In the early Victorian period many popular entertainers began to realise how much the guitar could offer them as a portable source of accompaniment to use for a musical spot in their act. During the ‘hungry’ 1840s, sustained economic downturn, and a series of bad harvests, created conditions that demanded as much resourcefulness from travelling performers as they could muster, especially the small fry with no reputation to trade on. This large tribe of guitar-players, who have never received the attention they merit, included some who performed are in costume or worked under a stage name such as ‘The British Minstrel’ or ‘The Banker’s Daughter’. Although most of these players have left few traces, sometimes indeed only one, they do not form the background to Victorian guitar playing, unless we choose to put theme there. They populate the foreground as the paid exponents of the guitar that members of the public were most often given the chance to see.