# Laura Henderson

laura henderson (6 December 1863 – 29 November 1944) born Laura Forster, rose to prominence during the 1930s when, as a wealthy and eccentric widow, she founded the Windmill Theatre in London's Great Windmill Street, in partnership with Vivian van Damm. Under the leadership of Henderson, as owner, and van Damm as manager, the theatre became a British institution, famed for its pioneering tableaux vivants of motionless female nudity, and for having "never closed" during the Blitz. At the time of her death in 1944, newspapers described her as "the mother of non-stop variety in London." == Biography == laura henderson was the well-travelled socialite wife of a jute merchant, Robert Stewart Henderson, whom she had married in London on 26 April 1887.