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Concept
Josephine Bradley
Summary
Josephine Bradley MBE (24 March 1893 – 16 February 1985) was a ballroom dancer and dance teacher. Although born in Dublin, she was raised from an early age in London, the youngest of eight children. Bradley was among the first ballroom dance professionals of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) who standardised the basic techniques of foxtrot, tango, quickstep and waltz. These are the English ballroom dances of what is now the World Dance Council's International Dancesport category. For her activities she had earned herself an informal title "The First Lady of the Ballroom".
Her father was a strict Roman Catholic, who abhorred dancing and the theatre. He died when she was ten, and an older sister subsequently succumbed to tuberculosis. It was feared that Josephine might be infected, so the family moved from London to Chorley Wood, at that time a rural village.
In 1924 she danced with an American, G.K. Anderson, in a competition at the Embassy Club in Regent Street. She was the professional dancer of the two. They won that, and went on to win the Daily Sketch Foxtrot competition, for which pro-am couples were eligible. In the 1924 World Championship at the Queen's Hall, the couple won again, to become World Foxtrot Champions. In the overall World Championships for 1924 (professional), and again in 1925, Maxwell Stewart and Barbara Miles won, ahead of Victor Sylvester and Phyllis Clarke.
That same year (1924), Bradley started her first dance school in the Knightsbridge Hotel. She was asked by the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) to join a working group to codify the dances and develop a syllabus for teachers. The ISTD formed its Ballroom Branch with Bradley, Eve Tynegate Smith, Murielle Simmons, Cynthia Humphreys and Victor Silvester as founder members. Bradley was a leading figure in the British ballroom dance world. She was active in ballroom dancing in general, and the ISTD in particular, right up to the end of her long life. Bradley was Chairman of the ISTD Ballroom Branch from 1924 to 1947.
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