whistled by the “man in the street,” the “boy in the gutter”
and the tradesman waiting at the door for orders.
With the Canterbury Hall, and its brother the Oxford in Oxford Street—a converted inn and coaching yard—built and managed on the same lines by Mr Charles Morton, the music halls were well started. They had imitators in every direction—some large, some small, and some with architectural pretensions, but all anxious to attract the public by cheap prices and physical comforts not attainable at any of the regular theatres.
With the growth and improvement of these “Halls,” the few old cellar “singing-rooms” gradually disappeared. Evans’s in Covent Garden was the last to go. Rhodes’s, or the Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, at the back of the Adelphi Theatre; the Coal Hole, in the Strand, which now forms the site of Terry’s Theatre; the Doctor Johnson, in Fleet Street (oddly enough, within the precincts of the City of London) disappeared one by one, and with them the compound material for Thackeray’s picture of “The Cave of Harmony.” This “Cave,” like Dickens’s “Old Curiosity Shop,” was drawn from the features of many places. To do the “cellars” a little justice, they represented the manners of a past time—heavy suppers and heavy drinks, and the freedom of their songs and recitations was partly due to the fact that the audience and the actors were always composed of men. Thackeray clung to Evans’s to the last. It was his nightly “chapel of ease” to the adjoining Garrick Club. In its old age it became decent, and ladies were admitted to a private gallery, behind screens and a convent grille. Before its death, and its revival in another form as a sporting club, it admitted ladies both on and off the stage, and became an ordinary music hall.
The rise and progress of the London music halls naturally excited a good deal of attention and jealousy on the part of the regular theatres, and this was increased when the first Great Variety Theatre was opened in Leicester Square. The building was the finest example of Moorish architecture on a large scale ever erected in England. It was burnt down in the 'eighties, and the present theatre was built in its place. Originally it was “The Panopticon,” a palace of “recreative science,” started under the most distinguished direction on the old polytechnic institution lines, and with ample capital. It was a commercial failure, and after being tried as an “American Circus,” it was turned into a great variety theatre, the greatest of its kind in Europe, under the name of the Alhambra Palace. Its founder was Mr E. T. Smith, the energetic theatrical manager, and its developer was Mr Frederick Strange, who came full of spirit and money from the Crystal Palace. He produced in 1865 an ambitious ballet the Dagger Ballet from Auber’s Enfant prodigue, which had been seen at Drury Lane Theatre in 1851, translated as “Azaël.”
The Alhambra was prosecuted in the superior courts for infringing the Stage-play Act—the 6 & 7 Vict. c. 68. The case is in the law reports—Wigan v. Strange; the ostensible plaintiffs being the well-known actors and managers Horace Wigan and Benjamin Webster, supported by J. B. Buckstone, and many other theatrical managers. A long trial before eminent judges, with eminent counsel on both sides, produced a decision which was not very satisfactory, and far from final. It held that, as far as the entertainment went, according to the evidence tendered, it was not a ballet representing any distinct story or coherent action, but it might have been a “divertissement”—a term suggested in the course of the trial. A short time after this a pantomime scene was produced at the same theatre, called Where’s the Police? which had a clown, a Pantaloon, a columbine and a harlequin, with other familiar characters, a mob, a street and even the traditional red-hot poker. This inspired proceedings by the same plaintiffs before a police magistrate at Marlborough Street, who inflicted the full penalties—£20 a performance for 12 performances, and costs. An appeal was made to the Westminster quarter sessions, supported by Serjeant Ballantine and opposed by Mr Hardinge Giffard (afterwards Lord Chancellor Halsbury), and the conviction was confirmed. Being heard at quarter sessions, there is no record in the law reports.
These and other prosecutions suggested the institution of a parliamentary inquiry, and a House of Commons select committee was appointed in 1866, at the instigation of the music halls and variety theatres. The committee devoted much time to the inquiry, and examined many witnesses—amongst the rest Lord Sydney, the lord chamberlain, who had no personal objection to undertake the control of these comparatively young places of amusement and recreation. Much of the evidence was directed against the Stage-play Act, as the difficulty appeared to be to define what was not a stage play. Lord Denman, Mr Justice Byles, and other eminent judges seemed to think that any song, action or recitation that excited the emotions might be pinned as a stage-play, and that the old definition—“the representation of any action by a person (or persons) acting, and not in the form of narration”—could be supported in the then state of the law in any of the higher courts. The variety theatres on this occasion were encouraged by what had just occurred at the time in France. Napoleon III., acting under the advice of M. Michel Chevalier, passed a decree known as La Liberté des théâtres, which fixed the status of the Parisian and other music halls. Operettas, ballets of action, ballets, vaudevilles, pantomimes and all light pieces were allowed, and the managers were no longer legally confined to songs and acrobatic performances. The report of the select committee of 1866, signed by the chairman, Mr (afterwards Viscount) Goschen, was in favour of granting the variety theatres and music halls the privileges they asked for, which were those enjoyed in France and other countries.
Parliamentary interference and the introduction of several private bills in the House of Commons, which came to nothing, checked, if they did not altogether stop, the prosecutions. The variety theatres advanced in every direction in number and importance. Ballets grew in splendour and coherency The lighting and ventilation, the comfort and decoration of the various “palaces” (as many of them were now called) improved, and the public, as usual, were the gainers. Population increased, and the six millions of 1730 became forty millions and more. The same and only act (25 Geo. II. c. 36), adequate or inadequate, still remained. London is defined as the “administrative county of London,” and its area—the 20-miles radius—is mapped out. The Metropolitan Board of Works retired or was discharged, and the London County Council was created and has taken its place. The London County Council, with extended power over structures and structural alterations, acquired the licensing of variety theatres and music halls from the local magistrates (the Middlesex, Surrey, Tower Hamlets and other magistrates) within the administrative county of London. The L. C. C. examine and enforce their powers. They have been advised that they can separate a music from a dancing licence if they like, and that when they grant the united licence the dancing means the dancing of paid performers on a stage, and not the dancing of the audience on a platform or floor, as at the short-lived but elegant Cremorne Gardens, or an old-time “Casino.” They are also advised that they can withhold licences, unless the applicants agree not to apply for a drink licence to the local magistrates sitting in brewster sessions, who still retain their control over the liquor trade. Theatre licences are often withheld unless a similar promise is made—the drink authority in this case being the Excise, empowered by the Act of William IV. (5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 39, s. 7).
The spread of so-called “sketches”—a kind of condensed drama or farce—in the variety theatres, and the action of the London County Council in trying to check the extension of refreshment licences to these establishments, with other grounds of discontent on the part of managers (individuals or “limited companies”), led to the appointment of a second select committee of the House of Commons in 1892 and the production of another blue-book. The same ground was gone over, and the same objections were raised against a licensing authority
