links
War Circus (published by Madame La Bonche Publishing, Edited by Helen Averley. Available from Libraries). Heritage Lottery Fund.
War Circus charity archive.
Ms Helen Averley has done wonderful work with this project. This was a call to circus artistes and showmen to contact Helen to supply facts anecdotes and papers to provide any details of family members WW1 war experiences. The year (2016) marked the 100th anniversery of my late father’s hospitalization in France. Richard Bratby served in the Royal Artillery and this cutting from the World’s Fair so kindly supplied by Helen shows his wedding to my mother Carrie Fossett in Eastbourne in 1917. The paper, uses the name as Bratley, it seems there were imply variants of the name. I have no real knowledge of this it could be a strange mistake by the Worlds Fair. I do have personally his birth certificate and marriage certificate with his Bratby name on them and he is called Bratby in the army. All his later documents like drivers Inland Revenue etc is Bratby.
he was in partnership with the Zola Brothers – acrobatic handbalancing act (please see my review of the Fossett book). His sub-title later for being a strong-man was, as a tribute to the great Eugen ‘Britain’s Young Sandow’. Eugen is mentioned a few times in War Circus and was world famous at the time. The book is wonderfully constructed and refers to 453 circus members and 630 showmen who took part but these numbers are not the much larger total. It would not be possible or fair for me to mention others, although many were relatives, but this is a small example of my father who was hospitalised. Married 36th September 1917.
Carrie Fossett – a studio photograph taken in 1915 aged 19 years. She toured with my great grandfathers circus along with her father Harry Fossett, during WW1 she sang patriotic songs during the performance. She was a fine singer apparently apart from circus skills. This is mentioned in War Circus.
Richard Bratby RSM.
My family’s number one theatrical agent during WW2 and the 1950s. This kind letter written to my mother was posted in 1958 following my fathers death a month earlier. this sadly terminated also the family as a bookable entity.
The Bratby family is one of the smallest but is now world-wide. The drawing below is the immediate family tree and surprisingly, Mr William Bratby 1852 – 1911, was one of the founding Directors for the famous Blackpool Tower. My father being a distant cousin.
