‘Seth Davy’ has been immortalised in a famous Liverpool folk song Whiskey on a Sunday but one local historian believes that may not have been his name at all
Seth Davy at Bevington Bush, Liverpool (from a lantern slide, circa 1900)(Image: Wikipedia Commons)
A local historian says he may have uncovered the “true identity” of a street puppeteer who performed in Liverpool and was immortalised in a folk song.
The performer, known as “Seth Davy”, was a black Liverpool street entertainer who was known for his dancing dolls. He is remembered in “Whiskey on a Sunday (The Ballad of Seth Davy)” by folk singer Glyn Hughes, which tells the story of a one-legged entertainer who performed at the corner of Bevington Bush and Scotland Road near to the Coach & Horses pub.
The song was popular during the second British folk revival and was first recorded by the Liverpool folk group The Spinners in 1966 before being covered by Irish folk singer Danny Dole in 1968, whose version topped the Irish charts for 10 weeks. It was also covered by The Dubliners, Rolf Harris and The Houghton Weavers and is still sung by Liverpool folk groups today.
A surviving image of the puppeteer believed to be at the centre of the song, dating from around 1900, adds further intrigue. The photograph, originally part of a lantern slide, later came into the possession of Fitz Spiegl, an Austrian-born musician, journalist, and collector, who used it to promote folk performances featuring the song in the 1960s.
The image helped confirm that the character in the song was based on a real person, but his true identity remained unknown.
The Liverpool Daily Post published the same Spiegl photograph in 1963 and the newspaper’s article, promoting one of Spiegl’s shows at the Bluecoat.
The article read: “In the programme is a piece called “The ballad of Bevington Bush” which tells of an old puppeteer called Seth Davey who ‘sat at the corner of Bevington Bush, astride an old packing case, and the dolls on the end of the plank went dancing, as he crooned with a smile on his face’.”
The 1963 article goes on: “The piece was handed down to Glyn Hughes, who sings it tonight, by one Richard Samuels, who called himself the ‘Ivor Novello of Scottie Road’ and Spiegl was inclined to think it spurious. But now he has discovered among some old photographic slides, dating from the turn of the century, one which shows in every detail what the song recounts. There are the puppeteer, the plank, the dolls, and the packing case, and there in the background the sign ‘Bevington House Hotel’. “
But despite the song’s popularity, Colin Holland, 55, from the L25 area, who looks into family and local history, said historians have long struggled to find any official record of a man by that name in Liverpool.
He told the ECHO: “The puppeteer who was the subject of the Liverpool folk song has always been impossible to trace in the records under the name Seth Davy.
“Readers of the Liverpool ECHO in 1957 were told by one correspondent that the puppeteer’s name was Seth Davy, and most people accepted that name must be right. Despite many attempts, everyone looking for Seth Davy came up against a brick wall.
“He doesn’t appear in the Liverpool records. It was only when I tried looking for possible candidates with other names that I finally found a man matching some of the description of the puppeteer.
“The puppeteer at Bevington Bush had what are called ‘Jig Dolls’. These are dolls with loose limbs that appear to dance or jig on the end of a vibrating board or platform.
“In England, dancing dolls were popular street entertainment for hundreds of years. Old soldiers sometimes busked with them to supplement their meagre pensions.
“Dancing dolls were first brought to England by itinerant musicians from Italy in the sixteenth century. They were known as ‘Poupées à la Planchette’ or ‘Marionettes à la Planchette’.
“Sailors away at sea would sometimes carve such toys to take home for their children. Royal Navy officer Harold Percy Rugg filed the first known English patent for a dancing doll in 1904.
“The real Seth Davy was noticed at Bevington Bush for a number of years and people reported seeing him and described seeing him in newspaper articles and letters.
“The name Seth Davy first appears in a letter to the Liverpool ECHO in 1957. Before this date, most accounts do not give him a name.
“One article called him Sam. If his name really was Seth Davy then that name should appear in the Liverpool census records, electoral registers, death records and burial records. The fact it doesn’t makes me think he wasn’t called Seth Davy.”
According to Colin, the earliest known reference comes from a letter published in the ECHO in 1957, in which a reader claimed the performer was called Seth Davy. It added that the “old” performer sat on a box at the bottom of Edgar Street or Edinburgh Street, off Scotland Road, on a platform attached to the box with “four kinds of dolls” fastened with an “angled spring” which made them seem like they were dancing.
The name in the letter was widely accepted, but no evidence has ever supported it.
Colin said: “I believe that Seth Davy was in fact a man called George Smart, born in Sierra Leone, West Africa. George Smart joined the Royal Navy in 1862 and spent the next 20 years working as a stoker in Royal Navy ships.
“He married at St Michael’s Church in Upper Pitt Street, Liverpool in 1883 to Mary Ann Duffy and worked on the docks and at Eccles Street gas works off Vauxhall Road.”
Colin points to several key pieces of evidence linking Smart to the legendary puppeteer. Both men were said to have lived in Maguire Street. Smart would have been an elderly man around 1900, matching descriptions of the performer, and appears to have been living on his own means, consistent with someone supplementing income through street entertainment.
He was also a black man living in the Scotland Road area at a time when that would have been relatively unusual, making him a memorable local figure. Smart died in 1902, around the same time Seth Davy was believed to have died.
Colin believes that over time, the performer’s real name was lost and replaced with “Seth Davy” through oral tradition and later retelling.
Colin said: “After further research of foreign-born men with names not in any way similar to the name Seth Davy on the 1901 census I drew up a list of possible candidates. I looked at where they lived and any other records available for them.
“I was left with two possible candidates who were living near to Bevington Bush in 1901. One was an American man who was actually lodging at Bevington House Hotel. He returned to the USA in 1903 and died in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA in 1913.
“The death certificate tells us that he was born in South Carolina and he was white. The other candidate died in Liverpool Workhouse in 1902 and I think he is the real Seth Davy.
“The man in the photograph was thought to have lived in Maguire Street and this led me to George Smart, a West African-born man who lived in Maguire Street in the early 1890s, near to Bevington Bush.
“On the 1891 census he was a dock labourer, born in Africa, living at house one in 10 court in Maguire Street with his wife Mary Ann. George Smart had married Mary Ann Duffy at St Michael’s CE Church in Upper Pitt Street in 1883.
“Like some versions of the song, he died in 1902.
“On 14th May 1902 he left his home at 34 Gildarts Gardens and admitted himself into Liverpool Workhouse for medical care for his heart problems. He died of cardiac failure due to mitral heart disease at Liverpool Workhouse on 11th June 1902.
“The Smart surname appears to be one that was admired and adopted rather than inherited through slavery. The colony included Africans who were liberated from slave ships by the Royal Navy.
“In George Smart’s case we can show that prior to coming to Liverpool he was traveling the world with the Royal Navy as a stoker (marine fireman). Stokers shovelled coal in the belly of the ship and were vital to power the coal-fired steamships of the day.
“Royal Navy records say George Smart was born in Sierra Leone on 25th December 1839. He first enlisted for service on a Royal Navy ship in 1862 and completed over 20 years service. His last ship appears to have been in 1885.
“His character was usually exemplary or very good. The records say he was a black man. There’s also mention of a pension for his service.
“That’s why I believe George Smart is a very good candidate for the real Seth Davy.”
