Charming collection of photography and ephemera related to Rhode Island native Jessie Darling, dubbed by various handbills and newspaper listings as the “world’s champion skatorial artist,” and “premiere roller skateuse.”

It’s hard to grasp today just how big roller skating was in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Decades before settling into its now-familiar niches of disco, roller derby, and the occasional TikTok trend, roller skating was a full-blown craze on both sides of the Atlantic. After James Plimpton’s revolutionary “rocker skate” design of 1863 made maneuvering fun and easy for even the untrained, rinks sprouted in every community of any size. Moral authorities seemed split on whether skating palaces were healthy and wholesome fun or cesspools seducing adolescents into vice, but one way or another, they began rivaling ballrooms as the preeminent venues for youthful social life.

Rhode Island native Jessie Darling, renowned for gracefully performing adapted versions of popular dances on skates, was one of the biggest stars. As a preteen she was paired with Professor Will Drown, who had previously been the featured skater in P.T. Barnum’s traveling circus, before going solo in the first decade of the 1900s. One of her signature routines was to dance through a maze of lit candles onstage. Handbills and newspaper listings billed her as “the wonder of the world,” “world’s champion skatorial artist,” and “the world’s premiere roller skateuse.”

Her stardom’s brightness was emblemized by her blinged-out signature skates with gleaming cut stones covering even the sides of her wheels (Seen in several photographs). The copyright symbol she added to her signature was more than a symbolic flourish; open the 1914 U.S. Copyright Catalog and you’ll find a registration for “Darling’s (Jessie) jewelled skate.” It was also around this time that she joined forces with skater Henry Bijouve, performing an act that is shown in the collection’s most startlingly-acrobatic image.
Jessie Darling was a marquee example of a kind of combination sports heroine and stage star that simply doesn’t exist in today’s world. Overall the collection is a fascinating window into a too-little-remembered era of entertainment history.