Rebel Britannia

February 12th 1870:

She sits among the cabbages and peas - and while she's doing that, she plots the downfall of the bosses.

Matilda Alice Victoria Wood (12th February 1870 - 7th October 1922), who performed under the name Marie Lloyd, was one of the biggest showbiz stars this country has ever seen, and she was also a rebel from top to bottom.

She was only 15 when she became famous, singing The Boy I love Is Up in the Gallery, and before long was topping the bill at prestigious theatres. Her earnings, as "the Queen of the Music Hall," were extraordinary: as early as the 1890s she was being paid £100 a week in panto. (Average UK income in 1900 was around £40 a year).

Many of Marie Lloyd's most famous numbers are still familiar today, including Oh! Mr Porter; My Old Man Said Follow the Van (And Don't Dilly Dally on the Way); and the song which many of us believe should be Britain's national anthem: A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good.

Her peculiar genius as a performer was in characterisation. The narrator of each of her songs (as often as not a woman downtrodden by poverty and by the hypocrisies of the age) was individually brought alive by Lloyd's mastery of tone and gesture. The songs were, on the surface, jaunty singalongs, but they were also authentic and recognisable slices of working-class life.

Lloyd's enjoyment of innuendo, in which she engaged in a collaboration with the audience through saucy nods and winks and by stressing particular words, was a big part of her appeal, and often got her into trouble with censors. Sadly, the legend that when she was stopped from singing the lyric "She sits among the cabbages and peas" she changed it to "She sits among the cabbages and leaks," is probably apocryphal; the only song know to contain the "cabbages and peas" line was written after her death.

It's certainly true that she was banned from appearing in the first ever Royal Command Performance in 1912 - either because of her lyrical naughtiness, or her trade union activities, or both. She responded by staging her own show on the same night under the slogan that all her performances were by command - "of the British public." It was a sell-out, of course.

Marie Lloyd was a suffrage supporter and a dedicated trade unionist, elected in 1906 as the first president of the Music Hall Ladies Guild. She was also an activist in the newly-formed Variety Artistes' Federation, set up to oppose attempts by theatre owners to force lesser-known performers to put on more shows for the same money.

She herself was not affected by such measures, because of her status. Even so, in 1907, when the VAF (which is now part of Equity) went on strike and picketed West End venues, Lloyd gave large sums to the hardship fund and was prominent on the picket lines - something for which the managements never forgave her. It was during this dispute that the (by all accounts) not excessively talented singer Belle Elmore was spotted crossing the line amid cries of "Blackleg!" Lloyd, however, called out that she should be allowed to go into work, on the grounds that she was more use to the strike performing inside the theatre than she would be picketing outside it.

(This, too, may be legendary, but it's said that, when word got around that Marie Lloyd was performing her songs on the picket line, the entire audience deserted the theatre in order to hear their idol. Belle Elmore, incidentally, has another footnote in history, a terrible one: in 1910, her husband, Dr Crippen, was hanged for her murder.)

The two-week strike ended in victory for the union. But Lloyd's off-stage life was less happy than her glittering career as a performer and union leader. At least two of her husbands were violent to her. She felt lastingly humiliated on arriving in the USA in 1913 to begin a tour, along with the man who would become her final husband, when they were both detained under the White Slave Act because they were travelling together though not yet legally married. This absurdity produced one of her best-remembered quips, when a local reporter later asked what she thought of America. Pointing to the Statue of Liberty she replied: "I love your sense of humour."

With failing powers and poor health, and a growing dependence on alcohol, snubbed by vengeful employers, and notoriously spendthrift even for someone who continued to earn huge sums, so that in her last years she was essentially broke, Marie Lloyd was just 52 when she died. By then, she was arguably a faded star from a previous century, but her public hadn't forgotten her: 50,000 mourners turned out for her funeral.

*

Sources:

Morning Star, 7th June 2008

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-595f-From-stage-to-picket-line

http://ourhistory-hayes.blogspot.com/2012/02/marie-lloyd-english-music-hall-singer.html

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/census/events/polecon3.htm

www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/marie-lloyd/

The "Quote...Unquote" Newsletter, July 2022

www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-notorious-case-of-dr-crippen/

www.vancouverisawesome.com/history/vancouver-was-awesome-marie-lloyd-1914-1929633

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVDbZ-uDh-g

www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/23015307.marie-lloyd-queen-music-hall-celebrated-100-years/