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‘Scandals to the Neighbourhood’: Cleaning-up the East London Theatres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Jim Davis
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Abstract

Sustaining the long, initially pioneering concern of TQ and NTQ with popular aspects of nineteenth-century theatre. Jim Davis looks here at the men and the methods involved in improving the reputations of the neighbourhood theatres of the East End of London. Usually noticed for its effects on the licensing of theatre buildings, the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843 also brought the newly ‘legitimate’ theatres under the direct control of the Lord Chamberlain. Particularly around the mid-century, the Examiner of Plays, William Bodham Donne, responded to public concern (some genuine, some worked-up by interested parties) by commissioning police reports on theatres, and on occasion requiring appropriate action – from the limiting of performances to one per evening, to the erection of public urinals. Here, Jim Davis, who contributed an article on ‘Images of the British Navy in Nautical Melodrama’ to NTQ14 (1988), and is the author of several books and articles in related areas, offers the first documentation of a little-explored subject.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 23 , August 1990 , pp. 235 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

Notes and References

1. The Prince of Wales's Theatre was highly praised by Donne for its achievements. In his report on the annual inspection of theatres in 1870 he commented, ‘superlatively good – vid. ultra – until next year when there will doubtless be something better than best’. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, Public Records Office, LC1/234.

2. Ibid., LC7/6.

3. Ibid., LC1/70, preamble to volume for 1858.

4. Ibid., LC1/234, ‘Report on Annual Inspection’, 1870.

5. See, in particular, Barker, Clive, ‘The Chartists, Theatre, Reform, and Research’, Theatre Quarterly, I, 4 (1970), p. 4–10.Google Scholar

6. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC7/6, police report, 3 October 1844.

7. Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life (London, 1882), I, p. 44–5.

8. Fleetwood, Frances, The Conquests: the Story of a Theatre Family (London, 1953), p. 40.Google Scholar

9. Middlesex Licensed Victuallers Records, Greater London Record Office, MR, LMD, 2, October 1840.

10. Ibid.

11. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC7/5.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., LC7/6, police report, 20 September 1844.

14. Ibid., memorandum, 10 October 1844.

15. Ibid., memorandum, 27 September 1844.

16. Ibid., police report, 22 July 1845.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., police report, 22 July 1845, et seq.

20. Ibid., LC7/7, letter, 7 July 1849.

21. Ibid., police report, 12 July 1849.

22. The Times 23 October 1864.

23. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC1/127, police report, 29 April 1863. Bracebrydge Hemyng, a contributor to Mayhew, H., London Labour and the London Poor (London, 1861), IV, p. 227Google Scholar, acknowledges of the Effingham that ‘Whitechapel does not go to the play in kid-gloves and white tie’, but adds that it was time to explode the West End prejudice that ‘East End theatres strongly resemble the delapidated and decayed Soho in Dean Street, filled with a rough, noisy set of drunken thieves and prostitutes’. Hanley, P. in Random Recollections of the Stage by an Old Playgoer (London, 1883), p. 48Google Scholar, says of East London theatres in the 1850s that ‘many respectable working men and small tradesmen, who live in the district, frequent these theatres with their families’. Such accounts are probably more reliable than Earle's, Thomas facetious accounts of the Effingham and other East End theatres in Letters from a Theatrical Scene Painter (London, 1880)Google Scholar, or G. A. Sala's description of the Effingham as a ‘gaff’ – ‘dreadfully dirty and with a dirtier audience’ – in Gaslight and Daylight (London, 1859), p. 268.

24. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC1/167, police report, 16 November 1866.

25. Ibid., LC1/232, memorial, 5 March 1870.

26. Ibid., letter, 14 April 1870.

27. Ibid., letter, 20 April 1870.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., LC1/263, letter, 5 June 1872.

30. Ibid., undated.

31. Ibid., police report, 16 October 1872.

32. Ibid., letter from James Richards, 21 October 1872.

33. Ibid., letter from W. B. Donne to Spencer Ponsonby, 17 October 1872.

34. See, however, Rees, Terence, Theatre Lighting in the Age of Gas (London, 1978), p. 156–7Google Scholar, for reference to the response from the Lord Chamberlain's Office to accidents involving gas lighting.

35. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC1/167, letter, 23 September 1866.

36. Ibid., LC1/185, ‘Report on Annual Inspection’, 1867.

37. Johnson, Catherine B., ed., William Bodham Donne and his Friends (London, 1905), p. 268.Google Scholar

38. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC1/153, ‘Report on Annual Inspection’, 1865. In Theatre Hygiene (London, 1888), p. 26, Walter E. Roth comments on the dreadful condition of actors' dressing-rooms. Although his account is based on a variety of evidence from Europe (and on Sydney, Australia, where he delivered the contents of the book in lecture form originally), his views endorse Donne's concern: ‘Actors often have the most abominable rooms to dress in – a small room with one window, if any at all, sometimes no light whatever except gas, and a door perhaps facing the wings whence the abnormally vitiated and heated air from the stage and body of the theatre rushes in with full force each time the door is opened. In some cases the dressing room is situated underground, in others it is placed high above the stage, with an atmosphere even fouler than it would be lower down’.

39. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC1/297, ‘Report on Garrick Theatre’, 20 January 1875. Roth, op cit., p. 25, has views on this subject also: ‘Inadequate provision in the way of latrines, etc., is, indeed, remarkable, and, when they are present, their ventilation and construction are often of so primitive a character that the olefactory organs serve as the best guide to their whereabouts. So well ventilated ought they to be that not even the presence of carbolic acid or other disinfectants should be detected, and far less should the foul air from such places be carried into the auditorium’.

40. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC1/275, ‘Report on Annual Inspection’, 25 September.

41. Ibid., LC1/70, letter, 27 October 1859, containing an account of how less disruption is caused by the inhabitants of the gallery in the Surrey Theatre, now that they are able to obtain refreshment in the theatre. LC1/83 contains a report stating that performances are quieter now that refreshment counters are permitted in theatres. This report is also dated 1859.

42. The Times, 18 March 1863. See also F. C. Wilton, Diaries, Mitchell Library, New South Wales, MS. 118.

43. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, LC1/166, memorandum, 30 March 1866.