Tom Major-Ball

Tom Major-Ball (born Abraham Thomas Ball; 18 May 187927 March 1962) was a British music hall and circus performer. He was the father of John Major, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1997. Early life He was born Abraham Thomas Ball in Bloxwich, Staffordshire, on 18 May 1879. He was a son of Abraham Ball, a bricklayer, and his wife Sarah Ann Marrah or O'Marrah who was of Irish and possibly Welsh descent. The family also had an adopted son, Alfred. When he was five years old, Major-Ball and his parents emigrated to the United States, where he spent his formative years in Pennsylvania, where his father worked as a steel worker, initially in Pittsburgh, then Philadelphia, and finally Fall Hollow, a small village near Braddock. He later worked as a vaudeville performer and trapeze artist in travelling circuses. Early adult life and stage career Circa 1896 the family moved back to the UK, to the Walsall area, where Tom Major developed a successful music hall career. He claimed to have performed at "every theatre in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland". In 1901 Major fathered an out-of-wedlock child (Tom Moss) with Mary Moss, a married woman. His music hall act was as a comedian and song-and-dance man, chiefly with Kitty Grant; a relationship grew, though this remained secret as Kitty was married. Kitty called herself Drum for the stage effect of "Drum and Ball"; Tom later added "Major" to the name when the double act was renamed "Drum and Major". He sometimes performed under the name Tom Major. In July 1903 he and Kitty toured for a year in South America, where Major worked for period as a ranch-hand in Argentina and later at a casino in Buenos Aires, before getting caught up in a civil war in Uruguay, where he was forced to enlist in a local militia. On the couple's return to the United Kingdom in April 1904 they resumed touring music halls and their performing careers flourished. On 18 February 1906, he and Kitty became founder members at the creation of the Variety Artistes' Federation at the Vaudeville Club in London. They later married in 1910, following the death of Kitty's husband David Grant. A heart condition prevented Tom from enlisting for active service in World War I.