Solo Women

Jenny Hill "The Vital Spark"

She was the daughter of a cabby on a Marylebone rank, who thought it would be a fine thing for his girl if she learnt the trade of a "serio-comic". Accordingly, he apprenticed her to a North Country publican. In return for the privilege of singing to farmers until two in the morning, she had to get up at five a.m. in order to scrub floors, polish pewter and bottle beer until the performance began at noon.

She married an acrobat, who taught her his trade so vigorously that she felt the effects to the end of her life, and left her, barely out of her ‘teens, stranded with a baby. She waited day after day in the agents’ offices, until one sent her with a note to the Pavilion. The manager read: "Don’t trouble to see bearer. I have merely sent her up to get rid of her. She’s troublesome." The manager decided to give her a chance. That night she "stopped the show," and Leybourne was kept waiting in the wings. As they continued to applaud, he picked her up in his arms and held her up to view. She earned enough by dancing the " Cellar Flap," by her song as "The Coffee-Shop Girl" and by her "male impersonations" to buy the Hermitage and its farmlands at Streatham.