1. The Times. 29 August 1823.

2. Royal Surrey Theatre Playbills, Theatre Museum, London.

3. Letter, dated 10 August 1827, quoted in Raymond, George, Memoirs of Robert William Elliston, Comedian (London: 1846), 2: 496–97.Google Scholar

4. Royal Surrey Theatre Playbill 1829, Theatre Museum, London.

5. Report from the Select Committee on Dramatic Literature: with Minutes of Evidence, in British Sessional Papers (1831–32, 7:95, 146).

6. Speaight, George, ed., Professional and Literary Memoirs of Charles Dibdin the Younger Dramatist and Upwards of Thirty Years Manager of Minor Theatres (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1956), 156.Google Scholar

7. Fitzball, , Thirty-Five Years of a Dramatic Author's Life (London, 1859), 1:256.Google Scholar

8. The London Theatres in the Eighteen-Thirties, ed. A.C.Sprague and Bertram Shuttleworth (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1950), 58–60.

9. Booth, Michael, English Melodrama (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1965), 102–3.Google Scholar

10. Bratton, J.S., “British heroism and the structure of melodrama,” indicia of Supremacy: The British Empire and the Stage, 1790–1930, ed. Bratton, J.S. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 47.Google Scholar

11. Carlson, Marvin, “He Never Shall Bow Down to a Domineering Frown: Class Tensions and Nautical Melodrama,” in Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre, ed. Hays, Michael & Nikolopoulou, Anastasia, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 153.Google Scholar

12. Estill, Robert, “The Factory Lad: Melodrama as Propaganda,” Theatre Quarterly 1: 4 (October-December 1977), 22–26.Google Scholar It was subsequently revived under a different title not at the Surrey but at the Victoria in 1846 as The Factory Lads. In 1840 the Surrey presented The Factory Boy by J. T.Haines.

13. Hartmut Ilseman, also writing of The Factory Lad, refers to its first performance at the Surrey Theatre, adding that “Blackfriars was a workers’ quarter at the time” in “Radicalism in the Melodrama of the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre, 192. Other untested assumptions about the Surrey include Richard Cave's assertion that circa 1870 a strong Irish presence cannot be assumed in the Surrey audience, in “Staging the Irishman,” in Acts of Supremacy: The British Empire and the Stage, 1790–1930, 99, and Alan Downer's assertion, apropos Macready's engagement in 1846 at the Surrey, that its audiences were “the roughest in London,” in The Eminent Tragedian: William Charles Macready (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966), 281.

14. Hazlitt, William, “The Minor Theatres,” London Magazine, March 1820.Google Scholar

15. F.G.Tomlins, A Brief View of the English Drama (London: Murray, 1840), quoted in Carlson, Marvin, “The Old Vic: A Semiotic Analysis,” in Theatre Semiotics: Signs of Life (Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1990), 59.Google Scholar

16. Baker, H. Barton, The London Stage: Its History and Traditions from 1576 to 1888 (London: Allen, 1889), 2:239Google Scholar, and also note Kingsley, Charles, Aiton Locke (1850, repr. London: Cassell, 1967).Google Scholar

17. Dickens, Charles, Sketches By Boz (London: Murdoch, 1838), Chap. 2Google Scholar, “The Streets-Night,” 40–44.

18. Dickens, Charles, “The Amusements of the People,” Household Worlds, (London, 1850), 1:14.Google Scholar

19. Sala, G. A., “Nine o'clock P.M.—Half-Price in the New Cut,” Twice Round the Clock (London: Houlston and Wright, 1859), 271.Google Scholar

20. “Up in the Gallery,” All the Year Round, N.S., 30 (July, 1882), 5–10.

21. Report from the Select Committee on Dramatic Literature (1831–1832), 7:1350.

22. Rowell, George, The Old Vic Theatre: a history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 39.Google Scholar

23. Findlater, Richard, Lilian Baylis:The Lady of the Old Vic (London: Allen Lane, 1975), 43.Google Scholar

24. James Jones and James Dunn, lessees of the Surrey, had rejected Temple West's demands for an increase in ground rental and determined to raise money for the building of a new theatre by public subscription in addition to their own contributions. Together with Joseph Glossop who had an interest in the East London Theatre and the Waterloo Bridge Company, and with costumes and sets appropriated from the Surrey, they were able to persuade Rudolph Cabanel to design the new theatre. (Booth, John. A Century of Theatrical History 1816–1916: the “Old Vic” (London: Stead, 1917), 4–5.Google Scholar)

25. Carlson, 64–66.

26. Fitzball, 1: 96–97.

27. Brown, Eluned, ed., The London Theatre 1811–1866: Selections from the Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1966), 89Google Scholar and Macready's diary entry for 15 August 1833, quoted in John Booth, 41.

28. Cf. Survey of London, “South Bank and Vauxhall” (London: London County Council, 1951), 23:15–16.

29. Quoted in John Booth, 3.

30. The imposing Church of St. John in Waterloo Road was built in 1824. Thomas Lett, a timber merchant, built a set of fine terraces in Upper Stamford Street after 1815, but they remained untenanted until the 1820s. The Royal Universal Infirmary for Children was built in 1823, and a writer on the substantial houses being built in Belvedere Road commented favorably in 1821 on the way in which old buildings were being demolished and being replaced by “new and elegant houses in their stead.” (Survey of London, 23:50).

31. The toll remained until 1878 when the bridge was bought by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Although l/2d each way might not appear to have been a great sum, according to Mayhew, in the early 1850s a pint of plums, a pair of soles, a quart of mussels or 2 oranges could be obtained from a street vendor for 1d. London Labor and the London Poor (London, Griffin, 1864 ), 1:11, and Walford, E., Old and New London (London: Cassell, 1881–1893), 3:203.Google Scholar

32. Report from the Select Committee on Metropolitan Bridges, British Sessional Papers (1854), (Report no. 370) 14:1, 32–33: Appendix, 157. For further details see Cockton, Peter (ed), Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801–1900, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Chadwyck Healey, 1988).Google Scholar

33. Victoria Playbill, 26 September 1833, Theatre Museum, London. To an extent the theatre was further disadvantaged by tollgates at Lower Marsh which provided the quickest access from Westminster Bridge Road to Waterloo Road. A toll remained in force here until the mid-1840s.

34. Coleman, John, Fifty Years of an Actor's Life (London: Hutchinson, 1904), 1:96.Google Scholar He also remembered a specific instance in which he walked from Westbourne Grove to the Victoria to see Phelps play there.

35. Coburg Playbill, 14 October, 1819, Theatre Museum, London.

36. The Theatrical Journal, 1 August 1840.

37. In the 1830s the Surrey had generally charged higher prices for admission than the Victoria. During the 1840s the standard prices for admission to the Surrey were boxes: 2s., pit: Is., and gallery 6d. with half-price admission to the boxes only. The Victoria prices were equivalent to this in the early part of the 1840s but by 1848 had dropped to boxes: Is., pit: 6d, and gallery: 4d. Consequently the Surrey Theatre appears to have maintained an appeal to a broader audience whereas the Victoria's lowering of its prices suggests a dependence upon less affluent spectators. The Surrey's accessibility by public transport may have been a further factor in this rather than the deliberate policy of competition during previous decades.

38. Victoria Playbill, 13 March 1843. Theatre Museum, London.

39. Sketches By Boz, 56.

40. Victoria playbills, 17 June 1848: 25 October 1847, Theatre Museum, London.

41. South London Press, 26 May 1866. By 1873 it could report the use of cheap return tickets by the railway companies to lure people away for the Easter holidays (12 April 1873), a prospect made more attractive the following year by “gaily coloured posters” (4 April 1874).

42. Unidentified Clipping, dated 1869, Theatre Museum, London.

43. Victoria Playbill, 24 December 1878, Theatre Museum, London.

44. Select Committee on Dramatic Literature (1831–32); LC7/5, Lord Chamberlain's Papers, Public Record Office; The Era, 16 June 1861.

45. We have already established that it was located on major thoroughfares, easily accessible via Waterloo, Westminster and Blackfriars Bridge. We should also take into account Hungerford Suspension Bridge, running from Hungerford Market to Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, which opened in 1845 and was taken down in 1863, when it was replaced by the Charing Cross Railway Bridge. Hungerford was also a major focus of steam navigation on the Thames, the embarkations and landings exceeding two million per year.

46. Between 1829 and 1846, fourteen steamboat companies had crafts in commission on the Thames. The Halfpenny Fare Steamers, which were greatly patronized by the poorer working classes of the metropolis ran from Dyer's Hall Wharf near London Bridge to the Adelphi until they were ousted by the suburban railroads later in the century. In 1866 the fare from Lambeth Bridge to London Bridge by steamer was Id. The steam navigation of the Thames exceeded that of any other river in the world. In 1861, 3, 207, 558 passengers landed and embarked at Old Shades pier on board the penny boats of the London and Westminster Steamboat Company. See Burtt, Frank, Steamers of the Thames and Midway (London: Richard Tilling, 1949), 29, 55–56Google Scholar; Timbs, , Curiosities of London (London: Virtue 1867), 777Google Scholar and Olsen, Donald J., The Growth of Victorian London (London: Batsford, 1976), 321.Google Scholar In 1840 The Stranger's Guide in the Theatre Journal mentions omnibus fares of 6d from Bank to the Elephant and Castle via Vauxhall Bridge.

47. Olsen, 319.

48. Playbills, John Howard Library, Southwark.

49. Playbill, 27 January 1872, John Howard Library, Southwark.

50. Unidentified Clipping, 25 August 1879, Theatre Museum, London.

51. Dramatic Notes, December 1880. The South London Times, 26 December 1867, refers to “both town and country visitors” seeking admission to the pantomime, suggesting another dimension to consider.

52. In 1836 Cornelius Webbe wrote: “In no city in the world will you find a greater population on foot than in the good city of London… The English—cabs, omnibuses and hackney coaches notwithstanding—are a walking people,” “Glances at Life in City and Suburbs,” in Four Views of London (London: Smith, Elder and Co, 1836), 181.

53. Some Recollections of the Stage by an Old Playgoer (London: Diprose and Bateman,1883), 6.

54. Lambeth Observer and South London Times, 9 October, 1858; South London Press, 8 June 1867.

55. Public Record Office (London), Census of 1841, HO107/1060–1062, 1064–1065, 1083–1086; Census of 1851, HO107/1563–1566, 1569–1571; Census of 1861, RG9/330–332, 334–337, 346, 348–351, 366–367.

56. British Parliamentary Papers: Population, 1841 Census abstracts: Enumeration. Vol 3 (Shannon: Irish University Press 1971).

57. Interestingly, the provision of juvenile nights during the Surrey pantomime season (when the pantomime was played first) throughout the period under discussion would seem to reflect the large presence of children in the neighborhood. The published census return for Southwark in 1841 records 31,283 (31.8%) inhabitants under the age of fifteen out of a total population of 98,098. British Parliamentary Papers: Population. 1841 Census Abstracts: Occupations, vol. 5 (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970).

58. Ibid.

59. British Parliamentary Papers: 1851 Census Abstracts: Ages, Occupations and Birth, vol. 8 (Shannon: Irish University Press 1970).

60. ’Thus in King Edward Street we find two barristers’ clerks, a cashier in a solicitor's office, an engineer, a law stationer, a stone mason, a solicitor's clerk, an excise manager, a messenger in the House of Commons, a Parliamentary agent's general clerk, a sculptor, a terra cotta manufacturer and a vocalist. In Gladstone Street the inhabitants include an accountant, an attorney solicitor, a bookbinder, a GPO letter sorter, a railway clerk, a parliamentary reporter, a schoolmaster and a silver smith. West Square provides evidence of particularly affluent inhabitants in the vicinity. On the other hand, London Street contains bookbinders, chair makers, laborers, plasterers, shoemakers, plate workers, laundresses, and charwomen.

61. In 1841 for instance, 3,390 seamen and 639 watermen lived in East London, as opposed to 386 seamen and 272 watermen in Southwark and Lambeth. In 1851, 6,286 seamen were resident in East London as opposed to 713 in Southwark and Lambeth.

62. British Parliamentary Papers: 1851 Census Abstracts: Ages, Occupations and Birth, vol. 8 (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970).

63. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, Public Record Office, LC7/5.

64. Ibid.

65. In 1851 the distribution of sailors across south and east London (out of a total of 10,111 throughout the metropolitan area over the age of twenty) certainly suggests that a greater proportion were domiciled in east London: 200 (1.9%) in London City; 78 (0.7%) in Shoreditch; 100 (1.1%) in Bethnal Green; 1025 (10.1%) in Whitechapel; 1521 (15.04%) in Saint George in the East; 2083 (20.6%) in Stepney; 1579 (15.6%) in Poplar; 59 (0.5%) in Saint Saviour, Southwark; 451 (4.4%) in Saint Olave, Southwark; 443 (4.3%) in Bermondsey; 74 (0.7%) in Saint George, Southwark; 43 (0.04%) in Newington; 129 (1.2%) in Lambeth; 33 (0.3%) in Wandsworth; 791 (7.8%) in Rotherhithe; 634 (6.2%) in Greenwich. British Parliamentary Papers: 1851 Census Abstracts: Ages, Occupations and Birth, vol. 8 (Shannon: Irish University Press 1970).

66. Lambeth Observer and South London Times, 9 October, 1858; South London Press 8 June, 1867.

67. Miss. Martin, engaged in 1841, lived at 11 Agnes Place, Waterloo Road; in 1845 both N.T. Hicks and a Mrs. J. Furzman, who had a benefit at the theatre were resident at number 5. J. Webster, engaged in 1842, lived at 3 Great Union Street, Newington Causeway; N.T. Hicks in 1843 lived opposite the Circus Gate at 3 Blackfriars Road; E. F. Saville, engaged at the theatre in 1844. lived at 41 Doddington Grove, Kennington. Stansbury, the musical director in the 1840s, lived at 5 Melina Place, Westminster Road. Mr. Neville (1847) lived at 39 Francis Street, Newington. Georgina Pauncefort, who had a benefit at the theatre in 1866, lived at 15 St. George's Road, Southwark. William Creswick and Richard Shepherd (managers of the theatre in the 1850s and 60s) lived comparatively locally, in Kennington and Clapham Road respectively; the former had moved across the river from Bloomsbury Square, the latter from Brandon Lodge, Brixton. When Davidge was manager of the Surrey he had lived in Charlotte Terrace, near the New Cut, and then in Davidge Terrace, Kennington Road. Royal Surrey Theatre playbills. Theatre Museum, London, and British Library.

68. Sunday Times, 4 December 1842. Far more actors lived in Lambeth than in Southwark. The 1841 Census records 32 actors in Southwark of the 181 living in the county of Surrey (17.67%); in 1851 the numbers engaged in theatrical and related professions were 56 in Southwark of the 229 living in the county of Surrey (24%).

69. British Parliamentary Papers: Population. 1841 Census Abstracts, vol. 3. The abstract of census returns for the Brixton Hundreds which does not differentiate Lambeth, shows 73,777 men and 82,794 women bom in Surrey; 60,917 men and 79,139 women outside the county; 3,580 men and 3,674 women born in Ireland; 1,647 men and 1,164 women from Scotland. The age distribution is quantified for Lambeth. The total population of 115,888 comprises a large proportion of males and females under the age of 15 (32.81%) made up of those under 5 years of age (14,734 or 12.71%); 12,321 between 5 and 10 (10.6%), 11076 (9.5%) between 10 and 15 and 12,233 (10.%) between 20 and 25 with a much larger proportion of females to males (7,338 to 4,895 or 59.9% and 40%).

70. The increase can further be measured by the fact that in 1831 the total population in Lambeth of 87,856 had numbered 39,545 males (45.1%)and 48,311 females (54.9%). British Parliamentary Papers: 1851 Population, vol 6.

71. Ibid In 1851, for instance, of the 35,047 males over twenty in Lambeth, 590 worked as domestic servants, 1,218 as shoemakers, 2,362 as laborers (a total of 4,170 or 11.89%); of the 45,275 females over the age of twenty, 6,161 worked as domestic servants, and 2,973 as milliners and seamstresses (a total of 9,134 or 20.17%).

72. In London as a whole in 1851, of a total population of 474,013 males and 493,260 females under the age of twenty and 632,545 males and 762,418 females over the age of twenty, there were 266,311 (34.9%) women older than twenty and 66,840 (13.55%) younger than twenty engaged in the clothing or “personal offices” business (as servants) and 114,476 (24.15%) men over twenty employed as mechanics. Of the women. 138,262 were domestic servants and 124,165 were employed directly in the clothing industry. Of the female domestic employees 32,994 (23.8%) were less than fifteen years of age and 32,432 (23.4%) less than twenty years of age. British Parliamentary Papers: Population: Inhabitants: 1851 Census Abstracts vol. 8 (Shannon: Irish University Press 1970).

73. Lambeth had 42.2% of its population employed as domestic servants and 35.1% in industrial trades. British Parliamentary Papers: Population 1861 and 1871 Census returns: General reports vol. 15 (Shannon: Irish University Press 1970).

74. Lower Marsh for example had 25 butchers with their assistants and 5 fishmongers in 1861.

75. Certainly the numbers of those who listed no trade or occupation was a high one in the district. James Street, for example, in 1851, had 350 out of 883 and in 1861, 275 out of 590.

76. The Survey of London, 23:41, mentions that Nos. 3–13 Stamford Street (later York Road), which were erected in 1829, housed dramatic agents and were used “as lodging houses for members of the theatrical profession who were in low water; they earned the sobriquet of Poverty Corner.”

77. There were, of course, discrepancies between the published and manuscript census returns. According to Tracy C. Davis, the published census for 1861 lists 45 female performers and 69 male performers as resident in Lambeth, while the manuscript census lists 87 female performers and 52 male performers in the same district. “The theatrical employees of Victorian Britain: demography of an industry,” Nineteenth Century Theatre 18:1–2 (Summer & Winter 1990), 16.

78. Davidge lived near the New Cut and died in Walcot Place; Eliza Vincent and Osbaldiston lived in Balham and later West Brixton; J. T. Johnson in 1848 lived at Great Charlotte Street, Blackfriars Road; Eliza Terrey in Upper Stamford Street in 1850; Cony and Blanchard at Chester Place, Kennington Cross in 1841, although Hooper, the acting manager in 1838 chose to live in Cecil Street, Strand. Many visiting artists lived elsewhere: T.P. Cooke lived in Brompton; Mr. and Mrs. F. Mathews played at the Victoria from Bedford Square.

79. In 1851 for example, Agnes Street had 164 out of 536 under twelve; Gibson Street had 160 out of 441 under nineteen; Hooper Street 126 out of 366 under nineteen; Isabella Street 215 out of 465 under nineteen; James Street 390 out of 883 under nineteen; Waterloo Road 491 out of 1,289 under nineteen. In 1861 Gibson Street had 175 out of 439 under nineteen; Hooper Street 189 out of 394 under nineteen; Isabella Street 168 out of 444 under nineteen; Waterloo Road 473 out of 1,150 under nineteen.

80. Sunday Times, 31 December 1848.

81. The Weekly Theatrical Reporter and Music Hall Review, 25 January 1868.

82. Sunday Times, 13 March 1842.

83. Sunday Times, 1 January 1843. This mobility between Lambeth and the East End can further be seen in reports of disturbances at the Pavilion. In 1869 young men living near Blackfriars Bridge were part of a drunk and disorderly group arrested by the police (Theatrical Journal, 20 January 1869).

84. The Weekly Theatrical Reporter and Music Hall Review, 22 February 1868.

85. The census returns for 1851 show one surgeon living in Waterloo Road and a number in Upper Stamford Street; for 1861 in Waterloo Road and Gibson Street.

86. A thorough search of the playbills provides evidence of managerial policy and repertoire at the two theatres under consideration: the Victoria's insistence on domestic dramas and the Surrey's more eclectic repertoire of popular forms together with Shakespeare and opera. For reasons of space we have omitted this significant aspect. Since this article was written, Knight's, William G.A Major London ‘Minor’: the Surrey Theatre 1805–1865 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1997)Google Scholar has largely corroborated our findings concerning this theatre's management and repertorial policies.

87. In a letter to the Lord Chamberlain, he suggests that his theatre may have to reduce its prices to compete with the beer shops where costs are between Id and 3d. Lord Chamberlain's Papers, Public Record Office, LC7/6.