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My cousin Michael Ritte has advised me of your website article giving extracts from the West Sussex Gazette and has passed me copies of the exchange of emails between you, wrote Ralph Forbes-Ritte.I wonder whether other members of your readership can remember Philip Ritte and his Concert Parties?My great uncle Philip (whom I never met) was born in Edinburgh on 8 January 1871, the fourth child of the Reverend Bernhard Rittenberg who was the Minister of the Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation. Soon afterwards Bernhard took up a new post as minister of a synagogue in Kingston, Jamaica returning to the UK in 1878.On 9 August 1899 Philip married Henrietta Helena Latte. In 1918 he officially changed the name to Ritte, although he and his siblings had been using the name for some years before then. It could have been either anti-German or anti-Jewish prejudice at the time -- or both.Although Philip was initially a lithographic artist he soon turned to the stage for a profession.He was a chorister in the Doyle Carte Opera Company from 1899 to 1901 and again in 1909. In 1903 and 1904 he appeared as the 1st Watchman in The Cherry Girl at the Vaudeville Theatre. I have a postcard of the Randell Jackson Concert Party, of which he was a member, dated 1913.As your correspondent Beryl Andrews said, he was a handsome man with curly hair -- although his height and grey hair are not apparent in the photograph! I also have two records he made and a copy of a concert programme dated 9 December 1930 at which he was one of the entertainers of the Grovian Society.He died at his home in London in 1931.Of his four children --Ernest was a saxophonist in the Roy Fox and Lou Stone Orchestras before he emigrated to Australia in 1939.Leonard won the Amateur Ballroom Dance Championship in 1924/5 season. Sadly for him this was the year after Victor Sylvester won the title. Leonard subsequently became a professional dancer and later a businessman.Sheila, as your correspondent said, was also a singer and dancer.If anybody can help me fill in the missing years of Philip's career I wouldbe most grateful.(Anyone wishing to contact Ralph can do so through the editor of this site in the first instance)
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