The singer Adelaide Hall was born in New York but she made London her home in the 1930s. It was here that she opened a nightclub, in Mayfair, with her Trinidadian husband Bert Hicks. In addition to her appearances at the club, Adelaide sang on BBC radio and entertained the troops and the British public who needed a boost during the dark days of the Second World War.
In 1940 Adelaide embarked on a concert tour that brought her to south London. Just before the official start of the London Blitz on 7 September 1940, she topped the bill at the Lewisham Hippodrome with her piano accompanist, Gerry Moore. On the evening of Monday 26 August 1940, in the middle of her act, the air raid siren sounded, but most of the audience remained seated. When the raid started everyone in the theatre could hear the screaming bombs falling and exploding, and the bursts of anti-aircraft machine gun fire. Though the building was strongly constructed, the sound of exploding bombs close by was clearly felt in the auditorium. Adelaide encouraged the nervous audience to join her in some community song numbers and she later recalled: ‘We – the performers and the audience - were told that no one could leave the theatre because it was too dangerous. Outside everything was burning. So, we just carried on and I managed to get the audience to join in many of the songs.
For four hours, with bombs exploding outside the Lewisham Hippodrome, Adelaide helped to entertain the nervous audience until the all clear sounded at 3.45 in the morning. Though Adelaide could barely speak, in defiant mood she returned to the stage of the Hippodrome the following evening to perform her act as scheduled.
In America, Adelaide’s bravery at the Lewisham Hippodrome made news. America hadn’t entered the war yet and only a handful of American stars had remained in Britain to entertain the public and the troops. Under various headlines, “Adelaide Hall in Bombing, Calmly Singing Songs” and “It Rained Bombs as Adelaide Sang”, accounts of Adelaide’s fighting spirit flashed across America and reached the front pages of many newspapers.
Undeterred, Adelaide continued her concert tour around Britain. She later reflected: ‘When we performed during air raids, we learned to be philosophical about the dangers we were being exposed to. Of course, in situations like the one at Lewisham Hippodrome are a little different, but we carried on to keep the public’s morale from becoming too low.’
This information is from Stephen Bourne's books Mother Country: Britain's Black Community on the Home Front 1939-45 (The History Press, 2010) , The Motherland Calls: Britain's Black Servicemen and Women 1939-45 (The History Press, 2012) and War to Windrush: Black Women in Britain 1939-48 (Jacaranda Books, 2018).
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Commemoration and Legacy
Artistic Responses to Conflict