HENSON, Gerald
Born c1886/7; died 24 November 1918; buried 25 November 1918; age 31
Gerald HENSON, an English actor of international repute, was with a troupe of players touring New Zealand when he, his wife the co-star, and nearly the entire cast contracted influenza. He died in Wellington a few days later. She recovered.
Gerald had a leading role in Peg O’ My Heart, a popular visiting theatre production which toured New Zealand in late 1918.
At this time, all professional theatre in New Zealand came from overseas, especially from Australia, Britain, or the United States of America. They presented Shakespeare, plays popular in London or New York, melodrama, or musical comedies. Talented locals offered repertory productions and theatregoers could also enjoy light operas by Gilbert & Sullivan, or French and German composers. Touring opera productions also came from abroad.
During WWI, Wellington was treated to a première in the Grand Opera House of a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni alongside Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, by the touring Gonsalez Italian Grand Opera Company. The company’s subsequent tours staged other operas in several parts of the country(i).
Peg O’ My Heart had been a raging success in London since 1914 and had 604 consecutive performances in New York. It drew on a very popular song for which sheet music was widely available for domestic performers around the piano. The show also contained renditions of Tom Moore’s songs and was described as ‘a comedy of youth, bubbling and vivacious, and full of the sheer healthy joy of living’ that suited ‘the young’ and brought ‘back memories of earlier, happier days to the middle-aged and old’ (ii). Opportunities to go out during the war and to engage in heart-warming escapism via musical comedy must have been very a welcome distraction from worries about the war zones and ‘our boys’.
Born c1886/7; died 24 November 1918; buried 25 November 1918; age 31
Gerald HENSON, an English actor of international repute, was with a troupe of players touring New Zealand when he, his wife the co-star, and nearly the entire cast contracted influenza. He died in Wellington a few days later. She recovered.
Gerald had a leading role in Peg O’ My Heart, a popular visiting theatre production which toured New Zealand in late 1918.
At this time, all professional theatre in New Zealand came from overseas, especially from Australia, Britain, or the United States of America. They presented Shakespeare, plays popular in London or New York, melodrama, or musical comedies. Talented locals offered repertory productions and theatregoers could also enjoy light operas by Gilbert & Sullivan, or French and German composers. Touring opera productions also came from abroad.
During WWI, Wellington was treated to a première in the Grand Opera House of a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni alongside Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, by the touring Gonsalez Italian Grand Opera Company. The company’s subsequent tours staged other operas in several parts of the country(i).
Peg O’ My Heart had been a raging success in London since 1914 and had 604 consecutive performances in New York. It drew on a very popular song for which sheet music was widely available for domestic performers around the piano. The show also contained renditions of Tom Moore’s songs and was described as ‘a comedy of youth, bubbling and vivacious, and full of the sheer healthy joy of living’ that suited ‘the young’ and brought ‘back memories of earlier, happier days to the middle-aged and old’ (ii). Opportunities to go out during the war and to engage in heart-warming escapism via musical comedy must have been very a welcome distraction from worries about the war zones and ‘our boys’.
Sheet music cover, 1913 (1/6d a copy) with image of Laurette Taylor in her title role
(With thanks to Wikipedia.org)
(With thanks to Wikipedia.org)
The show was brought to this part of the world by J and N Tait’s touring company, with Gerald in the leading role of Jerry. He was with the company for about 4 years before his death (iii).
In September 1917 he married his co-star Sara Ellen ALLGOOD in Sydney, NSW (iv). Their only child, Mary, was born in January 1918. She lived 1 day.
Sara, born in Dublin about 1880, was one of eight children born to George Allgood, an Irish Protestant who worked as a compositor (v) and his wife Margaret (née HAROLD), a Dublin Roman Catholic. Studying acting under Maud Gonne, and with the famed Irish writer William Butler YEATS a family friend, Sara joined the iconic Abbey Theatre in Dublin and the Irish National Theatre Society. By 1904 she was working full time in the theatre, touring England and North America, before joining Tait’s touring production to Australia and New Zealand in the leading role of Peg.
Gerald was born in 1886 in England to acting parents Gerald and Cecily Henson (vi). He was a well-known actor who had toured in North America in 1913, according to a shipping record for the Franconia which showed him arriving in Boston on 24 September in the company of 29 actors bound for the New Theatre in New York. He also toured in Australia before coming to New Zealand with the second tour here of Peg O’ My Heart. In 1918 the show was closed in Waitara, as a public health measure to minimise the spread of influenza, after a New Zealand run of 4½ months. The cast then travelled to Wellington, Gerald reportedly fell ill while playing cards on the train.
He was taken to the Alexandra Hall Temporary Hospital in Abel Smith Street, Wellington from the Empire Hotel in Willis Street. His wife caught influenza too but recovered in time to be with Gerald as he worsened. Nearly the entire cast, as well as its managers, were laid up as the flu spread through the company. Some of them, like Gerald, were sent to the temporary hospital to be looked after.
The actors would not have been paid while they were sick: a standard clause in theatre contracts saw salary payments cease when theatres closed (vii).
One of the cast, Miss Nan Taylor, was a trained nurse and offered her services to the Oriental Bay and Roseneath areas attending to extreme cases. Her vital nursing work was much appreciated by Wellington citizens (viii).
Gerald died at the Alexandra Hall with influenza and bronchopneumonia on 24 November 1918. He was buried the next day in the Church of England 2 section of Karori Cemetery in Plot 116E. His wife purchased the burial plot early in January 1919, by which time she was living back in Ireland, at 28 Claude Road, Drumcondra in Dublin.
Gerald’s death was widely reported and described as a loss to the theatrical profession (ix).
In September 1917 he married his co-star Sara Ellen ALLGOOD in Sydney, NSW (iv). Their only child, Mary, was born in January 1918. She lived 1 day.
Sara, born in Dublin about 1880, was one of eight children born to George Allgood, an Irish Protestant who worked as a compositor (v) and his wife Margaret (née HAROLD), a Dublin Roman Catholic. Studying acting under Maud Gonne, and with the famed Irish writer William Butler YEATS a family friend, Sara joined the iconic Abbey Theatre in Dublin and the Irish National Theatre Society. By 1904 she was working full time in the theatre, touring England and North America, before joining Tait’s touring production to Australia and New Zealand in the leading role of Peg.
Gerald was born in 1886 in England to acting parents Gerald and Cecily Henson (vi). He was a well-known actor who had toured in North America in 1913, according to a shipping record for the Franconia which showed him arriving in Boston on 24 September in the company of 29 actors bound for the New Theatre in New York. He also toured in Australia before coming to New Zealand with the second tour here of Peg O’ My Heart. In 1918 the show was closed in Waitara, as a public health measure to minimise the spread of influenza, after a New Zealand run of 4½ months. The cast then travelled to Wellington, Gerald reportedly fell ill while playing cards on the train.
He was taken to the Alexandra Hall Temporary Hospital in Abel Smith Street, Wellington from the Empire Hotel in Willis Street. His wife caught influenza too but recovered in time to be with Gerald as he worsened. Nearly the entire cast, as well as its managers, were laid up as the flu spread through the company. Some of them, like Gerald, were sent to the temporary hospital to be looked after.
The actors would not have been paid while they were sick: a standard clause in theatre contracts saw salary payments cease when theatres closed (vii).
One of the cast, Miss Nan Taylor, was a trained nurse and offered her services to the Oriental Bay and Roseneath areas attending to extreme cases. Her vital nursing work was much appreciated by Wellington citizens (viii).
Gerald died at the Alexandra Hall with influenza and bronchopneumonia on 24 November 1918. He was buried the next day in the Church of England 2 section of Karori Cemetery in Plot 116E. His wife purchased the burial plot early in January 1919, by which time she was living back in Ireland, at 28 Claude Road, Drumcondra in Dublin.
Gerald’s death was widely reported and described as a loss to the theatrical profession (ix).
Gerald Henson
(From Free Lance, 28 November 1918, page 5)
(From Free Lance, 28 November 1918, page 5)
A MEMORABLE THEATRICAL TOUR. The "Peg o' My Heart" Company in the motor-car in which they recently made a theatrical tour of the Dominion. The tour is probably unique in New Zealand for a company of this sort. The Company played in backblocks townships, right on the railway line, where similar companies have never played before. The above photograph was taken as the Company were leaving Havelock, Marlborough. The Company, are all aboard, not forgetting the luggage and Michael (sitting on the bonnet). Mr. Gerald Henson, who died recently in Wellington, is in the back seat. (From Free Lance, 19 November 1918)
Sara went on to perform in comic and tragic roles including an iconic part as Juno Boyle in "Juno and the Paycock" (Sean O’Casey) in 1924. She later explored film acting although was often typecast as an Irish grandmother or mother in small roles (x). She moved to the United States of America where she had several parts in such films as How Green was my Valley (1941). However, she never achieved the success she sought, and died with heart disease in 1950.
A report written by Ella Hassett for the Women’s Museum of Ireland said Sara Allgood had a ‘unique talent in portraying both the comic and the tragic. As one actress commented, Sara’s voice was “impossible to describe. It was gold and silver, and if so she wished, iron.”’ (xi)
A report written by Ella Hassett for the Women’s Museum of Ireland said Sara Allgood had a ‘unique talent in portraying both the comic and the tragic. As one actress commented, Sara’s voice was “impossible to describe. It was gold and silver, and if so she wished, iron.”’ (xi)
Sara Allgood
(With thanks to Project Gutenberg)
(With thanks to Project Gutenberg)
Sara Allgood, born in Dublin c.1880. She died in the United States in 1950
(Photo with thanks to https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0021329/ )
(Photo with thanks to https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0021329/ )
Researched by John Boyd and Jenny Robertson and written by Jenny Robertson
Grave Information:
Section: CH ENG2
Plot: 116 E
Sources:
(i) Information on professional premières in New Zealand taken from Opera’s farthest frontier – a history of professional opera in New Zealand by Adrienne Simpson, published Reed, 1996, page 257. His Majesty's Theatre Auckland, The Theatre Royal Christchurch, and Wellington and provincial audiences also saw several operas such as Faust, Carmen, La Boheme, Rigoletto, and Madam Butterfly among others by the Gonsalez Company in 1917 according to the Alexander Turnbull Library catalogue. https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23256439?search%5Bi%5D%5Bsubject%5D=Gonsalez+Italian+Grand+Opera+Company&search%5Bpath%5D=items&search%5Btext%5D=Pagliacci
(ii) Otago Daily Times 18 July 1918, page 6
(iii) Otago Witness 29 July 1914, page 68
(iv) This marriage year comes from NSW BDM registration number 120/1917, but Gerald’s death record says he was 26 at marriage in Sydney implying that it took place in 1913 when Sara Allgood was 29.
(v) Other sources contend George Allgood was an upholsterer – see https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0021329/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
(vi) It has not proved possible to discover more about Gerald’s English origins and some newspaper obituaries vary from each other. This account draws on some obituary material as well as his death record as the information is likely to have come from his wife.
(vii) New Zealand Times 19 November 1918, page 2.
(viii) Evening Post 25 November 1918, page 2.
(ix) Ibid
(x) ‘Her warm, open Irish face meant that she spent a lot of time playing Irish mothers, landladies, neighbourhood gossips and the like.’ From https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0021329/
(xi) http://womensmuseumofireland.ie/articles/sara-allgood