The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd (21 page)

Matilda worked hard at the Halls, sometimes appearing at three in one night and very quickly her career began to take off. The stage name Bella Delamare was dropped in favour of the simpler and apparently classier Marie Lloyd and a star was born. By the time she was 18, Marie Lloyd had married a part-time racing tout named Percy Courtenay and had begun to frequent Johnny Cooney’s pub in Hanbury Street after performing at the local music halls such as the Royal Cambridge in Commercial Street. It was probably here that she and her fellow artistes first met Dorset Street landlord, Jack McCarthy and his son, John.

It is not hard to imagine the impression Marie Lloyd made on John McCarthy junior, who at the time was still in his teens. Determined to mirror Lloyd’s success, John junior changed his stage name to Steve McCarthy (probably chosen because his mother’s maiden name was Stevens) and worked hard on his comedy song and dance act in the smaller halls. It was at one of these halls that he met the girl who was to change his life. Her name was Minnie Holyome but on stage she called herself Marie Kendall.

When Steve McCarthy and Marie Kendall first met, both were struggling to make a name for themselves. Due to his father’s burgeoning bank balance and local social standing, Steve possessed a fair degree of confidence that Marie lacked. Although considerably more talented than Steve, she was from a poor home and her parents had struggled to support her in her quest for fame.

Marie Kendall was born in Bethnal Green in 1873 to parents of Huguenot extraction. The unusual surname of Holyome was a corruption of the French Alyome and like so many of the original residents of Spitalfields, her family had originally been skilled silk weavers. However, by the time Marie was born, the silk weaving trade was all but vanished and the family had fallen on hard times. Her father tried a variety of jobs, from fish curing to wood carving, in order to provide for his family and there never seemed to be enough money to go round. However, despite their poverty, the family was close, happy and determined to support their children in their choice of career.

The music halls played a very important part in East End society. As we have seen, most working-class families endured exceptionally hard lives. By the time they entered their teenage years, they would be working up to six days per week for very little money. The lack of a good income meant that they were forced to live in dark, damp, cheerless homes that were often cold and overcrowded.

Like the gin palaces, East End music halls were designed to be the complete opposite of the audiences’ homes. Bright lights illuminated their frontages and the interiors were warm and sumptuously decorated. These ‘mini palaces’ offered a much needed escape from life’s daily grind at an affordable price (admission charges could be as little as 3d). Consequently, they were an extremely popular form of entertainment in Spitalfields and the surrounding areas.

Despite reasonable admission prices, a trip to the music hall was considered a treat for most families. In July 1886, little Minnie Holyome persuaded her mother Mary to take her to a local music hall to celebrate her twelfth birthday. Keen to give her daughter a night to remember, Mary Holyome scraped together the 12d needed for two seats in the front stalls at the Bow Music Hall on the Bow Road. On the bill that night were a turn called ‘The Sisters Briggs’ who entertained the audience with a song called ‘Don’t Look Down On The Irish’ (a reference to the racist views held by some older members of the population.) Like most music hall songs of the period, this number had a simple, easily remembered chorus to which the audience were encouraged to sing along. Little Minnie picked up the melody quickly and sang along with such volume and enthusiasm that it stopped the Sisters Briggs in their tracks. After the performance, the Sisters came front of stage and told Minnie’s mother that her daughter’s exceptional singing voice could prove to be her fortune.

Mary Holyome took the Sisters Briggs’ advice with a pinch of salt and took her daughter home, no doubt hoping she would forget what had been said. But Minnie didn’t forget and pestered her parents to allow her to train as a music hall singer.

The style of singing in music halls was very different to popular singing today. Microphones were unheard of and artistes had to compete with noise from food and drink being served and an often boisterous and drunken audience. In addition, the songs’ lyrics were often highly amusing satires on current affairs and so needed to be heard clearly. Consequently, music hall singers had to enunciate their words extremely precisely in order to be heard over the din of the auditorium. In addition to a good, strong voice and excellent diction, music hall singers had to be supremely confident.

Audiences were notoriously demanding and would regularly pelt artistes they didn’t approve of with food, crockery or any other missiles they could lay their hands on. Terrified of the indignities their young daughter might suffer at the hands of the crowd, Mr and Mrs Holyome wisely packed Minnie off to J. W. Cherry’s Music Hall Academy, Pentonville Road, for three months so she could learn the basics of performance. This act demonstrates how committed the Holyome’s were to their children; music academies were not cheap and at the time, the family had very little money to spare.

Happily, the Holyome’s investment in their eldest daughter paid off. Almost as soon as she completed her course at the academy, Minnie secured her first engagement, by coincidence at the same venue as her encounter with the Sisters Briggs. The concert had been staged to raise funds for local tradesmen and Minnie appeared as a male impersonator (a very popular turn at the time), performing three songs written for her by Fred Bullen, the orchestra leader at the Sebright Music Hall. Minnie impressed the proprietor so much that he engaged her for the following week for 18s.

Following her stint at the Bow Music Hall, Minnie (who had temporarily changed her stage name to Marie Chester) practised her act in a number of small halls throughout the United Kingdom. She also went on tour to Europe, appearing in Germany and Holland. On her return to Britain, she changed her stage name to Marie Kendall and continued to secure work as a male impersonator, appearing quite low on the bills. She also often took the role of Principal Boy in pantomime.

As she approached her twentieth birthday, Marie began to despair of her career ever taking off. She had little trouble getting work in the small halls, but was badly paid and those close to her felt her talent was being underused. In October 1892, she met up with her friend Flo Hastings and complained that her career was not going as well as she had initially hoped. Flo listened intently and then suggested that Marie should dispense with the male impersonation act in favour of ‘going into skirts’ (performing as a woman). In later years, Marie admitted that she didn’t like Flo’s advice but took it, feeling that she had nothing to lose. It was to be the best move she ever made.

Early in 1893, Marie secured a role in a drama called
After Dark,
which was playing at the Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town. A singer named Charlie Deane was also working at the Bedford, performing his hit song
One of the Boys,
a laddish ditty that the male half of the audience loved. Marie and her mother heard the song and thought it would be wonderful if they could persuade Deane to write a female version. One morning, they bumped into Deane at York Corner and Mary asked him if he would write the song for her daughter. ‘She’s a decent little turn,’ said Deane, ‘and if I can help her I’ll be happy to do so’. So it was that Charlie Deane wrote
One of the Girls
and Marie Kendall got her first hit.

Over the following year, Marie’s fortunes turned around. She secured herself a new agent and was soon earning £2 10s per week and playing to packed audiences at halls up and down the country. It was at one her many engagements that she met Steve McCarthy.

Marie Kendall and Steve McCarthy were married on 5 February 1895. Due to their Huguenot roots, Minnie’s parents were understandably dead against her converting to her husband’s Catholic faith, so the couple were wed at St Mary’s, Spital Square; a Protestant church. Steve’s sister Margaret and a friend named Robert Buxton acted as witnesses. Steve listed his father John as being a general dealer, a reference to their shop at 27 Dorset Street. Marie cheekily stated that her father William was a ‘gentleman’.

By the time of their marriage, Marie Kendall was rapidly becoming one of the country’s most successful music hall stars, while Steve had to content himself with having his name much further down the bill. At a time when very few married women enjoyed anything remotely resembling an independent career, Marie’s success must have been a bitter pill for Steve to swallow. To his credit, Steve did his utmost to further his wife’s career, even being responsible for the discovery of what was to become her biggest hit. However, privately he resented her success and the financial independence it afforded her and his resentment often turned to violence. Even on their wedding day, Steve attacked Marie in the back of a Brougham, cutting her forehead open; an incident that was to repeat itself throughout their married life.

Chapter 20

The Landlords Enlarge their Property Portfolios

As Steve and Marie embarked on married life, Jack McCarthy senior had to contend with marked changes in the way he ran his Dorset Street property. In 1894, the police handed control of common lodging houses over to the London County Council. This handover heralded a sea change in the way that this particular business was run. The police had long since regarded common lodging houses as the resorts of criminals rather than homes. Consequently, any inspections concentrated more on the list of inmates than the sanitary conditions therein. This had meant that landlords like Jack McCarthy were under absolutely no pressure to keep up any standard of cleanliness or hygiene.

Once the LCC took over inspections, everything changed. The council officials demanded that all walls in the common lodging houses had to be lime-whited and cleaned every six months ‘to remove the evidence of vermin around the beds, etc.’ In addition, the makeshift bunk-beds and oilskin mattresses were abolished in favour of proper beds and new, clean bedding. The mixed-sex lodging houses (known colloquially as ‘doubles’) were also banned since they had long been recognised as being thinly disguised brothels. Most importantly, the new, cleaner lodging houses would be inspected on a regular basis by council officials.

This dramatic change in the way common lodging houses were run had a dramatic effect on the entire business. Many of the smaller lodging house keepers, especially those who rented the properties, simply could not afford to make the changes and gave their businesses up. Others saw a dramatic decline in revenue as their ‘doubles’ were closed down in favour of single-sex accommodation.

Jack McCarthy gritted his teeth and made the necessary changes, no doubt treating the council inspectors with the utmost reverence whenever they appeared and giving them the two-finger salute on their departure. He even used left-over lime-white to give Miller’s Court a facelift. Whether or not he covered up the bloodstains on the wall of Room 13 remains a mystery.

The arrival of the council inspectors in Spitalfields resulted in many of the older lodging houses being abandoned by their previous lessees. Never one to miss an opportunity, Jack McCarthy used the situation to his advantage and started buying up more property. The lease on a massive lodging house on the corner of Thrawl Street and Brick Lane came up for sale in the spring of 1894, which was duly snapped up by McCarthy. This huge old property could hold up to 141 lodgers and so represented a sizeable revenue. Jack McCarthy presented this new acquisition to his brother Daniel and continued his search for more bargains.

For many years, he had coveted the two houses next door to his shop at 27 Dorset Street, which had been run as a lodging house by Alexander McQueen and his wife for over 20 years. The McQueens had been reluctant to relinquish control over the property, but the new legislation (no doubt coupled with further pressure to sell from Jack McCarthy) finally forced them to reach a decision. McCarthy bought the leases of number 28 and 29 Dorset Street in 1884 and by June, had registered the two houses in his name. These two properties were even more ancient than number 27 Dorset Street and had probably been built in the first half of the 18th century. They had mansard roofs and tiled attics, in which a silk weaver’s loom had once worked. Back in the 1840s, the ground floor of one of the houses had been used as a shop by one of the first Jewish immigrants to the area.

By 1894, the houses were a shadow of their former selves. At some stage, their gardens had been built over and now two mean cottages stood where once there had been trees, grass and flowerbeds. The ground floor of one of the cottages served as the kitchen for all the lodgers, thus making the tiny court a very busy place at mealtimes. In total, the two houses plus the two cottages at the rear were capable of accommodating 50 lodgers.