Song Writers

Joseph Bryan Geoghegan

Song writer, manager and chairman.

He wrote over 200 songs for the music hall including "10,000 miles away" and "Down in the Coalmine" but only seven are currently known/listed.

He was born in Barton upon Irwell, Lancashire in 1816 and died in Bolton, January 1889. During his lifetime he was the manager of several music halls in Lancashire including being Manager and chairman of the Star & Museum Music Hall in Bolton which burned down in 1852. "The Northern Music Hall" by Geoff Mellor - This will be copied from the book whenever I get it again FD

Michael Kilgarriff lists a further five songs in 'Sing us One of the Old Songs' but not the two mentioned above.

October 2000: There is a CD in preparation by a group called Strawhead. It will feature one or more of JBG's
songs, certainly "10,000 miles "and possibly "Down in the Coalmine". The track list is not yet finalised.

This group has also produced a Victorian Ballads CD track titles of which may be seen on their web site at www.strawhead.org.uk
Much of the above information above was supplied by Jude Flint who is researching for sleeve notes to accompany the forthcoming Strawhead CD.

Both Jude ( jude.flint50@freeserve.co.uk) and myself would be most interested in learning more about him.

Peter Charlton adds "Popular Leisure & the Music Hall in 19th Century Bolton" by Robert Poole, published by the Centre for North-West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster in 1982, has a little on J.B.G on page 65 (there may be other mentions but this book, annoyingly, does not have an index).  It describes him as a "vigorous" chairman!