Conclusion

We’re almost done. Time now to do the summary and wrap up, and let you know as much as we know about how things ended for this newly discovered side of the family. Let’s start by going back to Ted Poole’s side of things.

Richard Edward Poole (the one born in 1829, our great grandfather) seems to have lived into the 20^th century; his first wife Eliza Dodd, the mother of the crew of acrobats, died in 1883.

As I said before, Ted died early in 1901. His wife Olive survived until 1927. She remarried in 1905, to a Thomas Stevens in 1905, who predeceased her. After her death, these notices appeared:

On the anniversary of her death three years later, in 1930, another notice appeared:

For a long time and through many versions of this essay, I assumed that the Jeavon and Jena at the end of the advertisement above were Ada’s daughters, and I blessed her for having found more original names for her children than the rest of the family had! But as I saw more of these “In Memoriam” notices I realized that the form was to put your affiliation in brackets after your name. If that held true, then “Jeavon and Jena” was the name of the troupe Ada Poole had performed with. So I searched, and indeed, I found 72 references to Jeavon and Jena, who performed a singing, dancing, acrobatic and athletic act around the country between January 1913 and December 1929. Was this Ada? I think so; perhaps she was even performing with one of her sisters, either Hette or Olive. Unfortunately for researchers, by 1913 it was no longer necessary for actors to communicate via the newspaper since now you could send telegraphs, and, by 1929, use the telephone. So all of the notices in the newspapers are formal and indicate the name of the troupe, not the individuals. There is one final clue however: in their last ad seeking work. In December, 1929 Jeavons and Jena said their address was in South Shields, which is where their mother had died two years before.

Ted’s son Thomas Henry Poole, whose stage name was T.E. Bates, was born in 1877, and joined the army in 1916, at the age of 39. He wasn’t called up to the front however, and served as an entertainment manager at the army base at Aldershot. Interestingly, we know our father Frank Poole was stationed at Aldershot in World War II, and we believe his father Thomas was there as well. Since our grandfather Thomas also served in WWI, he may also have been at Aldershot in WWI, watching entertainment organized by his nephew. Did they ever meet, or even know of each other’s existence? Who knows? One was a teenager, the other over 40 by the end of the war.

Thomas Henry Poole married Florence Victoria Snow (Florrie). Together they had four children that we know of – Gladys, Queenie, Edna, and Henry R. Poole, born in 1918. Conceivably Henry R. Poole could be alive today, a very old man who is about to turn 93 in April of 2011.

The ads he placed looking for work in the 1920’s show that Thomas Henry and Florrie had moved to Llandudno in Wales. He may have left us a rather strange thread – in 1953 someone named Tom Poole, Advertising Inspector for Pier Pavilion in Llandudno placed an advertisement in The Stage seeking a Billposter and Biller. Who but an old comedian would place an ad in The Stage for a Billposter and Biller for a Pavilion in Wales?

Thomas Henry Poole died on January 5, 1961 at the age of 84. His daughters memorialized him with this notice in The Stage:

There is no mention of his son in the memorial. We don’t know for certain, but the obvious conclusion is that he had died young, perhaps in World War II, for which he would have been of prime age. Maybe we’ll be able to find out one day.

Ted’s daughter Lottie Poole / Weir had a long career. We know from “the Stage Yearbook, 1916” that she appeared that year with Frank Weir in a play called, “It’ll Tickle”. In the 1920’s, in addition to travelling to Australia (considering that in 1915 at the height of the U-boat crisis of WWI Lottie had sailed to South Africa, our Lottie was very well travelled) she appeared, as Lottie Poole, in a play with Frank Weir called “The Seven Liqueurs”. In 1928 she appeared as Lottie Weir in “Cinderella” at the Balham Hippodrome. Finally, in 1937, Lottie Weir performed at the Empire at Shepard’s Bush in a play called “The World Looks Up”. There the trail ends. I cannot find further references to her career in IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) or in Google, although I should note that when you put “Lottie Poole” into Google you get 482 results, and with “Lottie Weir” 396, so who knows? Hopefully we’ll find her yet.

Turning to the other half of the original Brothers Poole – Thomas and his family. Lily died in 1915. In 1929 Tom placed this advertisement in The Stage:

That is the only memorial for her I have been able to find. Who was Laurette? I think I know, and I’ll tell you shortly.

The next year these ads were placed in The Stage:

Looks like the daughters couldn’t get together on a memorial. I have no idea why. Had they had a falling out like their father and their uncle? Or had they just moved away from each other?

This ad is the last mention I can find of either of the original Brothers Poole. However, the final three words in the memorial provided the clue to what were apparently the last performers in the Poole family. If I’m reading this right, our great grandfather Richard Edward Poole had a granddaughter Elsie who was a member of Jurat and Dene. That troupe had a career spanning from about 1928 to 1930. They described themselves as “Singing, Dancing, Patter, Clever Acrobatic Act.” It seems they kept the Poole acrobatic tradition alive about 60 years and three generations after the Brothers Poole started.

Tom’s daughter Tilly died May 7, 1967. Her sister Elsie Dene died on December the 19^th, 1976. I have found two memorials for Elsie and one for Tilly. Here are the first two, which seem to have been placed by some of the same people, so presumably they were family. Both memorials identify the sisters as members of “Laurette and Laurel”.

And here’s the second one for Elsie. I don’t know who placed this one, but it also identifies her as a member of Laurette and Laurel.

This makes me think that back in 1929, when Tom placed his memorial to his dead wife Lily, he was referring to his daughter Elsie’s stage name, Laurette.

We started this journey with questions. Now we have at least some answers. We’ve gone from a family story about our grandfather having had half brothers and sisters who were much older than him to three generations of performers who had careers spanning 60 years. Because they were performers who lived pretty public lives, we were able to watch as they performed, argued, loved and died. Pretty cool, really.

One question I would love to know the answer to though: Did they have any contact with our grandfather? When Ted or Tom performed nearby did they ever visit their father with his new wife and young family? Did they scratch young Tom behind the ears and ask him if he wanted to be an acrobat when he grew up? Impossible to know of course, and Ted died only two years after our grandfather Tom was born. But unlike most people in England at that time, they had the opportunity to visit distant family because they travelled so widely. Whether they actually did or not, we just don’t know.

We do know, however, that there was at least some contact, and the proof comes not from any of the research I’ve done. When I told my Aunt Marion about all this, she told me that one of her father’s half brothers had ended up in Rhode Island. With a lot of digging, Leonard confirmed that fact. Richard Edward Poole’s son (Ted and Tom’s brother) Harry Poole emigrated to the U.S. and died in Johnston Rhode Island in 1939, age 75. We’ll probably never know whether he kept in touch with Ted, Tom “Zanlo”, and the others. However, the fact that Marion knew about Harry’s ending up in Rhode Island proves that there was at least some contact between the two parts of the family over the years.

That’s it! 11,000 words later, I’ve said everything I can about the Poole acrobatic / show business tradition. There’s more to do, of course; we haven’t looked in the Scottish census, I haven’t looked through more traditional newspapers such as the Times for obituaries (particularly for Lottie), we haven’t traced some of the other family in the census and other records, and we haven’t even started to try to trace any living relatives. Maybe one day.

By the way, I’ve amassed over 150 digital newspaper clippings. If you want to look at them all you need to do is ask. They can be sent via email. Maybe you’ll find something I missed, or find something which disproves everything I’ve said. Who knows what you might find?

If you got this far – thanks for staying with me. It’s been a blast.