Katie Lawrence


Katie Lawrence was an English music-hall singer, best known for Harry Dacre's 1890s' hit "Daisy Bell".

Appearances in other media

The Impressionist painter Walter Sickert produced some hundred and sixty-six preparatory sketches of Lawrence performing at Gatti's Hungerford Place of Varieties in 1887. These formed the basis of a number of paintings he made of her in the 1880s and in 1903. Only one painting, that from 1903, survives; the rest are presumed destroyed. As recently as 2005, while this painting was undergoing routine restoration work, it was discovered that the Katie Lawrence scene was actually painted over an earlier composition. Using X-rays, art restorers discerned a study of the exterior of a church beneath the music hall scene.
In a draft of the fifteenth episode of Ulysses, James Joyce uses Lawrence's name for one of the prostitutes in the brothel.

Selected songs