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Abstract
Theatregoing in nineteenth-century London was a mass activity. It was also one that extended beyond the playhouses of the West End. Between 1837 and 1870, the City of London Theatre was one of a number of venues catering mainly to the inhabitants of the East End. Locating the City within a distinctive East End theatre complex, this article traces the life cycle of a significant social and cultural institution that combined entertainment with elevation in an accessible and attractive way. Demonstrating the growing interconnectedness of metropolitan life, the article shows how theatres like the City of London worked hard to give audiences the best in dramatic presentation that the capital had to offer. It also highlights the importance of different managerial strategies, the interplay between theatres and the authorities, and the crossovers between theatres and political movements such as Chartism.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Charles Dickens, Sketches By Boz (1836; London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 120.
2 Martin Hewitt, ‘Introduction: Victorian Milestones’, in The Victorian World, ed. Martin Hewitt (London: Routledge, 2012), 23–24.
3 Michael Booth, ‘East End and West End: Class and Audience in Victorian London’, Theatre Research International, 2 (1977), 98–103.
4 John Hollingshead, My Lifetime, 2 vols (London, 1895), 1:18; John Lawrence Toole, Reminiscences, 2 vols (London, 1889), 1:143.
5 Heidi J. Holder, ‘The East End Theatre’, in The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, ed. Kerry Powell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 272.
6 John Tallis’s London Street Views, 1838–40, ed. Peter Jackson (London: London Topographical Society, 2002), 160, 239.
7 Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper (15 August 1846).
8 Gregory Vargo, ‘Chartist Drama: The Performance of Revolt’, Victorian Studies, 61.1 (2018), 9–34; and Gregory Vargo, Chartist Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020).
9 Alan A. Jackson, London’s Termini (London: Pan Books, 1969), 101–102.
10 Graphic, 18 October 1879.
11 Romantic and Revolutionary Theatre, 1789–1860, ed. Donald Roy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 153–154.
12 Henry Barton Baker, History of the London Stage (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1904), 407.
13 Albert Edward Wilson, East End Entertainment (London: Arthur Barker, 1954), 13.
14 Census of Great Britain, 1851: Population Tables, Volume 1 (London, 1852), 22.
15 Jim Davis and Victor Emaljanow, Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing, 1840–1880 (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001), 41–54.
16 Twynihoe William Erle, Letters from a Theatrical Scene-Painter (London, 1880), 4, 21.
17 Charles Dickens, ‘The Amusements of the People [2]’, in Dickens’s Journalism: ‘The Amusements of the People’ and Other Papers: Reports, Essays and Reviews, 1834–1851, ed. Michael Slater (London: Dent, 1996), 197.
18 Erle, Letters, 59.
19 Colin Hazlewood, Waiting for the Verdict (1859; London, 1870), 8.
20 Millicent Rose, The East End of London (London: Cresset Press, 1951), 136–139.
21 Wilson, East End Entertainment, 13.
22 Allan Stuart Jackson, The Standard Theatre of Victorian England (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993), 34–36.
23 Under this Act, the patent house monopoly was ended and licensing powers across the capital passed to the Lord Chamberlain. All theatres could now legally stage spoken word drama, but they were also subject to censorship and yearly inspection.
24 Quoted in The Britannia Diaries of Frederick Wilton, ed. Jim Davis (London: Society of Theatre Research, 1992), 15.
25 Booth, ‘East End and West End’, 100.
26 Clement Scott, The Drama of Yesterday and Today, 2 vols (London, 1899), 1:31.
27 Britannia Diaries of Frederick Wilton, 145, 149, 200; London Metropolitan Archives, MR/L/MD/0867.
28 Critic (2 April 1855), 2. See also: Reynolds’s Newspaper (4 September 1853); and Lloyd’s Weekly News (11 September 1853).
29 St. Vincent Troubridge, The Benefit System in the British Theatre (London: Society of Theatre Research, 1967), 79–80.
30 The National Archives, Kew, LC1/98, 10 August 1861.
31 Görel Garlick, To Serve the Purpose of the Drama: The Theatre Designs and Plays of Samuel Beazley, 1786–1851 (London: Society of Theatre Research, 2003), 149–154.
32 British Library, Playbills, Mic.C.13137, Reel 370. For Stirling, see: F. Dubrez Fawcett, Dickens the Dramatist: On Stage, Screen and Radio (London: W. H. Allen, 1952).
33 Morning Gazette (17 October 1837).
34 Jacky Bratton, The Making of the West End Stage: Marriage, Management and the Mapping of Gender in London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 122–128. On the development of the West End in general, see: Rohan McWilliam, London’s West End: Creating the Pleasure District, 1800–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
35 Weekly True Sun (8 October 1837); Bell’s Life in London (29 October 1837); BL Playbills, Reel 370.
36 BL Playbills, Reel 370.
37 Wilson, East End Entertainment, 143.
38 Hackney Archives, Playbills, Reel 792.31.
39 Frederick Renad Cooper, Nothing Extenuate: The Life of Frederick Fox Cooper (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964), 216.
40 BL Playbills, Reel 370.
41 File on the City of London, TNA, LC7/6.
42 For the Lord Chamberlain’s view of Jack Sheppard-themed dramas, see: John Russell Stephens, The Censorship of English Drama, 1824–1901 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 61–77.
43 Lloyd’s Weekly News (20 July 1845); TNA, LC7/6.
44 At the same time that the City was inspected so too were the Pavilion and the Standard. The City alone was visited on the other occasions noted.
45 Romantic and Revolutionary Theatre, 156–157.
46 TNA, LC7/6, 28 July 1845.
47 TNA, LC7/6, 16 September 1845.
48 BL Playbills, Reel 370; Bishopsgate Institute, City of London Playbills, LCM/56.
49 Charter (24 March 1839).
50 Marc Brodie, ‘Free Trade and Cheap Theatres: Sources of Politics for the Nineteenth-Century London Poor’, Social History, 28.3 (2003), 353. See also: Vargo, ‘Performance’, 23–24; and Appendix 1 in Chartist Drama.
51 Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 4 vols (1861; New York: Dover, 1968), 2:176–177.
52 Northern Star (8 November 1845).
53 On The Black Doctor, see: Hazel Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 76–80.
54 Northern Star (14 November 1846).
55 Theatrical Journal (October 1846), 318; BL Playbills, Reel 370 (19 October 1846).
56 Sunday Times (22 November 1846).
57 David Goodway, London Chartism, 1838–1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 227.
58 Quoted in Cooper, Nothing Extenuate, 234; Romantic and Revolutionary Theatre, 35–36; TNA, LC7/6.
59 BL Playbills, Reel 370.
60 BL Playbills, Reel 370; Era (24 October 1847).
61 Critic (2 April 1855), 175.
62 Thomas Frost, The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs (London, 1874), 319–359.
63 William John Lawrence, The Life of Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, Tragedian (Belfast, 1892), 149–152.
64 Islington History Centre, Sadler’s Wells Playbills, S/SWT/1.
65 For Lee as a pantomimist, see: Alan Ruston, ‘Richard Nelson Lee and the Victorian Pantomime in Great Britain’, Nineteenth Century Theatre Research, 11.2 (1983), 105–111.
66 Hollingshead, My Lifetime, 1:189–190.
67 Michael Williams, Some London Theatres Past and Present (London, 1883), 47–79.
68 Era (7 October 1860). See also Lee’s comments to the 1866 Select Committee.
69 Bishopsgate Institute, LCM/56.
70 The Pavilion and the Grecian were also rebuilt in 1858.
71 Era (22 December 1852); TNA, LC7/4 [Box 1].
72 Holder, ‘The East End Theatre’, 272.
73 TNA, LC7/4 [Box 1].
74 For example, Hazlewood’s Waiting for the Verdict was produced in Philadelphia in 1869.
75 Bratton, West End Stage, 18–19; TNA, LC7/4 [Box 1].
76 George Rowell, Queen Victoria Goes to the Theatre (London: Paul Elek, 1978), 58. See also: McWilliam, London’s West End, 153–156.
77 Era (28 March 1852). The Corsican Brothers played at the City between 22 March 1852 and the first week of May. It also played at numerous other London theatres.
78 TNA, LC7/4 [Box 1].
79 James Anderson, An Actor’s Life (London: Walter Scott Publishing Company, 1902), 206.
80 Era (21 November 1852). Civilisation was published in 1853 by Lacey’s.
81 TNA, LC7/4 [Box 1]; Era (29 February 1852).
82 Report from the Select Committee on Theatrical Licences and Regulations (London, 1866), 180 (no. 4993).
83 On DEMSFA and the RDC, see: Michael Baker, The Rise of the Victorian Actor (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 148–152.
84 Select Committee, 179 (no. 4945).
85 The City never had the modernising rebuilds of other East End theatres.
86 Britannia Diaries of Frederick Wilton, 202.
87 Orchestra (8 August 1868), 308; Williams, Some London Theatres, 77–78.
88 Era, 23 August 1868; TNA, LC1/201.
89 TNA, LC1/232; LC1/246.
90 Weekly Dispatch (3 April 1870).
91 TNA, LC1/233, 18 July 1870.
92 Orchestra (7 October 1870), 27–28.
93 Orchestra (7 October 1870), 27.
94 The Britannia passed into the hands of Lane’s actress wife, Sara.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Stephen Ridgwell
Stephen Ridgwell completed a PhD in History at the University of Sussex in 2017 on the representation of the English poacher in Victorian and Edwardian culture. He has since published in various journals including Rural History, the Journal of Victorian Culture, Theatre Notebook, and Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. He has also written on John Clare, Jack Sheppard, and Rudyard Kipling and is currently researching a fuller study of Nelson Lee. An account of female management at the City of London Theatre appears in New Theatre Quarterly, August 2023.