The Countees of Leicester collection is a digital only collection that provides the fascinating history of a local family against the backdrop of Victorian, Edwardian and post-war Leicester. The photographs, ephemera and documents create a more complete collective and historical picture of family life in the Midlands. It unpacks representation, identity and belonging transcending the gaze beyond a Eurocentric picture of privilege, class, expectation and belonging with an insight into what is in front of you, but hidden in plain sight. Leicester has a history of migration with a rich demographic profile and this invisible history highlights how communities and history are entwined. The Countees are a contemporary family whose history in the UK is from the 1870s, but mirrors family life in modern Britain today.
The collection was loaned to Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage to digitise by Diane Clafton and Richard Elkington. Through their grandmother, Mabel Elkington (née Countee), they are the descendants of Reverend Francis Nelson Countee, who was born into slavery in the United States of America around 1814. It was through researching their family history that they discovered that they had African American heritage that can be traced back to Loudoun County, Virginia. Their family archive revealed the courageous story of Reverend Countee escaping slavery and leaving the United States of America to make a new life in England.
Reverend Francis Nelson Countee
Reverend Countee was born into slavery in Loundoun County, Virginia, US with records indicating that his year of birth was around 1814. At the age of 25 he escaped and became a ‘fugitive slave’. He successfully travelled to Canada via New York where he became a free man. By 1804, many northern states had formally abolished the African slave trade, but it continued domestically nationwide and remained prevalent in southern states.
By the mid-1840s, he had joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada as a layman preacher and met and married his first wife Sophie. Toronto hosted a community of around 700 fugitive slaves in the 1850s. Reverend Countee a “coloured Clergyman and Fugitive Slave” gave lectures on the horrors and immorality of slavery in order to raise funds for churches assisting in the community of escaped slaves.
In 1864, Reverend Countee travelled to England in order to raise funds for the church in Canada. He remained in England and married Maria Pease in 1865, a white bible woman. Their marriage certificate states that he is a widower, but this is not corroborated by other records. Reverend Countee continued to tour the UK with his wife, Maria, to deliver sermons raising funds for the Methodist Church and in support of the temperance movement, a movement that promoted the temperance or abstinence from alcohol. Reverend Countee had five children and settled in Leicester. He died in Aylestone, Leicester in 1886.
Descendants of Reverend Francis Nelson Countee
Reverend Nelson Francis Countee had three daughters: Lucy, Mary Ann Amelia and Florence and a son called Charles. All of his children would sing and play the piano to accompany their father when he was touring his lectures in the late 1870s and 1880s. Later in their lives, his children all became performers.
The Two Countees
Charles became a cornet-player and alongside his wife, Eliza Carter, they were the original line-up of The Two Countees.
Frances Mabel Elkington was born in 1888 in Leicester to Charles and Eliza Countee. Known as Mabel, she performed in music halls around the UK with her mother Eliza as The Two Countees. Eliza used the stage name Marion when she performed as a part of The Two Countees.
The original Two Countees were Mabel’s parents, Charles and Eliza. When Charles died in 1905 Mabel took his place and the ‘’humourists and harmonising duettists” continued touring well into the 1910s.
George Frederick Countee
Known as Fred, the grandson of Reverend Countee, was an entertainer and met his wife Florence whilst on tour. They became well known in Leicester as the comedy double act, Fred and Flo.
Derrick Elkington
Born in 1920, Derrick Elkington, the grandson of Reverend Countee, was an accomplished pianist and a member of a three-piece band entertaining troops during the Second World War. Despite the band inviting Derrick to join them in the United States once the war was over, he returned to Leicester and discovered he could make more money playing piano than in his day job.
The birth and decline of the Music Hall scene, 1830s – 1930s
Music halls can be traced back to London in the late 1700s, where performers would entertain the audience while they ate and drank. By the 1830s, musical clubs in taverns would provide entertainment two to three times a week. Supper rooms also opened in the 1830s, catering for a more middle class and gentile audience. While women were not allowed in the middle class supper rooms, working class women would visit the taverns with their husbands and children.
The first purpose-built music hall was the Canterbury Hall in Lambeth, opening in 1853 and proving so popular that a larger one had to be built that was double the capacity. Throughout the 1860s, it became more common for women to perform in the halls. By 1875, there were 375 music halls in London and several in most British cities, including several theatres in Leicester, such as the Palace and the Royal.
The theatres that were now being built on proscenium arches, with fixed seats and a separate dining area from the auditorium, making them less rowdy and more gentile ‘Variety Halls’. A wide spectrum of speciality acts, comedians, musicians, acrobats and novelty acts would perform.
A part of the digital collection is the autograph book which gifted to Mabel Elkington (née Countee) on her twenty second birthday in 1910 by fellow music hall artists, Maisie Dainton and May De Rose. The autographs were collected by Mabel as she toured music and variety halls of the UK from 1910 until 1914. Inside the book are handwritten messages, doodles, sketches and the promotional photographs of the day from musicians and comedy act comedians, providing an intimate insight into the personalities of artists working the music hall circuits at the time.
The music and variety hall scene had begun to decline after the First World War and by the Second World War the music and variety hall scene was all but gone. Instead, the music halls that once hosted live entertainment would incorporate films into their schedules to attract crowds, leaving smaller venues to host the performers.
