Walker Gallery

George Walker and Ada Overton Walker in In Dahomey

Miss Ada Overton Walker and Mr George Walker, performing "The Tsar of Dixie" a song in the play In Dahomey at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1903. The Tatler reports that the play was "produced with great success at Boston last September, is written and played by coloured people'. Aida Overton Walker (February 14, 1880 October 11, 1914), also billed as Ada Overton Walker and as "The Queen of the Cakewalk", was an African-American vaudeville performer, actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, and wife of vaudevillian George Walker. The mentions how Ada/Aida had made the cakewalk popular among the Four Hundred - the top rungs of New York society. Date: 1903

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Polyphemus, the Cyclops, in his cave

Polyphemus (Polyphemos) the Cyclops, the gigantic one-eyed son of Poseidon and Thoosa, seen here in his cave with one of his sheep. In Homer's Odyssey he kills and eats several of Odysseus's men. Odysseus gives him wine which makes him sleepy, and when he passes out Odysseus and his surviving men drive a sharp stake through his one eye, blinding him. They then escape and sail away

© Mary Evans Picture Library

Membership card for the Caterpillar Club belonging to Flight Officer Edwin Walker

Membership card for the Caterpillar Club belonging to Flight Officer Edwin Walker, who was a navigator on a Lancaster bomber and bailed out when his plane was hit during a bombing raid in February 1944. He and two other crew members survived and he spent the remainder of the war in a German POW camp. The crew members who lost their lives are commemorated at the Bomber Command memorial in Lincoln. The Caterpillar Club was open to all aircrew whose lives had been saved by a parachute made of silk. It was run by Irvin Air Chutes of Great Britain, who made the parachutes. Date: 1940s

© Mary Evans Picture Library