LCC Inspector's report into Collins Music Hall, Islington Green, 1890

With one or two exceptions this is a place of entertainment to which I would not hesitate to take my wife and family to. The only part of the programme that I object to is the skirt dance of Miss Alice Leaman. The high pitching of the legs and the continual twirling, with the hands, of her muslin petticoats is, to say the least, suggestive. This skirt dance gave such unbounded satisfaction to the audience that she had to appear again.

    Regarding prostitutes, it is satisfactory to report that in the gallery they are not to be seen at the bar or promenade. As far as I could make out the Superintendents insisted that females must be seat – a plan which if generally adopted would in my humble opinion greatly improve the moral tone of the London Music Halls and Theatres.

    I regard that I cannot report as favourably on the area of the Hall. this part is besieged by a goodly number of unfortunates of the better-clad sort. The bar, which is at the back, is supplied with side lounges and these are the hunting grounds of these women. I observed no importuning but it is not required with such conveniences. A tipsy young man will invariably drop down beside one of these females. If the Superintendents were as exacting in this part as they are in the gallery, this blot would disappear.

    I would draw the attention of the Committee to the existing condition of the WCs in the gallery. At the back is a promenade not too well lighted – having two dim gas lights and an oil lamp. At the back of this promenade are two WCs – the one for men and the other for women, the distance between the doors being some  seven or eight  feet. The entrances to these are in full view of the promenade, the bar, and the exit, which is close to the entrance. For the observance of decency on the part of the female sex, I would suggest that a door, immediately at the top of the gallery stairs, would suit the purpose and would afford females an opportunity of availing themselves of the use of the Convenience without being so much observed.

    I must again make mention of the touting for drinks that prevails in this and other music halls and also theatres in London. I don’t see why a person after paying for admission should be continually pestered by a waiter poking his nose in yours and shouting “orders please.” These men are paid little or no salary and naturally they try to make three-fourths of an audience order drinks, whereas if they were left to enjoy the performance, the liquor would not be thought of.

A Visit to a Music Hall (no.4)

AMUSED LONDON

By a Novice - IV.

If the reader will picture to himself a fine theatre brilliantly lighted, luxuriously fitted, magnificently decorated with crimson and gold, and crowded from roof to floor with an overflowing audience, he will have some idea of a celebrated West End Theatre of Varieties now paying over 100 per cent dividend to the shareholders. On the night of our visit the inevitable cigars were as usual in everybody's mouths, but a strange feature in the audience was the relatively large proportion of apparently respectable women as compared to their almost entire absence in Music Halls, and our puzzle increased as we speculated as to why, when and where, respectable women draw the line between West-end Music Halls and Variety Theatres, for the latter certainly carry off the palm for immoral tone, indecency, and intentional suggestiveness. Probably the very lady who recently boasted in a letter to the papers that she was very pleased for her husband to attention an occasional Music Hall, though it was, of course, an unfit place for her to accompany him to; would quite complacently imperil he own more valuable soul at a Theatre of Varieties. The obvious conclusion is, therefore, that in the eyes of society, the character of the entertainment itself is of less consequence than the character of the female portion of the audience attending it. Music Halls are reserved for the convenience of gentlemen and that special set of their feminine friends who they do not introduce to their female relations. The proportion of women is always, however, it must be remembered comparatively small; in fact, in London, the relative numbers of the sexes in places of amusement and places of worship is reversed. A further distinction is that, although the songs were of the ordinary Music Hall type, and those by no means carefully selected, the audience did not join in the choruses.

   "That's how he carries on;"

    "Don't you believe it, dear boys;
     How forward you are, I shall tell mama,
     But don't you believe it dear boys - "

and another, also addressed to men, given by the "Liquid Gem", a lady in whom impudence did duty for voice:-

    "You're artful, so are we,"
   
    "And the lodger will sit on the old woman's knee,
     And if you'll stand that, you'll stand anything - "

together with an equally choice piece of advice to "Get married on the hire system," will sufficiently indicate the style of song. There was a great deal of harmless fun over a cleverly managed political monologue, which drew forth howls or applause from the various sections of the audience, according as Liberals or Conservatives were hit. Beside the usual Music Hall jokes, acrobats and songs, a woman athlete performed marvels on a trapeze suspended to the roof of the lofty theatre. The exhibition was most objectionable from the element of danger and excitement introduced by the height at which the performance took place, but the immense muscular power displayed by a woman, must effectually have dispelled from the spectators any pet theories as to innate physical incapacity in the weaker, or more accurately speaking, the undeveloped sex.
     The main features of the evening were two long and very elaborate ballets, arranged by a well-known London manager, and a lady almost equally celebrated in theatrical circles. There were about eight children on, between the ages of ten and fourteen, who were mentioned as a special attraction in the programme. Some of the dresses were tolerable but the greater number violated every canon of ordinary decency and good taste; the dancing as a consequence became indecent "the display suggestive, and the personal attractions of the performers, "exploited for vulgar purposes and worse." Some of the most beautiful flowers were pressed into the service of this essentially unbeautiful exhibition; but robbed by the human beings who impersonated them of their most precious attributes, the violets of their modesty, the lilies of their purity, and the daisies of their simplicity. How decent women, with any pretensions to dignity and self respect could sit it out was more than we could comprehend, yet some of them had actually brought their young boys and girls with them! Little dreaming in their culpable thoughtlessness of the crop of tares they were thus sowing in their young impressionable minds.
    After the performance quite a crowd of men and boys waited at the stage door for the actresses and dancers as they streamed forth by scores with their painted faces, and more in the background were to be discerned in the dark corners of the shadowy back street various gentlemen on a similar errand. In front of the theatre the gaily-lit square and crowded thoroughfare swarmed with men of the better-to-do classes, and the unhappy women who exist to subserve their purposes. The road was blocked with cabs awaiting at the doors of the brilliantly illuminated cafes the pleasure-seekers as they retired from their sumptuous supper-tables. At one spot on the pavement a thicker knot of human beings was collected round one of the unhappy creatures whom the world has agreed to call unfortunates - her poor, painted, but handsome face was disfigured by a frenzy of passion, as she shrieked in piercing tones, "I'm a lady, and I won't be insulted"; and the mocking laughter of the crowd echoed with a fateful irony her impotent rage.
    The night was a dark and gusty one, and occasional heavy drops gave warning of an impending storm; but the crowds of handsomely dressed gentlemen and painted and bedizened shows of women surged on, heedless of the elements, and bent only on their unholy mission. It was as though we had see with Dante the vision of those spirits, the unhallowed victims of their own lusts, swept round and round in never-ending circles by the stormy gusts of their unchained passions.

Vigilance Record, September 1888

A Visit to a Music Hall (no.3)

AMUSED LONDON.

By a Novice - III.

It chanced to be the evening of the Derby Day as we took an omnibus eastward, and having arrived at the terminus, and entered a second going in the same direction, we soon became aware, through our olfactory organs, by the blended essence of friend fish and burnt coffee borne to us on the perfume-laden breeze, that we had at least arrived in the Whitechapel Road. A third and final ride on top of a tram through monotonous miles of a long lobe unbroken level of discoloured, depressed looking dwellings, brought us close to our destination. 

    The Palace of Varieties of which we were in search is situated in the far east of London, amidst a vast stretch of low, squalid-looking houses, and stands out conspicuously by its relatively imposing dimensions and glaring lights from the surrounding gloom. Inside it is a small theatre; dress circle seats at a shilling were an allowable extravagance after such a journey, and owing to its being Derby night, and consequently there being an unusually small audience, we were fortunate enough to escape with less than half the customary fumes of drink and tobacco. How any human being contrives to survive asphyxiation on non-Derby nights would be a useful investigation for scientific men who assert that oxygen is necessary for the maintenance of life.

    The entertainment itself was very vulgar, the jokes low, the riddles coarse, and consisted largely of noise and rough horse-play. Some twanging Christies gave an excruciating rendering of the "Old Folks at Home," a new version containing a hit at Emigration, the whole concluding with a free fight between the "Old Folks," and the new folks who wished to make themselves "at home."

    A novel and to us striking feature of the entertainment was the jingoism which pervaded the place and which cheered to the echo such choruses as:

   "We've still got the men, we've still got the cash,

    We've still go the same old British pluck and dash,

    So let our foes beware, or we will make them stare,

    For there's life in the Old Dog yet."

sung with martial ardour by a warlike daughter of the regiment, dressed in crimson satin, in size a female Tichborne. This song and others of similar nature were levelled against - "those sneaking lot of cowards, the Russians" whom the audience vowed in chorus they would - 

    "Teach them to remember

      What British pluck can do," &c &c.

One began to comprehend, as one listened, how and whence the British armaments are recruited.

    The spirited goddess of war, having leisurely exchanged her martial uniform for a pink satin gown, condescended to the trivialities of more domestic sentiments; and we were favoured with the tragic history of a faithful though suspicious lover; chorus:-

    "O! isn't she a pretty little thing!

     I'll buy the wedding ring,

     And I'll take good care she never has a lodger."

climax-

    "She's been and gone and bolted with the lodger."

    Lodgers, we find are regarded by a large portion of the community, as persons of naturally depraved characters, by no means to be trusted, and to be scouted on all public occasions, more especially at Music Hall Entertainments.

    There followed one of the most painful exhibitions it has been our lot during our peregrinations to witness. A child, apparently of about nine or ten, got up in comic guise, singing with suggestive gestures coarse songs; concluding with a topical song on the degeneracy of the turf.

    The inevitable gentleman in evening dress, with his back to the stage, now announced the "Grand juvenile nautical spect-acle;" and the central table in the stalls with the announcement on it, "this table for gentlemen only" began to fill up, for was not the ballet about to commence? To the uninitiated the death of Nelson may seem rather an incongruous subject for terpsichorean representation, but they thus display a want of comprehension of which an audience drawn from the neighbourhood of the docks, inheriting the traditions and imbued with the glorious spirit of a warlike and maritime race, would not be guilty. The scene took place on the deck of the Victory, and certainly we must admit that if noise, and vulgarity and confusion, and incoherence, and Bengal lights, and banging of guns, and popping of fireworks could have killed Nelson, he must have died a thousand deaths before the final merciful release, when the charming young ballet-girl, who impersonated the great Admiral, fell mortally wounded but gracefully into the arms of the attendant officers, also ballet girls. Besides these dancers there were upwards of eighty girls and boys under fifteen representing soldiers and sailors and the rest, and four or five very small children. Here again our feelings were jarred by that want of reverence for childhood, characteristic perhaps of a teeming population, made so painfully evident earlier in the evening; the two youngest children, mere babies, were blackened, and kept the audience in a roar by their precocious tricks. Amongst other unpleasant features, causing  great hilarity, were the acrobatic antics of a human deformity, who climbed the ropes of the good ship "Victory" and stood on his head in the rigging. We were told by some of the audience he was a well-known dwarf called Blackwall Jack.

    At the conclusion of the "Nautical Spect-acle" we found our way to the dark badly-lighred street into which the stage door opened. The children steamed out; but were left to find their way home at nearly midnight as beset they could, there was no-one there to meet them. Later, one mother, a German woman, arrived and she confided in us her great anxiety about her girl of sixteen for whom she as waiting. She was not a bad girl, she said, but high-spirited and wild about the stage. She, in common with her other comrades of the ballet, got 3s. a week; it did not keep them in shoes; but they loved the excitement. It is a bad life for girls, she added, as we bade her good-night.

Vigilance Record, August 1888

    

A Visit to a Music Hall (no.2)

AMUSED LONDON

By a Novice - II.

Saturday night, the eve of Whit-Sunday, seemed a good evening to select for a visit to a well-known music hall in Paddington, patronized mostly by the poorer classes of society. Well-to-do people unconsciously get their views about the poor coloured by the police reports in the newspapers (as, it may be, the poor judge of the rich from the published accounts of divorce cases), and it must be confessed that I for one had some apprehensions as to the character of the entertainment at which my friend and I had imposed on ourselves the duty of assisting. [--sic--typo for 'assessing'?] Such fears, however, turned out not to be only an additional proof of the existence of that ignorance of classes other than our own in which it is the fate of so many of us to live and die. As a matter of act, on this occasion at any rate, the whole entertainment was immeasurably superior, in moral tone and decency, to that of the fashionable West End music hall previously visited by us and described in last month's Vigilance Record. Of course there was vulgarity, but vulgarity of a downright honest, homely kind, unseasoned by vicious jests or indecent allusions. Indeed, the audience seemed of a fresher and more wholesome type, more child-like in nature, easily amused, and readily expressing approbation or the reverse, but not requiring as did the educated gentlemen who formed the mass of the former audience, either vice or indecency to whet their jaded appetites.
    The prices of the seats ranged from 6d. to 2s. for reserved stalls, and on pushing through the handsome swing glass door leading into the pit, we found ourselves in the midst of a thickly-packed mass of working men, mostly standing, and all smoking short clay pipes. We made our way with some difficulty through the crowd to a side bench in front of a bar; from here we have a fairly good view of the "house", which was like a good-sized theatre, built in octagonal form. The performance had already begun as we took our seats on the wooden form, by the side of some clay pipes, with clay pipes in front and clay pipes behind us. As the evening advanced, the atmosphere became insufferable.
    The reserved stalls filling the parterre in front of us were chiefly occupied by quietly behaved decent-looking young men, with a sprinkling of entirely respectable women and girls, many of them shop-girls, who came in couples, in fact we could only discover one girl who might from her appearance be of doubtful character.
    Of women in the humbler ranks of life there were scarcely any, though their brothers and husbands and sons swarmed, and a factory girl, denoted by the unmistakeable scanty feather and thick fringe of hair, was a quite a rara avis; apparently poor women do not largely participate in the amusements of their male relations. The readiness with which the people inconvenienced themselves for their neighbours, and their true politeness to each other was remarkable; two men in front of us left their seats several times, and retired to the bar in order to replenish their glasses with porter, and although their places were immediately occupied by the bystanders, they were invariably cheerfully relinquished on the reappearance of those who claimed them; indeed all behaved well, and we saw no drunkenness or disorder of any kind, Owing to our position under the balcony, we had some difficulty in hearing the words of all the songs evidently familiar to the greater part of the audience who joined vociferously in the choruses; and in one song sung by a young lady, attired in scarlet satin, and vivid grass green silk stockings, interpolated a deafening shout at a given pause in each verse, which sounded like a Brobdingnagian "WHY?"
    Although we were treated to a very fair rendering of the Toreador's song from Carmen by a man with a fine baritone, the songs, as a whole, were certainly not meant to gratify refined taste; one of the most unpleasant being sung by a comedian who acted in character the part of an "unfortunate father," and deplored, with the naive irresponsibility of the British parent, the misfortunes showered on an innocent victim in the shape of seventeen daughters. The audience roared with gusto the chorus:

    Will any one marry my daughters?
    Will any one cart of the whole blooming lot?
    For I want to get rid of girls.

On the other hand, the same man sang a character song with great effect, containing a very visible and impressive moral; he gave highly dramatic sketches of the fate of the dishonest city clerk, the gambler, and the drunkard, and finally of the little actress, "Flo," who was betrayed by the fine gentleman in whose promises she had put her faith, and who ended her life by a fatal plunge off London Bridge. The entertainment was varied by acrobatic performances, conjuring, and some dancing of a comparatively decent kind. Having endured semi-asphyxiation for nearly three hours and a half - and as there was no apparent prospect of the entertainment, which began at eight, drawing to a close - we could stand the poisonous atmosphere no longer and made our escape into the reviving air. Never did London air appear so fresh and balmy to two poor mortals, and to us it was Spring itself, with healing on its wing, that we breathed anew. The night was a beautiful one, and we came out upon a very picturesque scene - the whole of Edgware Road turned a huge market, with stalls crowded with many coloured ware and lit by flaming jets of naptha lining the pavements, which were so thronged with purchasers we could scarcely get along. A quiet, patient, orderly, dowdy throng it was, absorbed in the paramount duty of purchasing food to sustain a life which, to the large majority among them must be one long weary grind. Here were whole families doing the shopping for the week-end, heaving inert-looking fathers, and wan-faced worn-out mothers, with tiny children in their arms of dragging at their hands. The things seemed to us marvellously cheap, from the bonnets and hats and second-hand clothing to the disorderly piles of paper-covered books - (by the way, why does not the S.P.C.K. get its rival penny dreadfuls on to these stalls?) - bacon, vegetables, fish, periwinkles, and flowers in profusion: as many beautiful pink tulips as you could hold for one penny. We were investing when my friend noticed a poor, pinch-faced woman gazing with long eyes at the bright flowers; she said to her, "They are very pretty, aren't they?" and the poor thing replied with such a depth of yearning in her voice, " 'Deedm an' they are, mam; I was just thinking whether I could get a ha'porth." "Of course you shall," was the reply; "which would you like?" "Oh, mam, something a bit green, please." As I turned I caught the exquisite smile of voiceless gratitude which lit up the poor wan face as she shook hands with her unknown friend. The glory of the earth's spring was never perhaps to rejoice her sad eyes, but into her heart at that moment the power of the spirit, which is of the spring entered; and we felt that our evening had not been spent wholly in vain.

Vigilance Record, July 1888

 

A Visit to a Music Hall (no.1)

AMUSED LONDON

By a Novice - I.

The saying that the man who writes the ballads of the nation is a greater power than he who makes it laws may be applied with equal truth to the men who provide its amusements. The power of the individuals mostly unknown who cater for the entertainment of the public is indeed immeasurably greater than that of the legislators enthroned in Westminster. A very large proportion of the electors of the country frequent at some time or other place of amusement, there they receive the food in the shape of the pleasurable excitement which they go for, in so far does it go to form part of their characters, whether they forget all about it in the next hour or not, just as surely as the dinner they ate last year went to build them up physically. The amusement managers therefore have direct influence in the formation of the characters in the individuals constituting the nation, whilst the legislators merely formulate and organize the collective opinions which are the result expressed in votes of these characters.
    It was perhaps with some such thoughts in our minds that my friend and I started off down Regent Street one evening this Spring for a well-known place of amusement. Being mere novices, we somehow at 8.30 found ourselves somewhere else, but fortunately at the doors of another notorious music hall, which would do equally well for the purpose of our researches. We entered, not it must be confessed without some inward trepidation, my friend emphasising the request that I should take the tickets by the doubtful compliment that I looked "the most like it". Having invested in shilling places, we passed into a large luxuriously fitted building, like a theatre built square; the space in which we found ourselves, beneath the dress circle, formed a promenade, and was fitted like a restaurant. We were informed by an old official in French uniform at the door, that if we wanted seat we must apply to the waiter who was at that moment engaged in paying conspicuous attention to almost the only young girl to be seen in this part of the hall. having received the expected tip, this amiable personage was enabled to discover the needful chairs at a table already overcrowded with smoking youths.
    The whole of the parterre (the stalls and a pit at an ordinary theatre) was fitted with luxurious plush setées, running at right angles with the stage and facing marble tables. They were occupied as the evening advanced by a great number of society young gentlemen, accompanied in numerous instances by ladies not in society, though we remarked one or two women amongst the company who were apparently quite respectable. The dress circle consisted entirely of small private boxes, a deux, price £1 1s. to £3 3s., which were filled in every instance by a gentleman with a cigar and a lady, generally young and pretty, in extremely decoletée costume. A strange feature to unaccustomed eyes was a gentleman, got up regardless of expense, in evening dress, seated throughout the performance in the stalls, in a prominent position, with his back to the stage. His duties consisted in announcing the name of the performer about to appear, whilst rigidly retaining his uncompromising attitude, as they he at any rate washed his hands of the whole concern.
    The entertainment began well enough: that is to say, although intensely vulgar, there was nothing morally objectionable in the first few songs, until we were treated to one sung by a man, describing supposed feminine indiscretions with the following chorus:

    "The poor little darlings they're not to blame,
    "They know that their mothers have done the same,
    "So why should we blame the girls."

     But even this was quite thrown into the shade by a song entitled, "A very different place," sung by Mr. M- , the last verses of which described how he had been invited by a cousin to visit her girls' school in St. John's Wood, and how on his arrival he found it "a very different place," the chorus being,

     "If in you chance to pop, I'll bet a crown  you stop," &c. &c.

Both these choruses were enthusiastically shouted by the audience.
    We read in The Indian Purity Trumpet "that several Hindoos were recently arrested and fined for singing indecent songs in Bombay theatres, the magistrate in passing sentence expressed his strong determination to put a stop to such conduct." British hypocrisy has indeed reached a climax when we exact from subject heathen races a morality to which we ourselves make no attempt to conform.
    The songs were followed by a coarse burlesque scene of a man who was the bone of contention between two girls; the man was finally chased up the stage by a dog, amidst delighted yells from the audience.
    A delightfully clever Japanese juggler, now formed a pleasing interlude with his marvellous dexterity. Then a pretty child who, we were told, was twelve, although her voice that of a child of eight, danced six or seven dances in succession, changing her dress, if her very slight attire may be dignified by that name, between each, with lightening swiftness.
     There was besides this an immense deal of solo-burlesque dancing of a very objectionable kind, which culminated in the appearance of a man, about 6ft 6in. high, attired as a ballet girl. This person was accompanied by a burlesque woman dancer, almost as objectionable as himself; they were both French, in which tongue they sang several comic songs. A shadow performance, also by a Frenchman, was very clever and interesting at first; but was spoilt by the vulgarity and indecency introduced into it towards the end.
     The whole entertainment concluded with some beautiful jumping by wonderful dogs; but the audience rose en masse and left as the dogs made their appearance. The simple grace and beauty of the faithful animals had no attraction for an audience whose tastes lay in a "very different" direction.
     The French say that John Bull takes his pleasures "sadly"; it would be more to the point if they said he takes it respectably, however questionable or unquestionable it may be in kind; his outward demeanour is irreproachable, whether he be assisting at a Church Service or a Music Hall entertainment. The present occasion was no exception to the rule; for, if homage was done to the goddess Lubricity, due respect was also paid to the great god Conventionality. About one-fourth of the audience consisted of women of light character; the remaining three-fourths of young men of every conceivable rank and condition in life, from those who could barely afford a shilling to those to whom a hundred would be of no moment; and one and all behaved with the greatest decorum and propriety throughout.
      As we followed the multitude out into the crowded thoroughfare, we overheard one young fellow say to another, "This is no place for you and me." Perhaps the calm peace of the midnight sky, looking reproachfully down with its clear shining eyes, may have brought to him the vision of a refined and simple home, sleeping far away amidst flowers and trees in the stillness of the starlight, the abode of pure-minded mother and sisters, whose hopes, and joys, and sacrifices, had centred for years round a beloved brother, now gone forth into the great world of which they know so little, and whose tender faith in him has been desecrated this night for the first time. Is it the beginning of the end? Or will the true manliness which uttered those words conquer? Who can tell?

Vigilance Record, June 1888