Mick Glover who wrote the book “St Peters and the Forgotten
Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens” here is the link http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/st_peters_and_the_forgotten_ranelagh_pleasure_gardens.htm
is aiming to do a book about Uncle Mac’s Troupe.
These were the Broadstairs entertainers that operated mainly
on the beach from 1895 to 1948, lead by Uncle Mac whose real name was James
Henry Summerson.
Mainly identified by black makeup (faces but not hands),
mortarboard (teachers) hats, and pretty much always with banjos, any
information about them would be useful.
Costume wise they mostly seem to be photographed wearing
something close to a clown suit dressed with lace, the 1937 guide http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/sunny_broadstairs.htm
says. “Uncle Mack and his Merry Minstrels will present the their usual Popular
entertainment” but what the entertainment consisted of I don’t know.
So anyone who remembers the performing? Any surviving
relatives?
As far as I can see this troupe would completely predate the
controversy related to blacking up with its racialist connotations which I
think dates from 1967 although if there was an controversy related to this that
extends back to 1948 it would be interesting.
I think that in Victorian times there were some genuinely
black mistrals performing in Ramsgate and white “blacked up” musician
competition, this is covered in the Gossiping Guide of 1882 http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/1882_a_gossiping_guide_.htm
and would need a reread, which I will do when I get the time. So whether the
blacking up here in Thanet was originally supposed to be derogatory towards
black minstrels or is founded on admiration for black minstrels or comes from
the American blacking up that started in the early 1800s I just don’t know.
I found a few more photos online and am concluding this was predominantly a musical performance.
I found a few more photos online and am concluding this was predominantly a musical performance.
Some pictures of today's fairly high tide, it went about a metre higher than this about 10 years ago, the worry is always that we get a high tide associated with the equinox, combined with a tidal surge associated with low barometric pressure and a storm all at the same time.
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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.