A relatively obscure figure, this brief biography is pulled together from notices in The Era and other newspapers.
WH Phillips was a writer and performer particularly active in the late 1870s and 1880s, mostly in the area which would now be described as Greater Manchester. I have not been able to find out when he was born, but his family were all entertainers – his parents were Jane and George Phillips who together performed under the name Mr and Mrs Punch Phillips, whilst he performed with his sisters Rose and Julia as The Brother and Sisters Phillips: Three Comical Cards.
The Brother and Sisters Phillips were described as “comic entertainers” “duettists and grotesque dancers” and “the Original Lancashire Trio”. They were well-known in the Halls around Manchester though they performed as far afield as Oxford and Brighton.
In the mid-1880s WH Phillips became proprietor of the Alexandra Music Hall in Wigan, but sadly he died in 1887 at what must have been a relatively young age. (His mother died in 1896 aged 71.)
He is credited with writing around a dozen songs between 1879 and 1882. His songs were sung by some very successful performers like George ‘Jolly Little’ Lewis, Fred Coyne, GH MacDermott and Vesta Tilley. The authorship of one of his songs was disputed (follow the link below to The Maid and The Magpie for details) prompting him to post this useful list of his most successful songs in The Era:
Given the relatively small number of songs he wrote it’s perhaps surprising that as many as three seem to have entered the repertoire of traditional singers:
The download file contains details of all the songs I can find that were attributed to WH Phillips:
Last Updated on May 5, 2022 by John Baxter | Published: May 4, 2022
