FOOTLIGHT NOTES
HAND MADE GREETINGS CARDS
Marie Lloyd (1870-1922),
'CLAN MARIE LLOYD'
* * * * * * * *
© John Culme, 2006
English music hall star, 'The Queen of Comedy',
at about time of her marriage to Bernard Dillon
at the British Consulate in Portland, Oregon,
21 February 1914
'GOES ON THE WARPATH
'Cablegram Revealing Marie's Unwedded Relations With Dillon Cause of Trouble.
'London, November 22. - The "Clan Marie Lloyd," resident in London, is much perturbed over the question of who sent the fateful cablegram to the United States drawing the attention of the immigration authorities to Dillon and his position in Marie Lloyd's matrimonial troubles. It is henceforth to be the life work of this numerous family to fun to earth the meddler who caused Marie Lloyd so much trouble and worry at the gateway to the Land of Liberty.
'When I saw the various members of the clan at dinner a few nights ago they had just received a long letter from Marie Lloyd and one from her sister, Alice Lloyd, and they were discussing ways and means of getting a peep at all the cablegrams sent from London on the fateful day in question. The girls were of the opinion that so closely were they guarded by the cable companies that nothing short of a lawsuit would reveal them to the eyes of the revenging clan, while the men took a much more hopeful view, believing that any one of several good friends on the London police force could unlock the door of the safe in which the original cablegrams are jealously stored.
'The theory that the cablegram was sent directly by one of Marie's enemies in London seems to have lost favour with her relatives and friends here and they are not working on the supposition that it was sent by a newspaper reporter alive to the possibility of a good story.'
(The Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, Sunday, 23 November 1913, section B, p.14b)