Denton Spencer

Denton Spencer’s real name was Arthur Spence: ‘Denton’ was his mother’s surname and also the middle name of his sister Hannah. He was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 19 November 1874, son of a builder and contractor. The 1891 census return described Arthur as a ‘chemist apprentice’ but on the 1901 census he was shown as a journalist and author on his own account. By then he had tried acting, appearing in Walter E. Grogan’s ‘A Vain Sacrifice’ and ‘Lord Allongford’ at the Theatre Royal, Torquay on 16 May 1895. Between 1902 and 1909, already using the name Denton Spencer, he wrote some short stories that were published in newspapers, followed by ‘Old Thane’s Mummy’, which The Stage, 18 April 1912, describing the author as having been ‘for some years our chief Leeds correspondent’, called ‘an acceptable specimen of what used to be called irreverently the “shilling shocker”’, about a young woman who impersonates an Egyptian mummy. On 24 August 1912 the Yorkshire Evening Post reported that ‘Mr. Denton Spencer, of Leeds, has already two sketches running on the halls - one being given by the Sisters Reeve, who were in the Grand panto last year, and the other by Harry Dent, who was in the previous panto. Now I understand Tom and Marie Motramo, who were at the Leeds Hippodrome last week, have accepted a third, under the title of “Mistaken Identity.” The latter sketch was forwarded, read, and accepted in a week-end’. Further sketches and short plays followed: ‘The Girl in the Cabaret’ (1915), ‘Self Defence’* (1916), ‘Ruling the Roost’* (1916), ‘The Yellow Spider’* (1918), ‘Settling Day’* (1918), ‘The Coffee Pot’ (1919), and ‘Bachelor Brown’ (1919). The four plays marked * are in the Great War Theatre database. Spencer continued to live in Leeds, working as The Stage’s Leeds correspondent, and writing letters to, and articles for, local newspapers about matters theatrical. In a letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post, 21 February 1927, he wrote, ‘I see practically all the amateur work of the foremost societies in Leeds, and if my thirty years’ experience is of any account, I should say that beyond a few isolated instances (easily counted on one hand), budding genius is conspicuous by its absence’. He died at his Leeds home, where he had lived for over 50 years, on 12 March 1950 (the date is confirmed by a death notice in the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 14 March 1950, and by the National Probate Calendar). The Stage, 23 March 1950, published an obituary: ‘We greatly regret to announce the death of our Leeds correspondent, Arthur Spence, better known to his theatrical friends as Denton Spencer. He was found dead in a chair at his home last week by his nephew. He had been in failing health for some time. He was 73 [sic – actually 75]. A former actor, he was a well-known figure in Leeds journalistic life, spending most of his time in the theatre and typing his copy in the small hours by the light of a paraffin lamp. He was a cheery, friendly soul, and endeared himself to many’.