The slowly emerging biographies of British-born people of African descent of the pre-1939-45 war document a range of activities which, at first sight, might be thought of as stereotypes. Entertainers might be presented or seen as “American” or “African”, despite their British nationality freeing them from the immigration and trade union restrictions on foreign performers which were applied to many black performers from the 1920s. Those with origins in the British Empire were at liberty to live and work in Britain.

The two daughters and son of Nelson Countee, an escaped slave from America, were active in British showbusiness at the beginning of the twentieth century – the Two Countees, and their brother, were singers [see page 129]. Although Isaac Cisco had reached Britain as a member of an African American choir, the several children he had with his English wife seem not to have worked in the world of entertainment [page 177]. The concert pianist Dorothy Callender had a background in both Canada and the Bahamas, she trained in London in the 1920s and was to be heard in London concert halls and on the radio in the 1930s [see page 265]. Ida Audains was a London-trained harpist of Caribbean birth, active in the 1890s [see page 251]. The American-born singer Mattie Lawrence married an Englishman and was to be heard in the Croydon area from the 1890s [see page 143]. She in fact followed an historic route which had seen black prima donnas in many places in Victorian times [page 120].

Some visiting performers settled in Britain – notably those who had travelled from Jamaica with the Kingston Choral Union (renamed the Jamaica Native Choir) in the 1900s [page 027]. Louis Drysdale worked as a voice coach, and influenced some of the American singers who obtained work permits in the 1930s and 1930s. John Payne, an Alabama-born singer who was greatly aided by Lady Mary Cook, never returned to the USA, moved from London after almost two decades in the late 1930s and died in Looe in Cornwall in 1952, aged 80. Payne was involved in theatrical and cinema productions, as well as renting accommodation to black students and visitors – including the future Dr Guy Errington Kerr, who performed on the piano on the radio in the 1950s [see page 271]. One of Payne’s associates was Marie Lawrence, who had been in the Jamaican choir back in 1906.

Two individuals who worked with Payne in the 1930s were sister and brother Amy and Victor Barbour-James. Both were born in London (in 1906 and in 1909), their parents being from British Guiana (now Guyana) and the father John working in the colonial postal service in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) from 1902. There were five Guiana-born children, and four of them died in England – as did their mother, Caroline [see pages 016 and 017]. John remarried, his new wife being a Barbados-born maths teacher who also had worked in the Gold Coast colonial service. Muriel, the sole surviving Guiana-born child, and Amy and Victor made up the family – a third London-born child had died, too.

From 1918 their father benefitted from a colonial service pension and had all the time in the world to devote to his schemes to promote awareness amongst the British of the achievements of African people. In 1935 the acclaimed bass singer Paul Robeson, probably through Payne, met Victor Barbour-James and encouraged him to develop his singing – he was a fellow bass. Victor had been educated in local schools in west London’s Acton, including Chiswick Polytechnic and had trained in electrical engineering at Action Technical College. In the early summer of 1936 he married Gladys Thomas in Hackney, London.

Like their father and step-mother, Amy and Victor was active in local circles, notably the Brotherhood Movement (a non-conformist social group originally called the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Movement, founded back in the 1870s) and in church and chapel meetings. The pair performed at the Northfields Methodist church near Acton in September 1935, at the majestic St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square on 1 June 1936, and at the Southall Brotherhood two years later [Middlesex County Times, 21 September 1935 page 12; Acton Gazette 29 May 1936 page 4]. The Gazette also noted they had broadcast with John Payne, and that Victor has been “discovered last year” by Robeson, and that the pair had been in his film Song of Freedom. This film also involved American singer Elisabeth Welch (who settled in London where she died, aged 99, in 2003) and British Guiana-born Robert Adams. Amy was employed on the Robeson film Sanders of the River through Jamaican choir settler Marie Lawrence and Payne [see page 031].

Victor also worked with Robeson and Adams in King Solomon’s Mines [Acton Gazette, 20 November 1936, page 5]. He performed at a Christmas concert at the Kensington department store Derry and Toms [Middlesex County Times, 12 December 1936, page 26] and his radio work included singing on the Scottish National service in April 1937 [Edinburgh Evening News, 15 April 1937, page 2].

His father and step-mother were guests at a garden party at Buckingham Palace in June 1937, reported in the Acton press although they had relocated to Kenton, a few miles away in the northern suburbs of London. They met Queen Mary (the widow of the late King George V) according to the Middlesex County Times of 26 June 1937, page 2.

In 1938 the Gainsborough film production company worked on a spoof version of Sanders of the River, to feature popular comedian Will Hay. Old Bones of the River had Robert Adams, Jack London [see page 294], and Victor Barbour-James. The Acton Gazette of 19 August 1938 had the headline “Fatal Accident at Film Studios”, stating that Victor Barbour-James had been seriously burned by the combustion of nitrate film. He was taken to Weybridge hospital where he soon died from shock. His funeral was at Weybridge cemetery on 18 August 1938. He was 29. His widow and his grave have not been traced.

Two other British-born black musical individuals who were active around Victor Barbour-James’s years were Evelyn Dove (1902-1987), a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music whose biography uses many illustrations from her scrap books [Stephen Bourne, Evelyn Dove: Britain’s Black Cabaret Queen (London: Jacaranda Books, 2016)] and pianist-composer Reginald Foresythe (1907-1958) whose band was called simply the New Music of Reginald Foresythe. Biographer Val Wilmer’s CD notes on the Dutch BVHAAST CD 0307 are definitive. Both Dove and Foresythe were born in London, their fathers being from West Africa.

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