‘Seth Davy’ has been immortalised in a well-known Liverpool people track Whiskey on a Sunday however one native historian believes that may not have been his identify in any respect
Seth Davy at Bevington Bush, Liverpool (from a lantern slide, circa 1900)(Image: Wikipedia Commons)
An area historian says he may have uncovered the “true identity” of a street puppeteer who carried out in Liverpool and was immortalised in a people track.
The performer, referred to as “Seth Davy”, was a black Liverpool street entertainer who was identified for his dancing dolls. He is remembered in “Whiskey on a Sunday (The Ballad of Seth Davy)” by people singer Glyn Hughes, which tells the story of a one-legged entertainer who carried out on the nook of Bevington Bush and Scotland Road close to to the Coach & Horses pub.
The track was common through the second British people revival and was first recorded by the Liverpool people group The Spinners in 1966 earlier than being lined by Irish people singer Danny Dole in 1968, whose model topped the Irish charts for 10 weeks. It was additionally lined by The Dubliners, Rolf Harris and The Houghton Weavers and continues to be sung by Liverpool people teams immediately.
A surviving picture of the puppeteer believed to be on the centre of the track, relationship from round 1900, provides additional intrigue. The {photograph}, initially half of a lantern slide, later got here into the possession of Fitz Spiegl, an Austrian-born musician, journalist, and collector, who used it to advertise people performances that includes the track within the Nineteen Sixties.
The picture helped affirm that the character within the track was primarily based on an actual particular person, however his true id remained unknown.
The Liverpool Daily Post printed the identical Spiegl {photograph} in 1963 and the newspaper’s article, selling one of Spiegl’s reveals on the Bluecoat.
The article learn: “In the programme is a piece called “The ballad of Bevington Bush” which tells of an old puppeteer called Seth Davey who ‘sat at the corner of Bevington Bush, astride an old packing case, and the dolls on the end of the plank went dancing, as he crooned with a smile on his face’.”
The 1963 article goes on: “The piece was handed down to Glyn Hughes, who sings it tonight, by one Richard Samuels, who called himself the ‘Ivor Novello of Scottie Road’ and Spiegl was inclined to think it spurious. But now he has discovered among some old photographic slides, dating from the turn of the century, one which shows in every detail what the song recounts. There are the puppeteer, the plank, the dolls, and the packing case, and there in the background the sign ‘Bevington House Hotel’. “
But despite the song’s popularity, Colin Holland, 55, from the L25 area, who looks into family and local history, said historians have long struggled to find any official record of a man by that name in Liverpool.
He told the ECHO: “The puppeteer who was the subject of the Liverpool folk song has always been impossible to trace in the records under the name Seth Davy.
“Readers of the Liverpool ECHO in 1957 were told by one correspondent that the puppeteer’s name was Seth Davy, and most people accepted that name must be right. Despite many attempts, everyone looking for Seth Davy came up against a brick wall.
“He doesn’t appear in the Liverpool records. It was only when I tried looking for possible candidates with other names that I finally found a man matching some of the description of the puppeteer.
“The puppeteer at Bevington Bush had what are called ‘Jig Dolls’. These are dolls with loose limbs that appear to dance or jig on the end of a vibrating board or platform.
“In England, dancing dolls were popular street entertainment for hundreds of years. Old soldiers sometimes busked with them to supplement their meagre pensions.
“Dancing dolls were first brought to England by itinerant musicians from Italy in the sixteenth century. They were known as ‘Poupées à la Planchette’ or ‘Marionettes à la Planchette’.
“Sailors away at sea would sometimes carve such toys to take home for their children. Royal Navy officer Harold Percy Rugg filed the first known English patent for a dancing doll in 1904.
“The real Seth Davy was noticed at Bevington Bush for a number of years and people reported seeing him and described seeing him in newspaper articles and letters.
“The name Seth Davy first appears in a letter to the Liverpool ECHO in 1957. Before this date, most accounts do not give him a name.
“One article called him Sam. If his name really was Seth Davy then that name should appear in the Liverpool census records, electoral registers, death records and burial records. The fact it doesn’t makes me think he wasn’t called Seth Davy.”
According to Colin, the earliest identified reference comes from a letter printed within the ECHO in 1957, through which a reader claimed the performer was referred to as Seth Davy. It added that the “old” performer sat on a field on the backside of Edgar Street or Edinburgh Street, off Scotland Road, on a platform hooked up to the field with “four kinds of dolls” mounted with an “angled spring” which made them seem to be they had been dancing.
The identify within the letter was broadly accepted, however no proof has ever supported it.
Colin mentioned: “I believe that Seth Davy was in fact a man called George Smart, born in Sierra Leone, West Africa. George Smart joined the Royal Navy in 1862 and spent the next 20 years working as a stoker in Royal Navy ships.
“He married at St Michael’s Church in Upper Pitt Street, Liverpool in 1883 to Mary Ann Duffy and worked on the docks and at Eccles Street gas works off Vauxhall Road.”
Colin factors to a number of key items of proof linking Smart to the legendary puppeteer. Both males had been mentioned to have lived in Maguire Street. Smart would have been an aged man round 1900, matching descriptions of the performer, and seems to have been residing on his personal means, in line with somebody supplementing earnings by means of street leisure.
He was additionally a black man residing within the Scotland Road space at a time when that may have been comparatively uncommon, making him a memorable native determine. Smart died in 1902, across the identical time Seth Davy was believed to have died.
Colin believes that over time, the performer’s actual identify was misplaced and changed with “Seth Davy” by means of oral custom and later retelling.
Colin mentioned: “After further research of foreign-born men with names not in any way similar to the name Seth Davy on the 1901 census I drew up a list of possible candidates. I looked at where they lived and any other records available for them.
“I was left with two possible candidates who were living near to Bevington Bush in 1901. One was an American man who was actually lodging at Bevington House Hotel. He returned to the USA in 1903 and died in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA in 1913.
“The death certificate tells us that he was born in South Carolina and he was white. The other candidate died in Liverpool Workhouse in 1902 and I think he is the real Seth Davy.
“The man in the photograph was thought to have lived in Maguire Street and this led me to George Smart, a West African-born man who lived in Maguire Street in the early 1890s, near to Bevington Bush.
“On the 1891 census he was a dock labourer, born in Africa, living at house one in 10 court in Maguire Street with his wife Mary Ann. George Smart had married Mary Ann Duffy at St Michael’s CE Church in Upper Pitt Street in 1883.
“Like some versions of the song, he died in 1902.
“On 14th May 1902 he left his home at 34 Gildarts Gardens and admitted himself into Liverpool Workhouse for medical care for his heart problems. He died of cardiac failure due to mitral heart disease at Liverpool Workhouse on 11th June 1902.
“The Smart surname appears to be one that was admired and adopted rather than inherited through slavery. The colony included Africans who were liberated from slave ships by the Royal Navy.
“In George Smart’s case we can show that prior to coming to Liverpool he was traveling the world with the Royal Navy as a stoker (marine fireman). Stokers shovelled coal in the belly of the ship and were vital to power the coal-fired steamships of the day.
“Royal Navy records say George Smart was born in Sierra Leone on 25th December 1839. He first enlisted for service on a Royal Navy ship in 1862 and completed over 20 years service. His last ship appears to have been in 1885.
“His character was usually exemplary or very good. The records say he was a black man. There’s also mention of a pension for his service.
“That’s why I believe George Smart is a very good candidate for the real Seth Davy.”
