Starship Hecate: Life in the Liminal Spaces: Music Mondays: Look What Percy’s Picked Up in the Park, by Joe Burley & Harry Castling

February 28

"Look What Percy’s Picked Up in the Park," by Joe Burley & Harry Castling (1912)

When I first listened to this song, I was really pretty appalled by it. I mean, just check out the lyrics from the 2nd verse:

His little brother said, “I wonder if the thing’s alive”

And then he took a pin and, of course, he stuck it in

Then his Uncle Jeremiah said, “This takes a bun

What funny things you do see when you haven’t got a gun”

The young man lodger came and looked at me and said, “Dear, dear

What curious little insects fly about this time of year.”

It’s really just outrageous and awful, and I felt so sorry for the poor woman in the song. BUT then I started to do some reading about the singer you’ll hear in the linked video (Vesta Victoria) and British music halls and US vaudeville acts, and it made a little more sense to me. I mean, I would never condone a modern song that highlights treating women in this way, nor would I suggest that we should resurrect songs like this for the modern day. Instead, it’s interesting to consider the place a song like this held in 1910s society and why it was so popular.

British music halls, which heavily influenced vaudeville theatre in the US, became popular in the Victorian era. They eventually became places in which “the masses” (i.e. working class, poorer people) could have access to entertainment. Some of the upper classes considered the entertainment on display in these halls to be somewhat vulgar, but it gave working class people an opportunity to relax and laugh and relate to the performers in front of them. Comedic acts and songs were the most popular, and that is partly why you see songs such as this one. Performers would poke fun at the experiences they had and the ways they were treated, and the audience could often relate and laugh at the poor schmuck on the stage. It was almost a form of catharsis for people to laugh off their problems and find relief from the drudgery of workaday life.

The singer of this particular version is Vesta Victoria. She was basically brought up in music halls/vaudeville. Her parents were performers, and they first brought her on stage with them when she was still a newborn. She grew up performing in music halls and eventually became one of the most well-loved performers in both the UK and the US. In fact, she was one of the most famous British performers in the US at the time. During her performing lifetime, she was able to amass quite a fortune of over 3 million pounds (which approaches 1 billion pounds in today’s money). I find it somewhat ironic that she made so much money imitating the working class. Clearly, by the time she retired after WWI, she would never have to live a working class lifestyle (and probably never really had). But I suppose that’s true of many performers today, too.

Anyway, this is the last week of the 1910s for Music Mondays! Next week, we head into the 1920s!