Tom Major-Ball
British entertainer (1879–1962)
Tom Major-Ball (born Abraham Thomas Ball; 18 May 1879 – 27 March 1962) was a British music hall and circus performer. He was the father of John Major, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1997.
Early life
He was born Abraham Thomas Ball in Bloxwich, Staffordshire, on 18 May 1879. He was a son of Abraham Ball, a bricklayer, and his wife Sarah Ann Marrah or O'Marrah who was of Irish and possibly Welsh descent. The family also had an adopted son, Alfred. When he was five years old, Major-Ball and his parents emigrated to the United States, where he spent his formative years in Pennsylvania, where his father worked as a steel worker, initially in Pittsburgh, then Philadelphia, and finally Fall Hollow, a small village near Braddock. He later worked as a vaudeville performer and trapeze artist in travelling circuses.
Early adult life and stage career
Circa 1896 the family moved back to the UK, to the Walsall area, where Tom Major developed a successful music hall career. He claimed to have performed at "every theatre in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland". In 1901 Major fathered an out-of-wedlock child (Tom Moss) with Mary Moss, a married woman.
The public source identifies “Tom Major-Ball” as british entertainer (1879–1962). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Major-Ball, British and entertainer.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7816689. VIAF identifies the subject as 295209483. The Library of Congress control number is no2013008674. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1962, 1990 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tom Major-Ball” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.