| Fannie Leslie | |
| Birth Name: | Fanny Catherine Annesley |
| Birth Date: | 13 June 1856 |
| Birth Place: | Soho, London, England |
| Death Place: | London |
| Occupation: | Music hall singer, dancer, actress |
| Years Active: | 1872 - 1905 |
Fannie Leslie (born Fanny Catherine Annesley, 13 June 1856 - 8 February 1935) was an English music hall singer, dancer and actress.
She was born in Soho, the daughter of a solicitor. She spent time in the United States as a child, and first performed on stage there in 1872. After returning to England and appearing in London and Oxford the following year, she played in the United States in 1875, as a dancer in Lydia Thompson's Burlesque Troupe in Broadway shows.[1]
After returning to England, she married theatre and music hall manager Walter Gooch (1850 - 1899) in 1878, and appeared in plays under his management at the Princess's Theatre.[1] She developed as a serio-comic performer, both in music halls and on the theatre stage, styling herself as 'The Queen of Burlesque'. Among her songs were "The Little Pirate of the Nore",[2] and "The Nineteenth Century Boys", a "masher" song which she performed dressed as a man.[3] In 1888, she featured in F. C. Burnand's burlesque play The Latest Edition of Black-Eyed Susan, playing opposite Dan Leno.[4] She also regularly performed in pantomimes, as a principal boy, and is credited with introducing cartwheels onto the stage in 1893.[5]
She and Gooch divorced in 1891, and in 1902 she married William Charles Broughton Wilson (1873 - 1949). She retired from the stage in about 1905, and died in 1935.[2] In 2016, her gravestone in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery was restored by the Music Hall Guild.[6]