Solo Women of the Halls
(Little) Ena Dayne
1900 - 1977

Little Ena Dayne was born Kathleen Mary Liversidge Pridmore in Tottenham on 14th July 1900 to a family with a theatrical history.

Her great-grandfather Richard Pridmore is believed to be the man who, in 1847 took over the former Savile House in Leicester Square to run as a casino. This eventually became, after a period as the Café du Globe, the Empire Palace of Varieties.

Her mother Fanny Pridmore was a distant relative of The Great Macready which explains the ancient copy of the sonnet composed by the Poet Laureate on the occasion of Macready’s retirement found in her papers.

Her father, Tom, was well known on the fringes of the London Music Hall scene and was once carried across a tightrope on Blondin’s back.

From about 1909 to 1918, she was the leading child performer on the halls. She is now forgotten mainly because she left no original songs and after about 1920 her career centred on London based Concert Parties.

As a child she displayed considerable talent both as a pianist and singer. Her father and friends often held card evenings and at the age of 6 or 7 Kathleen would creep downstairs and refuse to go back to bed until she had played and sung for them. One of the card players was the well known variety agent Tom Pacey whose most famous artist was G.H. Elliot. He suggested she was talented enough to go on the stage, became her agent and named her Little Ena Dayne.

Originally promoted as a drawing room entertainer she was tried at a London Hall for a fee of one shilling. This was so successful that she was immediately booked for the following week at the London Hippodrome for a star’s salary. It was there that she made her name singing songs such as Billy Williams' "Since poor father joined the Territorials" and "The Taximeter Car".

During the course of her career Marie Lloyds 'Oh! Mr Porter' virtually became her signature tune and her repertoir was  known to include;

'Will you be my Bridegroom' is posibly Dolly de Vere; there was a song about Woodbines which could be 'Little Willie's Woodbines'; a song about father’s misfortunes with the contents of a toolbox and another something like Someday I (or she) will find a sweetheart.

By the winter of 1909/10 she was appearing regularly and with considerable success on the London halls with her father acting as her accompanist (although he never learnt to read music). By late 1910, early 1911 she was under contract to Oswald Stoll.

A newspaper cutting from mid 1910 reviewing her appearance at the Avenue Gardens Clacton refers to her as the rage on the London halls the previous winter.

She was one of the original choices for the planned 1911 Royal Command Performance.

By mid 1911 she had a seven-year contract with Moss Empires which ran until 1918 when it seems to have finished with a week at Newport Empire commencing 3^rd June. There is a possibility that the contract was extended into 1919 or 1920. She also continued as a drawing room entertainer.

Working mainly the Moss Empires, Syndicate and LTV venues she performed popular songs of the time with particular emphasis on comedy songs and topped the bill around the country (accompanied everywhere by her father plus a canary and twelve white rats) and billed as "The world’s youngest comedienne" and "The future Marie Lloyd".

Around 1913 the preface "Little" was dropped and her performances were often favourably likened to those of Marie Lloyd and Claris Mayne.

Her first appearance in Edinburgh was in a blizzard and a welcome message for her had been marked out in the snow – or so the story goes! In late 1913 she had short season at the London Pavilion which set records for a juvenile star.

She married a Dutchman, Ambrose Vink who used the English surname Brown. They had one child, Patrica, born 17th March 1922. Ena left the halls on maternity leave but she and Ambrose did "end of the pier shows" as Bernard and Betty Brown, something of a come down from her previous success. Her younger brother Edward always maintained that her career was mis-handled at this time, that she could and should have continued on the halls.

By the late 1920’s she was doing regular concert party /revue/solo work in London mainly for George Thompson in a show entitled "Comedy Concoctions".

Ambrose died in the early 1930s and she married Dave Osborne a fellow artist in Thompson's concert party. The relationship did not last and he left her in the late 1930's or the early 1940's.

One of her fellow artists in the concert party, Dave Osborne, became her second husband in the early 1930’s.

By the late 1930’s she had a new agent George Sutton of Sutton. She left the concert party and with Dave and two others formed an act called "The Three Boys and Ena" which continued until the middle of the war when one of the members named Charlie Davies was killed in an air raid. After this she went back to solo work.

During the war she worked for ENSA and what is believed to be her last music hall engagement was at Collins for the week of 8^th May 1944.

The last trace so far is her membership of the Concert Artists Association in 1947/48 where she describes herself as entertainer and comedienne. Around this time she married Leslie Pafford.

She continued to work spasmodically from the end of the war until around 1960.

Among those she worked with were Bob and Alf Pearson, Saveen, The Two Leslies and in their very early years Vera Lynn, Reg Varney and Bruce Forsyth.

Some ninety six newspaper cuttings are to hand as at 5/6/99 and ten theatre programmes:

In 1944/45 a "Write a Song" contest was organised at Hammersmith Palais with the heats and final broadcast live by the BBC. Ena’s lifelong friend Elie Beadell had the words of a song and Ena helped put music to it. They entered the song "Cruising down the River" which won the contest largely due to the audience reaction on the night. Ena’s photograph featured on the sheet music and she broadcast the song on at least one occasion. In later life Ena complained that although she composed the melody to "Cruising" as she could not read or write music she received no composers credit. For many, many years Elie passed some of the royalties over to Ena which seems to bear this out.

In the late 1950’s her husband, Leslie Pafford retired and they took over the Royal Oak pub at Sandgate near Folkestone. She continued to run this after his death until it was finally shut around 1970. Her brother bought the building and the adjoining cottage from the brewery for her to live in.

Her final brush with show business came around 1972/3 when she appeared on Southern TV. Two researchers spent 2 days with her and she then recorded an interview and one or two songs. This was broadcast as part of a local news programme featuring interesting local people.

She was killed in a road accident in January 1977. 

Colin Charman,  Grandson of Ena Dayne

Ena's engagements for

Up to 1911,   1912,   1913,   1914,    1915,   1916,   1917,   1918 on

List of contracts