Eugene Stratton

This illustration shows the American entertainer Eugene Stratton in blackface. Stratton spent his whole life playing roles which required him to wear blackface in imitation of a black man. He came to Britain with an American minstrel troupe in 1880 and remained in London, working for a decade with the Moore & Burgess Minstrel Show at St. James's Hall in Piccadilly. Many of his songs were written by Leslie Stuart with whom he developed a close friendship. Minstrel troupes were a form of entertainment that developed in America from the 1840s, in which white performers caricatured enslaved black people.