page_title: Ada Winifred Weekes Baker
section_title: Western Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Ada Winifred Weekes Baker / Western Australia
caption_attribution_description: English: Advertisement announcing Ada Baker's intentions to stay in Perth to teach singing.
context_page_description: Ada Winifred Weekes Baker was a noted Australian soprano, singing teacher, vaudeville star and, later in life, a life governor of the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children.
context_section_description: During July and August of 1898 Rickett's Tivoli company played in Western Australia. When the company left to return to Sydney, Baker left the company and stayed in Perth. In Perth, she established herself as a singing teacher, whilst performing with the Fremantle Orchestral Society, the Perth Musical Union and the Lyric Club.
  Baker's time in Perth was not without drama, as in December 1898 she sued the proprietors of The Continental Gardens over lost wages. The case centered around Baker's assertion that when she signed her contract with the Gardens she claimed she told them she could not travel, however the company put on performances at the goldfields in the Kalgoolie and Coolgardie regions where Baker was prominently billed. When Baker learned of this, she evidently produced a medical certificate that claimed she was too sick to travel, and she vehemently denied she knew what opposing counsel meant by her not going due to "a Coolgardie or Kalgoorlie reason." The defendants counter-claimed, however, that Baker fully knew of the travel arrangements and that when she did not attend they were financially and reputationally disadvantaged by her non-appearance. Furthermore they produced a witness who claimed that Baker told them that it would inconvenience her singing business if she was to go to the fields. The court was unimpressed by Baker's claims of illness and decided, as the only reason she produced a medical certificate was to avoid attending the fields, to find against Baker.
  When Baker finally left Western Australia in 1905, she had established a solid reputation, with The Bunbury Herald describing her as "perhaps the best mezzo soprano vocalist in the State", and for many years her achievements and performances in Sydney were reported in the West Australian press. Her husband, Charlie Hall, was still living in Western Australia, but despite the fact that Baker only came to Perth with the Tivolli company, the Truth reported that "there seemed no regret for 'the man she had left behind her.'"
caption: Advertisement announcing Ada Baker's intentions to stay in Perth to teach singing.[17]
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