Charles Sloman

Charles Sloman (1808 – 22 July 1870) was an English comic entertainer, singer and songwriter, as well as a composer of ballads and sacred music. He was billed as "the only English Improvisatore".

Biography Born in Westminster into a Jewish family originally named Solomon, he began singing in taverns at a young age, and made one of his first professional appearances at the Rotunda in Southwark in 1825. In 1834 he went into partnership with his brother, the actor Henry Sloman (1793–1873), in managing the Rochester Theatre, and four years later was briefly the manager of the Colosseum Theatre in Regent Street. He was also Chairman at the Mogul Tavern in Drury Lane.

The diarist Charles Rice described Sloman as "the great, the Only, extemporaneous singer... his wonderful Genius is one of the most unassuming characters that ever entered the field of Public Criticism...". His popular songs included "Charming Sue" and "Social Bricks".

According to historian Harold Scott, Sloman was "the most respectable, the most ubiquitous and in some ways the most typical of tavern concert artists. As a performer, in spite of certain versatility, he may be regarded as negligible...[But]..it was rather as a personality with the gift of popularity that he succeeded in attaching himself to history." He supported Jewish charities, and in 1866 proposed setting up a provident society to help support entertainers who had fallen on hard times. In 1870, after becoming destitute, he was admitted to the Strand Union Workhouse in Cleveland Street, Marylebone, where he died seven weeks later.