Amelia Day

Born Katherine Amelia Rea on 9 October 1881 in the Wandsworth district of London, Amelia Day began her career on the music hall stage under the name Kitty Colyer. In an era when variety theatre ruled British popular entertainment, she performed widely and shared bills with leading performers of the day, including Vesta Tilley and May Beatty. The Bedford Theatre in Camden Town, owned by Harry Day, became a frequent home venue, and her professional and personal lives intertwined when the two married in 1901.

Over the following decades, Colyer built a reputation as a reliable and popular music hall performer, anchoring long runs of shows at venues connected to her husband’s circuit. Her stage career gave her a public platform and a connection with working London audiences, and both she and Harry became active members of the Labour Party as the movement grew through the 1920s.

In 1927, the party invited her to stand in one of the St Pancras seats, an offer she declined, but her commitment to public service soon took a different route. At the end of her run of shows, she retired from performing to contest the 1928 London County Council election in Southwark Central, winning the seat and serving a single three-year term before standing down in favour of Harry. After his death in 1939, she married John Latham in 1947.

Amelia Day, known to audiences as Kitty Colyer, lived to ninety, passing away on 4 March 1972 in Worthing, Sussex. Her story spans two demanding public lives, first as a performer entertaining packed music halls, then as an elected representative shaping London local government in the interwar years.