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The Employment of Children in the Victorian Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Tracy C. Davis
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Abstract

The public nature of their work should seemingly have ensured that children employed in the Victorian theatre enjoyed better conditions than their brothers and sisters, so often suffering on one of those treadmills at which the virtuous Victorians set their offspring to work. Yet little is known of the actuality of their experiences, and the present article represents a pioneering investigation into the area. Drawing on the researches of contemporary social reformers as well as on the reminiscences of the children themselves and of their employers and colleagues, Tracy C. Davis, who teaches in the Department of Drama at Queen's University, Kingston, Canad, presents an intriguing picture of exploitation mixed with adulation, and a pervasive muddle of defensive indifference, gradually brought within the bounds of well-intentioned legislation.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 6 , May 1986 , pp. 117 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

Notes and References

1. This figure is repeatedly given by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, although in testimony to the Royal Commission on Education (1887) she was unsure of its accuracy: ‘I have no means of forming any accurate estimate of the number so employed. One officer of the school board informed me that in London sometimes he thinks the number has been as high as a 1,000, but I have no means of knowing upon what he bases that estimate’ (Minutes of Evidence, p. 309).

2. Wilson, A. E., Christmas Pantomime: the Story of an English Institution (London: George Allen, 1934), p. 240–1Google Scholar.

3. ‘A Chat with Winifred Emery’, 28 October 1893, p. 11.

4. Babes in the Wood; or, Bold Robin Hood and His Foresters Good (London, 1890), p. 25–6.

5. Logan, Olive, Before the Footlights and Behind the Scenes (Philadelkphia: Parmelee, 1870), p. 37Google Scholar.

6. This is the estimate of Mrs, Jeune in ‘Children in Theatres’, English Illustrated Magazine. 10 1889, p. 7Google Scholar. A. G. Bowie counted 260 children, supers, actors, and pantomimists and 150 ballet dancers and extras in the 1881 panto, Drury Lane (‘Some Notes on Pantomime’, Theatre, 01 1882, p. 27)Google Scholar.

7. ‘Christmas Entertainments’, Era, 2 January 1892, p. 8.

8. Era, 2 January 1892, p. 9.

9. ‘The First of the Pantomimes’, Era, 13 December 1890, p. 11.

10. Mrs. Jeune, p. 10. Fawcett also mentions a Mr, Francesco (Minutes of Evidence, Royal Commission on Education, 1887, p. 310)Google Scholar.

11. ‘How Stage Dancing is Taught’, Era, 14 January 1893, p. 19.

12. Faweett, Millicent Garrett, ‘Holes in the Education Net’, Contemporary Review, LI (05 1887), p. 645–6Google Scholar.

13. Times, 27 December 1887, p. 5.

14. Arthur Brown and Edgar Wyatt, Dick Whittington and His Cat, produced at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester (Thomas W. Charles fourth Manchester pantomime, date unknown), p. 63–4.

15. Dick Whittington and His Cat, at the , Grand, , Islington, 1891Google Scholar, reviewed in Era, 2 January 1892, p. 8.

16. From a contemporary account reproduced in Mander, Raymond and Mitchenson, Joe, Pantomime: a Story in Pictures (New York: Taplinger, 1973), p. 25Google Scholar. The engraving referred to is reproduced as fig. 91 in the book