- 'The First Lady of Burlesque' and sex symbol of the Victorian age was born in the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, she was the second daughter of Cumberland-born Philip Thompson and his Quaker wife Eliza née Cooper (Griggs.) She was just fourteen years old when she joined the dancing chorus at Her Majesty's Theater in 1852. She gained some fame in Thomas Selby's The Spanish Dancers in which she caused a small sensation with her imitation-parody of the extraordinary Spanish dancer Perea Nina and danced in 'Beauties of the Harem'.

   - In 1855 she went to Europe for over three years and performed her dances before very appreciative audiences. She was billed as the `first danseuse of the Drury Lane Theatre' in London. By 1868, again married to she left London for America and a cast of British burlesque actresses, dubbed the British

Blondes, (however not all had Blonde hair such as Ada Harland) and comedians with the blondes' trademarks being 'Short Trunks and Shapely Thighs', Lydi Became the #1 "British Blonde Performer. In June of 1869 The New York Clipper trade newspaper notes a falling off of burlesque business at Niblo's New York City theater, (probably due to Lydia touring with P.T. Barnum.) Lydia Thompson returned to Niblo's Garden in New York in April of 1870 to appear in the burlesque Pippin and the King of the Gold Mine.

   - Their first appearance on the American Stage was at Wood's Museum and Metropolitan Theater in NY, on September 28, 1868 in Burnand's burlesque Ixion. She made an enormous effect with what had been intended to be a six-month tour developed into six years, performing at various Theaters including James Wallack's Broadway Theater and later leaving New York to take her burlesque company on a U. S. tour in 1869, finally returning to Britain in 1874. In 1887 her days of Burlesque where numbered when she tried to sing on-Stage with a not to pleasant voice. She made her last Stage appearance in 1904.

   - Lydia's daughter zeffie would become a movie actress and do more than 68 films between 1917 and 1941 including the Grapes of Raft.