52 Ancestors Challenge - Week 2 - Favourite Find

 

When it comes to family history, finding that elusive marriage or finally locating your relatives in a census or parish register can be exhilarating and worthy of a ‘high five’ but sometimes it is something else that is a favourite find.  It could be a postcard of a town high street with your relative’s shop in full view, finding a photograph of a relative attached to an online family tree, or finding a mention in a newspaper.  Or it could be something more tangible, like my own favourite find.

When I started to research my family history, way back in the 1980s, one of the ancestors that caught my imagination was one of my great-grandfather’s on my paternal side of the family, Henry Alfred (Harry) Sutch¹ born in London (UK) in 1857.  I had always been told that he was a music hall performer and also composed music.

Some of my Dad’s Sutch relatives were musicians and performers, both amateur and professional. His Aunts Nellie and Rose played the piano for the silent films, Ada was a dancer, while Uncle Fred was a whistler, Uncle Harry jnr was a composer (Forgive and Forget and Don’t Bid Me Goodbye) and cousin Dolly ran The Robert Layton Agency.  There was also another cousin, Lee Sutton, who was a drag artiste, who died of a heart attack at Danny La Rue’s Walton Hall Hotel.   Such are the tales I was told from a young age.

In the 1980s some of the Aunties were still alive.  My parents and I met Auntie Ada, who still regularly played the piano for the ‘old folks’ at a community centre near her home in Camberwell.  Auntie Ada gave me one of my most treasured family possessions, the band parts of the songs which she performed, many of which were written by her father and brother. Through Auntie Ada, my Dad also met for the first time cousin Dolly and renewed contact with cousin Florrie, who had been a nurse. 

Cousin Dolly owned a scrapbook, which she very kindly let me photocopy, which is full of family information about  Dolly’s brother, Leslie, who was a blind pianist and composer (Ninette and Holiday of the Toys) and her cousin, Lily Sutch, who was in Tod Slaughter’s theatre company.  There are also many newspaper cuttings about her Granddad, Harry. 

The scrapbook gives tantalising clues about his career on the halls as a double act with his brother and later as a well-respected pianist for charity events, playing for residents at Brinsworth House in Twickenham, Middlesex, the home for retired variety artistes, and for other clubs and societies in the South London area.  There is also a tiny real, very faded, photo of Prince, the champion soldier dog, who was an integral part of the Sutch Brothers N****r Minstrel and Performing Dog Act.

Amongst other family papers given to me by cousin Florrie there was an undated programme from the Brighton Aquarium with Harry Sutch in the ‘Celebrated IDK Minstrels’, a photo of a minstrel troupe, and a programme from a Theatrical Garden Party in 1913 at which Harry Sutch was the pianist. 

The music halls and artistes intrigued me and became a topic of interest, research and eventually performance.  I joined the British Music Hall Society and attended their music hall weekends, taking part in the ‘Members Music Hall’ performances.  I also performed locally raising funds for charities and in London, at the CAA and Hoxton Hall, singing the songs of Marie Lloyd, Vesta Victoria and my speciality siffleuse song, The Whistling Bowery Boy.  

I have found over 100 references to Henry A. Sutch / Harry Sutch in The South London Press, The Era, The Stage and The Daily Herald by using the British Newspaper Archive via www.findmypast.org.uk.  Some are advertisements, for example, ‘Mr Henry Sutch, Quadrille pianist and accompanist, acknowledged as one of the best pianists in South London……’, whilst others are reports of performances he was involved in from the 1870s to 1930s.

Harry’s family lived in Avery Row, Westminster in a house of multiple occupation in the census returns of 1861 and 1871, and in Marylebone in 1841 and 1851.

In the 1870s, he and his brother George were successful as The Brothers Sutch, appearing in music halls in London and the provinces as this advertisement from The Era of 17 Jan 1875, illustrates. There is a similar one is Cousin Dolly’s scrapbook. 

 Henry Alfred Sutch and Jane Matilda Woodman were married in 1877² and they had 10 children all of whom lived to adulthood.   After his marriage Harry and Jane moved to Lambeth and Newington in South London where they raised their large family.

Harry must have ‘settled down’ after his marriage and with his ever-increasing family needed to have a regular income, so a piano tuner by day and tickling the ivories all over South London by night!

In the 1880s-1900s, he was a pianist / accompanist at the popular concerts at The Horns in Kennington, concerts for The Queen’s Regiment, and for many other events in the South London, and for the ‘Old Folks’ dinners at Brinsworth House.   A report in The Era of 11 January 1928 states that ‘Mr Harry Sutch, for the twenty-first time, acted as an efficient accompanist’.  

In the South London Press, 3 March 1895 an article states that ‘Mr Henry A. Sutch has resided in South London for 18 years.  His popularity shows no signs of easing, for he has over 100 engagements this season. Mr Sutch has had the usual ‘ups and downs’ of the profession.  He made a start in life as a pianist at the old Temperance Hall in Dudley Street, Seven Dials, and he could a tale unfold of the early days of many stars of to-day’.  I will have to find out more about the Temperance Hall in Dudley Street.  

Harry was a composer of some published, many unpublished, tunes and songs, some of which are in the band parts given to me by Auntie Ada dating from when she was a ‘Serio and Dancer’³.  Most of the music is handwritten.

I have recordings of all the music, but I wish I had the words too!  Unfortunately, Auntie Ada could not remember many of the words but still remembered parts of some of the tunes and proudly stated she played the cornet at the beginning of ‘Terry, my Territorial’.

But the most interesting item I have discovered in a newspaper so far is an article from The Daily Herald, 9 January 1939. 

Harry died in April 1939, shortly after this newspaper article appeared.  My Dad and his sister Nellie could remember when the newspaper came out and how proud they were of seeing Granddad Sutch’s picture.  You get a flavour of the man from that opening quote.  What a character!  I do wish I had met him. 

But what of my favourite find, apart from finding a wealth of information from newspapers about my ancestor? 

You may remember that Harry was a composer, with some of his musical compositions actually being published.

On looking on the popular auction site Ebay I was delighted to find an original copy of Harry’s music called the The Queen’s Barn Dance (Francis, Day & Hunter, 1897), dedicated to Col. F. W. Haddan V.D. 4^th Vol^r Battⁿ “The Queen’s” (Royal West Surrey Regiment).

From my research he also seems to have had published three other compositions, La Cygne - Valse (c.1894), Our Little Darlings – Schottische (c1892) and The Cricket Bat Polka (c.1892) which was dedicated to W.G. Grace.  I wonder if I will find any more.

A copy of the ‘dots’ of The Cricket Bat Polka has so far proved elusive.  There is an illustration of the front cover in A Song for Cricket by David Rayven Allen (Pelham Books, 1981) but I have so far been unsuccessful in tracking a copy down for my family archive. 

 

Notes

1.       GRO Birth. 1857, Sep Qtr  Sutch, Henry Alfred  St Geo Hanover Sq, 1a 181.  [Copy Birth Certificate. 13 June 1857 at 13 Avery Row, New Bond Street, Henry Alfred, Boy, son of Henry Sutch & Eliza Sutch formerly Israel. Journeyman Shoemaker.  Informant: Eliza Sutch, Mother, 13 Avery Row, Bond Street, Twenty fifth July 1857].

2.       1877, July 15.  Henry Alfred Sutch, a bachelor, of full age, a Musician, living at 10 Avery Row, son of Henry Sutch, a Bootmaker.  Jane Matilda Woodman, a spinster, of full age, also of 10 Avery Row, daughter of Henry Woodman, a Butcher.  Both signed their names.  The witnesses were a Henry Sutch and Jane Woodman. 

3.       I have the Band parts for Pianoforte, 1^st Violin, 2^nd Violin, Bass, Trombone, Cornet, Euphonium, Flute, Clarinet & Drums.  The songs are titled ‘Maudie’ the Flower Girl (by Henry A. Sutch), Oh you are a Saucy Girl – Romp Song (by Henry A. Sutch), Go’way from Idaho (Music Henry A. Sutch, Words H. S. Sutch), The Darktown Cakewalk (by Edward Hesse), ‘Frisco’ -  Dance,  2 step (by Frank Brockett), Go’way Mr Jackson Please (by Henry A. Sutch), Hope for the Best or There Yet May Be Sunshine (by Henry A. Sutch), Don’t Bid me Goodbye (by H. S. Sutch), I’m Your Little Girlie, I am (by H.S. Sutch), You’re a Nice sort of Fellow (by H. S. Sutch), We’ll Stick to the Ship, Dad (By H.S. Sutch), Will You ever learn to love me? (by H. S. Sutch), Judy’s Wedding (by Bert Wilkes), My Drummer Boy, ‘Terry’, my Territorial (by H.A. Sutch).  There is also a list of the songs sung by Fred Garrick, Ada’s brother, who was a whistler.