Gertie Gitana

Who was Gertie Gitana?

Gertie Gitana was a British music hall entertainer.

She was born Gertrude Mary Astbury in Shirley Street, Longport, Stoke-on-Trent. Her father was a pottery works foreman and her mother Lavinia taught at St Peter's RC school in Cobridge. When she was three, the family moved to Frederic Street in nearby Hanley.

Gitana is Spanish for 'Gipsy' and she was a member of Tomlinson's 'Royal Gipsy Children' at the age of four. On account of her petite form and supposed Gipsy origins, she was sometimes billed as 'The Staffordshire Cinderella'.

She made her professional debut in 1896 at the age of eight on the stage of The Tivoli in Barrow-in-Furness. Two years later at the age of ten she had a significant billing at The Argyle in Birkenhead and her first London appearance was in 1900. At the age of 17, she topped the bill for the first time at The Ardwick Empire at Manchester and Gertie Gitana had arrived. In her prime she was reputed to have earned in excess of £100 per week and her name was always sufficient to ensure a full house.

Her music hall repertoire included "A Schoolgirl's Holiday", "We've been chums for fifty years", "When the Harvest Moon is Shining", "Silver Bell", "You do Look Well in Your Old Dutch Bonnet", "Queen of the Cannibal Isles", "Never Mind", "When I see the Lovelight Gleaming", and especially "Nellie Dean" - written by Henry W. Armstrong - which an audience first heard her sing in 1907. "Nellie Dean" was an instant success and became her 'signature tune'. Her first gramophone recordings, dating from 1911–1913, were made in London on the Jumbo label. During the 1914–18 war she was the Forces' sweetheart and often entertained the war wounded in hospitals.