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Jenny Hill (1848 – June 28, 1896), (born as Elizabeth Jane Thompson) was a popular British music hall performer of the Victorian era known as "The Vital Spark" and "the Queen of the Halls". Her vast repertoire of songs included "Arry", "The Boy I Love Is In The Gallery", "The Little Vagabond Boy", "I've Been a Good Woman to You" and "If I Only Bossed the Show". A later contemporary of Marie Lloyd and Bessie Bellwood, Hill made her stage début at an early age when she performed in ''Mother Goose'' at the Aquarium Theatre in Westminster. Embarking on a career in music hall, Hill sang at, amongst others, the London Pavilion. From 1868 to 1893, Hill was at the peak of her fame, enjoying top-billing at music halls across London and in the northern provencies. In 1879 she became a proprieter of her first music hall in Bermondsey. From 1882 to she kept a public house in Southwark which lasted a year. She later purchased the Rainbow Music Hall (later renamed the Gaiety Theatre) in Southampton in July 1884, but it was destroyed in a fire the same year. On stage, she played Mrs Micawber in an adaptation of ''David Copperfield''; and also played 'Nan' in the 1889 revival of J. B. Buckstone's ''Good for Nothing'' at the Grecian Theatre in Shoreditch. By 1889 the privations she had suffered in her early life were taking their toll, and she was forced to cancel a number of theatrical engagements due to ill health. A tour of New York in 1891 was not a success, and she returned to London. She later appeared at the Luscombe Searelle, Johannesburg, in 1893. By now her health was so poor that she could only be taken onto the stage in her wheelchair where she shook hands with her audience. Returning to Britain in 1894 and in poor health, Hill died in London aged 48. She is buried in Nunhead Cemetery in London. ==Early life== A contemporary of Marie Lloyd and Bessie Bellwood, Jenny Hill was born in Paddington in London to Michael Thompson (1812/13–1881) a Marylebone cab driver. Her stage début was made at the age of six or seven, when she performed as the legs of the goose in the pantomime ''Mother Goose'' at the Aquarium Theatre in Westminster. In about 1860 she made her professional debut at Dr. Johnson's Concert Rooms, traditional 'Song & Supper Rooms' in Fleet Street.〔Laurence Senelick, ‘Hill, Jenny (1848–1896)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 () accessed 26 March 2012〕 In 1862 her father apprenticed her to a publican in Bradford. In return for the chance to sing to the public house's customers until 2 a.m. she suffered great privations which would seriously affect her health in later life, rising at 5 a.m. to polish the pub's pewter, scrubbing floors and bottling beer until her performance began at noon.〔(Frederick Denny's ''Encyclopædia of the British Music Hall'' )〕 On May 28, 1866 aged 18 she married John Wilson Woodley, an acrobat who used the stage name Jean Pasta; he later abandoned her leaving her with three children: Lettie Woodley (1869-17 May 1943) (the music hall performer Peggy Pryde), Jenny Hill Woodley, and a son who seems not to have survived. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jenny Hill (music hall performer)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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