Press Clippings for the week ending
Saturday, 24 August 2002

A random selection of cuttings
from newspapers and magazines

* * * * * * * * The Low Theatres of London, 1851 ‘The normal schools of vice and profligacy in London are the low theatres, where abandoned actors dance the most disgusting ballets, vitiate the love of music by comic songs of the worst tendency, and perform dramas, farces, and tragedies, which convey to the audience infamous lessons in all the crimes that afflict and impoverish society. The persons that attend these penny theatres are, for the most part, the juvenile children of the poor, varying between the ages of 8 and 20, the great majority being boys unable to read and write. We had often heard of these Acherontic abodes, but scarcely credited the rumours of even witnesses of these deplorable performances, till we visited them ourselves. The first of these theatres situated in a district gorged with a vicious population, opened with a comic song, by a person who represented the character of a tipsy beggar man, raising roars of laughter at the expense of teetotalism. He described the joys of drunkenness, its independence and manliness, and was joined in the chorus by several hundred boys, who formed eight-tenths of the audience. To men of property, and property itself, was imputed the grand cause of the sufferings of the person. This performance was followed by disgusting dances that the play itself was designed to show, in the instances of a hawker of fish and a countryman in London, how easy it is for a youth to steal, to deceive the legal authorities, to get an innocent man arrested, while the true culprit decamps to the pawnbroker with the spoil. In our second attempt to ascertain the tendency of these performances, and the class of persons by whom they are commonly frequented, we found a greater number of actors, gaudier scenery, and the musical performances were in better taste. This also spiced with comic songs in ridicule of wives, families, and husbands. A little boy was then made to put himself into every attitude that shocks good sense and the moral feelings; and, after the exhibition of a female singer, as offensively half arrayed as it was possible to conceive, a play was acted that exhibited all the treacheries and shifts of a drunken and dishonest family, chuckling at the toil and privations of the industrious poor. In the third instance, the theatre was a warehouse on the banks of the Thames. Here we noticed a much larger number of young girls and sailors, with a few persons of colour, amounting altogether to about four hundred. The great majority, however, were boys between ten and eighteen years of age. Most of them were smoking throughout the performance, which was a comedy of a gross description, followed by a tragedy, in which the lesson was how to commit murder and yet to escape the gallows; interspersed with comic songs, illustrative of the frauds and fictions of society, in which it was represented that the only independent person was he who set laws and customs at defiance, and live a merry and a short life. There are more that fifty of these dens in the metropolis, where the performance is repeated two, three, or even four times in the course of an evening to a different audience, but always of the same character.’ (The News of the World, London, Sunday, 23 February 1851, p.2f) * * * * * * * * Mdlle. Sara indisposed, London, 1874

(photo: The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co Ltd, London, circa 1872)

‘Indecent Dancing. ‘Some strong observations we deemed it due to the dignity of the Theatrical Profession to attach last week to our commentary on the "Carnevalesque Ballet," introduced into the last act of the latest Alhambra novelty [Offenbach’s Le Roi Carotte], we have reason to believe attracted official attention. Judicial interference has been, however, rendered unnecessary by a cause best explained in the following advertisement, sent forth for publication last Thursday [17 September 1874]:- "Mr [John] Baum regrets to have to inform the public that, in consequence of severe indisposition, Mdlle Sara [née Sarah Wright, nicknamed ‘Wiry Sal’] will be unable to appear this evening;" and the announcement is supported by a medical certificate, as follows:- "7, Osnaburg-street, Regent’s-park. I hereby certify that Mdlle Sara, having sustained a violent strain and contusion of the muscles in following her profession, it is absolutely necessary that for some time she should not resume her professional duties. - John Wallis Mason, M.R.C.S., Eng., and L.S.A." That such a misadventure should have arisen, causing a pecuniary loss to accompany personal suffering, will be, of course, regretted by others than the visitors to the Alhambra; but it may be earnestly hoped that the patient of Mr Mason will henceforth find it desirable to forego that violent form of exercise on the public stage, which not only strains the limbs, but shocks the sense of decency. We had the satisfaction of knowing that an article which appeared in these columns a few years ago effectually [sic] stopped a most abominable exhibition of some French men and women at the King’s-cross Theatre, and any attempt to repeat similar outrages on propriety would receive from us equally severe treatment. Even in New York, a city which no one would accuse of extreme fastidiousness, it has been considered necessary to check a growing evil by magisterial restraint. It will be seen by our latest advices from America that the police have closed the Metropolitan Theatre, New York, on account of the "Can-Can" enormities there exhibited, and that La Timbale d’Argent is forthwith to be withdrawn from the Lyceum. There is no art, no skill, no training required to execute these gross gymnastic evolutions, and something more than unblushing audacity we may fairy ask from those who profess to be dancers of the "Carnavalesque Quadrille".’ (The Era, London, Sunday, 20 September 1874, p.11d) * * * * * * * * A School for Ballet Dancing, London, 1876 ‘When, in the spring of last year, we were the first to announce the scheme in connection with the National Opera House, there were many, both of our confrères and of the public, who doubted that the idea could be carried out in anything like its entirety. The scheme was so large and comprehensive that Mr. [J.H.] Mapleson had, it was thought, simply addled himself with ideas which had been certainly conceived in his fertile brain, but were destined to be hatched in the clouds. The Opera House itself was jeered at, while the schools for the ballet and for vocalism were, it was considered, very excellent ideas, but simply impracticable. Mr. Mapleson and his friends thought otherwise, and events are proving the wisdom and expediency of his resolutions. The Opera House is, despite the cynics, being very rapidly proceeded with, and its walls are now assuming substantial proportions, in time for royal inauguration next season. And now the school for the ballet, in which, according to rumor, the Princess of Wales greatly interests herself, is being formed. Last week Mdlle. Katti Lanner, the celebrated danseuse, accompanied by Mr. Mapleson, had a private examination at Liverpool of child-dancers. 200 children were assembled on the stage of the Alexandra Theatre, and fifteen of the most promising were selected as pupils. Other towns are now being visited, and with a similar result. It is the fundamental idea of this school for the ballet that its pupils shall be taught gratuitously. They will be instructed in the choreographic art by Mdlle. Lanner and her assistants, up to a certain age they will be educated at the Board schools, and they will be clothed and fed at the expense of Mr. Mapleson. It is easy to see how such an institution may become, in a very short time, self-supporting, and, indeed, a source of revenue. The pupils will, of course, dance in the operatic ballets gratuitously, according to the plan for many years carried into effect at the opera-houses of Paris, Milan, &c. They will gradually rise till they arrive at that heaven of danseuses, the front row, when they will be paid a small salary. Some of the best pupils of the school will be let out to provincial and other ballets, ballerines being especially at Christmas time, usually scarce, as they have hitherto been found pretty uniformly inefficient. Part of the accumulate earnings of the ballerines will be devoted to their support, part to dowries on their marriage, part to pensions when old age is reached, and part to the cost of the funerals of themselves and their parents. Thus the art of dancing is brought into immediate pecuniary contact with the cradle, the altar, and the tomb. It is hoped that by the time the National Opera House opens, next April, 50 young and well-trained coryphées will be available to take the place of the ancient and heavy danseuses amateurs usually see in the modern ballet. The terpsichorean art has lately been sadly neglected in this country, while it has been brought, by similar means to those Mr. Mapleson has now adopted, to the highest pitch of present perfection at Paris, Milan, Turin, Vienna, &c. The moral and intellectual education of the pupils is to be cared for equally with their instruction in art, and the Princess of Wales will, there is reason to suppose, be a constant visitor to the new school. If these roseate but perfectly practicable ideas be carried out there is no reason to doubt that we shall at last have at least one ballet in London, the members of which will be able to dance; and perhaps, in the result, an attempt will be made to revive the ancient glories of the ballet, glories which, in the [Benjamin] Lumley days, at Her Majesty’s Theatre, eclipsed those of the opera itself.’ (The Saturday Programme and Sketch-Book, London, Saturday, 8 April, 1876, pp.12b/13a) * * * * * * * * The legality of theatre queues, Manchester, 1909 ‘The legality of theatre queues is shortly to be tested in Manchester. In that city on the 22nd inst. representatives of the newly-formed Theatre Reform League were granted summonses against Mr. John Hart, lessee of the Prince’s Theatre, Manchester, charging him with obstructing the public footway and with permitting or causing a public nuisance. It was stated that the crowd was lined up under the manager’s direction or with the aid of his servants, not merely outside his premises, but along the footway in front of other premises. Keeping the crowd there until such time as he chose to open the door was, it was submitted, causing an obstruction.’ (The Era, London, Saturday, 30 January 1909, p.16b) * * * * * * * * A Beauty Hint from Teddie Gerard, London, 1919 ‘By arrangement with the Daily Sketch’ ‘I don’t agree that a brown skin, tanned by the sea and the sun, is not an aid to beauty. I think it is - so that’s that. After all, if you are brown nothing on earth will make the slightest difference, only time, which, alas, doesn’t take very long. Of course, being dark myself, I do tan, not go that bright red which is so unbecoming to people. I also think it is very beneficial to one’s health to get one’s skin thoroughly roasted. All the time I have been in Devonshire on a fishing holiday I have just worn high wading boots and sweater and no hat.’ (Winter Garden Theatre Programme, Kissing Time, London, 1919)

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© John Culme, 2002