|
J. W. Cragg
John Williams Cragg (born John Williams; 27 May 1846 – 24 October 1931), known as Papa Cragg, was a British acrobat who founded a family troupe of acrobats often known as The Marvellous Craggs. They were popular in music hall and variety shows between about 1863 and 1917. He was born in Manchester, the son of Edward Williams and Mary Cragg, and initially worked in a printing office. He first appeared on stage in a flying trapeze act with a partner in 1862, joining George Sanger's circus soon afterwards, when they were known as the DeCastro Brothers. Both Cragg and his partner married, and the two couples worked together as a quartet of acrobats around the country's music halls, before the partner left. Cragg then formed a family troupe with his wife, two sons and a daughter. They toured widely, and became known as "The Marvellous Craggs". The troupe made four trips to Australia, the first in 1873, and also toured New Zealand, India, the United States, and frequently in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acrobat
Acrobatics () is the performance of human feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination. Acrobatic skills are used in performing arts, sporting events, and martial arts. Extensive use of acrobatic skills are most often performed in acro dance, circus, and gymnastics, and to a lesser extent in other athletic activities including ballet, slacklining and diving. Although acrobatics is most commonly associated with human body performance, the term is used to describe other types of performance, such as aerobatics. History Acrobatic traditions are found in many cultures, and there is evidence that the earliest such traditions occurred thousands of years ago. For example, Minoan art from c. 2000 BC contains depictions of acrobatic feats on the backs of bulls. Ancient Greeks practiced acrobatics, and the noble court displays of the European Middle Ages would often include acrobatic performances that included juggling. In China, acrobatics have been a part of the culture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls Rebranding, rebranded their entertainment as Variety show, variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous ''Music Hall'' and subsequent, more respectable ''Variety show, Variety'' differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, #Speciality acts, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts. Originating in Bar (establishment), saloon bars within public houses during the 1830s, music hall entertainment became increasingly popular with audiences. So much so, that during the 1850s some public houses were demolished, and specialised music hall theatres developed in their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variety Show
Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a compère (master of ceremonies) or host. The variety format made its way from the Victorian era stage in Britain and America to radio and then television. Variety shows were a staple of English language television from the late 1940s into the 1980s. While still widespread in some parts of the world, such as in the United Kingdom with the '' Royal Variety Performance'', and South Korea with '' Running Man'', the proliferation of multichannel television and evolving viewer tastes have affected the popularity of variety shows in the United States. Despite this, their influence has still had a major effect on late night television whose late-night talk shows and NBC's variety series '' Saturday Night Live'' (which originally premiered in 197 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87 million. The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman Britain, Roman fort (''castra'') of ''Mamucium'' or ''Mancunium'', established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers River Medlock, Medlock and River Irwell, Irwell. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorialism, manorial Township ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flying Trapeze
The flying trapeze is a specific form of the trapeze in which a performer jumps from a platform with the trapeze so that gravity makes the trapeze swing. The performance was invented in 1859 by a Frenchman named Jules Léotard, who connected a bar to some ventilator cords above the swimming pool in his father's gymnasium in Toulouse, France. After practicing tricks above the pool, Leotard performed his act in the Cirque Napoleon (now known as the Cirque d'hiver). The traditional flier's costume, the leotard, is named after him. Trapeze acts In a traditional flying trapeze act, flyers mount a narrow board (usually by climbing a tall ladder) and take off from the board on the fly bar. The flyer must wait for a call from the catcher to make sure he or she leaves at the correct time. Otherwise, the catcher will not be close enough to the flyer to make a successful catch. The flier then performs one of many aerial tricks and is caught by the catcher, who is swinging from a sep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord George Sanger
'Lord' George Sanger (23 December 1825 – 28 November 1911) was an English showman and circus proprietor. Born to a showman father, he grew up working in travelling peep shows. He successfully ran shows and circuses throughout much of the nineteenth century with his brother John. He retired in 1905 and was murdered by a disgruntled employee in 1911. Early life Sanger was born on 23 December, probably 1825, in Newbury, Berkshire to James Sanger. James Sanger, the son of a Wiltshire farmer, had been pressed into the service of the Royal Navy at a young age, where he learned conjuring tricks, and later, as a navy pensioner, became a showman. He and his wife, named Sarah Elliott, travelled the country in a caravan, showing human curiosities and a peep show. After they began to have children, the family settled in Trowbridge and then Newbury, where George was born. George Sanger was the sixth of ten children, and the youngest son. The children grew up helping with their father ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leigh, Greater Manchester
Leigh is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester, England, on low-lying land northwest of Chat Moss. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, Leigh was originally the centre of a large ecclesiastical parish covering six vills or townships. When the three townships of Pennington, Westleigh and Bedford merged in 1875, forming the Leigh Local Board District, Leigh became the official name for the town, although it had been applied to the area of Pennington and Westleigh around the parish church for many centuries. The town became an urban district in 1894 when part of Atherton was added. In 1899 Leigh became a municipal borough. The first town hall was built on King Street and replaced by the present building in 1907. Originally an agricultural area (noted for dairy farming), domestic spinning and weaving led to a considerable silk industry and, in the 20th century, the cotton industry. Leigh also exploited the underlying coal mea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Order Of Water Rats
The Grand Order of Water Rats is a British entertainment industry fraternity and charitable organisation based in London. Founded in 1889 by the music hall comedians Joe Elvin and Jack Lotto, the order is known for its high-profile membership and benevolent works (primarily within the performing industries). Origin In 1889, two British music hall performers, Joe Elvin and Jack Lotto, owned a trotting pony called "Magpie". As the pony was a regular race winner, its owners decided that they would use the profits to help performers who were less fortunate than themselves.Charlie Chester, ''The Grand Order of Water Rats: A Legend of Laughter'' – W.H. Allen, London (1984) pg 12 One day, as Elvin was driving the pony back to its stables in the pouring rain, a passing bus driver called out, "Wot yer got there, mate?" "Our trotting pony!" replied Elvin. Observing the bedraggled, soaked condition of the pony, the driver shouted back, "Trotting pony? Looks more like a bleedin' European ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kennington Road
Kennington Road is a long straight road, approximately a mile in length, in the London Borough of Lambeth in London, England, running south from Westminster Bridge Road (at the junction with Baylis Road to the north-east) to Kennington Park Road. The road is designated as the A23. Formerly open land, in 1751, a year after Westminster Bridge was opened, it was constructed by the Turnpike Trustees to improve communication from the bridge to routes south of the river Thames. With the growing popularity of Brighton as a resort in the later eighteenth century it became part of the route there, used by George IV on his excursions there and later for other London to Brighton events such as the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. Lambeth North Underground station is located at the north end of the road at the junction with Westminster Bridge Road. The Imperial War Museum (formerly the Bethlem Royal Hospital) is to the east, in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, south of the junction wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1846 Births
Events January–March * January 5 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Country with the United Kingdom. * January 13 – The Milan–Venice railway's bridge, over the Venetian Lagoon between Mestre and Venice in Italy, opens, the world's longest since 1151. * February 4 – Many Mormons begin their migration west from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Great Salt Lake, led by Brigham Young. * February 10 – First Anglo-Sikh War: Battle of Sobraon – British forces defeat the Sikhs. * February 18 – The Galician slaughter, a peasant revolt, begins. * February 19 – United States president James K. Polk's annexation of the Republic of Texas is finalized by Texas president Anson Jones in a formal ceremony of transfer of sovereignty. The newly formed Texas state government is officially installed in Austin. * February 20– 29 – Kraków uprising: Galician slaughter – Polish nationalists stage an uprising in the Free City o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1931 Deaths
Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia. * January 25 – Mohandas Gandhi is again released from imprisonment in India. * January 27 – Pierre Laval forms a government in France. February * February 4 – Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gives a speech calling for rapid industrialization, arguing that only strong industrialized countries will win wars, while "weak" nations are "beaten". Stalin states: "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us." The first five-year plan in the Soviet Union is intensified, for the industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. * February 10 � ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Hall Performers
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect of all human societies, a cultural universal. While scholars agree that music is defined by a few specific elements, there is no consensus on their precise definitions. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance, though the topic itself extends into academic disciplines, criticism, philosophy, and psychology. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice. In some musical contexts, a performance or composition may be to some extent improvised. For instance, in Hindustani classical music, the performer plays spontaneously while following a partially defined structure and using characteristic motifs. In modal jazz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_-_BL.jpg "Click for more on -> Lord George Sanger")
