Marie Lloyd
With eight brothers and sisters to compete with, Matilda Alice Victoria Wood craved attention, so much so, that as a child she would gatecrash strangers’ funerals and fall about weeping in order to get an audience.
Born in 1870 in Plumber Street, Hoxton, she grew up to change her name to Marie Lloyd, and become the most famous comic singer of her day. Dubbed the ‘Queen Of The Music Hall’ and ‘Our Marie’, she was renowned for her shocking private life and saucy songs full of double-meanings, accompanied by suggestive winks and gestures.
Music was the young Matilda’s great love and, with her sisters Daisy, Alice and Rose, she formed the Fairy Bells Minstrels. Wearing costumes designed by their mother, the girls sang temperance songs like Throw Down The Bottle And Never Drink Again in local church halls. Daisy, Alice and Rose all went on to have theatrical careers, but it is Matilda who is remembered today.
Her first solo appearance was at the Eagle Tavern in Shepherdess Walk, Shoreditch. Under the name Bella Delamare she sang two songs then danced an Irish jig. The audience loved her and she was soon working at two or three venues a night. Her hard work paid off and Matilda was soon a success, changing her name again to the one she is remembered by today.
By modern standards, Marie’s act would seem tame, but at the time she was considered outrageously vulgar. Eventually she had to appear before the Vigilance Committee, where she sang ‘Oh! Mister Porter’, and ‘A Little Of What You Fancy’ – but with none of her trademark cheekiness, so both songs seemed perfectly innocent. But when she treated the committee to ‘Come Into The Garden Maud’, a genteel drawingroom ballad with lyrics by Lord Tennyson, she made it sound so rude they were shocked into silence.
Two of Marie’s three marriages were marred by drinking and violence, and she left her second husband for a man almost half her age. On arriving in the USA, they were refused entry and threatened with deportation on the grounds of ‘moral turpitude’ because they were unmarried.
When her third marriage failed, Marie began drinking heavily and as a result her work suffered. In October 1922, she collapsed on stage at Edmonton during the last song of her act – ‘It’s A Bit Of A Ruin That Cromwell Knocked About A Bit’ – in which she usually pretended to be drunk. The audience thought a bad fall was part of the show and laughed, but Marie was carried off desperately ill. She died three days later at the age of only 52, a sad end for a girl whose career began singing songs warning others of the evils of alcohol.
Page updated: 14 Nov 2008