| GREAT AUNT LIL’
Leah Ottolangui (Stage Name: Lily Pacey) Born - 1889, Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom Married - Solly Taubin (stage names: Jack Pacey, Eddy Bayes) Died – about 1954 Vocation - Stage Dancer Father - Aaron Ottolangui (Born London 1861-1936) (Israel/Israel/David/Menachem/Meir Ottolenghi) Mother - Mary (Miriam) Sharp (Born New York 1860- Died London 1934) |
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| Leah Ottolangui, my great-aunt, was born in 1889, in Whitechapel just outside the "city" of London in the area known as "The East End". The East End in general, and Whitechapel in particular, was at that time home to a very large part of the Jewish population of London.
Leah's parents, were, Aaron Ottolangui (Line:Israel/Israel/David/Menachem/Meir Ottolenghi) born in Middlesex Street, ("Petticoat Lane") London , on 9th May, 1861-died 1936, and Mary (Miriam) Sharp born New York 1860, died in London 1934, daughter of Uda (Judah) Sharp, also known as George, a cigar maker born 1834 in Rotterdam and Catherine Levy who was born in Holland in 1840. Marie was brought to London by her mother, and actually married Aaron twice. Their first marriage was a civil ceremony in Whitechapel Register Office on 31st May, 1879, and then they were married again five years later at the family synagogue in Bevis Marks, London on 27th January 1884. |
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| It is said that Marie Sharp had been an actress. This may have been from where the young Leah, or Lily as she was called by family and friends, obtained her love of the stage, for at an early age, whilst growing up around the "Buildings" of Bethnal Green, she began to dance, and in the years before the First World War, she was part of a popular dance troupe which even toured India.
Back in Blighty, Lily played the popular variety theatres, the “music-halls”, in a small dance team known as "The Five Bombays". This is a receipt from one of those theatres for the groups weekly salary of 22.10.00 (22.50) being about 4.25 each – quite a wage in early 1918. |
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| It was during this period that Lily met and later married a self-taught steps dancer by the name of Solly Taubin whose stage name was "Mr. Jack Pacey" - as Jack & Lily Pacey the couple toured the length and breadth of Britain between the World Wars. |
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| Lily eventually retired from the stage to raise their two children whilst her husband continued to perform as "Eddy Bayes", and even performed a cabaret act at my parents' wedding in March 1936.
At the height of his career, Eddy Bayes sustained a knee injury which put an end to his dancing. He continued to perform as a comedian, his theme song was "A Chinese Melody" a comedy song combining phrases in Mandarin, German, French and Yiddish in which he accompanied himself on a Chinese gong. My father last saw Eddy Bayes in person at the Bury Hippodrome (near Manchester) early in 1945. Eddy Bayes' last public appearances were on the Radio Luxembourg's English Service (a European commercial radio station very popular in England until the advent of the pirate radio stations of the 1960’s) where he was known as the "Gong Man" in quiz shows. |
| All of this was, for me, a kind of family folk tale, mostly sourced from my father’s memory and he being almost the sole survivor of his generation there was no easily available corroboration of the story until my cousins in the USA inherited a box of old family photographs when their mother, my father’s younger sister, passed away. Unfortunately many of the older photographs had no clues to the actual identity of the subjects, but we did find the above photograph of Great Aunt Lil’ and the Eddy Bayes postcard. Some years later we were contacted by Lil’s grandchildren in Canada – their mother Anita had married a Canadian serviceman at the end of World War II in London and had emigrated. They were able to corroborate my father’s reminiscences and even came up with some these slightly more recent photographs of their grandparents. |
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| My own research, consisting mainly of searching old music-hall sites on the Internet and correspondence with some of Radio Luxembourg’s veteran broadcasters and producers, failed miserably to reveal any trace of the Five Bombays, Lily & Jack Pacey and/or Eddy Bayes, until quite out of the blue a couple of years ago I came across the old receipt from the Chatham Empire up for sale on a theatrical memorabilia site. Story Written by Bryan Langley |
| Lil, Eddy and daughter 'Nita |
| Lil whilst still treading the boards |
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