THAT FRED VOKES AND HIS LEGMANIA...

Fred Vokes 1846-1888

One of the enduring thrills for a Victorian theatre audience would be the panto dancing acts - with the mild titillation of a shapely female leg at a time when the sight of an ankle on display during the course of daily life might be considered quite outrageous. But such 'artistic' stage antics were not only limited to the female of the species. Year after year in Drury Lane, where pantos drew enormous crowds, the starring act was Fred Vokes and his Legmania.

Fred was one member of a theatrical family, famous in the 1870’s for dancing, acting, and singing. The show comprised his three sisters, one brother and then various other adoptees who joined and took the family name. Fred was by no means the most talented of them, but he certainly excelled in achieving great feats of contortionist dancing which proved to be so impressive that when appearing in Humpty Dumpty the Daily Telegraph's review said that he - 

‘dances as few men in this world probably could dance or would wish to dance. The extraordinary contortions of limb in which his dancing abounds – contortions which in Mr Vokes’ hands – or rather legs – are not lacking in grace – are highly suggestive of the impossibility of his suffering at any time from such accidents as dislocations.’ 

 

View Fred in the bottom right of this poster and you might imagine how the journalist from The Telegraph was concerned about dislocated bones.

A review in the Times in 1871 followed a visit to Tom Thumb; or, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and gives a sense of the ‘mania’ abounding for Fred and his remarkably versatile lower limbs:

‘The manner in which first the crown and then the wig of Mr Fred Vokes as King Arthur persisted in tumbling off while that monarch indulged in unusual gyrations excited tumultuous laughter, and if there could be anything funnier than Mr Fred Vokes’ ‘split’ dance it was his step dance, Lancashire clogs, Cornish reels, transatlantic walk-rounds, cellar flaps and breakdowns, college hornpipes and Irish jigs. Nothing in the way of dances came amiss to the airy monarch whose legs and arms seemed to spin round on pivots and who seemed at once to stimulate the actions of the cockchafer and the grasshopper.

He was well assisted by MR Fawdon Vokes as the court fool who had apparently danced himself out of his  mind in his infancy and had lived on tarantula spiders ever since. All the Misses Vokes (Victoria, Jessie and Rosina), fascinated in their attire, ravishing as to their black hair and amazing in their agility, were fully equal to the occasion. When they didn’t dance they sang and danced simultaneously and then all the Vokeses jumped on one another's backs and careered – so it seemed  - into immeasurable space.’

Goodness, that reporter seemed to get his money's worth! But all good things must come to an end, as did the Vokes' spectacular run of success when the Drury Lane theatre changed its management and even though Augustus Harris' new pantomime productions were even bigger and better than they'd ever been before, sadly he regarded the Vokes' as unruly. In return they considered his own style tyrannical, and so the family moved on, continuing to perform their act in other theatres.

Just as popular as the Vokes' were the lady skirt dancers whose acts entailed manipulating several yards of sheer fabric in contortions round their bodies.  The 'art' became a wide-spread hobby, performed by female family members in many private drawing rooms, often following instructions printed up the press. Here's such an example from the Daily Graphic in 1892 -

Miss Topsy Sinden appeared to be particularly alluring. And when Miss Letty Lind took her act to America in 1888, audiences were astounded by her demure performance - with not an inch of bare legs or breasts being exposed. 

Miss Letty Lind's Skirt Dance - 'Going...Going...Gone!'

Such slow and quiet acts may have appealed for a while, but the audiences adored the more sensational dance as performed by Lottie Collins and her 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay'. This routine would begin in the traditional form, with muted music and the gentle swishing of fabric, but at the end of the first chorus Lottie would pause, place one hand on her hip, then lift her skirts to show the high kicking 'can-can' of her legs to everyone. 

The VV thinks that Fred Vokes would have certainly approved.