Lily Florence Knight 1893-1952, seen here in 1940, around the time war forced her departure from the Palladium.

A number of Twitter users expressed interest when I tweeted recently about finding an obituary for my great grandmother, Lily Knight, in The Stage Archive (https://archive.thestage.co.uk).

Although my great grandmother was not on the stage, our family knew that she had always worked in the theatre world. Her daughter, my grandmother, grew up around the theatre, and Lily’s grandchildren were treated to notable performances at the London Palladium. The tradition continued when my cousins and I were taken for our annual trip to West End theatres during summer holiday visits to Grandma in London.

Lily adored her work: she became privy to all manner of backstage secrets and met the toast of the London stage. Her life in the theatre covered the music hall period from Marie Lloyd through the years of variety and the emergence of cinema, into the dance craze, the light comedies of Noel Coward, Repertory theatre, and the dominance of classical actors such as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Peggy Ashcroft, Michael Redgrave and Alec Guinness.

The discovery of the obituary filled the gaps in my knowledge of Lily’s career, pinpointing the exact theatres in which she worked and identifying some of her colleagues and employers.

Lily Florence Knight began life in 1893, in a laundry in Stoke Newington. By the time of the 1911 census, Lily was working as a clerk in the establishment of a ‘Musical Agent’. Although Lily was just 17 years old, she had used all the intelligence, charm and looks at her disposal to make a career for herself away from the laundry. Her ambition was spurred by the contrast between the laundry she called home and the glamour of the early twentieth century stage.

The obituary revealed that Lily had begun her career even earlier than 1911, when she ‘in her early teens’, working in the office of a ‘William Henshall’ – the aforementioned musical agent. Around this time, Lily married Sydney Spencer and gave birth to two children. In order to keep working Lily retained her maiden name and was always known professionally as ‘Miss’. According to the obituary, Henshall gave up the agency in the 1920s and it was then that Lily began working as a secretary at the Alexandra Theatre in Stoke Newington. During the twenties, the Alexandra housed pantomimes, films (it had been an early cinema for a short period) and circus performances.

More details about this theatre can be found at the Music Hall and Theatre History Website: http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/AlexandraTheatreStokeNewington.htm Some of its posters and programmes 1897-1935 are held at Hackney Archives (currently being moved to a new location) http://www.hackney.gov.uk/ca-archives.htm

A few years later, possibly after the closure of the Alexandra in 1935, Lily transferred to the London Palladium – then one of the most celebrated theatres in the world, and in the heart of the West End. The Palladium was celebrated for its variety acts, and from 1935-39 saw a number of performances from the group later known as The Crazy Gang, which featured the composers Flanagan and Allen, as well as Jimmy Nervo, Teddy Knox, Charlie Naughton and Jimmy Gold. Here Lily worked as a secretary for the managers George Rhodes Parry and (later) Charles Hutchinson. Other acts of the 1930s who played the Palladium were the comedian Jack Benny, singer Paul Robeson, the musicians, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway, the actress Ethel Barrymore, the dancer and singer Josephine Baker, and the singer and entertainer Fats Waller (http://www.reallyuseful.com/theatres/london-palladium/history-1 ).

During this period that Lily worked closely with the man in charge of bookings and, from 1945, the Managing Director of the Palladium, Val Parnell.

Valentine Parnell (1892-1972), had begun his career as an office-boy, and later became a famous theatrical impresario and television producer. Val had been born in Hackney, and married firstly Dorothy O’Connell in 1913. In 1911 he was living with his ventriloquist father at 7 Wiltshire Road, Brixton. A biography and photographs of Val Parnell, can be seen at http://www.teletronic.co.uk/val_parnell.htm

When war intervened, leading to the temporary closure of the Palladium in 1940, Lily took a position at the BBC. A few years later, in September 1943, she moved to the head office of the theatre owners, Moss Empires, working for Charles Henry, the head of the Press department and the chief of production. From 1946, Moss Empires owned the London Palladium, enabling Lily to keep in touch with old friends. More detail on how Moss Empires was run by a small staff at Cranbourne Mansions in Leicester Square can be read at http://glasgow-empire.webs.com/howmossempiresworked.htm

Jack Sullivan, who had had been away serving in war, returned to Moss Empires and separated the Press department, taking Lily as his secretary. After he moved on, she continued to work for his successor John Carlsen.

However, this happy period was soon to end. In 1952, Lily was struck down by cancer of the oesophagus. Her obituary stated that, ‘After a short illness, during most of which she felt it her duty to carry on until it was impossible for her to continue, she was admitted to the Wanstead Hospital, where, after an operation, she died last Friday, May 23.’ Although it was known she was ill, she had been expected to return home after the operation. Lily’s death in hospital at the age of only 58 shocked her husband, children and grandchildren. And, as the obituary shows, Lily was to be mourned deeply by her beloved theatre world:

Her great knowledge of the business and unfailing helpful attitude to the many inquirers day to day were invaluable, and her loss is grievously felt. . . . Val Parnell said: ‘I knew Lily Knight personally for a great number of years. She was a most likeable person, and we shall all miss her very much indeed.’

The Stage, May 29, 1952, p4

Further Reading: Christopher Woodward, The London Palladium: The Story of the Theatre and Its Stars (Jeremy Mills Publishing, 2009)

 In Highgate days that gap was yawning wide,

But awe and mystery were everywhere,

Most in the purple dark of thin St. Anne’s

John Betjeman

St Anne Brookfield is a parish in the north of the modern borough of Camden, and formally in the civil parish of St Pancras, and the old Pancras registration district. Originally stretching into Kentish Town, the estate of Brookfield bordered Hampstead Heath and Highgate, where its heights and rural air refreshed those emerging from the miasma of inner London.

The site of the church on the steep hill of Highgate Rise (now Highgate West Hill) was originally home to the Cow and Hare. This was conveyed to Richard Barnett Esq. by Harry Chester and his wife in 1838. After Richard’s death in 1851, his sister, Anne Barnett, erected the church of St Anne, Brookfield. The church was built in the Early English style and dedicated in 1853, just a few years before Anne’s own death in 1858.

St Anne’s peal of bells was given by the parish’s most famous resident, of the enormously rich Angela Burdett Coutts (1814-1906). Believed to be the richest woman in England, Baroness Burdett Coutts (as she later became) was a close friend of Charles Dickens and the inheritress of the fortune of bank owner, Thomas Coutts (her grandfather). On the death of her grandfather’s wife, she inherited all the land between Swain’s Lane and Highgate West Hill (except the Cow and Hare) in 1837, and bought the remaining land in the parish from the Chester Trustees in 1856. Her rural home, The Holly Lodge, lay just behind the church, but was demolished in the 1920s when it was replaced with the current Holly Lodge Estate.

Other notable features of the area are Highgate Cemetery and Holly Village (featured on the gothic episode of Grand Designs).

Transcriptions of monumental inscriptions for other churches in St Pancras, compiled Frederick Teague Cansick (1889), can be consulted at Camden Local Studies and Archives. LMA hold Bishops’ Transcripts for the church in reference DL/T/064, and London diocesan visitation returns for 1858 and 1862 are held at Lambeth Palace Library in references Tait 440/128 and Tait 441/237. Latter-Day Saints information on this parish can be found at https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Brookfield_St_Anne,_Middlesex

Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman (1906-84), who was baptised at the church on 25 November 1906, lived for the first three years of his life at nearby Parliament Hill Mansions. The former ‘John Betjemann’ (his family changed their name in the Great War) referred to the church in his poem, NW5 & N6.

Whilst Betjeman was educated at the prestigious Highgate School, poorer parish children attended the National School of St Ann(e) Brookfield, built in 1870. Some pupils of this school lived in the parish of St Mary Brookfield – the next parish in the ‘Not on ancestry’ blog series.

Sources: ‘Additional Churches’, Survey of London: volume 24: The parish of St Pancras part 4: King’s Cross Neighbourhood (1952), pp. 140-146; ‘Nos 45 and 46 West Hill’, Survey of London: volume 17: The parish of St Pancras part 1: The village of Highgate (1936), pp. 67-68; John Betjeman, Summoned By Bells (1960)

Gate of Highgate East Cemetery, Chester Road

A gate at Holly Village showing gothic detail

The recently indexed parish registers on ancestry.co.uk have proved invaluable in my research for clients with London ancestors. Previously, locating a vital event such as a baptism, marriage or burial before 1837 required lengthy searches through the microfilms at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA).

Even when a birthplace was discovered on a later census, this did not lead me to the correct church. Families often had their children baptised at a number of parishes in the area – particularly in the City where, even today, thirty eight churches survive within one square mile. One family I researched lived at the same address in Southwark throughout the period their children were born, but the baptisms took place at three separate churches: Southwark St George the Martyr, Southwark St Saviour, and St Giles Camberwell. For those unfamiliar with the area, this can be readily explained by the fact that St George the Martyr and St Saviour are in the same road (Borough High Street).

Since the digitization of the LMA’s London parish registers and the Guildhall Manuscript Library’s City parish registers (now held at LMA), life is easier. My London research is speedier and, often, cheaper. However, clients can be concerned when they can’t find their ancestors on ancestry. They know they lived in London; they were born in London, they died in London – so why aren’t they there?

The answer is that ancestry has only been able to digitize records if the original parish register is held at LMA. This can be confusing: St Giles in the Fields parish registers, for example, can be searched at LMA on microfilm. One set of its records from 1800-1812 can even be found on ancestry. But the original is still retained by the church.

There are four batches of London parish registers that have been uploaded to the ancestry website:

1. London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812

2. London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906

3. London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921

4. London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980

The separation into pre-1812 and post-1813 registers marks the enforcement of George Rose’s Act in 1812. This followed up on Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1754, designed to stop clandestine marriages. Disorder continued, however, and Rose insisted that all baptisms, marriages and burials be recorded in separate registers. These registers were specially printed with columns marked for ‘When Baptized’, ‘Child’s Christian Name’, ‘Parents Name’, ‘Abode’, ‘Quality, Trade, or Profession’ and ‘By whom the Ceremony was Performed’. From 1813, registers are thus more organized and the content is less of a surprise.

So, clients ask, what is on ancestry and what isn’t? I visited LMA to clarify. Happily, I discovered that an official list is currently being compiled for publication on ancestry some time soon. In the meantime, there are lists in the LMA search room of churches whose registers have not been deposited with LMA.

Using this list, and comparing with what is on the ancestry site, I propose to write a series of blogs on the parishes that are not on ancestry. This will incorporate information on the records, my experience of researching that parish, and some social history of the area.

The first series of blogs will cover the modern London boroughs whose records I research most frequently: Camden, the City, Islington, and Tower Hamlets. I shall also blog a little on the Westminster churches whose records are held at neither LMA nor Westminster City Archives.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog and that you return to read about the first church in the Camden series – my own parish church of St Anne Brookfield (established 1853).