Fannie Leslie

Fannie Leslie (born Fanny Katherine Annesley, 13 June 1856 – 8 February 1935) was an English music hall singer, dancer and actress.

She was born in Soho, the daughter of a solicitor. She performed on stage from an early age, and first appeared in the United States in 1872, as a dancer in Lydia Thompson's Burlesque Troupe in Broadway shows.[1] After returning to England, she developed as a serio-comic performer, both in music halls and on the theatre stage, styling herself as 'The Queen of Burlesque'.[2] Among her songs were "The Little Pirate of the Nore",[3] and "The Nineteenth Century Boys", a "masher" song which she performed dressed as a man.[2] In 1888, she featured in F. C. Burnand's burlesque play The Latest Edition of Black-Eyed Susan, playing opposite Dan Leno.[4] She also regularly performed in pantomimes, as a principal boy,[5] and is credited with introducing cartwheels onto the stage in 1893.[6]

She married theatre and music hall manager Walter Gooch (1850–1899) in 1878. They divorced in 1891, and in 1902 she married William Charles Broughton Wilson (1873–1949). She retired from the stage in about 1905, and died in 1935.[3] In 2016, her gravestone in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery was restored by the Music Hall Guild.[5]