Miss Marie Lloyd, the famous variety actress and singer, died on Oct. 7 at her residence at Golders Green. In her the public loses, not only a vivid personality whose range and extremely broad humour as a character actress were extraordinary, but also one of the few remaining links with the old music-hall stage of the last century.
Born in 1870, the daughter of John Wood and his wife Matilda (Archer), she made her first appearance, under the name. of Bella Delmere, at the Eagle Music Hall, on May 9, 1885. Six weeks later she sang under her own name at the same hall. The music-halls of the East End—the old Falstaff, Old-street, Belmont's Sebright, and the (Star, Bermondsey—were a valuable experience for ther, and led the way to the Bedford and the Middlesex, Drury-lane. It was at the latter hall—the site of which 1s now covered by the Winter Garden Theatre—that she made her first step in that popularity which never deserted her, with Phe Boy that I love sits up in the Gallery." Tours in the provinces, in the United States, South Africa, and Australia preceded an engagement as "principal girl" at Drury Lane, in the pantomime of Humpty Dumpty, in 1891. In the two following seasons at "Old Drury" she appeared in Little Bo-Peep and Robinson Crusoe. In 1898 she went on tour in a musical play, The ABC, or Flossie the Fri-volans, written for her by Mr. H. Chance Newton. Of the '50 songs which were, at one time or another, immense favourites with her public, "Everything in the—_ garden's. lovely," "Oh, Mr. Porter, what shall I do?" "Then you wink the Other eye," and "Tinldley-om-Pom, are perhaps the best remembered.
It is a great tribute to her powers that she maintained her popularity to the end, being indeed "booked up" for some years ahead. But she did not presume on her fame, for she was a very hard worker, always studying touches from real life wherewith to build up her inimitable impersonation. Her generosity, both public and private, was open-handed, It 18 remembered that in the music-hall strike of 1907 she came out with the others and worked with success a "picket." She was married three times, first to Perey Courtney, then to Alec Hurley, the singer of easter songs, who died in "1913, and lastly to Bernard Dillon, the jockey. and dress accessories—laces, oembroideries, feathers, eto., is that much less now than before the war.
The situation is attributed by the Minister to present feminine fashions which are characterized by an absence of Practically all trimmings and ornaments. He asks the interested trades to ce-operate la seeking a remedy for the situation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.