page_title: Joseph Grimaldi
section_title: Family background and early years
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Grimaldi / Biography / Family background and early years
caption_attribution_description: English: An 1815 painting of the slum district Clare Market in London by the artist Thomas Hosmer Shepherd.
context_page_description: Joseph Grimaldi was an English actor, comedian and dancer, who became the most popular English entertainer of the Regency era. In the early 1800s, he expanded the role of Clown in the harlequinade that formed part of British pantomimes, notably at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden theatres. He became so dominant on the London comic stage that the harlequinade role of Clown became known as "Joey", and both the nickname and Grimaldi's whiteface make-up design were, and still are, used by other types of clowns. Grimaldi originated catchphrases such as "Here we are again!", which continue to feature in modern pantomimes.
  Born in London to an entertainer father, Grimaldi began to perform as a child, making his stage debut at Drury Lane in 1780. He became successful at the Sadler's Wells Theatre the following year; his first major role was as Little Clown in the pantomime The Triumph of Mirth; or, Harlequin's Wedding in 1781, in which he starred alongside his father. After a brief schooling, he appeared in various low-budget productions and became a sought-after child performer.
context_section_description: Grimaldi was born in Clare Market, in Westminster, London, into a family of dancers and comic performers.  His great-grandfather, John Baptist Grimaldi, was a dentist by trade and an amateur performer, who in the 1730s moved from Italy to England.  There he performed the role of Pantaloon opposite John Rich's Harlequin. John Baptist's son, Grimaldi's paternal grandfather, Giovanni Battista Grimaldi, began performing at an early age and spent much of his career in Italy and France. According to Grimaldi's biographer Andrew McConnell Stott, Giovanni was held in the Paris Bastille as the result of a scandalous performance. After his release, Giovanni moved to London in 1742, where John Baptist introduced him to John Rich; Giovanni then defrauded Rich and fled to the continent, where he later died.
  Grimaldi's father, Joseph Giuseppe Grimaldi (c. 1713–1788), an actor and dancer (known professionally as Giuseppe or "the Signor"), also made his way to London in around 1760.  His first London appearance was at the King's Theatre. He was later engaged by David Garrick to play Pantaloon in pantomimes at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, earning high praise, and eventually became the ballet master there.  Grimaldi's mother, Rebecca Brooker, was born in Holborn in 1764.  She was apprenticed to Giuseppe Grimaldi in 1773 as a dancer and public speaker, and she became his mistress shortly afterwards, even though she was under 14 and he was about 60.
  Grimaldi's father was a serial philanderer who had at least ten children with three different women. In 1778, he divided his time between two London addresses occupied by his mistresses, Brooker and Anne Perry. Both women gave birth that year, Perry to a daughter named Henrietta and Brooker to Joseph.  Although jubilant at the birth of his first son, Giuseppe Grimaldi spent little time with Brooker, living mostly with Perry, and probably maintaining other mistresses as well.  Brooker raised her son alone for the first few years in Clare Market, a slum area of west London.  In about 1780, Brooker gave birth to a second son, John Baptiste. Keen to set up an acting dynasty, Giuseppe left Perry and his daughter and moved with Brooker and his two sons to Little Russell Street, High Holborn.  Giuseppe, who often displayed eccentric and obsessive behaviour, was a strict disciplinarian and often beat his children for disobeying his orders. A fascination with death consumed his later life; he would feign death in front of his children, so as to gauge their reactions, and he insisted on his eldest daughter, Mary, decapitating him after his death because of his fear of being buried alive, a task which earned her £5 extra in her inheritance.
caption: Clare Market slum in 1815, by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd
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