Champion lady dancer, singer, soubrette, sketch artist, comedian.
The sister of English burlesque actress Marie Loftus, and the adoptive sister of comedian James Bell, Ada Delroy was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, and educated at a convent in Lancashire. Taught dancing by Bell she made her first ever stage appearance as Fatima in a professional production of Bluebeard (a feature being her "Cobra di Capello" dance). She and Bell first came to Australia in 1888 with Harry Rickards touring the country extensively for two years.
In 1890 Delroy and Bell joined Professor Baldwin's Butterfly Co for a world tour, travelling through the USA, Middle-East, Far East, China, Japan, South Africa and Europe for another two years. The pair returned to Australia in February 1895 under Rickards management, this time with Bell's wife, Alice (the "White Mahatma"). By then a specialist Serpentine dancer, Delroy was routinely billed as the world's greatest Terpsichorean artist. In June that year she and Bell established the Ada Delroy Co and initially set about touring Australia and New Zealand.
In late 1897 the company undertook a two and a half years world tour, returning to Australia in mid-1900. The company then remained in the Antipodes until around 1909, with its principals also appearing with Harry Rickards, James Brennan and the Conrad Power Company. Delroy and Bell also married in 1908 following the death of Alice Bell the previous year.
Delroys' last known performance is believed to have been with Carroll's Vaudeville Entertainment in Melbourne in 1915. A keen cyclist, Delroy was often featured in cycling news during her Australian tours, and claimed to be the first lady cyclist in both Australia and Ireland. She also speculated in real estate in Perth in the mid to late-1890s, selling a parcel of land at Cottesloe known as the Ada Delroy Estate.
[Source: Australian Variety Theatre Archive]
