Margaret Tisdall (8 January 1906 – 30 April 1979), better known by her stage name Peggy Dell, was an Irish singer and pianist who became a popular music hall entertainer.
Born in Dublin, Tisdall made her first public appearance as a pianist at the age of nine at the Olympia Theatre, where her father played flute with the pit orchestra. Later, at the age of 13, she was employed by Woolworth's to play at their store in Grafton Street in order to improve the sales of sheet music.While still in her teens Tisdall formed her own band which played at various Dublin venues, such as the Theatre Royal and the Capitol Theatre. In the early 1930s she joined Roy Fox's band in London as his first female singer. For visual appeal on posters and handbills, Peggy Tisdall then adopted the stage name ‘Peggy Dell’ and kept it throughout her subsequent career. A deep voice added to the jazz-band quality of her performance.
She toured the USA to great acclaim with the Jack Hylton Orchestra, returning to Dublin on the eve of the second world war. She turned down a BBC offer of a place in Tommy Handley's new ITMA (‘It's That Man Again’) radio show of 1939–49, a series later enshrined in the canon of British entertainment.
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Nevertheless, in the comparative safety of ‘Emergency’ Dublin, Peggy Dell joined Phil Murtagh's band at the Metropole ballroom on O'Connell St., close to the Capitol. She continued to appear at the Theatre Royal .Her fame was undiminished and ‘the Peggy Dell Orchestra’ achieved national prominence.. She played and sang at dances, performed in revues, and acted in pantomimes.
The 1950s preserved her appeal but time, fashion, and technology gradually affected the cohort of Dublin entertainers who had started out with the new state. After 1960, television provided alternative popular entertainment, and economic development swallowed up the live entertainment halls, replacing them with undistinguished office blocks. Peggy Dell was on stage for the last week of shows at the Theatre Royal in June 1962. What later became the genre of ‘rare ould times’ nostalgia was then part of a highly emotional endgame for fading stars.
Peggy Dell never married. She died in Dublin aged 73 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
(Edited from Wikipedia & Dictionary of Irish Biography)