Walter Slaughter

Walter Alfred Slaughter (17 February 1860 – 2 March 1908) was an English conductor and composer of musical comedy, comic opera and children's shows.

[1] He attended the City of London School, and sang in the choir of St. Andrew's Church, Wells Street under Joseph Barnby.

[6] After several one-act works, including Sly and Shy (1883), The Casting Vote (1885)[7] and Marie's Honeymoon (1885), he wrote the score for what became the most successful musical version of Alice in Wonderland, in 1886, to a book and lyrics by Henry Savile Clarke.

[9] At the same time, Slaughter composed incidental music for plays, including those produced at the St. James's Theatre, while he was employed as the musical director there, including, in 1890, Walter Frith's Molierè and Quinton and Hamilton's Lord Anerley; in 1891, Haddon Chambers's The Idler; and in 1892, Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and Donna Luiza (with Basil Hood as librettist).

Slaughter's breakthrough success came in 1895 in collaboration with Hood with the musical comedy Gentleman Joe, The Hansom Cabbie as a vehicle for the low comic Arthur Roberts.

Bernard Shaw dismissed the score in The Saturday Review: "The music, by Mr. Walter Slaughter, does not contain a single novel, or even passably fresh point, either in melody, harmony or orchestration.

In 1897, Basil Hood and Slaughter wrote a series of short children's musicals based on fairy tales that received warm reviews.