Jenny Hill (music hall performer)
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Jenny Hill (c. 1848 – 28 June 1896), born Elizabeth Jane Thompson, was an English music hall performer of the Victorian era known as "The Vital Spark" and "the Queen of the Halls". Her repertoire of songs included "'Arry", "The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery", "The Little Vagabond Boy", "I've Been a Good Woman to You" and "If I Only Bossed the Show".
Hill made her stage début at an early age in a pantomime version of Mother Goose at the Aquarium Theatre in Westminster. After a difficult apprenticeship at a public house, she embarked on a career in music hall by 1868. She made a success at the London Pavilion, and until 1890 she was at the peak of her fame, enjoying top-billing at music halls across London and in the northern provinces. In 1879 she became the proprietor of her first music hall and later owned or operated several more, but without success.
By 1889 her health was declining, and she was forced to cancel a number of theatrical engagements. After a tour of New York in 1891, she returned to London where she made some appearances until 1894, but was mostly in poor health.
A contemporary of Marie Lloyd and Bessie Bellwood, Jenny Hill was born in Paddington, London, to Michael Thompson (1812/13–1881) a Marylebone cab driver. Her stage début was made at the age of six or seven, when she performed as the legs of the goose in the pantomime Mother Goose at the Aquarium Theatre in Westminster. In about 1860 she made her professional debut at Dr Johnson's Concert Rooms, traditional "Song & Supper Rooms" in Fleet Street.[1] In 1862 her father apprenticed her to a publican in Bradford. In return for the chance to sing to the public house's customers until 2 a.m. she suffered great privations, which would seriously affect her health in later life, rising at 5 a.m. to polish the pub's bar and pewter, washing glasses, scrubbing floors and bottling beer until her performance began at noon.[2]
On 28 May 1866, aged 18, she married John Wilson Woodley, an acrobat known by the stage name Jean Pasta; he later abandoned her, leaving her with three children, one of whom became the music hall performer Peggy Pryde.[3][4]
Music hall career
In London, Hill was engaged for a tryout at the London Pavilion, a music hall, where her song stopped the show. The popular entertainer George Leybourne led her back onto the stage for an encore.[4][5] By 1871 she was earning £6 a week at the London Pavilion. The theatrical agent Hugh J. Didcott gave the expressive, witty and vivacious Hill the sobriquet "The Vital Spark", which she used throughout her career.[1]
Hill remained at the peak of her career until 1890, enjoying top-billing at music halls in London and the northern provinces. One source claimed that she appeared at three or four different halls a night, earning £30 at each hall.[3] Her repertoire was varied and ranged from the tuneful "Maggie Murphy's Home" to the melodramatic "Masks and Faces". As a music hall manager she was less successful. In 1879 she purchased the Star Music Hall in Bermondsey (where Bessie Bellwood had made her debut), and from July 1882 to 1883 she kept a public house in Southwark. She purchased the Rainbow Music Hall (later renamed the Gaiety Theatre) in Southampton in July 1884. Opening in September 1884 after refurbishment, it burned down in December of the same year.[1][4] In the straight theatre she played, among other roles, Nan in the 1889 revival of J. B. Buckstone's Good for Nothing in Shoreditch.[6]
