[SOUTH AUSTRALIA; THEATRE] Jack Ward, vaudeville performer : his personal scrapbook, documenting his career on the stage in Adelaide and regional towns, 1895-1905.

[Adelaide : Jack Ward, c.1895-1905]. Handmade scrapbook, elephant folio (440 x 300 mm), original red pebbled cloth over boards (stained and rubbed), printed name of the compiler ‘JACK WARD’ mounted at centre of upper board, spine reinforced with a later leather backstrip; it is evident that the boards were repurposed by Jack Ward, as the front pastedown has the partially erased earlier ownership inscription of Mary Ann [McNam]ara, Adelaide (this is possibly Mary Ann McNamara, b. 1860 Blackfellows Creek, d. 1915 Kirkcaldy); containing well over 200 handbills and programmes for South Australian theatre and social events at which Jack Ward performed; these are laid down on backing sheets taken from issues of contemporary Adelaide newspapers and bound in (a few programmes are loose at rear of album); the edges of the leaves are brittle, but otherwise the contents are sound throughout.

This astonishing archive provides a unique time capsule of vaudeville theatre in South Australia around the time of Federation.

In notices and reviews in the South Australian press of the time, as well as on many of the handbills in this album, vaudeville entertainer Jack Ward was billed as an ‘eccentric dancer and comedian’, who was noted for his ‘clever female impersonations’. He was referred to as ‘the Australian Coleman’ – a favourable comparison with the popular English eccentric dancer, John Coleman, who toured Australia in 1896. Ward’s personal scrapbook chronicles his career from 1895 –  the earliest handbill being for a ‘social and dance’ at the College Park Cricket Club on 4 July that year – up to 1905. This represents an entire decade of Jack’s work as a performer on the vaudeville and theatre circuit in Adelaide, Kadina, Moonta, Uraidla and other regional centres in South Australia.

Up until now, Jack Ward has remained an obscure figure in the history of Australian vaudeville; in fact, we have not been able to glean even the most basic biographical information about him, such as birth and death dates – although a funeral notice for a Mr. J. J. Ward (Jack) appeared in the Adelaide Evening Journal, 15 May 1906. With the discovery of this scrapbook, however, Jack Ward’s career and contribution to South Australian variety theatre will inevitably be properly researched and more thoroughly understood.