Pat Stewart
Tiller Girl who posed in a polka dot dress for one of the most memorable images of the postwar era
PAT STEWART, who has died aged 83, was a former Tiller Girl who, in later life, was revealed to be the pretty blonde in a polka dot dress in a famous and much-reproduced photograph taken in Blackpool in 1951.
The photographer, Bert Hardy, had initially approached members of the public to pose for the Picture Post shoot, but turned to two Tiller Girls, the 17-year-old Pat and her friend Wendy Clarke, who were treading the boards on Blackpool’s North Pier. “Bert turned up one Friday night to see the show and afterwards asked us to meet him on the beach the following day,” she recalled. “We didn’t get paid but it was my first show and to me it was publicity. My mother bought me that frock for about £3 to go away in.”
The picture, which captures the moment when Pat’s skirt is caught by a blustery sea breeze as the two girls perch on the railings of the promenade, was at first deemed too risqué to publish, but after it appeared in Picture Post “Blackpool Belles” was reproduced on countless postcards and in newspapers and magazines, becoming one of the most memorable images of the postwar era.
Pat Stewart’s memories of the photo shoot were mixed: “It was very windy that day, it’s always windy in Blackpool, and my dress kept billowing up. People have asked me since if I was really laughing and I think I was too terrified. There was a big drop down on to the beach the other side and if you look at the photo I’m holding on to Wendy and that’s when the wind blew up my skirt.” Nor was she entirely happy with the finished product: “I was wearing a one-piece swimsuit underneath my dress but when the photo was developed a bit of it was showing so it was airbrushed out, which makes it look like I wasn’t wearing any knickers.”
Pat forgot all about the photograph – until 2006 when a woman called Norma Edmondson came forward, saying she believed that she was the girl in the photo. In an interview on The One Show, she recalled having a polka dot dress and visiting Blackpool, though she could not recall exactly when the picture was taken.
The story prompted Pat Stewart to come forward. Not only did she vividly remember the photo shoot, she had the original contact sheet to prove it. Mrs Edmondson admitted she had made a mistake and Pat Stewart was then invited on The One Show to claim the credit.
The media interest led her to publish a memoir, The Girl in the Spotty Dress (2016), co-written with Veronica Clark.
She was born Pat Wilson on November 25 1933 in the village of Featherstone, near Pontefract, West Yorkshire. Her father was a miner who, to make ends meet during the General Strike, had performed as a bare-knuckle fighter at a fairground.
Her mother picked peas to pay for Pat to have dance lessons from the age of three and, aged 12, she won a place at Lilyman’s Dance School in Leeds. In her mid-teens she saw an advert in the Yorkshire Post for chorus girls for a pantomime at Leeds Theatre Royal. She went to the audition and got the job. Also performing in the pantomime were the Tiller Girls, and the following summer she joined the troupe in Blackpool.
In the 1950s she performed many times in The Good Old Days at Leeds City Varieties and worked with stars including Benny Hill, Morecambe and Wise, Diana Dors and the Beverley Sisters. In 1953 she appeared on the same bill as Laurel and Hardy at the Finsbury Park Empire.
In 1956 Pat married the Welsh comedian Johnny Stewart and in the 1960s she retired from dancing and became a theatrical agent. Later she gave dancing lessons to children and was still working until a few weeks before her death.
Her husband died in 2000 and she is survived by a daughter and two sons.
Pat Stewart, born November 25 1933, died May 7 2017