Life on the Victorian Stage

Theatrical Gossip

Nell Darby

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781473882454
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Teatro

The expansion of the press in Victorian Britain meant more pages to be filled, and more stories to be found. Life on the Victorian Stage: Theatrical Gossip looks at how the everyday lives of Victorian performers and managers were used for such a purpose, with the British newspapers covering the good, the bad and the ugly side of life on the stage during the nineteenth century. Viewed through the prism of Victorian newspapers, and in particular through their gossip columns, this book looks at the perils facing actors from financial disasters or insecurity to stalking, from libel cases to criminal trials and offers an alternative view of the Victorian theatrical profession.This thoroughly researched and entertaining study looks at how the Victorian press covered the theatrical profession and, in particular, how it covered the misfortunes actors faced. It shows how the development of gossip columns and papers specializing in theater coverage enabled fans to gain an insight into their favorite performers lives that broke down the public-private divide of the stage and helped to create a very modern celebrity culture.The book looks at how technological developments enabled the press to expose the behavior of actors overseas, such as when actor Fred Solomon's' bigamy in America was revealed. It looks at the pressures facing actors, which could lead to suicide, and the impact of the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act on what the newspapers covered, with theatrical divorce cases coming to form a significant part of their coverage in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Other major events, from theater disasters to the murder of actor William Terriss, are explored within the context of press reportage and its impact. The lives of those in the theatrical profession are put into their wider social context to explore how they lived, and how they were perceived by press and public in Victorian Britain.

PART 1:

BUSINESS LIVES

CHAPTER 1

Licensing the Theatre

Theatres were not, despite what some newspaper writers and readers thought, places of simple enjoyment and fantasy. They were businesses – and ones that were difficult to make money from. Everyone involved in the theatrical way of life, from managers, lessees and agents to actors, actresses and chorus girls, hoped to make money – but more often found themselves mired in financial complications, or even penury. It was only a small percentage of actors who became stars of the day and were able to enjoy a certain lifestyle; and fortunes could be as rapidly lost as gained. Dickens, in Nicholas Nickleby, gave a more prosaic view of the theatre when he wrote that in a touring company, ‘the actors depend in the most direct way on the patronage of their audience – for their benefit nights, they have to go round selling tickets’. He also stressed the gap between the actor’s public persona and ‘the sometimes dingy realities of his life’.1

Actors’ lives were, as they are still today, precarious. This is why they had to work hard to get engagements and to promote themselves. The Era, throughout much of the Victorian age, was full of advertisements placed by theatres, managers, agents and the actors themselves, publicizing their latest productions and the availability of individuals for roles. Actors’ adverts were a ‘valuable channel of self-publicity’, stressing their successes so far.2 Yet they also had an element of pathos, as can be seen in repeated ads placed by actors who were ‘unengaged’ or who highlighted minor roles in provincial plays as evidence of their achievements. Nobody wanted even a brief break; they were constantly seeking work and had to diversify in order to make a living. In 1860, for example, The Era included an advert placed by the Misses Maskall – as the singing sisters Elizabeth Wadd Maskall and Mary Malkin Sherwood Maskall were known – wishing to notify readers that they would ‘make their last appearance at Scarborough this season, on Monday evening, Sept 17th, when, having completed their Summer Tour in the North of England, they will return to their town residence, 11 Norland Square, Notting Hill, where all communication respecting concerts, public or private pupils, &c, must be addressed’. It was sent to the paper from Tynemouth in Northumberland, with four days left of their northern provincial tour.3 Actress Mrs Moreton Brookes advertised in the same edition. She put her ‘provincial and metropolitan theatre’ experience at the top, but then added that she was ‘prepared to receive pupils for the stage and qualify them for the profession according to the best received rules’. These women shared what we would call the classified ads pages with a host of others all about to be ‘unengaged’, from Henry Cooke and his circus troupe of dogs and monkeys, to Herr Christoff, the tightrope walker and Monsieur Oriel, the French clown and chair performer. There was not just a performer for every occasion – there were too many performers, all scrabbling to get regular – or semi-regular – work and having to diversify in order to support themselves when roles could not be found.

It is interesting that, in the ‘wanted’ section of The Era, were lots of positions for practically-minded people – scene painters, props men, watchmen and fencing teachers (to teach swordfighting to actors). Acting roles were fewer, although one can imagine thespians leaping on the odd advert for ‘an entire theatrical company’. Henry Butler’s Dramatic Agency, which was located at 21 Bow Street, Covent Garden, placed a large advert in The Era, stating, ‘artistes in every line and of every kind, required for London and Provincial Theatres of standing. Wanted, first-class English and Italian Vocalists for a Metropolitan Theatre; Principal Singing Comedy and Burlesque Ladies; Leading Actors and Actresses; Heavy Men; Juvenile and Walking Gentlemen; and Pantomimists of every description.’ There were certainly a huge variety of performers that the Victorians wanted to watch; but there were also a huge number of performers who would only get a rare chance to perform at a London or provincial theatre, regardless of their skills. Then, as now, it was a competitive and precarious occupation.

Those who were the lessees of theatres could also face an uncertain career. The complexity of theatre licensing meant that a production could be refused a licence, or have it withdrawn, as a result of complaints or concerns about morality and behaviour – not just within the theatre, but outside, too, as moralists expressed concern about the impact of theatres on their neighbouring communities. The history of the licensing of theatres and other establishments in London is a long one. The Disorderly Houses Act of 1751 meant that places of entertainment either within the City of London or Westminster, or within 20 miles of them, had to get a licence from a magistrate in order to carry on staging entertainment for audiences. These licences were not a foregone conclusion – they could be issued or renewed, but they could also be refused. Where theatres got into trouble, reneging on the terms of their licences, their proprietors could find themselves hauled before the magistrate at the General Sessions. These were known as Quarter Sessions outside of London as they met four times a year – however, in London and Middlesex they met more frequently due to the higher number of cases needing to be processed.4

In 1737, the Licensing Act (10 Geo II c28) was passed and this set out to control travelling actors considered to be rogues and vagabonds, thus putting actors under the remit of the various eighteenth-century Vagrancy Acts as well. The Act stipulated that anyone acting in a play, or involved in its performance, who did not have either a letter patent or Lord Chamberlain’s licence, or who did not have a legal settlement in the place of performance (likely for itinerant provincial actors) could be convicted as a vagabond. The Act also set out that a copy of all new plays had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office at least two weeks before the first performance was scheduled. Therefore, the Lord Chamberlain was a censor of plays; he could ban all or part of a play and refuse to grant a licence. His jurisdiction did not just apply to Westminster, but also to royal residences and public houses. By 1800, as Jacky Bratton has commented, there were only two theatres – Covent Garden and Drury Lane – catering for an expanding population in the winter, with the Haymarket Theatre covering the summer season. A few small theatres were allowed to perform plays with music and others opened outside the Lord Chamberlain’s geographical remit, such as on the South Bank, operating under the jurisdiction of local magistrates.5

The Licensing Act was repealed in 1843, when the Theatres Regulation Act (6 & 7 Vict c68) was passed. However, this had a similar function and under its remit, the Lord Chamberlain and Justices of the Peace had responsibility for the licensing of theatre managers (in 1788, JPs had already been given some responsibility for licensing within their areas of jurisdiction, under 28 Geo III c30). All London and Westminster theatres could apply to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for a licence to perform drama, as could the boroughs of Finsbury, Marylebone, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Southwark. New plays had to be submitted for approval – for a fee – at least seven days before a first performance and licences could be withdrawn for inappropriate behaviour. However, matters were not simple. Small saloon theatres (including public houses) could apply for either a magistrate’s licence that enabled their customers to drink on the premises but not watch dramatic performances, or a Lord Chamberlain’s licence, that enabled an establishment to put on dramas, but not allow drinking in the auditorium. This situation resulted in theatres and music halls developing separately, catering to those who wanted ‘serious’ drama and those who wanted more varied entertainment.

These attempts to regulate theatres and other places of entertainment hint at what the authorities really didn’t want people doing – entering into prostitution, or using prostitutes. As Frederick Burwick has noted of the 1788 Theatrical Representations Act, ‘moral supervision was the rationale’ behind it and subsequent legislation.6 From the attitude that female actresses were little more than prostitutes or loose women developed the Victorian conceit that theatres, and their environs, were hotbeds of iniquity, where prostitutes gathered. The newspapers and archives are full of cases involving theatres having their licences refused or rescinded. For example, in 1866, the Oxford Times recorded that Charles Moralli had his application for a theatre licence refused, after the mayor had spoken out to say that ‘he did not think that theatres were beneficial to the interests of the young men of the town and therefore he could not be a party to such things’. A majority of Oxford magistrates consequently decided to refuse the licence. The licensing of theatres, music halls and dance halls was a popular issue; when Middlesex magistrates gathered to hear applications in October 1850, it was noted that ‘the court was crowded with parties interested in and connected with, the musical and theatrical professions and places of public entertainment’. Although many establishments had their licences approved or renewed without objection, the Catherine Wheel in Great Windmill Street was not so lucky. The churchwardens and overseers of St James, Westminster, petitioned the court, asking for the licence not to be renewed. It emerged that they had decided to oppose every music or dancing licence submitted by an establishment within the parish, as it thought ‘the granting of such licence[s] had a demoralising effect upon young people’. In this case, the magistrates approved the licence anyway, after hearing that there had been no complaints about how the Catherine Wheel had been run over the previous year. A perusal of the cases that came up in this period suggests that complaints made by individuals about how a licenced establishment had previously been run affected the decision to renew that licence far more than a vague argument about the moral effect of granting licences. However, the Middlesex magistrates were still accused of inconsistency in how they dealt with licences – approving one whilst refusing another that looked identical and making their minds up about individual applications before they had even walked into court. The chair of the Middlesex magistrates in 1850 was stung by such accusations, saying, ‘He was supposed to be against music and dancing and for the curtailment of enjoyments of the people, but he had done a great deal to promote those enjoyments.’

Competition was also taken into account when deciding licence applications. In 1887, the Cardiff magistrates met at the city’s police court to hear Harry Day’s application for a dramatic licence for a newly-built music hall adjoining the Grand Hotel on Westgate Street. Harry, originally from Birmingham and running the Days’ Concert Hall there, intended to provide drama to a 2,000-strong audience in the new hall. His barrister argued that the population of Cardiff, which was around 100,000, needed more than one theatre – there already existing the Theatre Royal. However, Louis Reece, who spoke on behalf of the Theatre Royal’s lessee, Edward Fletcher, argued that not only were two theatres not needed, but it would be detrimental to the Cardiff Theatre if a second was granted. He argued that the new build was called a music hall and therefore, only music should be allowed to be performed there – not theatrical productions. In addition, competition was not healthy – ‘all competition in regard to theatres in small towns [sic] was the reverse of healthy’; Mr Fletcher had spent a lot of money on his theatre and his expenses were large. Cardiff had declined in ‘social importance’ and fewer people now wanted to visit the theatre there – ‘attendance was anything but satisfactory’. However, it then turned out that Harry didn’t want to put on dramas; he wanted to use the building as a music hall and really needed a music licence, but the magistrates weren’t due to hear music licence applications at that time. As he had already booked a number of acts, he had tried to apply for a drama licence instead, as that would cover the other acts he had booked and it was the only type of licence up for discussion. The magistrates felt that Harry had been rather rash to book acts prior to being granted a licence and therefore refused him one – almost as if to teach him a lesson.

The moral effect of theatregoing, and of music halls, was regularly used as a reason to refuse a licence. In 1865, a case in Paisley involved a statement from one Robert Kerr regretting the fact that magistrates were advising that a licence be granted to ‘permit every sort of immorality’ (in reality, it was an application for a licence to put on theatre productions at the Exchange Rooms Concert Hall in Paisley). He saw the stage as having gone downhill since the mid-eighteenth century, it now ‘abounding’ in immorality – ‘How would any man like to see his children going to such places, where they heard indecent talk which, to a great extent, inflamed their passions? And yet they heard a magistrate speak of the wants of the public in this matter . . . The town was very much degraded already by drunkenness, without increasing the means of promoting its immorality.’ Another man who wanted the licence refused stated that, ‘Another ground was the religious element. He was quite sure if the religious people had known of this application, there would have been a great many petitions sent in against it.’ These people were fighting what seems to have been a losing battle; in this case, the licence was granted and it was similarly in many other towns where moral objections were raised.

Yet this was not always the case and, on occasion, such moral objections resulted in action being taken against allegedly offending theatres. In 1894, the London County Council (LCC) took action against the Empire Theatre of Varieties in Leicester Square, due to its alleged links with prostitution. The Empire had a somewhat chequered history in terms of licensing; in 1886, the Middlesex magistrates had refused to grant it a licence. The St Stephen’s Review then published a piece stating that the magistrates had then told the Empire that if they paid £1,000, they could have the licence. It was later determined that this was a libel, but the Review then published another piece stating that ‘the matter was a joke’ and apologizing for the original article. However, it was published so late that an action for libel was still formally brought before the Queen’s Bench. Mr Justice Stephen commented, ‘It was said it was a joke. He failed to see where the joke lay. It was a serious imputation the attributing to magistrates what, if true, would be a national disgrace.’ It was decided that the defendants should plead guilty and enter into recognizances of £500 each. This case shows that there was some bad feeling towards the licensing of theatres, with some believing – even if couched as a ‘joke’ – that magistrates were using the licensing laws to line their own pockets.

The Empire had duly opened in 1887, presumably without the payment of a bung to gain its licence, and its licence was duly renewed regularly until 1894. The late chair of the LCC Licensing Committee had gone on record that he did not intend to ‘interfere in any way with existing licences or the conditions on which such licences were granted’. In 1893, the Empire spent £2,000 on a new entrance to the theatre and its directors were confident in its continued success, noting that, ‘the entertainment at all times has been entirely free from double entendre or vulgarity. Large sums of money have recently been spent, both on the stage and front of the house, to meet the requirements of the County Council.’

But then, when they applied for their licence to be renewed in 1894, their application was rejected by the Licensing Committee, who linked the Empire with prostitution and advised on several alterations they wanted to the fabric of the theatre, to eradicate this perceived problem. They requested that the theatre promenades be demolished, ‘and the space now occupied by them be disposed of to the satisfaction of the Council’ and that no ‘intoxicating drinks’ should be sold in the auditorium.

The theatre directors were appalled – ‘the alterations proposed would necessitate the removing of the roof and other important structural alterations’. It was commented that the minority of people who had suggested these changes were not the ‘only champions of virtue in the Metropolis’ – there were numerous Vigilance Societies who might have been expected to complain if the Empire really was a hotbed of iniquity – but they had not found anything to complain about in the past seven years. Instead, the licensing Committee members were ‘extreme in their views and intolerant of the views of others. They visited the Empire expecting and intending to see solicitation in the promenade and of course they saw it. Imagination went a long way in this matter.’ One woman who had instigated the concerns, L...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1: BUSINESS LIVES
• PART 2: CRIMINAL LIVES
• PART 3: PERSONAL LIVES
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Plate section