Born in the
Seven Dials area of London, he was one of four children of a
circus clown, of
Cornish descent. He first appeared with other family members in the Chirgwin Family troupe in 1861, when they imitated touring minstrel shows. The family became regular music hall performers, until 1868 when George Chirgwin first appeared as a solo act, singing "
Come Home, Father" in a summer engagement at
Margate. Born simply George Chirgwin, He worked for a while as a
busker, and as a musical instrument salesman, gradually extending the range of instruments on which he performed to include piano, violin, cello, banjo, bagpipes, and one-string "
Jap fiddle". He also sang in a
falsetto voice. In the 1870s he toured with his younger brother, Tom, as the Brothers Chirgwin. He made his first solo stage appearances in London in 1877, and was immediately successful. Rather than using a fully blacked-up face as other blackface minstrels did, Chirgwin chose to adapt this by making one large white diamond over one eye. This meant that his stage character was only partly inside the blackface minstrel tradition, and was using the tradition in a somewhat ironical manner; and indeed his material included
cockney material as well as straightforward blackface songs and sketches. He said that the make-up originated from an occasion when he was performing in the open air at
Gloucester.A storm got up in the middle of the performance, and a lot of dust was blown into my right eye. The pain was so great that I naturally set to work rubbing my eye and when I faced the audience again there was a shriek of laughter. I had rubbed a patch of the black off round my eye, and the effect was so peculiar that I stuck to it ever since. Though, of course, it was some time before I adopted the diamond shaped patch as a distinctive mark. His comic performances included improvised exchanges with audiences, and he was noted for his rapport with working class patrons; He retired in 1919 due to ill health, and became the landlord of a
pub, the Anchor Hotel in
Shepperton,
Middlesex, until his death in 1922 aged 67. ==Filmography==