PLYMOUTH |
The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History |
|
|
Alice Maud Lamb was born on October 11th 1897 on Drake's Island, in Plymouth Sound. Her father was a gunner in the Royal Artillery based in the Royal Citadel. Not even her family know where the name Geraldine came from but it is presumed she took a liking to the name and adopted it. She had three brothers and four sisters, whom she looked after at their home on Lambhay Hill after their parents had died. It was in the front room of that small house, in 1919, that she started her dancing classes with just one pupil, Miss Arminel Myers, who paid sixpence for the lesson. Arminel went on to marry one of the brothers, Samuel, who was in the police. 'Geraldine' married Edwin Tout and by the mid-1930s they were living at 28 Cobourg Street, where they converted the garage at the rear into a dance studio. Concerts and dancing displays were often put on in the back yard, much to the delight of the neighbours, and they also took part in carnivals and pageants. Later, on Saturday afternoons, the Alhambra Theatre at Devonport was hired and shows put on in aid of local charities. As many as a hundred children would participate. During the Second World War, Geraldine Lamb's Starlights performed some 380 ENSA shows in the City. Unfortunately they were bombed out of Cobourg Street during the War and moved to a large house at 12 Connaught Avenue, Mutley, from where many a pupil went on to national fame -- Fern Britton, Angela Rippon, Judi Spiers and Wayne Sleep. The School provided dancers for the local pantomimes at the Palace Theatre and floats and majorettes for the local carnivals. Without a doubt, 'Geraldine' Lamb was a very prominent Plymothian for her years of dancing tuition and for the many charity shows she directed. All the more amazing was the fact that she declared that she had never had a dancing lesson in her life: she relied entirely on her imagination. Alice Maud 'Geraldine' Lamb died in 1965, just days away from her seventieth birthday. Sylvia Tout took over the running of the Dancing School, while her sister, Valerie, ran the Plymouth School of Ballet and Stage Dancing in the house next door until the 1980s. Valerie's daughter, Susan Cook, runs the School today, over at Saltash.
|
