[1] She was born Violet Mary Tipton in Kentish Town, London, in 1886 and went on the stage as a chorus girl at the age of sixteen.

Her duet with Robey "If You Were the Only Girl (in the World)" became a "signature song" of the era and endured as a pop standard.

[2] During the early months of the First World War she recorded the patriotic '"When We've Wound Up the Watch on the Rhine", which she first performed at the London Hippodrome in the 1914 revue Business as Usual.

She retired from the stage on her marriage on 22 September 1921 to Edward Raylton Joicey MC (1890–1955) and they had two sons, John and Richard.

She returned to acting for the screen, appearing in Britannia of Billingsgate (1933),[3] a musical based on the play of the same name by Christine Jope-Slade and Sewell Stokes, followed by Road House in 1934.