Nell Fairhurst

Nell Fairhurst is the popular city’s singer, better known among clerks, soldiers and river families than several performers who command a box at Vexley Hall. Most Londoners meet her first as a name on a bill, a song in a boarding house or an imitation, and only later in person.

London’s great stages, the Great Alianor and Vexley Hall, sit above an enormous performance economy of Playhouse Lane houses, lower music halls, public-house stages, supper rooms and fair theatres. Nell Fairhurst belongs to that more popular city, and within it she is something close to a household name. Clerks, soldiers and river families know her better than several singers who command a box at Vexley Hall, and her reputation owes nothing to patents or subscriptions.

Like most of Night London’s recognisable people, she is met by rumour before address. Her name travels on bills, in supper talk and in jealous imitation long before a newcomer sees her face, and wherever Playhouse Lane sends stage fashion and song back into the boarding houses, her choruses go with it, to the despair of landladies with lodgers on the stairs at midnight. She is a bold, athletic performer rather than a society songbird, and her white leather trousers have become as recognisable on the Lane as any song she sings.

For adventuring companies she matters in two ways. Singers in London’s pleasure economy are information systems, and a performer who works halls full of clerks, soldiers and river hands hears a great deal about who has been paid, who has vanished and which crews are hiring. A company that has earned her goodwill, perhaps by seeing her safely between halls on a bad night or settling trouble with a manager, may find her a remarkably well-informed friend. She is also a draw: a benefit night with Nell Fairhurst on the bill can raise money for a widow or a broken crew faster than most subscriptions.

In person

Nell Fairhurst is a young woman with a mass of curly, light copper-auburn hair, a round and lively face, expressive stage eyes and a broad smile made to carry to the back of a hall. She is athletic, curvy and full of energy, a bold popular performer rather than a society lady. Her signature is a pair of white leather trousers, worn with a fitted green or burgundy stage bodice or waistcoat, boots, jewellery and theatrical accessories. On stage she works with a brass projection horn and the music hall’s restrained stage-light and acoustic machinery; off it, her dressing room is a litter of sheet music, props and costume.