The Musical Gardners by Isolde Kinns

“The celebrated Gardner family … both as individual performers and as an orchestra, have gained the warmest encomiums from the most severe professional critics.”

So read the publicity material when John William Gardner and five of his children toured Australia with the Irish vaudeville show ‘The Great Hibernicon & Comedy Company’ during the late 19th century.   After a paragraph on each of the performers, the article concluded:

“It may be truthfully stated that the combination of the Hibernicon Company with so talented a company of musical artists will attract the patronage of all those who seek to be amused and instructed by an entertainment replete with fun and humour, whilst entirely devoid of the faintest suggestion of vulgarity.”

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