many of which were rare occult volumes, and filled the Grand Hall with statues. Her favourite was a bust of Napoleon dressed as Julius Caesar.

GRANTHAM CASTLE

She kept her second husband’s ashes in an urn on the ledge of a stained-glass window in the Great Hall and often attempted to contact his spirit during séances performed in Grantham Castle. Mrs. Van der Elst had a number of psychics who she consulted over the years. She was discerning about whom she let in and  could pick out a fake after just one session.

She hid money under carpets to test her maids’ honesty and banned shooting on the 427-acre estate - despite having a passion for wearing Russian sables.

VIOLET & HER DOG AT GRANTHAM CASTLE

Mrs Van der Elst became disillusioned with the Manor after it was requisitioned for the war effort, when the War Agricultural Committee ploughed up 100 hectares of parkland. She said: “I felt part of me was taken away.”

She had based the Women’s Peace Legion at Grantham Castle, and took out advertisements in national papers claiming women could end war for all time.

She spent much of the Second World War living at her Kensington flat, as the military took over Harlaxton Manor. There she showed extreme bravery, putting out incendiary bombs with buckets of water and driving through a blitz to deliver blankets to the needy and the homeless.

She entered politics and stood three times, unsuccessfully, as a candidate to be a Member of Parliament. Firstly she fought for the Putney constituency at the 1935 General Election as an Independent, coming third. Then she stood for the Southwark Central constituency in the 1940 by-election as the National Government candidate, coming third. And lastly, she fought for the Hornchurch constituency at the 1945 General election as an Independent, coming fourth.

She was also a prolific music composer, publishing (through her own company) more than 200 pieces, despite being unable to read or write a single note of music. She employed professional musicians to do that for her.

MRS VAN DER ELST'S BOOK

She wrote the book On the Gallows in 1937 as part of her efforts to eradicate the death penalty. In the same year she published a collection of 13 ghost stories, The Torture Chamber and Other Stories though her own company Dodge Publishing. These books are incredibly rare nowadays and 1^steditions of them sell on Ebay for between $70 -$400 upwards.The biography of her life written by Charles Gattey is also a very rare book - something no doubt that she would have loved.

As part of her campaign work, Violet fought to keep Ruth Ellis and Charlotte Bryant from being executed - to no avail. After Bryant was hanged, Violet helped find her children a suitable orphanage, and set up a fund to help children who had lost parents because of the death penalty. You can read Charlotte Bryant's story here on the blog.

Mrs. Van der Elst was a great fan of Shakespeare’s tragedies and could quote them word for word.

She had a great love for art and for painting and gave a lot of her money to orphanages and to the poor.

Her social campaigning, charitable acts, eccentric behaviour, and unsuccessful political career did much to reduce her fortune. She was forced her to sell Grantham Castle in 1948 to the Jesuits for a mere £70,000. It is now the UK campus of The University of Evansville, Indiana.

Violet moved into to her flat in in Campden Hill Square, Knightsbridge, London, in 1959. She died alone and forgotten in a nursing home in Ticehurst, Sussex, on 30 April 1966, aged 84.  Her wealth was reduced to just ₤15,528, but she had lived long enough to have seen the abolition of capital punishment for murder in Britain the previous year.

In the 2005 film Pierrepoint, she is played by actress Ann Bell.