Club Queens: Women Nightclub Owners in Jazz Age London by Jo Thompson

Whereas nightclubs today close at the alarming rate of 2 per week, 100 years ago the very opposite was true. “Almost any place with a respectable band and a decent floor was bound to make money.” said Mrs Meyrick, who was in her day, the most famous nightclub owner in London. Between 1919 and 1926 it is estimated that nearly 11,000 dancehalls and nightclubs opened up in the UK. Whether in a Lyon’s Corner House, a church hall, hotel, restaurant, ballroom or nightclub; the nation wanted to dance until it dropped. The Great War had blown British society to pieces, sweeping away a generation of men and obliterating the social order. The working classes were ‘less cowed’ and women could no longer remain ‘the colourless, dependent creatures of the past’. With the aristocracy’s resources depleted, London's grand houses were sold off and replaced by American-style hotels. Stuffy ballrooms were traded for sultry nightclubs in the pursuit of pleasure. Black jazz musicians fleeing racism and prohibition in America flocked to British dancehalls while changing fashions meant looser clothing and higher hemlines. In an airless underground room shrouded in a haze of Chanel No. 5, cigarette smoke and whisky fumes, the jazz age club was born. While still predominantly the prerogative of the rich, police documents from the time prove that musicians, clerks, steel contractors and tailors were amongst the clientele. If the ordinary man was lucky enough to be in possession of any disposable income, he now had increased leisure time in which to spend it; and if the ordinary woman desired a night out, she no longer needed a chaperone to accompany her. A small but surprising number of women seized the opportunities that this new night time economy offered. They operated on the margins of society, often independently of husbands or male partners, presiding over disruptive dancefloors where sex, class, race and gender collided. These women left only faint traces of their lives and their contribution to London's nightlife has largely gone ignored. Of the few women nightclub owners in the 1920’s, Kate Meyrick was head and shoulders above the rest. It is said that £500,000 passed through her hands during her thirteen year reign (over 25 million pounds in today’s money). Financially she experienced highs and lows but her reputation ascended to scandalous heights. Her career began in 1919 when she left her husband after twenty years of dreary respectability as a doctor’s wife. She bore him eight children along the way but in truth, her feet had itched for the last ten years - she had first filed for divorce in 1909. A cinema venture that might have quenched her thirst for some fresh excitement, had failed, and it hadn’t helped that Dr. Meyrick’s fondness for his nurses had overstepped the bounds of propriety. Mrs Meyrick says that it was while nursing her eldest child back to health during the Spanish Flu epidemic that she happened upon an advert in a London paper, seeking a partner for a share in ‘tea dances’ to the tune of £50. ‘Dalton’s Club’ flung open its doors to the throng of Leicester Square in the spring of 1919. Conveniently situated next door to the Alhambra Theatre, Dalton's drew a crowd of chorus girls, ex-soldiers, refugees and even royalty, despite its pervasive underground odour. Mrs Meyrick’s rather genteel upbringing made her inclined to obey the law, at least initially. Although at forty-six she was a woman of the world, she was naive in West End terms and just a few months after Dalton’s opened, she found herself at Bow Street Magistrates Court charged with allowing sex workers to habitually use her premises. External surveillance over a two week period suggested that 292 female sex workers had been seen leaving her club. Mrs. Meyrick admitted some naivety on her part but also insisted that not all of these women were of ill repute “I know for a fact that two of the young women were in the chorus at the Gaiety.” she remarked. In court, Dalton’s was labelled ‘a sink of iniquity and a noxious fungus growth that ought to be eradicated’. Singed and shamed by the law she retired to consider her future. On the realisation that her reputation was probably beyond rescue, she chose instead to inhabit the role in which she felt she had been unfairly cast. By the winter of 1921 she had opened the ‘Forty Three Club’; the club that would make her a household name. Mrs Meyrick had interests in a number of clubs but the ‘Forty Three’ was her most beloved. It was the club in which she spent most of her evenings, a diminutive figure in a little black cloak, sitting at the reception desk. Even when her other clubs had prettier interiors or more esteemed guests, there was something about the Forty Three that drew her back. Evelyn Waugh wrote about the club both in his diaries and his fiction, yet the club’s allure was lost on the Metropolitan Police who described the decor as ‘tawdry’. They clearly had not appreciated that its edginess was part of its appeal and that the possibility of a police raid was just another reason to visit.

After various brushes with the law, Mrs. Meyrick was handed her first prison sentence in 1924 for selling drinks after hours. Her daughters assisted greatly with the running of her clubs particularly during these periods of incarceration. Her daughter ‘May’ was second in command, integral to the empire from the very beginning. Her exit from Bedford College where she had been studying medicine, coincided happily with the incorporation of Dalton’s Ltd. It also coincided with a college report which suggested that May was perhaps not cut out for her chosen career. The timeline of events is interesting as Dalton’s was conceived many months before Mrs. Meyrick’s marriage ended. It suggests that either secrets were being kept from Dr. Meyrick, or that his wife and children were openly disobeying him. Although we can never know exactly what caused the conflict, Dr. Meyrick was clear about his feelings towards his wife’s career. A doctor’s wife could not run a nightclub. In a newspaper interview after her death, Dr. Meyrick claimed that he had his wife followed by a private detective. Perhaps this ignited the quarrel? As a single woman Mrs. Meyrick was committed to securing the futures of her children and this was the very reason, she claimed, that she persevered in the nightclub business. Certainly her children were educated at great expense and made advantageous marriages but they were also loyal to her in return. All of her children assisted with the business in some way but it was the female members of her family who were her most noticeable asset. In 1925 Mrs Meyrick’s first son, Henry, married Edna Irene Andrews. Irene, as she was known, managed ‘The Manhattan’ in Denman Street. In May of 1928, Irene was summoned to Marlborough Street Magistrates Court charged with selling intoxicating liquor after hours. The newspapers told stories of sliding peepholes and iron bars used to keep out undesirables - which presumably included the police. Although at 25 years of age it was her first offence, Irene was fined £150 (almost 8k in today’s money). The magistrate said that he considered her to be the ‘catspaw’ and although he did not say to whom he was referring, everybody in the courtroom and beyond would have known that he meant Mrs. Meyrick. The Manhattan was duly struck off the register and forced to close. There is a suggestion that in her later years, Irene retired to Florida and lived comfortably. Mrs Meyrick enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity for a few years. She opened clubs in Paris and yet more clubs in London, including the jewel in her crown ‘The Silver Slipper’ in Regent Street. However this had only been open a few months when it was raided on Christmas Eve. By the summer of 1928, Mrs Meyrick was behind bars again and did not emerge from Holloway until the air was crisp. A fabulous party was held in her honour at ‘The Silver Slipper’ but in her heart Mrs. Meyrick was racked with anxiety. Shortly before she left prison, the cells had echoed with whispers of a police corruption scandal that was just about to break. No sooner was she released, Mrs Meyrick was embroiled in the ‘Goddard Trial’. Sergeant Goddard of Soho was investigated for corruption and bribery Mrs. Meyrick was subsequently found guilty. Evidence suggested that she, like other nightclub owners, had paid significant bribes to Sergeant Goddard in order to continue her lucrative trade. Mrs Meyrick, whose health was already compromised, was sentenced to 18 months in Holloway with hard labour. Shortly afterwards ‘The People’ newspaper denounced her as ‘one of the most dangerous women in London”. The trial exposed another nightclub owner of the day, a woman long since forgotten. The only traces of her career are the papers relating to the Goddard trial, sitting in the National Archives. Madame Ahier was also a nightclub manager but unlike Mrs Meyrick she operated at the lower end of the spectrum. She was born Marcelline Houssier in 1891 to French parents living in London. Traces of her early life are scarce but at seventeen years old, in June 1908, she married Abel Fernand Ahier. Over a decade later, Abel brought divorce proceedings against his wife and he was granted custody of their only child. The 1921 census shows Madame Ahier cohabiting with Leopold Silberman, a music publisher in Charing Cross Road. Silberman also happened to be the co-respondent in Madame Ahier’s divorce case. While Leopold had some success with songs such as ‘Abie My Boy’ and spent his days selling sheet music to Woolworths, Madame Ahier opened ‘The Denman Club’ in 1924 and ‘The Perroquet Club’ in 1926. It was said that Madame had a telephone in her club which only she answered. After receiving a phone call, drinks would cease to be served. Jack Harris, another club owner, said of her, “When Houssier was in drink she would talk a good deal.” This ‘talk’ included the nature of her relationship with Sergeant Goddard, who she called ‘Mr British’ and who she visited on Sundays while Silberman gave violin lessons to Sergeant Goddard’s son. In her police statement during the Goddard trial, Madame Ahier admitted to working as an informant for Sergeant Goddard. After the trial, Madame Ahier disappears from the records. Having been unmasked as a police informant, Soho would have been a very difficult place to live. In contrast to Mrs. Meyrick, Madame Ahier made very little money out of her short-lived nightclub ventures, meaning that there were even fewer opportunities for her to appear in public records. Who knows how many other women tried their hand at this profession and left no trace?

When Mrs. Meyrick was released from prison in 1929, she was in noticeably poorer health but in time she returned to the Forty Three. Her eldest daughter, May, was now busy with a young family and it fell to another woman to assist her. Mildred Hoey was born in Dublin in 1903 and it is said that she was a relative of Mrs Meyrick. She appears in several undercover police reports at this time, clearly in a managerial role. In a demonstration of her vigilance, one night in April 1930, Miss Hoey approaches a table of two men and two women, asking if the gentlemen are club members. On learning that they are not she asks them to refrain from using the automatic gambling machines. Later on that same evening she refunds them their money explaining that only members are permitted to make purchases. After further consideration on the matter she finally asks them to leave. Whether by luck or astute judgement, Millie Hoey had just ejected two undercover police officers from the premises of the Forty Three. They returned to the station without any concrete evidence of wrongdoing. Many female nightclub owners were associated with Mrs Meyrick in one way or another. Some cut their teeth as dance instructresses in her clubs before managing businesses of their own. Sunday Beretta was one such woman. On the 24th May 1928 at about 1.30am 'Sunday Beretta' was on the premises of the Forty Three when it was raided. The police took her details describing her as married and a 'club member'. Her unusual surname was Swiss and records show that she was married in Switzerland at just eighteen, despite being born in St. John’s Wood, London. Her marriage to Achilles Beretta did not last long and she soon returned to England with their young daughter. A divorce swiftly followed. Sunday Beretta was described as 5ft 8, with grey eyes, fair skin and fair hair. Her height alone would have made her a striking woman and she found work as a ‘mannequin’ and an extra on film sets. The likelihood is that she supplemented her acting career with work as a dance instructress in Mrs Meyrick’s clubs. Considering her time abroad, Sunday Beretta probably spoke at least two or more languages. This would have been a significant advantage for both her and Mrs. Meyrick who said of her dance hostesses, “It was necessary that they possess charm as well as mere good looks, and I liked them to have some culture in addition…..no club in London can have had a more attractive or more intelligent set of dance hostesses than were to be found in mine.” Geoffrey Simpson, a stockbroker, began his affair with Sunday Beretta in 1932 while his first wife tended to their young child at home. After a divorce in which Sunday Beretta was cited as a co-respondent, they married in Westminster, in 1935. His income provided a flat in Mayfair and they travelled internationally but despite the birth of their son by 1939 Sunday Simpson was divorced for a second time. Now under financial pressures, she returned to club life. In 1946, in a suitably sensational Daily Mirror article, ‘blonde’ and ‘vivacious’ Sunday Simpson reportedly hired a six-foot wrestler as her bodyguard at her Mayfair nightclub. According to the newspaper, the bodyguard is a navy deserter who has just been handed a twelve-month prison sentence. Sunday Simpson, doesn’t appear again until 1950 when the London Gazette publishes a bankruptcy order against her. Records suggest that she relocated to Miami, Florida shortly after this, living out her days in Hollywood until her death in 1984. In contrast to Mrs. Meyrick and her associates was Elsa Lanchester. She was known to many as ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ and later as the demoralised ‘Katie Nanna’ in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins. Elsa Lanchester hailed from a bohemian, socialist family with parents who never married. She was one of the founders of ‘The Cave of Harmony’ which opened in Charlotte Street in 1924 and later moved to Covent Garden. It is one of the few places where a plaque exists for a club. ‘The Cave of Harmony’ was less of a jazz den and more of an after hours theatre cabaret. Elsa and her friends performed short plays and sang bawdy songs into the small hours. They circumvented their lack of a liquor licence in a number of creative ways and attracted an intellectual, alternative crowd. Elsa Lanchester had an unconventional marriage to Charles Laughton who was gay. Nightclubs and their dancefloors were places which rarely discriminated. Religion, politics or sexuality scarcely mattered when the party was in full swing. With their ‘anything goes’ attitude nightclubs naturally lent themselves to become queer positive spaces. Mrs. Meyrick claimed that she was ‘never one to moralise’ and once her till was ringing, she seemed happy to sweep any personal prejudices aside. There are several reports of ‘men dancing together’ in her clubs. In the same tradition, Muriel Belcher’s name is familiar to some as the founder and proprietress of ‘The Colony Room’, a late night private drinking club with a queer crowd which opened in 1948. In the decade prior to this venture Muriel had managed various nightspots such as ‘The Sphinx’, ‘The Music Box’ and ‘Romilly’s’ often co-owning them with other women. Both Muriel and her club achieved legendary status and her legacy was so enduring that The Colony Club continued for a further twenty nine years after her death. What most of these women have in common is that they were either single or in non-traditional relationships. They required space from men in their domestic sphere, in order to create their professional selves. Some women benefited from club life financially and for some it propelled them into another strata of society. For others, they were already cast as transgressors whether as divorcees, sex workers or queer women. It made little difference to them whether they added nightclub owner to this list or not. The emergence of women in these spaces shows the shifting cultural landscape of the 1920’s. However, for all the strides that women were making, Mrs Meyrick still felt it necessary to frame her career in terms of her children. It is only towards the end of her life that she allows the truth to peek through. In her memoirs, she states “In my scale of values I would place the romantic side of club life before its monetary aspect. To me it has always been so fascinating to think of all those lives, so different from one another, yet all converging in pursuit of one goal - pleasure.” This was her greatest transgression of all: to orchestrate pleasure and to indulge in its power. It is the thing that united all of these women. But for every woman listed here there are those that, like smoke in a nightclub, left no trace.