Idea Transcript
THE CIRCUS AND RESPECTABLE SOCIETY IN VICTORLAN BRITAIN
A THESIS SUBMIïTED
IN CONFORMITY WTH 'CHE
REQUlREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF
PHILOSOPHY, GRADUATE DEPARTMENT O F HISTORY IN
THE UNrVERSIïY OF TORONTO
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Brenda Assael Department of Wisc~ry,University ofTomnto Mar& 1998
Ph-D.
Thesis &tract= "The Circus and Respectable Socieg in ViGtorian Bntain"
The circus is a subject that has received no ngorous historicai treatment in rhe period when its growth, as a trade, occurred. Having its origins in the fairground world, the circus emerged in the Viaonan era as a stmcmred and organized m d e , as chapters one through
three of this thesis demonstrate. This development was intricately tied to a widespread demand for circus acts by a broad range of classes in this society and so, this work also considers, in chapters four through six, the Victoriaru' interest in the circus as an artistic f o m within the contes of a vibrant (and sometimes not so respectable) consumer market. In doing so, it provides a new view on popular culture which has, until now, largely k e n seen as the preserve of the working classes. It considers the complex problem of taste, in cmjunaion with ciass, as one way of approaching the problem, "what drew the Victorians to the ring?"
The consuming public's desire to see the kinds of displays which refonners wished to
reylate put the arcus establishment in a diffinilt position. Wishing to crearc a respectable repuration for itself while also a profitable business, the urcus Company was engaged in a suuggle that required the appeasement of both camps - that of the regulator and the consumer - which were, more often than not, in conflict. These confiicts inform us not only of the complicated role that the circus played in Viaorian sociery but also of the fractures and dislocations that were present within the respectable world whose vibrant consumer market sometimes suayed from its path. Many within the circus establishment vied to paper over these cracks but, in the process, drew attention to them.
ii.
CONTENlS ABST R A C T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , ~ . ~ . . . ~ . . . . . . . ~ . ~ . . . . . . , . .
ii
CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .**. . TABLE ..,.,.,.........................-,,........,......,.....,..,,.iv ILLUSTRATIONS ....................................................... v ACICNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v i
INTRODUCTION
......................................................
1
CHAPTER ONE: THE GROWTH OF THE CIRCUS IN VICTORlAN BRITALN 1. PERFORMANCE
........-.......................................
12
CHAPTER W O : THE GROWTH OF T E CIRCUS IN VlCTORIAN B R I T . II, ORGANIZATION AND COMMüNI'IY
.................................
63
CHAPTER THREE: THE CIRCUS AM) THE PRACTICES O F MID-TO-LATE NINETEENTH CENTüRYHELP
................................................
96
CHAPTER FOUR: WOMEN ON TOP: ACROBA?S, THE VICTORlANS AND DANGEROUS PERFORMANCES,1863-1897 ......................................
CHtlPTER FIVE: THE CHILDREN OF THE RING, 1879-1897
....................
142 196
CHAPTER SIX: DISPLAYING COMPASSION: ClRCUS ANIMALS, TAMERS AND THE D E A OF KINDNESS, 185û-1900 CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
..........................................
......................................................
245 293
......................................................... 296
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.....................................................
314
BlOGRAPHY ........................................................ 3%
TABLE
PAGE
TABLE 1.1 :
BAIANCE BETWEEN THEATRICAL AND TRADITIONAL PROGRAMS. 1847-1897
2.1 :
TENTING COMPANIES DURING THE SUMMER SEASON. 1847-1897
2.2:
TENTING AND RESLDENT COMPANIES DURING THE SUMMER SEASON. 18471897
22
......... 65
........................................................ 68
........
68
LTNKNOWNCIRCUSES. 1847-1897
..................................
70
2
DISSOLVED CIRCUSES. 1847-1897
..................................
70
2.6.
CASUALTIES FROM HENGLER'S QRCUS ACCIDENT. OCTOBER 1872 ........ 87
3.1 :
SALARY LIST OF CLOWNS c.1870s-80s
3.2:
LEADERS OF THE DRAMATIC. EQUESTRIAN & MUSICAL ASSOCIATION
2-3:
COMPANIES TfIAT ONLY RESIDED IN AMPHITHEATERS. 1847-1897
2.4.
BELONGING TO THE CIRCUS
..............................
100
....................................
119
..........................
147
4.1:
INDMDUALJFAMILY ACROBATS. 1867-1878
5.1 :
DMSION LIST: RE: WCENSING FOR CHILDREN. 1894 .................. 211
5.2.
DMSION LIST: RE: INSPECTION OF CHILD TRAINING. 1894
............
212
5.3:
NSPCC INVESTIGATIONS OF DANGEROUS PERFORMANCES
.............
235
A.1 :
AVERAGE OF ALL CIRCUSES PLAYING IN THE COUNTIES. 1847-1897
......
296
A.2.
A m A L NUMBER OF CIRCUSES TO LANCASHIRE. 1847-1897
............
297
k3:
PERIOD OF TIME CIRCUSES SPENT IN SELECT AREAS O F LANCASHIRE. 18471897
........................................................
297
ILLUSTRATIONS
Cookes' Bmefit Performance Poster. 1861
Photopph of Zaeo. the Acrobat Photograph of Chiid &bat
.................................
........................................
................... , , . .. .,.................
141 1% 244
1 am o
h asked how 1 came to write a PhD. cm the cirrus. Much t a the reüef of
my parents, 1 never hadmred a desire as a chiid to nrn away h m home and join the circus. My inspiration to write on tbïs topic has corne to me in a varïety of ways, some
consciously and some subconsaous~.Perfmps, most impol~antly,it ha9 mme h m m y
own early experiences as an apprentice in the theater and h m my desire a> learn more about its history. The circus, 1 believe, fits within this history, although pahaps slightiy
oddly because of its itinerant status. Another source of inspiration ha9 been through the
Victorian novel and s@cally,
Hard Times.
While 1 owe Charles Dickens much, I owe my supervisor, Richard J. Helmsoldter, even more for his constant encouragement and ca&
supervision of this project. Paul
Bouissac, Trevor O. Lloyd and b r i Ineb a b deserve credit Cor pmviding the& checks and balances in the final stages of this work. 1 would also k to thank Peter Bailey, Anna Davin, Martin Hewitt, Chris Hosgood, Peter Mandler, Roland Quinault and P.ML
Thompson for providing m e with usefiil r e h c e s and comments at various stages of m y writing. Special thanks go to Matthew Cragoe and Rohan McWilliam Cor th& ~ifefbi
reading of parts of this thesis and for their d u d e and important suggestions. For any errors that remain, however, 1 accept fidi responsibility.
Of course,any historiml work rests on the sources w&ichunderpin it. 1 &&re wish to thank the Librarians and staff at Colindale Newspaper Library, the British Libxary,
the New York Public Libmry, the Bodleian Library, TNiity CoUege Librarg, Cambridge, the
Manders and Mitchenson Collection, the Minet Library in Lambeth, the Public Records
Office,the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cmelty to Animais, the Iancashire Record Office, Birmingham Central Library, Tyne and Weu Adives, NewGaSde, Grrater London
Record Office, Dickens' House, Cheltenham Lib~ary,Southwark Local Studies Library, and
Westminster R e b c e Libmry. A h , 1 wish to express m y gratitude to Nichoh Maiton of
the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chiîdren, Vicfor Bqnnt of Eari's Court Exhibition Centre,John Fisher and Jeremy Smith of Grtilâhaii Library, John Tumer and Malcolm Clay of the Circus Friends Asociation, Liverpool, Steve Gossad of the Milner Library, Illinois State University, and Clarr Hudson and Cathy W of the Theatre! Museum, London lor providing me with expert help with theh coiiections. 1 am a h grateful to the Society fbr Theatre Research, the MictweSt Victorian Studies Association, the
Theodora Bosanquet Trust and the University of Toronto for helping to fund this p r o j a Even with al1 this supervision, guidance and financiai support, 1 doubt that 1muid
have surviveci in the company of so many dead clowns and acrobats were it not br m y
friends who include Sarneer Akbar, Rhiannon Ash, Patrick Bali, Maria Benzoni, Kelty Boyd,
Tom Baytinck, Diana Burton, Matthew Cragoe, Natalie Fingerhut, Anne Goldgar, JSm Hill, Ljubinka Jeftic, Isaac land, Rohan McWillIam, Gabriel Milland, JeE Mmburg, Chris Munn,
Elizabeth Ransom, Heather Shore,Adam Sutdiffe, and Gabrieiie Ward-Smith. Finally, my parents, Henry and ALyce Assael, and my brother, Shaun, deserve s p m a l thanks for theh love, support and earnest belief in the ment of this project.
INTRODUCTION
1.
The history of the circus bas bem mauily studied by admirers who have Litde interest in the historical c o n t a oftheir subjecr. Their work thedote has an antiquvian quality, nostalgie and uncomplicated by the sorts of issues that lie at the center of schoiariy history. Thomas Frost's ci tac^ Life a d Cimus CeCebrfUes (1875) serves as an
illustration of this tradition and has inauenceci popular writing on the drw untii the
present &y.'
For Frost and the more recent circus scholars, the origins of the drcus
began with Philip Astley in 1768 when
he srarred a riding schml in [ambeth where he
demonstrateci ai& riding. The venue was convetzed into a permanent building, called "Astley's," and was
d br cimuses and other theatrical pductiom und the late-
nineteenth cenmry. For these circus hismrians, Asdey was the fathm of the modem drcus
and helped to shape what the circus was to becorne in the nineteenth century, nameiy, an equestrian entertainment. One side-e&ct of this focus on Astiey's has been that the
pichire of the arcus which ernerges is Londoncented. Another by-product is that this focus has produced a star-centeredview of the circus: the famiiiar iist of m i s s Ducrow, Adah M d e n and
Cook
- Andrew
- who appeared at Astley's reappears ad
wuseam in the works of circus scholars. Additions or substitutions may be ofArrd but
the overall impression they give is of an aitertainment that was part of a by-e
world of
'sec, for example, AH. Saxon,Enter F w t and Wmse:A Afstory of HIppodramu in England and France (Nmv Havai, 1968);George Speaight, A Ristory of Zbe Chrur (London, 1980) and AH. Coxe, A Sèat at tbe Ci(London,1951).
fun and frivolity? More recentiy, the Muence of these works has afkcted the way regional circus history has k e n written, particukwly with respect to Heng,ier's in Liverpool, which also belongs to this n d g i c canon? These works, though in
themselves weli-riesearcheci, do not stmy beyond the amfines of the institution ioelf and thus obscure the
usenilness of the circus as a subject for exploring probiems,
discontinuities and stniggies in Victorian Society.
This study is also criticai of a strand of thinking ophich has been influmtIaf in the writing of popular culture in modem Britain, notabiy by AP. Donajgrodski, Robert Storch
and others who have advocated the " s a k i control"thesis-' Their work evoived out of a larger interest in what hss corne a, be hown as "historyfiam b e i d aJsodated with the work of E.P. Thompson.' Cmdely put, they haire seen popuiar eventsYsuch as the cban'vari, as &rs
toterated
- or sometimes sanctioned - by the dite in its &rt
to
coatrol the erstwhiie unmly public. Their stuclies have k e n motivateci by an interest in
the impact of industrial change on popular culture, an interest common among historians
in the 1970s who wished
to
understand the transition h m "traditionai"to industriai
society. They assume that antagonism existeci between the elites and working ciasses in
2Scholars of the music hall have the sarne problem; see Peter Bailey, "MakingSeme of of PGeaswe,ed. Peter Bailey (Milton Keynes, 1986): 1-32.
Music Hall,"in Music Hall: rbe Business
'see kP Donajgrodski, ed. S o c i d Contmf in Ntrwteentb Csntury Btitafn @,ondon, 1977); Robert D. Storch, PopuCar Culture and CMÎtom fnNfneteentb Gmîury B n g b d (London,1982). Other work steeped in this t - d o nis RW.Malcolmson, P o w r Remution in Englisb Socieîy, 170048'0 (Cambridge, 1973). For an ezuiy-modem European perspective, see Peter Burke, Popuhr Cu&um in M 'E m p e (London,
1978). 'sec E.P. Thompson, "Rough Music: Le Cbarivati Anghfs,,' in Custonts in Gmlll~tt (London,1972,repr. 1991).
the nineteenth cenniry, a view which -tes popular entertainments. The drcus o
the hise vision that the former kept aloof
b but one exampie which challenges tbis
pervasive interpretation of ViaorMn pop&
culture: the drcus was, at
mot, a cultural
form that was consurneci (if not always enjopd) by a vafiety of ciasses wihin Victorian society h m the worlcing ciasses to elites. A second and dated dticism of the "social control"thesis is that it ascribes t w much power of the goveming
or social &te over the public. The point which is k i n g
made with respect to the cûms is that the elite's support of the circus in communities
stemmeci h m their belief that this h m of popular enteminmat was a useful pan of the comrnunity and otkred a valuable alternative to other brms of sodal intermurse, notably
drink;6a distinction is thus implied between elite conml over such popular cultural
brms,such as rhe ciras, and the elïte's acceptance of them as a usefd part of the community. The cornparison between respectability in the forin of the circus versus u~especeabiiityin the brm of the public house was a cornparison that was Eimiliar to
many contemporaries. in a dif6e-t
way, Gareth S t e d m m Jones has oasr doubt on the problematizing of
the question of "social conaol,"emphasizing instead the notion of "dass expression,"as
did Peter Baiiey and later, Patrick Joyce. Rather than a pmduct of elite social mntrol,
working-dass leisure, thqr argue, was a positive reflection of the constmction of workingdass identity and language.' Using the music hall in order to depict this pichire, they
60n the subject of drink, see Brian Harrison, Dtfd a d tbe VictOrfCUtS: ï& Ténzperunce Question fn EngCae 1815-1872 (Pittsburgh, 1971). 'see Gareth Stedman Jones, "Class &pression versus Social Control? A Critique of Recent Trends in the Social History of Mure," Hfstory Won&shp,4(Autumn 1977): 162170;idem., hnguages of C ' s : Studies in tbe ReCatidips &tueen Classes in Wc~Orfart Society (Ozrford, 1971); c.f. Peter Bailey, leîsum and C h in VidOt311n E n g M : W O n C I C Rematfon and tbe Contestfor M a l Contr91; 1830-1885 @andon, 1978); Patrick Joyce!,
4
have studied lyrics of songs in order to examine the mots of workingdms attitudes towards everyday Life in matters relating to Empire, war, and made unionism, for erample.
AH agree that song was saf'é and that "music hall was consemative in the sense that it accepted c i a s divisions and the distribution of wealth as part of the naturd order of
things.'
Whiie their snidies have rightly oist serious doubt on the "social contd' thesis,
their points of view, taken together, only acmunt for workingclass entertainment (e..g. the music hall).
What of those enterceainments which were consurned by a variety of social ciasses and had no speci£îceffect on the brmation of class identity? Such
- üke the drnis
- serve to raise questions about the histonographic emphasis on class and ofEr a set of alternatives, in the brm of a socio-cuiturai approach that accounts for changes in social
and aesthetic values, or put simply, in taste. Such an approach, ratha than bigbiighting dass divisions, seeks to understand the perrneabiiïty of dass boundaries.
The gerreral
question of "whatdrew the Victorians to the ring?"aliows us to establish points of
conneccion arnong the various classes and sodal gmups within the dass system.
II,
ALthough anractive to some, the circus was perœkd by others as a suspect part of
the Victorian underworld, dweiiing outside i n d d Society and ignorant of the time/wotk discipline that underscoreci it. Nowhere was this view better encapsuiated than in the comment made by Mr Bounderby, the capitalist, to E.W. Chiiders, the horseman in Sieary's circuS:
Visionr of tbe PeopCe: Industrial E n g W and tbe Question of Clars,18#%1914 (Cambridge, 1991). Bstedman Jones,Lunguages of C h s , 230.
You see, m y filend, we are the kind of people who know the d u e of time and you are the kind of people who don'r9
Hardworking, thrifty, oqpnized and ambitious: these were the qualities that underscorPd Bounderby's Benthamite utilimrian phiiosophy and that heiped comprise the m
d of
Victorian respectability - a concept which, according to F.M.L. Thornpson, is m u a l to an
understanding of soda1 relations in the period.'O Although Bounderby COZlSidered the c h u s to be anathema to his system, it occupied a far more complu role in Wcrorian sotiety than he understood. This thesis is concemed with
unraveiling this cornplex relationship
the circus and respectable society and
considea several convergent forces that acted upon the circus and a&cted the direction which its development took in the nineteenth century.
The market and regdation serve as one such set of forces, sometimes working in tandem and sometimes in conflict. The pressures ofthe market and parei-b,
of pop*
mie
mste, helped to make the circus successfid m m m e d y during the course of
Victoria's reign. Wïth the strength of popular opinion behind it, the circus establishment carved out its own space in the fom of a tent or amphitheater. E f i r t s by the c k u s
establishment and local authorities to provide a controkd space in the ring and tent helped to differentiate the circus h m ia ancestrai pan, the hir. These e f b r ~ also s helped the circus to market itself as a respectable enterminment. While prompting the success of the circus, popuiar taste also tnggered the hostiLity of moral reformm who
wished to regulate various aspects of drcus lifé and performance. In certain instances,
9Charles Dickens,Hard T i m s , (London, repr. l s ) , 23, 1°see F.M.L. Thompson, Tbe Rise o f Respect&& Sodety: A A HLstoty of VictOricltt Btftain, 1830-1900(iondon, 1988); On the conneciion between respectabiiity and the performef, see Tracy C. Davis, Admsses as WOrAifng W Tbeft Social IidhMy in Victot-faaCukure, (London, 1991), ch.3.
6
these mord ~mpaignscuiminated in p a r k a i t a r y support and the passage of Ie@slation concerning the drcus. The transfkrence of state intervention to new fields, such as the circus, provides a k s h perspective on the
and public opinion reiationship about
which kv. Dicey deliveffd a series of lectures nearly one hundred years a g ~ . ~If' we
assume, as Dicey did, chat every law expresses and endorses a prindple or a set of principles, then the regdation of the circus enables the historian to create key points of
connection between the circus comrnunity and the world around it.
If the combined force of the market and regdation provides one conma for the dwelopment of the modem cïrcus
then the combination of n d y and tradition o
another. Since the a m that appeared in the circus throughout the cenairg were o deriveci h
k h
m old aido performed at the falr, in the sueet or cornmon ground, the drcus
was c o m m d y regardeci as having its mois in
traditional entertainment, Yet, these acts
were not entire@traditional in the sense diat they changed and adapteci to the popular riste.
In the process, the artist who performed them marketed hirn/heeseIf as an
individual and unique commodity. In many ways, th& a m serve as a barorneter of popular tasse and interest and thereby suggest a semnd tension between noveity and
tradition. While asserthg their indivïduaiity, these performers also saw the need for munial
aid, as in any othcr artisan d e , w h i d
rise to sefihelp schernes
that aiievhted
hardship. At the mid-century point, the demiopment of hrmal help nerworlrs in the fôrm
of fiendly sobeties, dong with ad boc u d f k e efforts, m t e d an important culture of
''Legal change motivateci by public opinion has ban treated by AV. Dicey in his Lectures on tbe Rehtion Between Law and Public -ion in England dutlttg tbe Nineteentb Century, (London, 1917); Cor a more reœnt study about the m o n of governrnent incemention as a result of pressure f b m enthusiasts, see O . Midhmgh, A Pattent of Goverrttnet2t Gvwtb, 1800-60: ï?x?Pasmget Ac& mrd tbdr Esforcsmsttt, (London, 1% 1).
7 bonbomie that a f k t e d the growth of a circus identity and mpecebility.* Many players
began to sente into a relatively organized communiy of kiends with new welEve arrangements as weii as finanaal and sociai obligations which stood in marked mntrast m
the Fairground world, Cor example, where such weifàre structures were not in place.* The relationship between individuaikm and the brrnation of a circus identity thus provides another context in the devefopment of the modem circus. T m &
the end of
the century when a growing suspicion of circus cuiture amse?many leaders within
the
trade chaîienged these attitudes and the support of their community was viral in this struggle. The public's hostiiity may be seen as a repisiting of past prejudices that were directeci against itinerants such as the stroiling minsael and the snirdy bcggar of the
eighteenth century, as weii as eariier. That these views reemerged during the latenineteenth cenrury and were codateci with a growing fear of hreignefs helped to produce a new set of arguments and attitudes about the threat of mntiunination, which
the c i r u posed, to respectable society. These v i m were indicative of a general climare of anxiety during the fin de si&&.
Thus, the tensions between the market and reguiaticm, noveity and tradition, as
well as the relationship between individuaüsm and group identity, aii produced pressures that pushed the c i r a in a direction which shaped its
modem developrnenr Such
pressures wouid have k e n recognizabie to Bounderby, suggesting that contrary m his
"On the question of artisan respectability see, Geo!ky Cmsick, "TheLabour Aristoc~acyand Its Values: A Smdy of Mid--Vàctorian ICenrish London,"WdOrfatt Studfes, 19.3, (March 1976): 301328 and Simon CoderyI"FriendlySWeties and the Discourse of Respectability in Britain, 1825-1875,"JormrPl of Btfttsb S d i e s , 34 (January 53.
lm),
%th respect to the "comrnunityof fiimds"within the music hall M e , see Peter Bailey, "A Cornmunity of Friends: Business and Good Fellowship in London Music Hall Management, c.l86@l885," Music HaU= ?be Business of Pkumml ed. Peîes Eldey (Milton Keynes, 1986).
8
assumption, the drcus was îàr h m peripherai to Victorian sodety and its members were Far from unaware of the importance of time and other attendant values diat underpinneci
the respectable world. in faa, the circus was engagcd in a constant struggfe driven by lorces which sometimes reidbrced and at other times challengecl that concept of respecmbiiity which Bounderby embraced.
III. The thesis has two main strands that piovide an explanation OP how these cornplex forces affectecl the Victorian circus. First, it explores the origins of the dnrus and its development, as a d e , in chaptas one through three. Second, it probes the cornplex relationship between the circus and respectable society in chapters lour through six.
Chapter one begins by locating the circus within Victorian Society and then,
suiveys its growth numericaiiy with a view towards understanding its mmmerdal development From its fàirground origins. Circus managers, it is argueci, a=eatda niche
for their business in the second haif of the nin-th
century and, in tum, the number of
companies grew from 10 in 1847 to 74 in 1897 - an increase of over 600%. As well as providing an o v e ~ e w of the circus, chapter one also goes h i d e the ring in order to provide a glimpse o f what the Victorians could expect to see when they went to the circus. In doing so,it shows that whüe the eady circr>s of the lateeighteenth and eariy-
nineteenth centuries emphasized equestrian ciramas (sometimes in three acts!), the cinrus of the second half of the century lay greater stress on discrete n
d acts (e.g. tumbling,
cloming, acrobaties and animai displays). Acmmpanying the cornmerpal expansicm of
the arcus was the emergence of the amphitheater in which many dnruses performed. Having a âxed space meuit that the drcus also had a susmineci reiationship with the
community b e h which it performed. Chapter two thus deais with the orga&ation of
9
the dmis and the efkcts of this organhtion on the community. The acmmpanying appendix th- appears at the end of the thesis qmenmicaily reveais the impact that amphitheater-building had on the concentration of the cimus in towns and industrial centers inaeasingty throughout the period.
Chapter three shows that as the drcus deveIoped, sophisticated business brms and practices ernerged. In particular, the evolution of kiendly societies and arade unions led to schisms in
th&
trade. That
is,such organizations dected the growing distirrdom
within the circus communîty as proprietors and certain @ixmers
assodation whüe th&
enjoyed the Wts of
poorer brethren remaineci outside their organization. Such
divisions were aiso reflected in safasr dBerenti& and hiring poliaes. This chapar d that in the process of becoming profkssionalized, the shared brotherhood that osmisibly united the members of the circus d
e was, in f k t , built upon unstable bundatiozls that
compromiseci the "communitf to which, it was said, they belon@. Tensions ernerging h m within the community were exaœrbated by tensiozls
arising from ouûide it- This was perhaps no more dearly expresseci than through Legal challenges. Chapters Four and Bve consider the extent to which perfomers were a&cted by them. The emphasis on disawe acfs in the circus piogram of most mmpanïes in this period arguably provided an important focus for phiianthropiss in this regard. Perhaps
no group of performers was more policed than =bats.
'Ibe popular mste *ch
sanctioned these exhibitions encountered fierce resistance by a moral minodty conœmed
with propriety, partidarly in the early 18605. They argued that the acrobat
- particularly
the h a l e acrobat - who performed death-defying kats in a scanty cosnime gratifiecl a
lewd taste fbr nudity and morbid display. The intensity of opposition grew as arrobats increasingiy fèii to their deaths, provoking M a n b a J of Pariiament and the Queen a,get
involved in the controversy as well. In the 18705,the act-obat'sllveiihood had becorne
seriously threatened given the Dangernus Perfotmances Biii which, in its initial brm, curtaiied the performancts of women
and chiidren. Mar iîs passage in 1879,it bad the
important enec< of providing a steppïng Stone for hrther legislation, prohibi.ting the employment of chüdren in
the circus, a topic cihcwmd in chapter Eive.
Legal regdation of dmis children markmi a serious dismption a> a profession that relied entireiy on the system of apprenticeship. Since cbildren wat seen as physidiy agile and flexible, theh training as acrobats and equestrians was most dkctbdy conducted at a young age, managers argued. Growing opposition to tfiis b e k f emerged
h m various q w e r s , induding h m among Evangeiicils. In particular, religiousiyinspirexi writers of "waif fictionwchararterized the drcus M d as a w s h , n tomued in its physicai training behind-the-scenes. Not coinadentaily, this opposition reached a fevered
pitch in the late 188ûs,at a tirne when the Prevention of Cruelty to Chiidren Acr was passeci and when the National Society for the Prevention of Cmelty to Chiidrai was
formed. In their quest fbr respecabüity, many c h u s m a q p s responded positmeiy to this movement, defending th&
moral mmmitment to chiid protedon while aiso rlaiming
that growing-up p h y s i d y disciplineci did not p d u d e growing-up loveci; d others, initiated change with respect to child employment that was consistent with the h.Both
chapters four and five argue that, in irs attempt to disouice I t d f h m its conbtoversial
role, the circus sometimes sought to accommodate the law. But, in the p r o e s , many members of the circus a h expresseci a growing finisaadon with the reality of inQteaSed
government conml over their trade. Chapter six also de& with the issue of l e p i regulation and tales as its fausthe c i r a s anima!. It shows the mie that the animal played in the ring
- and to an exrenq on
the stages of those eatLier circuses that l d s o much stress on equestrian piays- It phces
the animal within the culture of humanitarian concem and ofirs a picture of the way the
11 arcus estabüshment reacted to this culture. A ghpse into the ring of Cooke's drcus in 1858, fbr example, shows one manager's stntggie to pin support h r his % m e r nsecret
Tor timing wild horses, a secret that had been prrsented in the same season by an Amencan rival, J.S.Rarey. The mid-Victorian interesr in khd Bming fechniqyes br horses
widened into concern about timing techniques for wild animals, parricuiariy as the circus began to show such nwelties in the later d d e s of the centuy-
Likc the chiid of t&e
ring, the animal amacted the attention of phiianthropists Who wished to rescue it h
m its
harsh existence. Aiso Lîke the child of the ~ g the , animal was ultimately brought under the control of p a r h e n t a r y law in 1900 due, in part, to the succesful campaigns of rehrm groups, such as the Ruyai Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animais.
Thus, this thesis concems the devdopment of the drcus which, having its mots in the fairground world, emergd as a structtued and oqanhed aade
- am-
to Mr
Bounderby's assumption - in the mid-nineteenth century- Its development was intricately tied to the public's demand for ciscus acts and so,this work afso considers the Victorians'
interest in the circus as an areistic form within the con-
of a vibrant (and sometimes
not so respectable) consumer markct. As such, this study dwhat the cimus meant to the V i c t o r ÿ w and how it fitted with the structures of a sodety that was rapidiy changing in social, economic, politid and gender terins.
The Growth of the C?rnrs in ïlkmrhn Brimim 1. Perf;Ornianreb
1. Introduction
The history of the modem drcus in Brirain has roughly four phases although thqr are by no means rigid. And while the k t phase has reœhed a noticeabie amount of
attention among chrus mthusiasts and scholars, the latter three phases with which this thesis is concemeci have not The fim phase, 1768-1837, begins with the deveiopment of Asdey's Amphitheme which is often thought by
experer who write about the drcus to be
the place where the &cus was hm.' The view has been tecentiy deveioped and revised
by one scholar who has arguai that Astley was not, as is commonly supposed, the first to present his show in the ring....What does seem to bave disthguished Astley's was its convenient surround of sheds and knPng to d u d e the gaze of non-pagas.
Adopting a functionaiist approach, this revisionist argument states tbat 'whereas [Astley's]
precursoa had modtly passed round a hat to their casually assembleci audiences,"Asdey's
charged admission and had patrons take seats around the ring h r an entertainment that began at set times.' Foîiowing Asdey's, other permanent and semi-permanent ampbitheaters appeared on the scene. In his memoirs, the playPPright-manager, Charles
'Speaight, A Hfstory, 3 1. The bibliography on immense. For an overview see R Toole Stott, Ci-
the hismry of the modem drcus is and AUfed Arts: A WmU Bibliograpby,5 vois. (Derby,19581992). The principal authors that ascribe Astiey's this "founding"role indude AH. Saxon, F'oor und Hwse; idem., Zbe tf/e a d M of Andmw Ducrow and tbe Age of Romntidsm in tbe Britfsb C m ;A.H. CA Seat. The view was largely inherited from within the Qrcus establishment itse& see Thomas Frost, Cfnus Li/e and Circus Celebrities (bndon, 1876),George Sanger, Ssvenry Yeurs A Sbowman (London,1926)and James Lloyd,My Cimcs Lifs (London, 1925). 'Marius Kwint, "Astley'sAmphitheatre and the Earb Cinis in Britiin, 17681830" (Ph.D. dis., Oxford U., 1995), 16.
13 Dibdin, the younger, spdre of the amphitheatm rhat were acred in various parts of England. Wales, Scotland and Ireland as of 1799.' These drcuses werr evenaially
responsible for contributing to one saand in the deveiopment of the modern c i r a s : the theatricai circus. At Asdey's, the proprimr's original rafson d'etrre to demollstrate tri&
riding before the pubiic was presaited in the form of such sœnes as, "Ihe Taylor Riding to Brenaord," in
1769 which combinai low mmedy with horsemanship in a burlesque
about a WtlLeite dothïer. Asdey's later presented more sustained dramatic pieas, a k t whidi was helped by the ernploy of a "tcmporarystage erected in a few minutes on
trestles on the centre of the ring" in April of 177û and then the a stage, set a p r t
d construction of a
h m the ring, during the winoet of 17789.' As the amphitheater evohred,
so too did its program which began to katurie, as in 1781, butletras (or brief pl+
that
relied on song) such as Brftaftz in A m q or, W h ' s Maid ofJer~ey? Moving h m burletta to a new genre caiied gbines militaires on its stage, the amphitheater also delivered pieces that relied on topicai news evena conmning the Napoleonic W a . ,such as Tbe Arab; or,Freebooters of tbe Deserf in 1809 which included a grand attack on home
and fmt within the b
e of an equesrrian drama? This piece, it has ken argueci,
'sec Charles Dibdin, the younger, M m i m of Cbarks mbdfn,tbe Younger, ed. George Speaight (London, 1956) niese amphitheafers induâed: me's Ride in Bath (1772); Jones' in Dublin (1785); Swann's Amphitheatm in Birmingham (1787);the Circus in Edinburgh (1788); -4stIey's Equestrian Theatre Royal in Dublin (1788); the Circus Riding Schooi in Bristol (1792);New Circus in M a n c h m (1793); and the Oiympic Cirrsus in Liverpool (1798). see Kwint, fig. 1.4. 47.
'Saxon, 48.
14
helped W
y to establish the standard t k - p a r t program at Asdey's that g r a d e had
been talcing shape since the turn of the centuryO7
As i t moved into the world of theater, M e s a~idiaicgcouid rcly on scdng,in die k t part of the program, equestrian dcamas which correspondcd m contemporary
theauical conventions. Ir was a "sort of melodramanthat induded "usurping viihins and gailant knigha, chaste young maidew and virtuous wivesnand had as its dlmax the confrontation between vice and virnie? It gsve ample opponunity for the display of the entire stud of the Company. Speaking of a scene he had witnessed at Astieg's one
contemporary noted that "you will sometirnes see 20-30 horses [in this part], some of
them single with riders and others pked in twos and hum in cmiages, chariots, etc....Banles are fought on horseback, as well as on f
b ~ t This . ~ part l a d apptozcimately
two hours. FoUowing part one were the "scenes in the M e nwhich induded tumbling,
gymnastic f e a s and cornic singing and usuaUy "occupiesthreequarœrs of an hour."'O
Finally, the program typically ended with a "nondescriptson of afterpiecen on the stage.LLAs the cenhiry progressed, it became increasingly common for thk
three-part
structure to Ei11 away. Instead, the theatricai circus g r a d d y adoptecl a more variable program that offèreci %cmes in the M e " and thm amdudeci with an equesaian drama.
Whereas the equestrian drama was an outgrowih of the contemporary theatsicai world, those acts that comprised the nscenes in the arcleuhad th& mots in the fair where
'Kwint, 63. %acon,55. 'James Grant, "Astiey's," ?Be mat Metmpolis (London, 1837), vol.1, T7-80.
'%idlLIbid.
15 players, such as acrobam, jugglers and othem, gathered. It has been shown by scholars
that this development stemmed badr as Éir as the late-rnedievai and ear1y-modern period. George SpeaÎght, the Cucus historian, has counted, becween 1570 and
1663,twenty-two
refkences to rope dance=, thkteen such records of tumblrs, seven of v a u i m , and &e of juggiers that appear in the books on dvic expenditures in Engiish tcnms.* On 28 August 1688, Samuel Pepys seated in his diary that
he went to Bartholomew Fair and saw
"JacobHall's dancing on the ropes.** The scene was one of confiision in which "there thundered the danging of gongs, ththe firing of pistoIs?the springing of ratdes..and the hoarse voices of showmen, ali uniting into one loud, discordant and ceadess roar."" Another important chmnicler was Hogarth who depicted such playas in his engraving, Soutbwark Fair (1733).
In it, a rope fiyer parachutes from a Church mwer which has
becorne an o b j m to assist a fiifgound act and actors @rm
on a coilapsing stage in a
travelling theatricai booth.L5
Similarly, svay clues, denved k m inhrmation about the Eiirs in the h m of posters, municipal reports, newspaper reviews, memoirs and woodcuts Wrm us about
the gradua1 i n t w t i o n of artists into one program and the organiztionai efbrts of the Company to take this program h m town to tawn. in a report of 1833 by "J.JA.l&"
Clarke's equestrian troupe, for example, was listeci as one of the many enterminmens that was to be found at Banholomew Fair. It stated chat Clarke who was biiied as "a [former]
equesaian tiorn Asdey's"perfonned with his mm amipany and his program began with
'LSpeaight, 12. '%itedin Ian Starsrnore, EngffsbFa*
(Lnndon, 1975), 13.
L'Guildhall,Noble, "A Peep At Banholomew Fair,"us., c.1841, c*26.126.51. lSseeDavid Bindman, Uogartb (London/New York, 1981).
the old performance of going round the ring tied up in a sa& hirlng the going round, a tramfbrmation tnok place, and he [who]wait ïnto the sscL a man [then] came out a woman on throwing off the Following this act "Miss Clarke [performed] with and without a balance pole on the tight rope." After her, "a Little boy named Benjamin Çatkreg, 8 years ofage" apparcd and
including "a Chinese and a Pierrot [who] w d k around the ring with each a leg put up to their ne&."
As weii, he exhibiteci "a Black Man... who threw himself backwards and
resting on his han&, formeci an arch, and then two heavy men stood on his stomach, with ease."17 The performance ended with the appcanuice of a "countrymannwho
ini-
prcsmted himseif as an apparently unskilled rider- He mounted a horse and
afcer a short the, beginning to grow warm, he puifs off his coat, then his waistcoat, then another and another..and at last with apparent modestg and reluctance his shirt.-.then he appears a spiendid rider..and does a féw evoI~tions-~~ Nor was Clarke's company musuai. Mr SamweU's company,for example, perfbrmed at
the same fair in the same year. His ring program consisted of "tuxnbling,dancing, and a real Indian W m o r who showed the manner of pehrming the m e war dance."" And the troupe wmt there again severai years later, perfbperformingamong other things "the equestrian d u c a t o n showing every possible means of mounting and dism~unting.~ Sem from one perspective, such programs consisting of dïscrete ac6 represaited an
'6Guildhall,Noble, "Bartholomew Fair, 1833,"c 26-5-26.51. "Tbid. '%id.
'PIbid. Woble, Guildhall, poster, SamweiI's New Olympic Circus, BarthoIomew Fair, c. 1836.
17 important evolutionary stage in the d e d o p e n t of the circus during the nineteenth century. The gradual mlution of the traditional circus (as distinct from the theatrical circus)
which mnsisted of artists Who performed th& individual act was dosely Linhd to
the world of the fair. By labelling it "traditionai,"the implication is not that the actg in this kind of circus were static; radier thqr were highly changeable, adopting a> markn
changes that were motivated by consumer demand, social values and new technical equipment, as we will see. Bcsides ~ o l o m e Fair, w these perf'ormers banded together
and performed at Jubüee Fair, as did Mr Saunda's in 1814,at Hyde Park Fair on the day
of Queen Victoria's cornnation in June of 1838, at Greenwich Fair, as did Clarke's in 1843, and at Stepney Fair, as did Price's in 184S.=
in other instances,mmpanies hund employment at the gmwing numher of recreational m e n s in this p e r i d Mr Saunder's company, for exampie, @meci
at the
Ranelagh Gardens in Norwich in 1809." Still, in other GISS,these companies occupicd meadows or other open spaces. Lloyd's company staked out a piece of ground opposite
Fischer's Hotel, near the Nutsheii Orchard in Cheltenharn in 1822? Simiiarly, the Messrs. Brown and C M erected a temporary ring at Bell Street in Mafyiebone in 1831
and displayed some artists that had formerly been employed at Astley'~.~ Messrs. Bridges' company perfbrmed in the Cattle Market at Canterbury in 1838 and presented a
program that induded the "youngMaster Bridges on the tightrope, die Mandarin Jugglers,
''TM, M C , wood~llt,Saunder's Circus, 1 August 1814; Guildhall,Noble CoUection, c.26.5, T.1843,ciipping #277;M m n g Werald, 30 June 1838;"Stepney air," Ibe C h of London, 1845,2.
uGuildhdi, Noble, poster, Lloyd's Circus, 3 August 1822.
"TM, AHC, poser, Messrs. O. Brown and Ch&, Bell Street, Maryiebone, 18331.
18 the Automatcm Tumblers, a Comic Antipodean, and an intaesting panoramïc vïew of the 'doings' of the fàir?
Whereas rhis program contained no theamcal elements, its
program in 1841 at East RetfOrd did, thereby suggesthg the fluidity of the program's form
which acmmmodated theatrical and traditicmaf elements. In this instance, the program condudeci with Che equestrian cirama. KeniImmtb, or Orbe &Men Era of 1575 based on Sir Walter Scott's novel which pmvided audiences with ghpses of the court of Elrnbeth 1." There continueci to be an invisible Layer of countless small troupes that tr;rrrelld
h m county to county throughout the century, performuig at Eurs and odier out-of-door venues, although some troupes began to I
d br altemative performance s p a m . In
London done, the clmure of rnany important fairs such as Bow, Brock Green, T O M and
Edmonton Fairs in the 1 8 2 0 ~ and ~ Bartholomew Fair in 1855, as well as Greenwich Fair in
1857, prompted many troupes and individual arthm to seek new options.= "The Honorable MPs might have thought that we had wives and chlldren to support b e k they decided to dose Bartholomew Fair and Greenwich Fair,"said one discontentecl conjurer in 1860." Even if the fàirs su-,
as in Oidord d u h g Whitsuntide, Birmingham and
many other parts of the country, there were still major efforts by local authorities in this period to dean up the events, shorten them in length and malrc them more orderiy, in
Mark Judd "'The Oddest Combination of Town and Country' :Pop& Culture and the London Fairs, 1800-60,"in Leisurie in BMafn, 178G1939,eds. John K.Walton and JamesW a h (Manchester,1983), 15. 5üphonse Esquires, Tbe Englfsb m H m ,trans. and edited by Iascelles W (London, 1861), i, 347.
d
19 g e n e d 8 The enect of this movement, said the conjurer was tbat "theother ikim still existing outside London "Iose the* importuice every year," making it difFicult for the artist to earn
a h g . " Ir was coinadentaüy in this second phase, 1837-1860,chat the Era,
which emerged as the major entert;iinment newspaper of the period, began a, report on
the ernergence of aaditional circus cornpanies whkh brought mgether a &ey
of
performers h m the Eurground worfd. In many wags, then, the apparent rise of such companies aiiowed an increasing nurnber of ar&s more employment opponinities. The rise of new organizational structures in this period, nich as the fiendly sodety that acteci
as agent and the Era, a national enteminment uade paper that carriecl help w a n d advertisements, Éinlitated perfomers' search for anployment as well as managers' search for taient. Not oniy did th& mean chat the Etir was beconhg a less cruciai arena Tor earning money but it also meant, more genedy, that the dnis was developing new, enduring and organized structures within which to deveiop. A decennial sample colIrneci between 1847 and 1897' h m the Era, shows that
there were ten companies in Britain t-hat d e d themselves "circusesnor "equestrian c o m p a n i e ~a, nurnber ~ which rose to £Ifteena decade lam. Of the ten mmpanies in
%ee Alun Howkins. "Whitsun in Nineteenth Cennvy Orb;ordshk," HLstory W h b o p Pamphlets, no.8, 1972; c.f. Douglas A Reid, "Interpretingthe F M Caiendar: Wales and Fairs as Camivds," Popuhr Cdture and Custom in Nft~eteentbW u t y Engknd, ded. Robert D. Storch (London, 1982), 125-153.
''These dates go h m October und October the following gcar. For example, the date, 1847,a d y covers the period bemeen Uctober 1847 and October 1 8 4 ; 1857 covers the pend b e e n October 1857 and Oc#>ber 1858,and so cm. The reason why the evidence has been accumulateci in this way is so that it corresponds a> the ead of the tenting season whkh is usually in Lare Septernber and auly October. 32Thetwo terms were interchangeable in this period.
20
184P3, di presented three-part programs. EquesPian ckamas inducihg Mazappa, Dfd Turpids Rfde To Y M CftzdereIla, Tbe Cmnp of Side-
and Esmer&
wm commonly
found in the 6Rt part of the program. Clearly?these figures h m the Bru do not eilre into account the invisible layer of troupes that performed at the hir or elsewhere o u t 4 -
doors since the newspaper's revïew secpion, h m which these figures are gieaned, do not cover this kind of entertainment. The p i m m of the cïrcus world based on the
idonnation taken from the Ern therebre is only a partial one. Despite the Limitacim7it is interesthg to note that in the n a t decade the E o reportexi an impressive growth in the number of traditional circus companies. Of the £ifkenoanpanies in 1857,dght were of
the traditionai type (53%) and seven were theatrical cireuses (46%). In the third phase, h m 186@1880, there was much mOdng between the theatrid
and naditional prograrns to the aaent that the structure of three-part program of the former became a rarity. As of 1867, there were twentyone companies. W~thinthe pro-
of thode nine circusg (43%) chat continueci in employ equesPian p b 7the
theatrical part of the program Qmeat the end, rather than the beginning and the end as was usual in the earîier period. Given the fàct that most o f the companies in 1867 were run by b t - t i m e managers (76%)with a limitecl amount of capital m invest, financial
prudence was an issue for survival. Since the display of equestrian spectacles was h o w n to be more codtly than
kenes in the chie," the progiam was paaially detienaineci by the
limitations of h a n c e . It was also determineci by legai consideratiom. The Theancal Regulations Act of 1843 had a prohund impact on the way in which the circus developed in diis period.
"It should be stated that the term "mmpanf rekrs to an or&anizationnui by one manager. A managm may huwever have d"troupes"within his Company that perfbrm at various locations.
21 Since one o f the main provisions ofthe Act was that any Company needed a theatrid ücense nom
the Lord Chamberlain or local J.P. in orda a> present plaps, cheatnd
cireuses, the majority of which were uniicensed, h
d that they were o
h in breach of
the law? Faced with fines, many of these troupes were mmpeiied to pay up and to drop the drama h m th& programs. Many new troupes simply avoided the le@
problern dtogesher by presenting traclitionai programs which this h did not touch.
Altogether, twelve companïes (57%)in this period gresenteci the traditional program. Popuiar taste was another key fàcmr motivating the inaease of traditionai programs. Perhaps no spectide in this period received greater appiause and attention than that of the acrobat who katured in d the traditiond programs of the
m.in
catering to market hrces, however, Qrcus managers often f m d that pressures mounted h m disapproving quarters where
the danger associated with the acrobt's work was
viewed as a threat to the hes of so many acrobats and to the pubiic's moral good.
Regdation in the fom of parliamenGuy statutes h m 1879 on&
became a fZLct of lik
for the acrobat and the circus trade as a +le.
But this situation did not alter the steady deciine of the equestrian drama's poputarity. At the end of the rhird phase, in the 1870s,the equestrian drama had becorne
an even m e r kature of the program- Commenthg on the trend in 1876,one
commemator was moved to write that of late years, a change has come over the equestrian drama. The circus flourishes and quadnipeds figure now and again, but the 'horse spectade' has alrnost vanished. PIays are not now written for [the herse]?
%uws, Sratutes, etc, Theatre Regdations Act,
1843,6/7WC.c.68, s.23.
3%uttonCooke, A Book of tbe P h y (hndon, 1876) ü, 189-9,dted in Saxon, 228.
In this pend, the number of companies ruse again, h m twentyane in 1867 to thircy-two in 1877. To the extent that equestrian dramv appeared at di,it may be said that they
were a specialized item, employed only at certain times of the year as at Chrlsmùas when,
fbr instance, Sanger's produced Tbe Si-
of P k u at the Agricuitufal Hall in Deœmber
of 1877.' Taking into account the fàct that most circuses altered th& program and
tweive companies (38%)in this period presented - at some point in the year
- an
equestrian-theatricaievent. Y* twenty companies (62%) had no inciination a> do so and
okred traditionai programs O*.
Table 1.1 below shows that the balance between the
theauid and traditional program graduaily shiftd in Eavor of the latter.
No. of Cos 10
15 21
32
47 74
Theahtical 10 (100%)
7 (4%) 9 (43%) 12 (38%) 17 (36%)
14 (19%)
In sum, the Era's figures show a paneni of saPady dedine of the theatricai program. Whereas a l the companies in 1847 were theatrical ones, theg deciined to half in
1857 and then to appmximately one-third in 1877. The traditional cirnis,on the other hand, increased steaciiiy kom ni1 in 1847 to over half a demie later. This rise increased steadily so that by 1877,nearly twethirds of ail drcuses presented traditional progranis.
Since the Era's review section, h m which these figures are gieaned, was mainly aimed at covering entertainmens that were pecbrmed in dean and accommodating structures that
'"Sanger's at the Agnculnval Hall,"ka,20 Dgember 1877, 7.
attracted anisan and middledass speaators, it would be safk to say that only the upper ieveis of the cimus worfd appeared in its pages whiie that strahun connected with the
world of the fair remaineci invisible- Thus, by rrlying on the Era, we are Zesbricted oo a discusion of the "visiblearcuSnand the balance presenteci here betweai traditional and theatricai depends on this fàct. Were the 'invisible circusnpexceptibIe, it might be argued
that, in ha, there were more traditional drcuses than estimateci in this discussion, That is, since the h d s of troupes that continued to kquent the hir were, p e d i y speaking, too poor to prrsent
theatricai ciramas tbat nquired an investment of capitai in
and sets, it is iikely that they ofièred traditional prograrns to the public, a supposition
which increases the number of traditional companies in our ovemll scheme.
In the burth and nnal phase ofthe decrelopment of the circus, h m 1880 to 1900, the equesaian drama had diminished fùrther in importance within those companies on
which the Enz reported. The trend of previous decades continueci so that when the equestrian drama appeared, it was typically presented as the M e . Yet, even in these
cases, the equestrian drarna rnight appear only for several weeks or months, rather than remain in the program fbr the duration of the year. Given these quaiifkaticms, we note that in 1887,when the number of mmpanies grew ta brty-,
&ere were seventeen
theamical circuses (36%) and thirty traditional ones (64%), indicating ody a siight change in proportion h m the previous decade. The patœm conpinueci so that by 1897,when an impressive body of seventy-four companies appeared on the scene, fDwœen were theatricai cireuses
(19%) and sixty were traditional (82%).
With the decline of the equestrian chma, there was a strong public pressure on
the circus company to
.
rejuvenate the novehy of the acts in the ring. In some
cases, entirely new acts appeared in the form of wiid animais, particuIarly h m the 1880s
onwards. Lions, bears and dephans, br example, contributeci in an important wap to the
24
novelry of the pmgtam. Although such animais were expensive and difEcuIt to maintain even b r
the weaithiest ofmanagers,there were neveaheless faMltable citcunstanœs that
ailowed the laser to ernploy these naielties. Given the grmuth in the popularity of the circus and the consequent rise of incorne,
more managas posesed more options than in
previous decades. The purdiase o r loan of a wild animal becme, if not the nom, a sready pattern among a minority of managers. This m a r M a considerable change h m eariier &ys when the wild animal was m m m d y encountered at the menagerie, such as
Wombweii's, or,as some contemposaries despaired in the 1830s,on the stage of Dnuy
h e under Ai€red Bunn's management. Ln cases where l e s wealthy managers muid not afford the cost of renting a d d animal, they ernp1oyed dogs which were hown to be
cowiderably cheaper. Matchhg their own financial murces with the public's caste Tor
novelty, they presented a program that amordeci to the exigencies of the market. Yet, the forces of the market wete again met with some resistance by animal welfàre advocates
whase f s of "cruelnforeign tamers and desire to sec some aniads removed h m the ring stirred b o r in Parliament and ultimateiy was men expression in a seitute in 1900.
II. the pattern ofchange that occutred in the development of the Victorian ciras already discussed, w e now seek a, fW in the detail conœming the acts. This
section thereby considers, in tum, the acts that compriscd the drcus program of the
nineteenth century and how they changed over t h e . Beginning with an acamination of
the program of the theamical c h u s , this section wili then consider the gradual emergence ofthe traditional circus and the including posters, reviews h m I
that took p
k in its ring. A variety of sources
d newspapers, Select Commitîee repom, help wanted
25
advertisernents, mernoirs and mnhhœnces, as wefi as fiction, infenn us of the details of
the acts and o f the highly organized nature of the program oeerall.
Perhaps no part of the circus represented i~ organization bener than the procession. O
b used by those companies that toured fÏum mm to aiwn and in sane
cases, at the sran of the winter season in October by those companies that oonipied
permanent amphitheaters, the circus procession helped to advertk the company and introduce i s many artists to the residents of the community. So popuiar was it that "a
public holiday was [ofrai] held on the day of the parade¶"said one down,who d e d himself Coma.37 To be sure, by stirring the residencs' curiosity, the promsion onai had the effm of disrupting the worladay routine of the community as its members sought to get a peek at the coming events in the ring. When Cooke's circus arrivai at Lincoln in
June of 1850 during its "tenting"tour (a terni which indicated that a company toured with its entire stock and performed under a tent), it was said that "thehishion and the beauty
of the town...h e d the streets and windows" in antiapation of the troupe's enty. Nor was Lincoln unwual. Other towns dong his route induding Worthings Chichester and Dover experienced the same degree of excitement At 11:OO in the moming, these midents eagerly waited to see Mr Cooke drive twemty ho-
through the p ~ t i p athoroughfàres l
ofthe towns. Behind him was "a fine brass band" which was fbllowed by the
superb war carriage with descripthm scenes of the Batth of Waterloo [which would be presented in the ring]..a cavalcade o f spotced white and golden steeds and ponies... the degant miniature carriage drawn by two dwarf ponies, expressly made for and driven by the talentcd chil4 Miss Kate Cooke [Cooke's daughter].s
3 7 C F "Circus ~ Life Behind the Scenes," #603, 166.
s"Advert," Derby M m y , 22 May 1850,2.
26
mer the cavalcade, "theladig in B e Sfag Wunt Cbasenanother equestrian spgtade, appeared and were mounted on cream co1ored Arabian coursers. Foliowing them "were
some reindeer in hamess"which were said to be "the psuliar novelties of the d i s ~ l a y , ~ dong with "thesmaiiest horses in the world...[that were] meny-fOurinches high, a
complete mode1 curiosity."* Numemus other artisa inciuding the duwns, Nmblem,
contomonists, and acrobats foiiowed in the cortege. Recilling his previous aLperience in a circus procession, Y- Stewart, a cornedian, said "clowns [tike me] sometimes drove the
donkeys in tandem while other artists such as the 'nimble nymph' sat on the top, uppermost seat of the highest wagon?
The whole mmpany then "rodedong with all
that careiess grace which induces the village youth to ciream of aii the happiness and grandeur of c i r a s L&E."~
"And so,"he continueci,
amid a crash of music and glitter of tinsel, the strange heterogenous procession wends its way through and round the mm Ilke a rnammoth snake of many c ~ i o u r s . ~
The comment revealed an important constant withïn the circus procession: the band. Similady, C.W. Montague, the circus manages*mentioned that once the signal for the procession was given
wW.Cwke's Royai Circus,"Humpsbtne Advertfsr, 13
jw 1850,4.
'O"Mvert," Derby M e r c u v , 22 May 1850, 2.
'V. Stewart, "TentingA Week W~thA T m i i i n g Circus,"Tbe Engiisb Hitcstroted Magarrarrne mi, (1897): 66-7.
O1bid.
the band going 61%
strihes up a iively air. The dnimmer haWig a i k i y îâith in the power ofhis instrument to aman a crowd?plies his sticks vigorously.* In order to a t m the attention of the mm, the band was?in fkct, an essential pan of the procession. Charlie Keith said there was no way in which to run a cirrus without one. So desperate was he to h d players for his band at Colchester that he engageci "the services
of a jweniie band from the [local] ~ o r k h o u s e Aithough .~ none of these nmnagas indicated what theh band members wore, James Lloyd, another impresario, said that his
band members were once mistaken for k i n g English soldiers b u s e of their mllirary-ii& outfit~.~~
The sirnilarity was not only linked to appearances. As in the miiitiuy band where woodwind and bras instruments were dehing eiements, so u consist of them. The ernphasis on brass instnimeentqin parti&,
~ did ,
the àrcus band
made the cirrus band
compatible with the brass bands movement that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, partinilady in the north of England where many cirmses were concentratedca So dose in type were they chat Mons. Hogini plaad an advertisement in the h a in 1858 sîating
that he was "in need of a small b r a s bandnfor hir company? Other managers advertised for specific band members, as did the Cirque Unique when it sought "a Brst dass e-flat saxophone player" in 1858 and Powell and Clark's Company which sought a
"C.W. Monrague,"RecoUeCtionsof an Equestrian Manager,,"Cbumbers's]ou~,20 March 1880,183.
"see appendix for areas of concentration.
28
bombaron plaper yeam later? The trend continueci throughout the century, as manages placed help wanted adverrisements in the Era in an effort to attract those Who muid play the solo coronet, the trombone and euphonium, double drum, solo ciarinet and
double
bas. In still other instances, musicians associateci themsehs, as did 0th- artiscs, with
the Dramatic, Equestrian and Musical Agency *ch
made engagements between artists
and manager^.^ Whiie it is undear how many residents heard Cooke's musicians or ssrw the
procession in any @en
tom, some estimateci as did one Hampshire reportex that the
average number of speceators who were able to gain admittance to Cooke's d u ~ the g
evening performance was 2,000' Another reporter guesed that the same number of spectators was in attendance at the ep.ening perfiDrmance in Wuchester. At Wonhing,
many would-be speccamrs came away disappointeci h m the evenuig show since "itwas impossible to obtain even standing room.q2 And the number of disappointeci residents who could not obtajn admission in
Dover was said to amount to "h~ndreds.~
Meanwhüe as Cooke's was "crowdedto overfiowin~'the actom at the Dover Theatre were
said to have played Sheil's q e d y , Evadne, to "empty benches* Comenting on this
49"HelpWanted," Era, 25 April 1858, 1; "Help Wanted,"Era, 21 A p d 1878, 19. 'Osee for example, advert, E r . , 24 Aupst 1856, 1; other agencies of the period included Harry Wilson Bames' General Theatrid Agency in Manchester and H.Franklin's Dramatic Agency although, as the narnes suggest, they catered mainiy br the theatticai trade.
Cooke's Circus Royal," D o m C h f & andKBnt and Sussex Advmtisw, 10 August 1850,2.
*"Dover Theatre,"Dowr Cbronic& and Xent a d Sussex Ad-, 2.
10Augusî 1850,
29
disparity, a reporter b r the D o m C h i & kmmted, "somudi fw the raste that p to see men and women kickùig their heels
h
in the air to a radonal, intdectuaj and
instructive arnu~ement.~')
Tickets at Cooke's circus rangeci in price h m 2s for "&st dass" or box seats which were located at the ~ g s i d to e 6d which were in the arena, outside the box seas. Ar
Cooke's, as at most other circusa,children under ten years and school children were admitted at haif-price during the evenings. Children were g h n even better concessions during the afiemoon perfonmmces as C o o k admitted them gratis, a philanthropie
gesnire that had more public relations benefit than Gnancial risk since these day performances t y p i d y amacted fewer customcrs. Ihy were held at 2:ûû p-,
Cook
emphasized in his advertisements. Unsurprisingiy, the benevolent act proved popular with the community and particulariy with the chiidren and as a amsequence, as many as -600 children boom the local charity schoolnat Stratfbrd-upon-Avon, for aample, appeared at his afiernoon performance.'
Upon entering Caoke's tenp, the k t thing thac nmst spectators would have
noticed was "thevague srneil of horses suggestive of the coming wonders,"as weli as the scent of orange peel hom the staiis at which oranges could be bought during the show? Furthemore, they would have seen the sawdust t
h fUed the ring and would have noted
"'Cooke's Royal Circus,"Covenfry StatçdC1rdl 27June 1850,9.
"According to one review, the mmpany performed under a canvas oait as opposed to in a wooden semi-permanent amphithater, see "Cook's,"Sussex q g t f C U I t U T a l ~ s s and County Advertiser, 24 August 1850,6. =Charles Dickens,
me OLd Cdosity Sbop (bndon, repr.l=),
250.
the band that they had heard earlier in the procession? Whiie it is undcar what Cooke's band played whiie the audience m e m h to& their seais, it is the case that &cus bands often played the national anthem or parts of iîght operatic mmiues, such as
Meyerbeer'sL'etoiie du Nord, a work that was criticized for its "pagesmt-Iïk and hi-
coloured e&cr."60 Indeed, Schumann was said to have made the Link between Megerbeer and the Qrclrs expüat when he commente& "I place [ M ]
with Franconi's drcus
people."61Finally, whüe waiting for the scaie to begin, spectators would have a h noted that the ring was iit by "theglare of parafnn l a m p ~ . " Then, ~ the perfofinance would
them [the audience],when that Long, dear, brilliant row of ligho came slowiy up; and the foreriph &tement when the Littie beii rang and the music began in eamest, with strong parts br the drum and sweet e h for the a glow which burst upon
Whiie the " p a in the local papers suggened that all three parts of the program
were of a "verysuperior chiuacrer,"the grand finaie of the program, ïBe Battle of WaterCoo, attracted the widest attention. Cltzdy, Cooke's was a theatrical circus but
whether me Battle of Waterloo took place on a specially designed platform, as it did earlier at his permanent amphitheater in Leeds, or, instead, in the ring, is uncertain h m
60PercyAScholes, Tbe Oxjord Componion to Music, ed. John Owen Ward, tenth edition (Oxford, 1991), 636.
%onald J. Jolly, "JohnMorrison: Poer, Musician and TzaveUing Showman,"CWbaOnia, Jan-Feb. 1895,164.
the pTOYinciai newspaper accounts of his mur? In any event, Cooke's choie to present Zbe Buttké of Waterloo was, no doubt, based cm the play's Fast succes with the p u b k It
had been p d r m e d by a vari-
of circus compsuiies since the 1820s,inciuding Astley's,
where it was first produceci, Benson Hill, who went to Astiey's eqxxthg to laugh, "admittedto being amazed by the accuracy with which the miliüuy edutions were
e x e ~ u t e d . "Commenting ~~ on Cooke's vaion, one reporter at Plpouth said that by the by inured as we are in the garrison 00 fire and smoke,we mntess we were Litedy stunned and stiaed by the overwheimïng brces emplogad [in the banle scenes] on this occasion.'
The play afso had a special appeal for chiidrem and for this mason, it katumi in many Victorian reminiscences. Having seen this production at Asdey's Amphith-,
one
obsemer called John Coleman said
a wonderful spectacle wfth its reai horses, reai Highlanders, real Drageons, real Home guards and mfdstrams, real otd guards which died but never surrenderd...mai guns...and gunpowder..and real red Grey to my immature mind, it seemed
Another observer who wimessed the display some years later at the Vauxhall Gardens also emphasized the play's reai-lik quality:
The entire evening to me was one scene of mntinuous enchantment. Tbe B a t t h of Waterloo was being represenred on the b o r k ground and I could not divest myseif of the idea that it was a d engagernent 1 was
-th regard to his amphitheater at Leeds, it was said that "a spacious plathm is erected fmm the cirde to the top of the gaiiery [in order to]fàciiitate the quesuian specade and display the powers of the home which will be arrangeci...by Mr W.Cookekell See Leeds InteUfgettcer, 23 Febniary 1850, 1.
6%ensonEarle Hill, Playhg Aboutr or, Z k a t r f a l AnscCtOtes a d Advmtums (London, 1840), i, 234, cited in Saxon, 140. &The Chus," Tbe Portsmouth and Naval Gazette, 20 J d y 1850,s.
witnessing as the sharpshooters BRd hom behind the trees, the d e r y wagon b1ew up and the stniggie and co&tgration took place at Hougoumont. When 1 stood years afoerward on the real batdefield, I was disappointed in the efkct. 1 thought it ought to have been a great d d more üke Vauxhd.6B Utifizing the strength of his company, Cooke, no doubt, employed the band members so that "distantmusic is heard in the ûackgroundnand then "ahost of ûoops advance [and]
fom lines,"as occurred at the Vairxhall production. Afcompanying this sœne was a
chorus which sang "Tia dieerful sight, by the watch-fire!s iight, to view the Pnissians above and below; eager for Bight., and mous for the Light, That's to guide him a> hi9
These kinds of equestrian dramas,involving patriotic sentiment, delivered important messages to children about the nature of heroism. To be sure, the themes of
war and British vaior which they ernphasized made tbese child speccaturs "marvelnat the performance and prompted them to think about the Life of a solider or sailor. It was said that T. P. Cooke, the actor,
irnbibed a prediiection for the sea [at the young age of 81..& seeing [a pehnnance ofl me Batth? of Trqfialgar...which bacame very speedlly gratifieci by a friend of his îàmily who mmrnanded a ship." Besides prompting children to "rnarvel," these dramas may have also deveioped existing metaphors and correlations about the Angla-French relationship in the same way
T M , Astley's mes, ciipping, c. 1848.
Tbid.
''SU, PC 791.3.AST,J. H. Amhurst,
''BJ.,, Th. Cm. 75, dipping.
ofwa-Co08
1-
33 that an enactmenc of Hemy V may have d o n e . It has been argueci by anthropologlsts that most thwries (scientific, racial or any other kind) move mainly by metaphor? In
the case of the equeStTiiin spectacle the metaphor was creaaed v h d y and may have beai an extension of the popular undersrandhg of the nation,as prrsaited through
painting." Thus by presenting the British as just and by depichg the enemy as unjust,
these ciramas made "a mmpelling argument by anaiogy for the supremacy of the bmer over the latter."'
The allure of the British soldiers, according to Coleman, was that thep
"diedbut never surrendered,"rhereby adding an important element of hemic melodrama to an historic scene.
As such, in Act 2, Scene 2 of the Butth of W a t e r b , the patridc
message is reinforceci by the Duke
of Wellington who prepares his troops for battle
against the French. He says to his men: %aidemen, the world has ûxed its eye upon us,
England expects much; no one is hem, 1 trust, who wodd not mhet die than disappoint his native country's hope?
The Butfk of W a t e r h continued to be revived consistently und1853 and tben only sporadically until 1898 when the Royal English Circus presented an "episode" 6rom it.n Except
in those rare periods of intemational conflict involving Brigin between the
'%in& Coiiey argues this idea with respect to paintings, see Brftons: Fmging tbe Nation, 1 707.183 7 (New Haven, 1992). '%ee C . Geem, Inttvprietution of Cultures (New York, 1973;idem.,L o d KtK)w&de: Furtber Essays in lnterpretutive Antbtr,po&bgy(New York, 1983).
"sec Martin Meisei, Redizations= Nawatfw, R c t d and 2 k a t r i c a C A r k F in Nineteentb Gmtury England (Princeton,1983).
'%nthony Monsanto, Jr., "TheLiving Proof: The Bamum and Bailey Circus and the Reifkation of Racial Categories, 18841896; (MA thesis, Princeton University, lm).
34 mid- and iate-nineteenth century, the military spectacle hardiy appeared on the boards. lae qlgbanislan Wac or tbe Retriolt of C a b u Z and Britisb Trfullzplis in Indfa (1&43), ï k
Battle of tbe Alma (1854),Tbe Stmirzg and Cbptum of DelBi (1857),Tbe Bombardll~ej~t
and Capture of Ca?ztm (1858), ïb Z u h War (lûûû), ZBe F d of Kburtoum (1888)and Tbe War in ZuluCand (1898) were among those pieces that were perfbrmed. When
military spectacies were not presentted, however, those equesrrian dramas with a longstanding presence, such as Dfah Twpin's Ri& to Y d or RIcbard R7,appeared in the
prograrns of those remaining theatrical arcrises. In contras& the new cmp of managers
who increasingly appeared on the scene h m the mid-nineteenth centuq hund that it was in th& best interests to keep up with the times. And as they bund that the times
were changing, so too did the program which now tended to h
r those traditional acts
that could easily accommodate dianges in the popular tastd8
m. Commenting on th& change, Peter Paterson, an actor cum circus clown noted in 1864 that most cireuses, "if they are to carry on a profitable business,"should wZLSiSt of
"thirty male and kmale perfonners induding the Iion king or queen, acrobetr, vultiguers
and amazons,"al1 of whom performed th& performances to suit the latest "rage?
individual skilis and amtinuaIiy altered th&
This change in fàmr of the traditionai program
did not imply that equestrians otcupied a les imporouit role in the circus program. In
most programs, the horse and the skïiieci rider were still Eeatured. The emphasis,
David Cannadine, "The 7 8 ~a ~difkrent r subject study on a dady relatai point, Contexx,Perfbrmance and Meaning of Rituai: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition',c. 1820-1977,"in Invention of Tradftfm,eds., Eric Hobsbawn and T. Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), 101-164. '?Peter Paterson, Glimpses of R8al LfJé (Eclinburgh, 1864), 123.
however, within the traditional circus program was di&rent. Rather than undercaklng to play a role within the contexi of a play, the equesaiari now acœnted M e r individual
ability as a rider. Such perfbrmances d they were performed by
e a parti&
impression on audiences when
children. At Reddich in 1860, h r example, 'the monster audience
continuaily applauded the daring act of horsemanship of Master Powell (a m a e chiid) on his bare-backed steed.'=
The act may have beem iike the "DashingAn on the Barr
Backed Horse" that had made such an impression on Charles Dickens' fictional doctor who said that the display 'was photographed sharp1y on my rnind":
[the act] was a series of leaps, badrwards and h d ,tuming and twisting, riding the beast in everp sort of fashion and on eppg part of him, except his ears and tail.... 1 thWr the equesuian-gymmst was Hcatally swept around the ~g once or twiœ clinging with arms and legs to the creature's ne&? When pvformed by women or girls these a m were said to achieve a parricular "grace," as the poster that advertised the performance of Miss Emily C o o k in 1853 statecLsl According to one reviewer, she performed a k t inpoiving an equestrian leap through sixteen paper hoops although the poster described h a dispiay as a 'fiight through sixteen
balloons borh backwards and brwatds."
The stunt was impressive since " d a e n t
i m p e t~o carry the body through the air a considerable distance is tequired." So difficuit
was it that not even Miss E-
Cooke could accomplish it on the f h t rriai although
"throughthe force of will [she eventuaUy] subdues d obstacles."u
BO"Reddich,n Era, 8 July 1860, 12. "Charles Dickens,"In the Ring," ACC 2%
82V&&
Year R o u d , 28 January 1868, 20.
poster, Astley's Amphitheam, 10 SeptP-mber 1853.
mIbid;c.f.,BoL,JJC, Astley's clipping, September 1853.
bid.
36 So appreciative of these scenes were some spectatozs that they went to the dnnrr in Lieu of more uiteUecNally rehmhg" performances. M E . Btaddon wrote of that illustrious Spanïsh woman who is said to fme the atque better than the opera and to have a more intense appreciation of a series of m g plunges through tissue papr covered hoops than of the most eiaborate fioriture of soprano and tenor?
"Mdlle Hadetina de Rozename, the flating zephyr ridernin Dickens' " T m and Country Circus me,"was said to inspire "wondermtxcd with a liale dash of fëarIman
emotionai state which the opera arguably did not amuse. In addition to kminine 'graœ,"
she p w s s e d "powernand "speed." Acmrrdingly, Hameltina's horse
with archeci ne& and fhshing eye is fiying round the ring at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour..d the nymph of the flmting zephyr, standing upon his back, goes through her great 'trick act' with a power, if not a grace, chat emkes the thundu of the gods most iibedly!'
Upon leaving the ring, it was typical h r the perfbrmer to make direct contact with the audience by "Iean[ing] over the home, smil[ing] and throw[ing] a kiss to the[m] and the clown."=
To a larger extent, howwer, male riders were credited with pcnwer and speed, as well as conaol. nTosee 'the favorite pupil of the great and mighty Ducrow, the nsplus ultra of British horsemen [of the 1820s and SOs]'..sitting upon the extreme verge of the
horse's hind quaners with neither bride nos saddle,"said the narramr in 'Town and
*%LE. Braddon, Aumra Floyd (hndon, 1863).
s6CharlesDickens, 'Town and Country Circus Lik,"All Tbe YemRound, 16 Nuvember 1861,185. "I bid.
%iny Clive, ne Cfxus Gfri (London, 1906), 24.
37 Country Circus Lik,""almostmakes the gazer giddy. Like the fémaie rider, "hesprine suddenly m his feet [while riding].m But uniike the fnaale or chiid rider, 'he sweeps round and round [the ring] at redoubled speed.*'
Ln doing so,
he [puts] one fbot on the home's head and the 0th- on his shouider...the home and he b o t . leaning into the ring at an angle which seems to threaten t h [at any moment they WUbel sent whirling into the sawdust, the spectators cannot choose but to breathe hard?
The circus was one ofthe féw venues in which the public codd go and see the exhibition oftaiented riders perform h t s on aained horses. Witnessingthese tri& gratifieci a desire to see the workaday matter of riding a home d While equestrians aimeci to -te
-
arguabiy
e glamomus.
a magicai if not sometimes tense
-
atmosphere, the down, who ohen fbliowed in the program. was responsible for wreaking
havoc and chus desaoying this mood. As the fool he was responsibie for moddng the
seriousness of hurnan events, rnanners and morals. Current evenq for example, were
used in this regard as a leftmotrf by many clowns such as W.F. Wallet. During one performance at O x f k i ,possibly in 1847,Wallm made a modr election speech in the ring
in an efbrt to âraw attention to the upcorning generai election: In it, 1 proposeci to s o k the vexeci question of fieemen's right to vote for the country as w d as the aty. 1 had primeci mgself with iàcts and figures, and compareci the number of h e n with the number of acres of 6reehold land belonging to the corporation..and was able co show that there was
'%harles Dickens, "Townand Country Circus Life," passim.
Tbid. 9LIbid.
qbid., 186.
land enough, in fact more ttian twice enough, to amstitute each k e m a n a brty-shiiiing 6reehold.*
Beaaying a heightaied sense of sesworth which was mmmon a> most perhrmers, he
added "this 1 intended as a joke but it tumed out something better
- it was good iaw?'
Despite the originality of some, clowns were often criticized by viewers for their w~rtlen sketches. Remlling one mediocre performance, Dickens' narrator spoke of a
clown's act in which [the down] ask[s] the audience if they lmew his grandhther; upon the simple biks laughing ar this, he then launches fonh no end of mries about
his &rent relations h m his great-great grandfathet down to bis nephew's wile's last tuvins.The narrator added that "it is astonishing to see [with] what gusto e v e q b d y hughs at [this]..~ c i r a s clowns are not h e d for their inventive m." He recommended
that "the[se jesters] ought to reîbrrn.. and to satirize the M
g manners [and currient
issues] as they risenrather than reiy on old antics that were not funny? A decade later
the situation had hardly impmed as Chariie Keith, the down cum cirnis manager, noted that the oId jokes between clown and ringmaster which seemed to go round of every circus and were wont to set the country yokels in a roar prove rather
93W.F. Waiiett, Tbe Public Lue of WJ;. WdIett, tbe Queen's Jester,ed. J. Luntley (London, 1870),73.
MChariesDickems, "Townand Country Circus Lifk," passim. "Ibid.
stale to the inteiiechial visitor particuiariy in this age of comic and cunning peri~dicals.~~ Yet, "staleness"was relative. I t is m e that as the h l , his job was to modE his own status and that of others. But there couid be new variatio~lson this old theme. For
example, recalling h m his chiidhood a comic sketch at Coolce's circus,Samuel Reynolds Hole (1819-1904), Dean of Rochesur, describeci "Joef who told the ringmastez and the
audience that, "[My h û l y and I] iived happily in a pcaceful vülage two hundred miles from land, three hundred d e s h m water and four hundred h m anywhere eise?
He
said that this changed when "my brother, Biüy, began to die, and has been dying ever
since." At this point,
Joey produces a met-handkerchief about rwo yards in length and begins to wail and howl in a paroxysm of woe. [And] then the masm of the ring atternpts to console him.'O0 But the ringmaster loses his patience
when Joqr insists that his brother, BUy, dies so much more rhan anybody else....'He does', cries Joqr; and then, putting his han& on his hips and with a broad grin on his face, he shoue 'He's a dyer by d e he dyes every fol.enight'.'O'
-
-
The ''Joey" was a standard name given to the down - based on the tradition created isy Joey Grimaldi (1778-1837),the clown c m pantomime. He is the main instigator of chaos
-
98ChariieKeith, C i r a s Lije und Amusemenfs (Derby, 1879), 40. *Samuel Reynolds Hole, Tben a d Now (Landon, 1901), 148.
'Ybid., 149.
'"Llbd.
cifus
40
and, as has been argued elseWhen, is both "iconotectw and "iconodast,"serting up images and situations only to break thern down, at someone else's expense.Iq? Besides reciting his antics, the ciown ofkm Performed dongside anbais. Coma, the down, performed with a trained donkey, "Mocha,"fbr example: We d to sit down to supper
together...[and during the round of appiause] w e shared a carrot pie in the
ring."'03 The scene was similar to die one that appeared in Hengier's program in 18/3 in which "the comic ponies will ceiebrate the clown's birthday by supping with b i d L D L
Horses could be made to do this, said Peter Paterscm, rhrough kind training that always ended by okring the home o a t ~ . 'Besides ~ eating, animals could also be made to sing, or give the appearance of singing with the down and Coma performed with a donkey in
this manner. "1 taught hirn to join in the chorus c m a certain note and bray though it was,
he [always] got an encore as certainfy as if he had been a p h dm12~1:."'~
The musical clown occupied another part of the program and to this cabegory of clown, the Huline Brothes belonged. One reviewer who had seen them perform with Pablo's circus in Oldham in 1869 noted that "someof rhar musical tri&, are not new....[However] their comic dancing is en-
though good,
so in this b o r ~ u g h . "Critics ~~
were arguably more experienced viewers of circus entertainments than the public which may have only gone to one or two
'02Coxe,A Seat,2 13. '''CFA, "Behindthe Scenes,"#603, 165.
LO"v&A, poster, Hengler's, 1873.
going
performanœ~per season. For this
'"Peter Paterson, GIfmpsesof Raal Lffe (Fdinburgh, 1864), 157. '061bid.
'"'TM, AHC,2.97% poster, Pablo's Mammoth C i , Oldham, 20 Ncmmber 1869.
41 ceason, the scale on which novelty was judged was difbent br the cridc than br the
audience members. Nevertheless, one act within Pablo's program at Oldham seemed to spark approvai f h m both critic and audience Tor its noveity.
in if a down d e d S;uoni
appeared
who, in addition to his wit and his rrally excellent bandling of the violin, succeeds in drawing..music-..hm the most uncouth looking instruments which no one couid h c y they containeci unless he heard for himself.'OB With the growth of popuIar entmtahments in the 18605,the music hall and
theater provideci the circus with a new crop of clowns. Clowning gave rise to a "jack of
ali mades"who performed music and dancing, as well as e. Acmrding to some contemporaries, the comparativefy Little amount of the that clowns spent in rehearsal (in relation to other artists, such as equesaians and gymnam) meant that they had the opportunity to meet other artiss and stiare intorrnation about engagements elsewhere.
O n the Continent, this was particularly the case, There, Charlie -th
said that
when the clowns have been o n e seen and paid their good momïng compliment to the director, they saunter into the café comecîed with the circus and p a s their time in piaying billiards, dominoes or other amusements,.-withtheir brotfier artiscs.109 As fiiendship networks were established in such places, an archange of idbrmation between artists about their respectme mrnpanies and about employment openings, no doubt, occurred. Furthemore, these d i s or pubs were important meeting grounds for
the unemployed. One such figure was Peter Paterson d o ,aithough trained as an actor, recalled king recniited to work as a clown in the ring upon meeting the arnis manager,
'OBIbid.
'%th,
67.
Mr Chirper'lo, in the sitting m m of a hotel near Birmingham. In a dialogue that he reconsttucted in his memoirs, Paterson recaiied that Chirper told him that he shouîd turn
his attention to the m
t trends among clowns:
the great thing now-a* [in 1864]is to gÏve parodies h m Shakespeare...[Tor example] burlesques of To be Or Not To Se' ...Shakespeacean clowns are [now] aii the go.lLL
"Oh, 1 see...p retend to have a mothache afkr making a fkw good 'mue', [and thai] commence [by sayingJ'To draw o r not to draw, chat is the q~estion'"'~ replied Paterson. In persuading Paterson to join the company, Chicper dismisscd the abor's ladr
of downing experience and insisteci that tuming [the] clown is the easiest thing in the world..as for the jokes, never ksu man. The ringmaster bas d the oid standard mes ready cut and dry..and as for the n m supply...p u on soon get up a fèw by reading Punch or ï b Fumily
One sueet clown whom Henry Mayhew intervieweci disagreed entirely with this latter bit
of advice. He said, "1 have d a great deal of 'Punch'but the jokes are neariy all mo high there."lL4It is worth noting that whiie Puncb was perteiveci as mo high, Shakespeare was n ~ t . ~ Other ~ ' downs such as Ha-
who appeared at Hayes' Monster
'LO"Chirper" was probably a fictional name. Furthemore, Peter Paterson may have indeed k e n a fictional chamcter and these mernoirs may have been written by someone with insight about the trade.
LL4Henry Mayhew, London Lrrbour a d tbe London Poor (London, 19=, iii,323. 1 L 5 1 a ~Levine c e makes this argument with respect CO Amexican popular cuiture in the nineteenth cemtury, see W i g b h w , Lowbtvw: Tbs Emargenar of CuCturd Hfer.arc6y fn America (Cambridge, 1988); for a faaual account of the impact of Shakespeare on the
43 ciras in Preston in 1860 and Jim Pymer who appeared at G h e t t ' s Circus in Southampton in 1864 were arnong the rnany Shakesp*arean jesteTs of the
and were
b7
sought afie5some managers who placeci advertisements in the Ers.'" Given his tendency to present naaienjokes, the d m was o
h valued less than
his skilled counterpart, the equestrian. Saiary dïfkmntials re£îecGed this fact, Wh-
the
most famous equesaians eamed up to £100 a week and gpnasts as much as S6û a week, a "first m e nclown ody earned S30 per week,said Keith d o refipsred to Cook's papsheet for his Continental tour in the Iate 1 8 7 û ~ . ~But ~ ' in En@&
board
the siilaries - aaoss the
- were lower; thme, clowns earned no more than
Sû and f10 per
~ e e k . ~Clowns, " such as Patefson, who were pro the audience's daire fbr --more
exciting and fëarless exhibitions. It continueci,
it is a gossip among the theatres b t one visitot atmideci night aher night in order fhat he might not be absent d e n Van Amburg's head was Mtten off by a lion.'" In contrast to menageries or zoos that sthibited udd animals by
mut
enclosures, the circus presented them as Perfomers invoived in acts with their tamers, "So...instead of the old invitation to W up, wdk up!' [by the showman at the &] we
are invited to view the prehrming Lions and dancing dephants,"said Peter
The difSerence between an animal that lay idle in a cage and one that performd was important, as Paterson suggested.
Wrestling was a common display that tamers perhrmed, particulariy with lions and was one that Aiex Amousa engagxi in with his beast, Prince. Although Prince was at ease
....mhe
with his nainer h m the start, "he was nervous the fim time we wrestied in pubiic
people's chers and shouts a b l e c i him...[and he scratched me]."Le He addeci that in
case Prince revolts, "1 always have a loaded pistol in with me, but 1 need hardiy add that 1
should have to be driven [much harder than this] behre 1 shouid think of using it."L(6 Some rames did indeed ônd themsehrcs in ciFcumstances in which it was appropriate 00
L62"Lion Kin@, Queens, and Trainers," Cbambers'sJoumuZ, 17 March 1877, 176. '"Ibid.
'&Paterson,Glimpses, 136. 16s"The Wrestiing Lion and His Tamer," 3"be W c b , 22 Febrwry 1893,204.
L66~bid.
56 use the pisol they carrieci. .iMaccomo, the lion tamer, h r example, saw ~FROtigers engageci
in a "sanguinaryconflict" and entend th& dem with a six barrelied revolver in order to
make them stop.Lq Irnmediatdy on doing so,the immense brute which had just beem introduced into the den left bis opponent and made towards Marromo, and with a t d c roar sprang upon him.L".
Then, Maccomo "ùisrandy 6red his revolver, the bal1 taking efkt in the right brefoot of the tiger causing him for a moment to crouch in one corner of the den."'"
But sometimes these pehmances were a hoax. James Sanger gave evidence
before the Select Cornmittee on PerfOrming Animais in 1921 and d e d that it used to be common for circuses to present "boundng iions,"that is, "a lion that was a p p m t l y
very via ou^."^^^
Now,to make the thing more startling, they used to ham a coke fire with hot irons...to sakguard the man going into the cage and they used to announce that 'The Great Maccomo' or some name iike chat wül [attempt to] enter the den br the ninth time tonîght and of course, the people used to flock to see i ~ . " ~ But in redity, said Sanger, the
bouncing lion...is the tamest lion you could v i b l y have,-A clangetous and spiteful lion is, in conuast, a sly and quiet animal; they never give p u any sign of what they are about to do."
--
-
- --
L""Macornmo.the Lion Tarner, and the Tiger,"Era, 24 June 1866, 12. lmIbid. 'Tbid. L70PP, SeZect Cornmittee on Pejonttfng Anintu& (1921) vol. 7, In.840,32.
'"Ibid. '%id.
57
In fact, the animal's viciousness was best detiermined by its killing history. In instances in which the animal on display had previousiy Wed or maimed its trainer or
keeper, the curiosity of spectators naturaiiy intensified. This was so at Sanger's drcus
which pehrmed at Hasting in 1861 when 4,000 patrons fiiîed the companfs arena in order to see a Lion, which had earlier been responsible for the death of a groom at Asdey's. Despite this animal's viaousness, it was said that
the comrnand [that Mr CLpCkRtt, the tamer] has over the aeamms is truiy astonishing; the pawing and kissing between him and his pets who pass through their various pedbrmances like kittens are something m l o u s to behold.lA
-
-
But, "exciternentis wrought a> the highest pitch,"one d e w e r noted when "the capacious jaws of the Lion are opened for the reception of Mr CfOCkett's s k ~ l l . ~ ~ " Just as tamers had to exhibit caution and fearlessness, so t w did audiences when
they entered the menagene which was set up by many circuses as a side show before or after the cirw perfbrmance, as at BeU's, Sanger's and at other largede wmpanies. In
one unfortunate incident, Mr George Elliott wmte to the managers of the Royal Imlian C ~ ~ C that U S his " 6 ' s velvet cape was grasped by a large ape
h m behind [at their
menagerie] and a piece of the material was tom right out of the &arment.'"
"Of
course,"he added, "it is a very hrtunate circumsFance rhat the animai did not clutch my wife's arm as in that event the result would have beai v e y se
ri ou^."^^^ ~everrhelm,the
victim's husband wanted compensation for 'the cape which has bem rendered quite
L75G~R0, LCC,Min, 10, 827, Itr.,25 Ocmber 1905, f h m George Elliott, 2 Park h e , Greenwich to the Mgrs. of the Rayai Imlian Circus
58
useless."'" Years earlier, P X Bamum fàcetiousIy wamed bis patrons of such thin@ by
I could guarantee the morality of my ànrus exhibitions b u ~ c o u l d not guarantee the m o d t y of my wild beasts [at the rnenagerie].ln
Among those willing to take the chance, it was wideiy believed that these dispm were üluminating because they provideci useful knowledge of the animal kingdom. In
Sbarp Tornmy: ïüe Story of Circus L@, Mr Spring, the circus propriaor, sags to Mr Strickland, the schoolmaster, that if his pupils attend the drcus they "wiii learn more about natural history from seeing the lions...than they will leam
h m th& school books
in a ~ e e k . Speaking " ~ ~ of B a m u m and Bailey's exhibition in 1898,the Bfnnfngbmn Dai4 Mail simiiarly stated that
the schoolboy or schoolgirl may have in a single mur of the collection [of their menagerie] a lesson in zoology, surpassing in interest and practical efkct [that] which cran] be imparted by leamed [school masters] in a whole month.'*
In Nottingham, the School Board dedared a half holiday in honor of Bamum and Baüey's entry to the town and many schoolchildren anended the s h w with their ciasses.'"
Enthusiasm spread as their tour continued. Schoolteachers in Ross, for amnple, petitioned the School Board sweral months later when they ieamed that this circus was
corning to the nearby town of Hereford. It was reponed that 'the whole teadiing smE
'"ibid.
'"CFA, dipping, scrapbook #604, 100. L79Elizabeth J. Lysaght, Sbarp Tommy: Tbs Story of Circus Ufs (bndon, 1891),57. l-amum
and Bailey's Show,"Birmfngbum Dai&Mail, 31 May 1898,2.
LBL"Barnum and Bailey's in Nottingham,' Notcingbam Dai& lhpnxs, 10June 1898,8.
59 with no exception signeci the petition."'* Some locai newspapers epcn sponsorrd
contests fbr sdioolchildren and gave prizcs for the best otgv that descrhd what they saw of Barnum and Bailey's. Joseph Caidweli, a g d 12, the winner of the Y d b f r e
C h n i d e ' s contest, wrote that 1 saw the show corne in at 500 am...J also saw the elephants,the kgest of which weighs 5 tons.'"
The elephants were feanwd in the moming procession when, it was said, "they marcheci solemnly by with Little regard for the curious c r o ~ d . " In ' ~ the program, the elephancs
were introduced by their tamer, George Conklin, who made them perfOrm "new and novel dances."'" in addition to dancing, elephants were also made to stand on their hrelegs, a dispiay n ~ h i c i hs not hard,"said Reuben Castang, a tamer, bef'ore the Select Cornmittee
on Performing Animals in 1922."
That is, he explained, "[the elephant] pua his nme
dawn on the ground and the saain of the body naturaljy U s on the brelegs."m Not
only did they p e h m solo but they also pertOmed with other animals, including horses. At Ginnett's and Sanger's, elephants wem made to walk over horses which resteci on the
ground. This oick, said Ginnett before the Select Conmittee, requued a amsiderable amount of aaining since horses were o h ahaid of e1ephantsLu
'"Ross
Schml Board,' H m f o r d Joumal, 12 November 1898, 2.
lS3"DearUncle Nd,"Ymksbim Cbronick, 19 August 1898, 3.
'&"TheBamum and Bailey Procession,"Bfnningbum DuSb Mail, 25 May 1898,2. '"EC,program, Barnum and Baiiey's Greaoest Show on Earth, 1898.
'&PP,Seîèct Cornmittee on Pe&mfngAnimals, (1922) v, ln. 4 3 9 2 6 . Tbid. Ybid., In. 607, 739-45, p.36, 42-3.
60
Besides tigers, Lions, apes and elephanm, the circus ofan pre~entedperforrning bears. James Sanger spoke of "TeddyBeaf who
used to corne into [ou] ring with the down..and of course any bear d wak on his hind legs..Jt used to waik in with the down a m in a m and then the down used to inttoduœ a bottie to him, and then [Teddy]used to put that to his mouth and ttunb1e d m and r d abo~t...~ The secret of the am, said Sanger, was that "thebotue [containedl condensed miik" and the bear was simply pretending he was drunk LeS&ars could be made to do otha
"sensational"acts, he contuiued, such as walk a tight mpe, or ride a horse. In fàct, "I have aained a bear to do [both] a m myself,"said
While some ârcwes iïke Sanger's had the resources to exhibit wild animals to the public, srnafier companies did not and had to d y on cheaper alfernathes. Trained dogs
provided such an option. According to the receipts of a sale in which Wombwell's stock was put on auction in the 18705, a mastiff dog cost £12 and an Engüsh h x terrier cost
62/2s; in cornparison, Hannibal, the lion, was sold for b270.= Not only were dogs
cheap but they were also versatile as the French trapeze dogs demonstrateci when they "hang[ed] by their legs [ h m a trapeze]." PerfOmiing at heights was not rPsPicted to
trapeze work. 'ïhe same dogs might also dimb "a very high ladder and then jump [down to
the sawdust]," said Sanger.lg3 In some cases, these "diving dogs"wure sacks around
their heads or were put into sadcr behre th&
leap. This was not dangerous to the dog,
'"PP, SC on P ~ m i n Anfmak g (1921) vii, Ln.880,p.33. 'Tbid. LgLIbid., in.949, p.35. ' W i i d Beasts Under the Hammer,"Eru, 14 Aprii 1872, 12.
i93PP, (1921) passim, h.1004,36.
61 said Fred Ginnett, the drcus manager, bebre the Select Cornmitee on Performing
Animais. "I wiii let you in on a secret... the sack is just as old as everphing &...[ it] is
made of jute and you can see through if"" Dancing dogs were another fèature of man? aricus programs. It was cornmon br example to see perfbrxnances invohring "three dogs [who] had to waik tound and round their master to the measure of music."'s One observer of such an act said &at "one of the dogs [stood] simply on all bus,one on its hind legs and the other on its fOre-Ie!gs.
This last one held himseif right up in the air,showing the whole underside of its body."'% The dog stayed in this position chrough the
eEom of the trainer who
prompted it by "softly tapp[ing] its tender parts between the hind legs with the h i e m e ,
which he held dmwards for the p ~ r p o s e . " ' ~ ~ Considering the increasing criticai attention that animal rights achcates gave to
the circus from the 1880s onwards, the circus and its tamers were piaœd in a preGatious position. Agahst the popular pressure which demanded these kinds of novel exhibitions
and the favorable financial conditions afkdng some managers which iàciiitated them, the circus had to baiance the new requirements of parliamentary reguiation which amse in
1900 largely due to the campaigns of refOmers many of whom wwe conne!cted with the
RSPCA and the National Canine Delaise m e . Saiking this balance was in be the
dilemma of the circus in the nwr century.
'"PP, (1922) passim,h.749,43. "PP, (1922) passim, Appendk 1, 1467. '%id*
19'Ibid,
62
W. In the h
t
phase of i a development, the Qrcus world was dominated principly
by the theatrical program with the equestfian speccacle(s) as its main fèature. In the
second phase, when there occurred a rise in the number of companies on the sœne as weii as an increase of capital and iabor, there developed a new strand of Qrcus tbat
firatureci discrete dispfays of agility in the program. The taming and subzsequent dosure of
some fain in the 1840s and 50s, as well as the 1843 Theatre Regdations Act whose efFects were felt slightly later, helped propet many artisD h m out~faoorsinto an organized
ring. New organizationai structures inciuding the press thiit ran job m e n i t s as weli as the rise of the agent system also helped in this migration of b r . In this formative period, therefore, many performers began assOaating themseh.es with a
community that had new systems of authority and new codes of pmkssional behavior that
suongly contrasted the worid of the fair. It was in this period thaî the traditional drcus evoIved and grew in importance.
This was helped by the fâct that the program it ofked to the public was flexible,
accommodaring the ever-changing public desire for nmehy. From sUed riding oo
clowning to acrobaties to tumbhg to animal Faming, the program gratifieci the pubiic desire for excitement, wonder, humor and neme tîngling amusement, Whiie the danands
of the pubiic for these kinds of displays continueci, the demands of the moral rebrrners to stop them mounted. The stress of the situation welghed heaVyr on the cirnis manager
and performer who were concemed with their own respectability, producing a considerable amount of anxiety in th&
min& and, to an actent, in the min& of local and
parliamentary authorities who were in a position to eifect legai regulation, as we WUset.
In his 1864 comrnents on the state of the trade, Peter Paterson, said that the c k u s was "so enfirely changed h m what it was some thirty to brty y e a ago ~ as to be almost a
new institution."' No longer associateci with the "hiemountebank panies..at the dage green,"the circus, he believed, was a highiy organjzed afkjrir.' Indeed, the proocss of bringing together a range of artists inciuding musicians, equesaians, gymmms, downs, as weU as animals, into one program conttibuted CO the oqpnhtion which Paterson described and which has been examineci in the previous chapter. Not only was the
amalgamation ofartists a key hcmr in the organhîion of the c h u s but so t m was the utilization of a controlled space. The deveiopment of the modem drcus depended on the emergence of some kind of organized space in which perfbrmances tmk place so that,
unlike the "village greennwhere spectators came and went, the circus atttacted customers who paid the cost of admission and took their seats. The evolution of aztitudes about the ciras implied
by this change s
u
e an important direction, in terms of status, in
which the circus was moving. This chapter will thus consider both the ot&anization and
the implications of this organization on the circus and the mmmunity around it. There were severai dinerem h d s of spaces that the circus occupied which depended on the cornpany's sïze, s t a t u and wealth. From permanent amphitheatexs, such as Astley's, to semi-permanent ones to tents, the &cus appeared in a range of con-
'Paterson, GCfmpses,123. %id.
64 over the course o f the cenniry? The fim part of this chapter examines diese mntexts.
The rise of the raidency system, a s opposed to tenting, which came to domulate the circus wodd
had important implications Tor a whole host of hcmrs anecting the drcus.
In parcicular, as secrion two discusses, the occupation of residences afkcted artists's emptoyment: the pattern promoted an in-
flow of b
r as artists moved with
greater frequency among resident circuses. The residency sgstem innoduceci a new
variation on the old theme of touring with a single company which travelled h m piace to place.
Residency was also important in the brmation of community allegiances, as senion three of this chapter demonsttates. The developmait of M c pride, commercial mtertainment and regdation al1 contributeci to the new and changing environment in
which the dnrus dwelied. It stood to reason that as these resident mmpanies, which may be classified as "visiblecircuses," came under the goke of reguiation during the second hall of the century, the d
e
d "invisibiebrais," which was entirely itinerant and iacked
an approved sranis in the community, fbllowed. To the extent it appears in the historicai record,the "invisiblecircusnwas often the subject of local cornplaint. Towards the end of the century, an ernerging fear of contamination h m itinerant peoples motivateci e f b t s by
some cornmunities to regdate th& strand of drnis, as wd,and to b
~ it gwithin the
scope of respectable society.
3Because the Era and other records used in this study did not always dlsringuish between a tempotariiy-construcced wooden amphitheater, which might be e r e d br a period of three mon* or so,and a permanent one, this discussion relies on the prindple chat both these s a i c n i r e s count as residenc buiidings. Whem it has been possible to differentiate between these two kinds of stnicturies, a distinction has been noteci.
65
II. Cooke's tour rhrough the provinces during the summer scason of 1850,which hao
midcentury point. For Cooke and other mid-cenniry managers, the drcus season was divided into two pam: From March until O c t o k , most rnidslentuy troupes, Mce
Cooke's, generally went tenting and this involveci singieday visits to individual tcmms dong a predetehned route. Between October and March, circus companies ocnipied
permanent or semi-permanent residences in tuwns? As the century progrrssed, however,
the difference between the summer and winter s c w n gew less distinct and companies performed in k e d sites Tor periods of weeks, months or even the length of the y-
Table 2.1,which is gleaned h m information regardhg the deannial sample collecocd fkom the Era employed in chapter one, highiights the inkquency, dthough widi some hiccups, with which companies tented after the 1850s.
Year
%
No.
Total
Since the change away h m tenting and rowards residency was gradual, it became
common for companies between the l&l(k and 18809 to altemate between tenrhig and residing in amphitheaters during the summer season. For rnany companies, it was costeffective to remain in their winter arnphitheafers during the sumxner season or
altematively, sublet h m other managers tbat growing crop of amphitheaters that iittercd
66 the entertainment map in the provinces and the rnetmp0i.b. For example, in 1877, the
manager of the South Shields Amphitheam admmkd that his establishment couid be leased h r £3 per week. in m a t cases, the manager simply wished to cover the cmts of the ground rent which in Keith's case amounted to 618 per month fw his amphithcrirer at
Southport? In cornparison, Powell, Fmtit and Clarke hund out a xason later, in 1878, that ground rent was more expensive when they tenteci
- a daily average oC544-û- than
when they leased amphitheatefs. Around the same tirne, the Newcastie Town Councii agreed to have Mr Pinder emct his circus tent on the Haymarket for sixmm weeks at a cost of 10 guuieas pet weeko Furthemiore, the heavy demands of tencing and the
incidental cosa of tepairing those items that were a casualty of the road iaised important questions in the min& of many managers about why they ought to continue to tent if sublening was easier and possibly cheaper. (It is impossible, h
m
, to say with any
accuracy that tencing costs were higher than those which the leasing c h u s enmuntered in
the maintenance of the amphitheater since the lamr figures are madiable.) Nevertheless, the purchase and upkeep ofa tent sometinies proved to be a nuisance and added to the
travelling d m i s ' s expenditure. Considering the problem of aposurr,tents Cotton ones
- were in constant need of repair.
- particuiarly
Powell, Foottit and Clarke's 1878 account
book suggess that these costs amounted m appmximately U)-2-6 weekîy, in addition to
the £0-14 that the Company s p t on thread and repair matetials. The efibrt invofved in repairing such damage becme particularly burdeisorne (and expensive) if it was required
on a frequent -bis,as was o
h the case. Of course, the mmpany was put in a
particularly vulnerable position if the tent was beyond repair, as was reportedtg the case
'"Important to Equetrian Managers," Era, 5 May 1878,6.
m,Newcastle Finance Comxnittee 589/197, no.7, 138,4 Oceober 1877.This wodd have been at the taii end of the tenting season.
-
when a high wind "srnashedthe center post" of ikhcame and Clarke's tent at Behst "and down came the erection." Despite the subsequent efforts made to hoist it again, a new post having obtained, the wind continueci to blow so strongiy that ali e!fForcs of the emp1qees proved to be abortive?
Other matters made tenting seem dhdvanmgeous to the company both in terms
of money and importantiy, reputation. The n d fOr tentmen who would set up the structtu-eincreased expenditufe by an mecage cost ofLfl-0 pr town, according to Poweii,F w t i t and Clarke's accounts? As weli, tenmien were notoriously unrrliabie and sometimes jeopardized the respectability of the operation, as in 1888 at Sanger's circus in Motherwell whm some chineen of Sanger's "atteadants"induding the ananen were arrested in an incident that d t e d in the injury of rwo consrables? Regardhg the
incident, the Era was quick to add that "thosein cusaody are merely the attendants and that the artists were kept aloof of the dh~rbance."'~Whüe neœssary to the propt running of any tenting circus, tentmen, who were usually hired on the spot, were o h viewed as suspect in the eyes of managers iargeky because they had no interest in
remaining with the company on anything more than a short-term basis. For this reason, it was common for managers to adverrise Tor employees who "are sober and steadf; or,said
one advertisernent, if they are hired and then pmve otherwise "they wiii be disrnissed on a moment's notice."" There were signiscant liabilities associateci with taking a show on
'"Bekt,"Era, 11 April 1858, 11.
8TM,AHC, RP 76/1539,Route Book with Accounts, Powell, Footit and Clarke, 1û78. ?t"ïe
Police and Circus Men,"Era, 23 June 1888, 16.
'OIbid.
LL"Wanted," 1 September 1878,Era, 19.
the r-not
the least of which was the hiring of casuai labor which might disrupt the
smooth running of the drcus and compromise its reputadon. While tenting did not disappear h m the c h u s caiendar, many companies, as table
2.2 shows, were flexible, alternathg berween tenting and residing in amphitheanm.
Year
%
No. of Companies
I t was perhaps unsurprishg to find that there was a correspondhg rise in the niimber of
those companies that ody occupied amphitheatem throughout the year and did not tent during the sumrner.
Year 1847 1857 1867 1877 1887
36
17
1897
35
26
O
No. of Companies 1 O
38 31
8 10
%
10
That the height of drcus building oarirred h m the late 1850s to the 1880s helps to explain this pattern. Based on the Enz's reports, it is clear that at le= menty-three new
'%ased on a decennial sampie coliected h
UIbid.
m the Era, 1847-1897seasons.
69 amphitheatess had been cc~stnictedby the end of the 1850s, a figure which had increased dramaticaiiy to at least fifky-nine by the end of the 1û6ûs." Commenting on the visible rise in building in South Shields, North Shields, Sunderland and
Middlesborough, one conternporary was moved to wxite in 1866 that *the inmase in these places of amusement has been something asmnishing within the last fèw years?
A decade later Charlie Keith built six amphitheams rhroughout the north of the muntry
from Douglas on the Isle of Man to Southport to H a M k That Kath's focused his empirebuilding in these areas reflected a larger aaid w i t h the d e . As the appendix shows, Lancashire, a county which expedenced much amphitheater development, rralired the greatest average proportion of drcws:31%;meanwhile Yorkshire was a cl-
ninner-up
since it amacted an average of 29%of all cireuses throughout the period, many of which,
Iike Keith's, found accommodation in the towns-
While these figures in the rables are helpfd in terms of shedding light on major patterns in the made, it should be noted that tabla 2.2 and 2.3 take for granted that a proportion of companies occupied either permanenVsemi-permanent venues or tenting
grounds but, either way, cannot be determined exactiy, as table 2.4 shows:
-
-
- .
"see Era, 1850-70.1 have counted the nurnber of buildings baseci
on newspaper reports. It is, however, undear whether these were d e n structuries buüt for the season or permanent buildings that lasteci beyond it. ""Theatricaf and Concert Halls in the North of England,' Em, 16 Sept 1866,14; cf. appendor induded at the end of this thesis.
Table 2.4: Year
Unknown Chcuses %
No. Unknown
If we assume (and there is no reason not to) that these paenmges can be scattenxl evenly across our ejnsting categories of "tenting,"'combined" and "residential,"we End the pattern supports the argument that there was an incrase in tesidency. It is perfecdy
possible that diis pattern of residency, involving much investmmt for hose managers who consaucted their own arnphitheaters, causeci a correspondhg increase cwer time in the
nurnber of companies that wmt out of business,as rable 2.5 suggests: Table 2.5:
Year
D i s s o M Circus Canp;iriies %
No. Dissolved
What did these structures Look üke? Wth himself designed his own buildings
which were p r i m d y made out of wocxi. In fàct, by F e b q 1882,he reœived patent protection for his so-called invention, which had k e n mereiy a variation on the old theme of portable theaters. His design consisteci of
convertible vehides phceci in a arcle with a roof brmed by erecting a pole in the centre, which supports a ccner secured by ropes to rings B m d to the rooS of the ~ehicies.'~
71 It concained "rnoveable seats, shutters, etc [And] spaces are lefr in the circus fw the
entrance and exit of the horses, etc., and a portico with p y office and other moveabIe buildings may be fitte~i-"~'Whiîe the cost of ccmst~ccing such a bdding was not induded in its description,it is lmown that these structurts were cheaper to build than
permanent ones. Nthough not designed h m Keith's plans, Newsmne's c i r a s at Blackburn was said to have been built for a cost of "about £200" in 1867." Three
decades later when Mr Clarke proposeci to buîid a temporarg wooden circus at Dover, "he supposed the building wodd c m b3ûû or m."" Such buildings, iike IüPeKdths ' at Southport, could hold 250 persons in the private boxes and stalls, 800 in the pit and
1,000in the gallery? These M o n s suggested that the circus was not tu fkom the
theater in its creation of a mdti-layered stranun of classes in the auditorium." More subsrantid structures,which were built in this period, held an even -ter
number of patrons. Pinder's circus,for srampie, was erected in Novembet of 1877 and was reputed to be able to hold an audience of 2,500 persans? The dimensions of the building were 120 feet long by 100 feet wide and the ring measured 42 feet in niameter, a rneasurement which acmrding to Speaight beaune standardized in thls period.= E v m
"~bid.
""Blackburn,"Era, 14 J d y 1867, 12.
'su,AHC, clipping, c.1898, ?Dover Town Cound". m'Southport,"Era, 6 January 1878,18.
"sec Kwint,chapter 2. n"Bradford,"Era, 4 November 1877,7.
DSp&ght,
44.
more impfessive was Newsorne's Circus at Glasgow, which was mnstructed in the same season and could accommodate an audience o f 3,000 people." Newsome boasted that
the stalls are placed at the west end [of the circus] and are fit& with ebony chairs, upholsmcd in crimson d v e t with which materiaï the ring fènce is also covered. Imrriediate4y behind the staiis are the second seats and to the right and lefi is the pit h m which a promenade ~ t a i d dong s each side o f the house whüe the entire east end is oaripied by the saiiery*"
Other additions distinguished this building h m Kdth's design fw a temporarg construction. That is, the building is lighted up with gas jets and a handsome chandeiier conaining 210 jets..[Furt&ermore] stabling has been pmvided for 50
h~rses.~ Tradesmen, both local and regional, were employed in the construction of Newsome's
Glasgow building. M. Penton of Edinburgh built the drcus f b m the pians of Mr McAndis, the architect, and Messrs. C. Jenner and Co. of Edinbugh designeci the upholstery w U e Messrs. E. Whanne and Co. of Glasgow looked
afm the Lighting arrangemen4 aii of
which suggested an important point of wmection betweai the Iocal/regional eamomy
and the resident circus." The cost o f employing labor and supplia in the COllStruction of such a building was hi&. Fred Ginnett was said to have built his "~apacious
hippodromenat Brighton in 1876 for £4,000. Such a place was reporteci to be not only
24"Glasg~," Era. 25 November 1877, 19.
=Ibid.
%id.
nIbid.
capacious but also comfortabie an4 unlike the temporary stnictures,
"had hot air pipes
which wiU be introduced to warm the audience in cold weather?'
If ody b m a financiai point of view, it b e h o a d the manager either to bave his own company perfom in the building or to sublet it ro another Company. In instances
when both plans Wied and these buildings stood vacant, managers were made vufnerable and some encountered dire h d a l cüftldties as a result. For example, show after building an amphitheater in Bolton in 1878,Messr. Charles Adams attempted oo Bnd lessees fkom the end of May, after his own company finished its winter engagernent at the
building. Only in mid-June did he sucœed in rmting the premises. Shody akmards, however, he dismantled the a'rcus and sold it Cor parts, presumabiy because he did nor want to mmunter more financial tisk. Propercies induding "30,000 ker of floortxiards, 16,000 k t of tongued boards, 8,500
ket of pine posû and iafPrs..as weU as, smirs,
doors and windows" were among the items he sold? Meanwhile, in Nortingham, Messr. Weldon, who erected a circus in that a t y during the pmvious February of 1877, found that because he was "underdistraint of rent," he had to seii at auction "thestud of horses
and properties connected with the e~rablishment.~ That drcus companies were constandy going out of business throughout the cenniry did not help marms. According to the decennial sample, it is dear that afrer 1857, this became a pattem. (See table 2.5)
For the manager who ammpted to get Iessees fbr bis amphitheater or organize a troupe on his own, this Buctuating pattern hardly helped his amfidence in the business and pobsibly helped b
="A
New Ci-
~ about g the dosure of some buildings. Observlng such "specgcular"
for Brighton,"Era, 8 October 1876,9.
="To Builders, T i r dealers, etc,"Em, 4 August 1878,15. '"Sale of Circus Property," Enz, 2 June 1878,13.
Mures among amphitheater m e r s , Chariie Wth remarked, "it is dangerous [for drcw proprietors] to dabble in brick and mortar [or wood]."' R e g a d e s , many did. And this trend had enormous implications in terms ofthe o v e d concentration of the circus in aisthg buildings, rather than mts,and in dties
and towns, rather than rurai a r a s throughout the caiendar year. Taking ïancashite,which was
the most denseiy covered region for àrcus entertahment,as an example, it is dear
that bemmm 1847 and 1897 the inhabitants of the county's major tmms, notabiy
Manchester and Liverpool, were incrcssingiy arposed to the drcus? the Manchester public had the opporninity of seeing 120 drcus perfi,rmances in 184p, a figure which rose to 134 during 1857. The number of pedbrmances Wer increaseâ to 348 in 1867 largely because of the residency of Franconi's and then Newsome's companies in that city during this season. The figures dropped over the n a dwee decennïd periods so that by 1887, only 252 performances took place, a figure that further Mi to 204 by 1897.
Liverpool experienced a similar pattern: 108 shows were given in 1867,a figure which
rose to 398 in 1877 iargely b u s e of the Iong-tem residence of Newsome's and Hengier's in chat aty. hlthough the figure HIdram;itiically to 192 performances in 1887, it inaeased to 264 during 1897.
The pattern of dedine during the last two dccades of the
century in these two aties may have been linked to the aMilability of other similar
32Thesefigures are denved from fmding the number of weeks each Company perfbrmed in the tom, mdtiplying rhis number by six (since modt troupes performed on every day of the week except for Sunday) and then, multiplying this figure by two (since most troupes perfbrmed both during the moniing and evening). Source: Era, "Manchester,""LiverpooInb r pend between 1847/8 and 1897B. =E.g.: Batty's performed in Manchester for 10 w&: 10~6~2=120. The lamr two figures indicate that the circus Perfomed six days a week and twiœ daily (during a matinee and evening performance). Sunday was the oniy dag in the week that no performances were given.
75 entertainments, such as wvariety." These hdin&s conceming Lancashire are r
d
d in
the data of other populated areas, such as Yorkshire, Wimvidshire and Northumberland
which bliowed a simiiar pattern, aibeit on a smaiier scde, as the appendix shows.
m. The flow of labor in the circus trade correspondeci to the exigenaes of this situation. Artists' engagements with the mident Qrcus might last for a week, a mont., o r an entire season. As such,
the artists' engagement with the A
of the amphitheater
was more flexible than with the manager of the tenting troupe. This was iargeiy due co
the iàct rhat the latter had neither the t h e nor the rcsouroes to -gage new talent while on tour and instead required a constant group of artisçs which perfbrmed in a set program. To meet the demands of the residency ~pstem~which required a more active mm-over of dent, both artists and managers had to use the newiy developing srmcnires within the worid of commerciaiized entertainment,
Agentr who increasingly emerged h m the mid-185QP h e l p i to fill employment
gaps. This agent systern evolved at a t h e when the integration of a r t i s ~into ~ 6riendly societies also occurred. In fàct, in the han& of the Dramatic, Equestrian and Musical Sick
Fund, which was established in 1855, the agent system and the fiiendly d e t y were combined. Both however ;tfkcted artists of the highest tier rather than the rank and file
who could not afford membership fies nor booking fees that might start at 1s. For those who could afford them, the Agency adverrised in the Era that artists "are respeafully inforrned that the abow association is ready to transct aii agency business..and dispatch
in an honorable way at reduced charges, the p r d t s of which go into a h d to support
members in sickness and misfomuie?
Mier payment of the initial membemhip kes, the
ariist was also obliged to give the manager a percentage of his salary but just
how much
of a cut was given is unknown and probably v a r i d acmrding to the araiJt's salary. For many agents, havuig control of a particular aftiStPscareer provideci than witb a degrre of Stans and
proprietoriai daim, as weii as mon*
Mr John
of E i e r o y Square in
London went so îâr as to take out an advertisement in the Era that stipulaad that "he is the only authorized director and manager of Picco [the minsPel and that] any
engagement,contract o r agreement [must bel entend Into wlth...[ him],' suggesting the degree to which artists, Iike Picco, were both protected by and responsible to a middleman.35 W e , on the one hand, the agent provideci protection h m arploitative empfoyment pfactices, he also,on the other, serveci a> l
m whatevet bonds may have
formerly aristed between the circus manager and artist. But this reflected a common predicament for many other kinds of performers who were di en^ of such agenaes as
those begun by "Arthur Diilion, Dramatic Agent" in Covent Garden o r "MrFranklin's Drarnatic ~gencf in Manchester in the m i d - 1 8 5 0 ~ . ~
For the rank and fiie mmanbers who couid not f i r d to join an agency, hfbnnal friendship nerworks provideci information about engagemens, as the previous chapter has
shown. More reüably, howemr, artists, if they were literate, tumeci to the job section of
YnGeneralDrarnatic,Equesaian and Musical Agency," Em, 22 July 1855, 1. 35nPicco-N~tice," Enz, 14 June 1857, 10;see also "'Piam,The B h d Minsrrei,"Era, 10 August 1856, 1 0 for an ewmple o f breach o f employer-agent contracts. While Gay claimeci that thete was a binding contract between him and Picco, the Court ruied that "Piam couid not be cornpeiied to [consentto if], for he was no party [initially] to [the said contract]."ALthough it was not mentimeci in the prcps report, the question about how much Picco, as an Iralian, understood the terms of the agrremmt which were pfesumably in English might have been an importuit issue in t e m of the outwme of the case. j6see Tracy C. Davis, Actresses As
Culture (London, 1991), 42.
WOrkfng Wmmm Zkir S
o c f a l I w
fn VictOtJcln
77 the E r . b r Wrmation about work Charles Haigler, fbr example, was keen to Bnd the whereabouo of Mr Haywood, the equestrian, JO thac "hecan joui [the troupe at Wfh] immediately.' Sometimes managers requested that amtes & vistes (or BUiag ouds with photograph pomaits mounted on than) be sent dong with mms b r employment,
How~rer,some artists cornplainecl that managers were ofkm @tg "cartes even when the stamps
have beem provideci h r the purpax?
of Ming to retum the Altematmety, the
performers themselvcs made their time-tabie known to the circus community by adverrishg in the Era's "jobswanred" section when they were k e to und&
a new
engagement with a new manager. As a meam of increasing their maktabiiity, t h q o
h
drew attention to the diversity of th& dents. For example, when M. Ozmond and Mdm.
Ozmond placed an advertisernent in the Era ~ 8 t i n gthat they were open to an engagement for elastic-wire performances9they noted that M. Omiond "cane r r n as a
clown, if needed.-
Mr Hogini and his h d y onend an even greater Yariety of skiiis in
their advertïsement which srated that chey, "havingcondudeci a three-year engagement with Mt Hengler will be at Liberty for an engagement"and "cmperform on the monster globe, chair, single perch, stiits..and as taiking clowns, jug%iers9tumblers and ~ a u i t e r s . ~
SpeQalty artists often found themselves engaged in a stream of short-term
contra-
which suited the residency system. Once their act was seen by one community
and was no longer novel, the artist simply fbmd employment with another troupe elsewhere. For srample, b e e n 30 June and 20 October 1878, Edwin Croueste, the
--
''Ers, 23 September 1860, 1. %TheCarte de V i e Nuisance: To the Editor of the Ela," Era, 10 Deamber 1876,6. 39Era,3 October 1858, 1. ''Era, 23 September 1860, 1.
down, worked with six companies: Aaato and AUen's at Sunderland, the Pavllion Circus at Lincoln, Stoodley and Harmston's at Nottingham, Keith's at Southport, Tournaire and
Reed's at Guemsqr and Charles Adam's at Scubomug&,whichwere all resident
companies4' His engagement at these amphitheaters lasteci fiom one to six weeks. proof of his popularity, Keich empioyed him for a m w e e k engagement in August, a key holiday period, in the
sort
town of Southport. Ar each of the places where he
performed, Croueste was the head of "a powerful army of downs,"as one reporter observing the Nortingham show cornrnented.o Croueste was in
so much demand in this
season that the manager of the Coiosseum Circus at Chelanham attempted to secure an engagement with him for the following winter season by advertising in the Era in
September that he was needed, dong with Abe Danieis, the musical d m , to complete the Company w h w e winter season was to begin on 4 November?
The hperative to get novel acts was a central concern a,the resident circus manager. If managers M e d to accompkh this, as Mrs. Newsome, now the sole proprïetres of Newsome's, was accused of doing by the CàrlfsfeE x a m i w , they ran the risk of lming pubiic support.* During the Chrismias season of 1866,a reporter for the newspaper wrote that he had witnessed Newçome's drcrus twice and comphed:
Era, 2 June 1878, 7; "Lincoh," Era, 9 June 1878, 8;''Nottingham,"Eru, 30 June 1878, 9; "Southport,"Era, 4 August 1878,7; ibid., 11 August 1878,7; "Guemsey," Era, 18 August 1878, 6; ibid., 25 August 1878, 7; ibid., 1 September 1878, 7; ibid, 8 September 1878, 7; "Scarborough,"E r . , 29 September 1878, 9; ibid., 6 October 1878, 9; ibid., 13 October 1878, 8; ibid-, 20 October 1878, 8.
43Wanted,n Eru, 15 September 1878,19.
"In contras, the Era reporter F e a hvorable review of Newsome's drcus in Carlisle stating that "the principal novelty has been the pantomime which has gone off remarkably well ... the patronage and presence of W.H. Hogron, Esq., MX, has been stcoorded to the establishment during the part weekudted in "Carkle,"Era, 28 Jan1866, 12.
w e have seen ail th& *difbmt*perfi,rmances so o h t&atsome of them are necessariiy tiresorne a,wirnessBa importantly suggsting char some patrons w a i t to the drccis more tban once during a
single season. As a consequace of this dtidsm, Mr HairgBthe agent for Mdm. Newsome, withdrew the company's advertisements h m the Euzmfner. Sevaal opeeks
later, Mr Henry had a change of hearr and allowed new advertisemens to be printed in the newspaper announcing "an entire change of program.
The same reporter lamenteci
upon his r e m to witnes the "new program"that "itamounted ody to a reshufEing...the
season is flat."" The crîtidsm supportai Keith's comment that, with the residency system, "the visitor fkquents [the amphitheater] more tlmes in a week and he becornes a better judge of our b u s i n e ~ s -Knowing ~ the importance of f k h n d t i e s and wishing
to cultivate on-goingsupport among his patrons, Mr Transfield promiseci the audiaice on the opening night ofhis amphitheater in Hyde in 1898 that "therewould be an entire change of program weekty [loud appiause]."a
The public not only demanded a rapid tum-over of a m at the resident drcus but also a high standard in th& contents. For this reason, Hunter Mande, "aclassical /ester," who had finished an engagement with Myers's American Circus suggested in "a word to equestrian managers,"a note which appeared in the Era and which huictioned as a "job
wanted" advertisement, that
""Newsome's Circus,"CarIik& B u m f w , 27 Jan. 1866, 3. 1 wish to thank Matthew Cragoe for this rekrence. '?l%e Circus and
Ourselves,"CarlisGe Examiner, 3 Febniary 1û66,3.
if [pu]inquire which of aü the downs now tmeihg is most elegam and concise in language most chaste in senpiment, most original in idcas...gou will find the answer is Hunter Mantle?
-
Clowns had a particularly ciiflicult time cultivating a p p d since, not only were th&
jokes thought to be "staie," they were also sometimes thought to be rude. Ghen what he perceiveci ta be the public's increasingiy aiticai and devated rasteç, Quinette caiied fbr
£iil the vacanaes at his Southport amphitheater in the 18ûO~.'~
IV. i.
The public's positive judgement of the building and of the company that perhrmed in it was important to the survivai of both. And populat support sometimes derived h m the belief that the weU-managed amphitheater, as an escdAished part of the
town, conrributed to the common good. It was not unwmmon br m;ryors and other public dignitaries to preside at opening nights, as the cirrsus proprietor, Chariie Wth,
observed." Furthemore, as a fonn of rational (and cheap) enteminment, the brw was said to be a needful aitemative to other brins of social intercourse, such as drinking.
Such a comment was made by the Town Councii in 1865 at Middlesborough where, it was said, "drunkennesswas a besetting
mA Word to Equesîxian Managers,"Era, 26 August
1860,l.
51"Quinette's,nEra, 8 September 1888,20.
'%n Engüsh Amphitheatre,"Era, I l Jan. 1863,10. ""ML Newsome's Circus,"Era, 15 October 1865,l l J t is curious that the paper mistakeniy rekrred to Mr. rather than Madame Newsome's cirnis.
it seems fiom the records of misdemeanors that convicticms fbr that o&ce decRased by 152 cases. It was officiaily staoed that [this] was deady traad to the coumeracting i d u a i c e of a weiiumducted piaœ of
amusement.-.Newsome's
In sum, Newsome's was "a testimonial to the moral Usefijness of a properfy conducted a d i i b i t i ~ n .Many ~ years later, Aberdeen's &tes went so fàr as ta honour the Cook
Brothers at a dinner for the sarne reason. The City Corncilman, Wiiiiam Paul, who presided mer the event believed that aii would be agreed that it was desirous to wean the people from the public house [since the drink trade b ever becoming an increasing e d in this City] and that this could best be done by pfoviding for them iegitimate and proper enrefEainments such as have been given by the Messrs. Cook in
their ciras.% Crudely put, well-estabiîshed and "rationalnpublic amusements such as those found in die concert room, assmibly room and theater, as weU as the amphitheiltier, were o
h
consmed by those concemed with proprieîy as important detement h m the public's enjoyrnent of dnnk, for example. A decade earlier, the argument was employed by those witnesser appearing before the Select Cornmittee on Public Houses in
1853. Rev.John Clay, for example, sugge~ted
that in his own community, Preston, there were not enough rational recreations t&at
would produce such desirable enecS. Instead, "thepublic houses are cursing this p l a ~ e . "Recaliing ~ some curiosity mm chat were set-up in Preston d d e s eariier, he
added that such displays would be welcome again, as they drew together "the poor
"Ibid. Tbid.
'"~omplimentarg Dinner to the Brothers Coolce,"ara, 3 Feb. 1878,7. n
~Select ~ Cornmittee , Report
on Public Houes, xmwü, (1853),ln.6408.
82
working man, the worlang dass boy, and the higher classes also?
It was thus assumeci
that the existence of such rooms on a permanent or s e m i - m e n t basis provideci cheap entertainment for a broad range of the public the*
discouraging popular participation
in vice-riddm aCtMties. In keeping with Samuel smiled Mef that 'the interests of capidists and labourers are identical,"many beiieved that the drcus ofked the community a h a d e s s relief h m work; of course, this was a view that Mr Sleary who
famousiy said that "peoplemutht be amuthed [sic]" also oook*
ii. But the &cus troupe's tesidencg was not without its problems. In particuiar, peag jealousies stirred within the performance wmmunity as estabiished theater managers
viewed the amphitheater as a rhreat to their business, dmaccing h m the number of
specmtors that popdateci their own houses. One way of registering this opposition was through a process of reporthg *informationsnto local magistrates. These "init0nnatio11sn
or cornplaints were cornmonly registered by local theater managers d e n chose theatlid cireuses presented ciramatic pieces or pantomimes without a stage piay liceme and were
thus, in violation of the Theatre Reguiations Act of f -3.
For the theater manager who
was concemed with protecting his local conml over the drama, the reporting of such a
violation was deemed entirely necessacy. While the satute did not appfy to tents or
"Ibid.
wickens,Hard Times, 32,
83 booths, it could be seen to apply to arnphitheaters which were regmieci as more or l a s
permanent? In the event of a court hearing both warring W o n s - the managers of the drnis
-
and of the theater were caught up in the d S d t proccss of supplying the court with proof. Rather than hard evidence, witnesses ofken gave highly-co10red impressions of the
problern surrounding the case. At Sheffield in 1863, the Sanger Brothers found themselves, iike other cVcus managers of the pexiod, Eifed with the threat of paying fines for performances that, they b e l i d , lay entirely outside the scope of the 1843 h , 6 ' Their case was initiateci by Mr Pin of the Theatre Rogal who dthem of perfbTII1iZ1g a stage play d e d Blue Beard without a dramatic liceme.
In pleading the case beEore the
Sheffield Magistrates, Mr Branson, the soliator for the plainti& appealed to the court for
the Brothers to pay "asum not exceeding 510 b r every &y" that the law was b r o h . Importantfy, said Mr Branson, the Sangers' piaœ was no booh nor tent. It was, he believed, "apermanent building although at present it was ody buiit of wood" and
6aIhe question arose. for example, in Fredericks v. Payne in 1862 and it was decided that "abooth was not a place"according ta 6/7Vic. c.68. see "TravellingTheatre,"Era, 16 Novernber 1862, 6.
cursory glance through the entmainment section of the provinciai and national papers in this p e n d will show numemus other s i m k cases. For example, see "InformationAgainst the Proprietor of Hengler's Circus,' Em, 14 April1861, 11; "The Theatre versus The Circus,"Sto&m HerSoutb Durbarn d CGeueI;arrdAdtiierçtser,27 January 1865, 3; "Stockton:AIleged Infiingement of Act Reiaîing to Stage Plays," DarCingtotz Tekgrapb, 28 January 1865, 2; "The Case Againsî die Aihambra," Era, 15 January 1865, 14; "PehnningStage Plays without a License," Era, 28 March 1869,13; "ApriI- PoweiI's Circus,"Era, 2 January 1870, 2;"What is a Stage Play?," Era, 29 January 1871, 12;%portant Circus Case," Era, 18 June 1892, 15; 'Stage Play at Clrcuses," Eru, 17 December 1892, 12; c f . "Chuses and Dramatic Licenses," EM,3 Deœmber 1892, 12. It is signincant that many of these cases were brought to court during the ChriPrnias season when b t h the circus and theater commody pfe~entedpantomimes. Importantiy, most of these cases were dismissed due to iack of proof. 6 ' J ~ sa t
84
therefore a threat to Mr Pin's Livelihood because of its lkœd statu^.^ John Lauri, the key informer who t d e d at the hearing on the side of the plaina, was "a pmotessonai PantOmimist with thirry years arpaiencenand was ar that t h e ,
in the anploy of Mr Pitt
Lauri said that Mr Pin had sait him to observe the events in the ring. For the Bench, the
key question underlying the case was "didthe Sangers have a stage on which this pantomime was perfi~rrned?"~~ If they did, then the 1843 law might be seen 00 have been
broken. That Ïs, the 1843 Act stated that all places of public enterÉainment which contained stages were theaters and therefore in need of a theatncai liceme if plaps were pehrmed within their waiis. Upon king asked the question, ïauri responded: "Anytbing
on which you c m perfi,rrn is a s t a g e . The prosecution's soiicitor sarcasticaüy reuiforced that "'AU the world's a stage' (laughter)?
While the performance was
conducteci in a ring fiiied with sawdust, not a stage, it nevertheles possessed aii the &arameristics of a thearicai pantomime with its transformation scene and music, said Laun. He fùrther added that aithough there were horses, which made the perfbfmance
seem iike an equestrian spectacie, "the chi& part of the enhibition was the p a n t ~ m i m e . ~ "Could such a performance have taken place at the Theatre Royal? asked Mr Dixon, the
magisuate. lauri responded, '7 don't think our stage is large enough. (laughter)?' While the case was dismissed because the witness could p d d e no reasonable evidence
6"'Theatrev. The Circus,"Era, 4 January 1863,5. 631bid.
'9bid. '%id. '%id. 671bid.
85
h r the position t h t the Sangers broke the law, Mr Pitt and his infbrmer, Mr Iauri, were mticized by the SheffieId maghrates for their efforts to proseCute the Sanger Brothers:
1 can ody express my regre...t that Mr Pitt shodd have exhibitecl such a keling against any pcuty as to try to deprive him of the mcuis of getang an honest iivelihood.68
E m o t i o d in tone and -tic
in pfesentation, the Pitt-Sanger case drew
attention to the extent to which the mident c h u s couid simultaneously stir support and hostiiity h m the community. This
was instructive without being unique. Other
cases arose h m similar situations inwlvhg jeaious theater manages who believed chat the resident circus infnnged on their le@ rights over spoken drama, For this reason, sorne circus managers sought to preempt these hostile legai actions by appkying for a license to perform a pantomime, which containeci dialogue, before the production openeci." At Landport in 1869, for example, Mr Stephen W iUiam Helby made such an
application which was immediately opposed by H. Rudey of the Theatre Royai who, iike Ur Pitt, wished to protect his rights over the spoken drama. Rudey's soliator, Mr Ford,
"contendecithat the gianting of these ficenses to piaces of this description muid be a most efkcaial mode of lowering the dramaQOHe added that
if this iicense were granteci, it muid make the Theam Royal, which was weilconducted, take a second rate place and ultimately be brought d m a> a level with the other places of amusement in the borough. If theg iicensed this place, where wodd they stop?'<
#For such cases see, "Bolton,"Era, 10 May 1868, 13; "Bolton,'Era, 24 January 1869, 11; "Cooke's Circus,"Era, 12 -ber 1869, 11; "Refusal of a Dramatic Liœnse," Era, 3 November 1878, 4;"CiKiuses and Dramatic Licenses,"Era, 3 Deœmber 1892, 12. 7m~pplication for a Theatrical License for the Circus, Landport,"Era, 27 June 1869, 13.
86
The magistrates rejected this argument and granteci the stage play iicense to Helby, rcasoning char "thiswas a tmun which was g r e a e extending its population and should have other places under the supenision of the i&@strate~.~ in such a case, the Liœnse symbotized more than just the right a> perform stage plays or pantomimes;it represe!nted the a p p d which
the Iegal authorities bescawed on the weii-amducted amphitheater, an
approval which riied many theatrid managers, particuLarïy th-
at the Theares RDgal
who wished to hold on to those monopolistic privileges which since 1843 had ben revoked. This approML was intricately tied to the fact that in many populous towns, like Sheffield and Landport, local authoritier acceptexi the widespread need for weIisonducted
amusement.
iii.
Wekonducted also implied wekonstmcted. Howewx commodious and cornfortable these places seerned, some of hem posed a real risk to audiences. The collapsing of balconies and galleries was not an unlaiown occutrence and h r this reaxni,
managers were particularly keen m reassure their patrons that their buildings were sound structures and made from quality materiais. Yet,such assurances
- even h m respected
and well-known managers - were mere hyperbole when accidents ocnirred. In the event, manages had to rnake serious repairs to theh buildings, raïse raise&
for the relatives of
the injured and dead, as well as answer serious legal charges of negügence. Charles
Hengler found himseif in such a position in Ocmber of 1872 when one pemon died and at least forty o r n f r y people were seriousty injured anei "oneof the side @des on which
were seated about one-hundredand Mky persons of both sexesnfeil? O&ring a rare insight h a > (at least part of) a circus audience, the local papas printed a pattiaî list of the victims of the accident at Hengler's cinrus. They indudeci:
George Booth Thomas Hanson Jane Hanson (wik) Angela Gambels EUen Barker MaryAnnPitrlcins Thomas WOOdhouse
W i l l i a m Gould George Hunt Thomas Grey Mary Grey (daughter) Thomas Needham John Breckenbridge RusseU Alilan Scott George H m t Harry Gillot Robert Knewwshaw
fbmace man white mecal smith warehouse woman ? ?
scholar ? razorgrinder h h salesman ?
While most of the viceims sufféred injuries ranging h m "dislocationsof the anklento
"brokenlegs," Robert Knewwshaw died in hospitaî afçer having "sustained a fracnue of the spine."" Specuiation about what cawd the eofiapse ran high. Accordhg to the
foreman, Richard Beeves, who acannined the building aftu the accident, the hemy min
"Fall of A Gallery at Hengler's Circus, She[ndd," SkfleU Dai& Te&ègmpb, 22 Ociober 1872, 7. ''"Faif of A Gallery at Hengler's Circus, Sheiiidd,"S-eeld Dai& Tekqpzpb, 22 October 1872,7;"Thek c i d m t at Hengier's Circus,"Sbe@dkiDai(Iv Te-qpb, 23 Occ~ber 1872,S;Census of England and W b (bndon, 1871), *Sheffield,"RG10/4681,53; RC lO/4684,59;RG1O/4684, 62;RG1O/4689, 53; RG/4676,98;RG10/4678,56.
T h e Arcident at Hengler's Circus,"S&@eCd Dai& Te&apb,
23 October 1872,3.
that had recendy fallen caused the wood from which the d e r y was consvucted to " buckle or give way at the centre."76 The rain had also 'drawn the beuen out of the monice at the foot of the
balcony."" But the fact that the "mortice w u not of niffiicient depth' caused muiy to doubt the suuctural soundness of the building in the
fint place, regarciles of the weather conditions. Puning
fonh its own theory, the Enz reported that it is believed that [the accident] was the r e d t of one portion of the building rening on what is known as ' made ground' composed primdy of loose debris and
mbbish." At the coroner's inquen, one c i r a proprinor called Mr Moore testified that he had been in the business for twenty five years and that
during that time he had never had an accident of th[is] kind before. It w u his deliberare opinion that if the circus had been coasuucted according ro rhe specifications in the plam, the accident would not have happened." Yet, whatever Moore's professional opinion, Charles Hengler wened thar he, too, had been in the
business for menty-five yeus and had never had an accident of this kind. Furthemore, "he has had myiy circuses b d t on the same principle as this one?' One local reporter chimed in diat
"Mr
Hengler, his family and establishment are weIl-known and on this account considerable sympathy
will be felr for him."' Strangely, the
""The Fatal Accident at Hengler's Circus,"SkfiIdundRotbe~humIndppendent, 28 November 1872,3.
78"AlarmingAccident in a C i r w at Sheffield," Era, 27 October 1872,7. ""The Fatal Accident at Hengler's Cirnû," ShefiIdand RotherhumIndependent, 28 Novernber 1872,3.
'OnFall of a Gallery at Hengler's Circus, Sheffield,' SheffieIdDady Telegrqh, 22 October 1877,7.
"Ibid.
89
commentator Eiüed to d
e mention of what steps were to be taken to help the grfeving
fàmilies o f the victims and instead added that, "[theaccident] bas cast a gloorn over [Hengier's] present and what promiseci to be a most successfui visit to ShefBdd." Another reporter M e r stated that "generalcegret will be Mt that so hannless and yet so interesring a place wül be dased
- let us hope oniy temporady - a f k this we&-
Standing in judgement mer the aiminal charges of negligence against Hengler, the jury presiding over the case at the coroner's inqugt decided that whiie Mr Hender was innocent, it did behoove hirn and aii other c h u s managers to have th& snuctures "inspecteciby the Bofough Sumepr or some other competenc officiai before king
opened to the public in order to prevent such accidents for the funw."'13 To be stue,
such orders had, in the future, an impomnt reguiative e&ct that, if fbliowed, helped to make the circus a more respectable place to visit than it otherwise had k e n . Not only did buildings have to be properly built Tor structural soundness but they also had to be properiy rnainrained for fire saf'ety, as wdl as good g e n d upkeep and
sanitation. Amphitheater owners found that the process o f leasing, which was becoming
increasingly common within the circus world, was also ben>ming a mmplicated and tense
affair. in some instances, the lesee compromised the very repuation that so many amphitheater managers sauggled to attain. To be sure, thce was a risk that the m e r ' s
finanaal invesmient might diminish in d u e . The Sanger Brothers,for example, who managed Astiey's Amphitheatre went on a Eusopean tour in 1879,leaPing th& buiiding in the hands of Mr Glover, the actor-manager, who used it to ptesent theatrical pmductions, induding Miaz@pu, &mru F b y d and May M m ,or % Vfctssftudesof a Ssrclont Girl.
OnTheFatal Acddent at Hengler's Cirrus,"SbeBeCd and Rotberbarn Independent, 28 November 1872, 3.
90 Whiie the circus managers were away, Thomas Ve&y of the Lord Chamberfain's Offiœ
who was in charge of inspecting the condition of the theams visiteci the house; pcissing building inspection was a requirement, among 0th- thlnw, for the r e n d of the stage play Ucense which the amphitheater heldmM He hiund that since his last visit to the
theater the year before "therehad been no imprwement in the arrangements for...genefal comfort and conveniencenand specifically indicated that the "publicwater dosets are in a
very bad condition?
When John Sanger got back h m his tour, he replieci ta the Lord
Chamberlain's Office by saying, 1 have just remmeci from Austsia to hear with regret that p u had cornplaints to make rrspcctingAstiey's ...but reallp the neglezt is not of our own making. W e sublet the theatre to Mt Glover who agreed to keep the place in chomugh deanlines and repaireM
Were the problems really of GIover's making? As Vedy's report indicated, suggestions for improvemens on the building had been made by him to the San-
one year eariier.
Since the Sanger Brothers did not make the changes he suggested, the building's
probiems were simply passed on to - and possibly made worse by
- G1me.r. The Lord
Chamberlain shrewdly responded by suggesting that cwo stage play Lioaises be issued to
-On this point, see John Russell Stephens, Tbe Censmbfp of tbe Englisb Druma, 18241901,(Cambridge, 1980), 13-14.This was made a feQuirement by the Lord Chamberfain's Office in 1857.Inspection was c o n d u d by the Exarniner who was accompanied by a surveyor. In the provinces, it was done by the equmalent licetlsing authorities. By 1878, such insperîions had been delegated to the Metroplitan Board of Works (MBW) and the Lord Chamberiaïn's Office. There was, howerrw, much wnfirsion about the M B V s role and it seems Verily phjeci a iarger part at this time in the inspection of Astley's.
"PRO, LC 7 25,LC Inspection Reports, 15 Septeskm 1879,ktœr to S. P01lsonbg Fane f&rn Thomas Veriiy. 'PRO, LC 7 25,LC In-Letîers, Letrer h m John Sanger a, the Lord Chamkriain's Office, Spencer Ponsonby Fane, Comptrokr, 22 Sept& 1879.
91 the theater, one to Messis. John and George Sanger and the other to dKir tenant,ff In any case, irnpmvemens had to be made a,the building by the owners if it was a, remain
open and indeed, they were initiateci several years later "at a cost of 56,000, the main body of which related to f h apparatus,"said George Sanger into whose han& the house had Men.pUltimately however his inability a> satisfy
the demands of the London County
Council c o m p e k d George Sanger to dose Astley's in 1893,purcing an end to i s 125 year existence. Meanwhile, in the provinces, a muniapal impmvement cornmittee u s e inspecteci theatrid building and amphitheaters and muid recommend 00 the magisaatc
that a stage play license, if the manager heid one, be m k e d in the event the buiiding in
question did not meet safèty and hygiene d e s . Aitemativeiy, if it did not hold a stage play license, the building could stül be mndemned or temporady dosed on public health
grounds, as occurred to Mr Pinder's Circus at Merthyr TydPiI in 1869.- Whether the owner of the buiiding occupied it himself with his own cornpany or leased it, he Eacêd important responsibilities not o d y to himseif but the community around him, responsibilities which were enfbrced by reguiative bodies.
iv,
The "invisiblecircusn- which occupied no fOrmal residence and lacked an approved s a t u s within the comrnunity - was regardeci diikrentty. Ia appeafanœ sparked
concened attempts by I
d householders, particulariy a h the 1880s,to expel it h m
vacant pieces of Land. Commoniy m n n d wich "IOW exhibitors,"and "gypsiesnof the
@'PRO, LC 7 27,LC In-Lmers, Letter from WH to the Inrd Chamberlain, recommending that two Licenses be issued.
92 day, as weli as the "sturdy begaars" and "stroiiingminsttels*of previous centuries, the
members of the "invisibleairus"raised public doubts and fears about lawlessnes and immorality. George Smith (of Coahrille), a brmer brickyard manager, ctianneiied diis
sentiment into a fbrceful legislative drive, intaidecl to secure the circumspectlon of
travellea and their nornadic Lihrstyle." Whiie Smith's campaign wiîî be deait with in the next chapter, the cornplaints of wmmunities, particulariy throughout metropoIiran and suburban London, illustrate the extent to which the public's attitudes oowards the c h u s
were shapeâ iargely by c o n t a . In general, cornplaints were rrgisrerrdwith the
Metroplitan PoLice by local propertyholders who feared that the "invisibleci.rcusn
threatened the good of the neighborhood in sePeral di&rent ways. One man in Kilbum asserted that as a consequeme of a showman's prrsence in his area, property values were sure to decline. He cornplaineci of noise and paraicularly "an organ which is dreacihi...[since it) continuaify plag[s]...the same tune mer and over again." The police officer at the Paddington dmsion atcending the cornpiaint srated that
Mr Tyler reporteci that he spent a lifk's savings in the purchase of two hoW... which would be worth S50 per annum but owning to the shows only reaLised S3O each per a n n d '
W.J. Sherlock, the superintendent h m the Finsbury division, noted that "these
lstyled gypsies reside in camvans which are drawn up on waste or uncioseci spus...and
hold exhibitions ofMnous kinds...which ofkn continue for some days.""
Implicidy a
"PRO, HO 45 A33890123, Home Office Files, X Division (Paddington), Police Report from Thomas Madxr, insp., 5 May 1884. q R O , HO 45 &3890/14, Horne Offiœ Files, G Division (Finsbury), Police Report f h n WJ. Sherlock, 2 May 1884.
93 distinction was k i n g drawn between the legitùnate and "visibledrcus" and the "invisible one." That is, as one Metropditan Poiice Report stated,
The shows [belonging to the "invisiblecircusn]stop in such positions for a week or more at a rime and they di&t in that respect h m the ordinary travelling circus or menagerie which only stops br a day or two and then m w e s to another place? On this point, Sherlock lamented, that "the police have no p m r to inmatter?
in this
However he suggested that a k e shodd be extracteci fior a license; and the loml authority shouid have power to stop such shows or exhibitions after they opened if they proved to be a nuisance.*
Such a license, it was argued, wouid have the benefidal efkct of estabkhing how much time the troupe intendeci to rrmain on the land it occupied.
This was important since
"these [unticenseci] parties..sometimes remain for rnonths...[and in the process] are responsible for ruining the mords of young people?
Another superintendent counted
three places in his division of Cambemell where "personsof [the itinerant showman] ciass reside in -vans
which are resorted to by children and young people at night??
Couchhg their arguments in terms of protecting the cornmunity's children h
m moral
corruption, such authonties hoped that these enteminment9 rnight be discouraged. Yet,
"PRO, HO 45 A33890/14, Home Office Files, T Division Speciai Repon, 2 March 1884.
%PRO, HO 45 A33890114, Home Office Fiies, G DMsion (Finsbury), WJ.Sherlock, 2 May 1884.
"PRO, HO 45 A33890/14, Home Office Fiies, R Division (Greenwich), ChM., superintendent, 2 March 1884.
"PRO, HO 45 A33890/14,Horne Office Files P Division (Camberwtll), signature unknown, 2 Mar& 1884.
94 these obsenntions and suggestions for more stringent policies for dalLig with itinerant people
conflicted with the advice given by the Home Secretary, William Harcourt, who called for a statu quo. He argued that "ch;ldren in their humble amusementn ought not to be d h b e d , a suggestion
that was given expression in a police or&r of 28 April1885. His position stemrned from the beiief that
the showmen...unlike the gypsies who may be found guilty of violation of the law...contribute to the innocent entertainment. of those who have too few means of enjoyment to reiieve the monotony of labour and of life and who m o t afford the c o d y amusements which are open to their more fornuiare neîghbors?
Within this discussion wu an inherent disagreement about the extent to which itinerant showmen were seen Y bad for the physical and moral well-beiq of the community. For those ntepayers and others interesred in expelling itinerants from their neighborhoods, it was qreed that the Iack of legal endement given to the police to deal with showmen was a problem. Although powen were never explicitly created for this purpose, the idea that the "invisible &cusW ou& to be and could
be brought within the scope of the law w u an important outgrowth of the system which had almdy brought the "visible circuswwidiin its grasp. Seen from the point of view of some onlooken, there was s t i l i much work to be done in terms of the inregration of the 'invisible cirrusn into respectable society.
v.
The creation of a controlled space wu a key factor in the development of the modem circus. As the cenniry went on, most circuses found rhis controlled space within
9 P R 0 , HO 45 A33890/25, Home Office files, from WVH, Secretary of State, Home Depanment, 6 November 1889.
95 the con=
of the arnphitheater which was a stark mntrast to the Wlagp green"of those
days gone by. The rise ofthe resident drarr which ernerged h m this development
helped to bring about rnany changes in the way the circus and rhe community inmacted.
One important change oawrrd with respect to labor arrangements. UnWoe the tenting cïrms which maintaineci an idmtid program and cast througbout one season, the resident company relied on a mmparatively high turn-over of talent, a fkt which had important impiications in terms of employment opportunities fw artists. In tum, the
public came to demand d e t y in the program, a d e c t i o n of the gmwing appetite for this kind of cornrnerdal enteminment. Just as the drcus program and perflormers needed
the public's approval, so tao did the building chat the Company occupied. Throughout
the cenniry, the resident cinw found iself faced wirh new regulatio~ls which retated to theatrical Licensing, structural soundness, fhe safcry and sanitation. The cornpanp"~ abiiity to respond positiveiy to these new danands s e d a>
b
~ the g circus within the scope of
respectable Society. In the process of this development, the d
e d 'invisible circus' was
seen as an inaeasingly menadng part of the community and mnoened attempts were
made to regulate it, as well, by the end of the cenniry.
CHAPTER THREE
1. Insoduction
In May of 1870,Wüliam Mitchell, a clown, relinquished an engagement with Mt. G i ~ e t to t p e h m in his circus in Leamington. Mitchell
ut sick and returried to his
native Nottingham in order to recwer his health. With no means of support and "his
fiends king few," he b u n d shelvr in a workhouse and slept there for nearly six weeks.' On 22 June, he "raised himseIf and tried to dress but he was too kebie and fiAl back cm
his bed as a corpsen at the age o f 53 yearsO2Mitchell's case was instructive without king unusual. Many circus perbrmers were famikr with poverty and as such many h
d that
their 1 s t place of rehge was the workhow. Yet, this endpoint was not UnmeLSaUy
shared. The historid record does show that some players were luckier than others.
Some received help h m within the drcus pmbsion t b u g h a flexible,ad boc w e l f k system which took two basic fbrms. The fOrm of help which was the most ffmiliar was
the benefit night, a naditional practice inhericed h m the theater at which the proceeds of the performance were given to a particuIar neeciy member of the company? On these
occasions, the theater, its amenities and staE were (in theory) pfovided fke by the
'"Death o f a Circus Clown,"Era, 3 July 1870,6.
The subject o f help within the nineteenth century performance world is that adcires theatrical w e k (widdy nefineci) underresearchecl. The rwo key recent are the bllowing: Peter Bailey, "A Cornmunity of Friends," 33-52; Tracy C. Davis?Actresses, has a section on Gendly society schernes for acaesses. See a h her d e , "Victorian Charity and Self-Help for Women Pehnmers," 22watm Notebook, 41 (1987);For a nonacademic smdy on welfare in the theater, see T.St. V i t Tmubridge?B e System in fbe bedtisb Zbeatre @andon, 1967).
97 manager to the benefidary (or a rrpresentativeof the benefiday) who then hostcd the performance. The second form ofad boc theatricai welFarr or heip used for Wing the
ailing artist's coffers was the nsubsaiption,"when sympathetic groups or individuals wnaibuted to a "get-wellnhind N o part of this welfue &a
was buiit upon solid
founâations m e r . Instead it conaacted and expandeci and mmmody heiped those who were well-known and iiked by the members of the perfbrmance community, as the filst part of this chapter will demonstrate.
The pfactices of "help"(dehed throughout this chapter as reiief or protection from hardship or unjust cirmmstances) changed as the cenniry progressed. Inspireci bg
the midcentury self-hefp movement, some members of the prokssim sought more rational and sauchired help d e m e s than the ad boc system codd O&,
as the second
part of this chapter will discuss. The Dramatic, Equestrian and Musical Fund and, kater,
the Van Dwellers Association served as workers' associations that were designeci to
promote indusuy, thrift and respectabüity, three key quaüties aiat defined seKhelp. Organization had the efkt of Linking groups not belonging to the circus togethet wirh
the circus; in the case of the Dramatic, Equestrian and Musical Fund, the theatricai and musical trades were d i e d to the circus; in the case of the Van Oweiiers Association,
itinerans who ran roundabouts and s t e m engines at fairgrounds were associateci with
the arcus. Each group had common interests to protect and thus a mutual identity developed. But this came at a price, namely the d u s i o n of the poor drcus performer, such as William Mitchell, who could not aFfOr-dmernbership to the organization and who was effectively lefi outside an ot&anized mutuai aid sodety that promoced wotkets'
independence h m charity. Thus, the circus baame increasingly suati£iedb r n the midnineteenth cenhiry onwards and the lowest and the highest within its intenial hieracchy grew further a p m in social and profksiond terms. In tum, the connections bcrween the
98 highest ranks of the circus and im allieci trades, such as the musical and theatricai ones, tightened. The developmmt of se&help schunes, therefore, as this chapter ciem~~~~trafes,
had a profound impact in the oqpnization of the circus and the formation of a tradebased identity.
II.Chatitable Acts i. mamgers and actists
I t is a vuth u n i v e d y adaiowiedged that absence makes the h m grow fonder.
Cerrainly when we consider the reiatïonship between managers and arQcs thip can be seen to be borne out.
The manager's desire to alleviate the artist's (and his hmîlfs)
plight was often stmngest when the artist died and when his fàmily needed Bnandal help with burial ~ 0 6 6outstanding , debt and prwisions for the niture. Trading on the pubhc's
sympathy, the manager calleci attention to the needs of the poor a m ' s h d y in an eeOrt to rouse
help.
With much to gaui and Littfe to lose if the hanciai b d e n was shared, managers
-
particuiariy in bndon - found tbemselves joineci in a c011llllondesire m aid distressed artisa and their Eunilies, a desire which was aided by spatial proxhity.
Frederidc Neale
of the Pavüion, Mr Lane of the Britannia, Messrs. Nelson Lee and Johnsonof the City, and Mr Douglas of the Standard Theatres - aü of whom manageci theaters in the West
End
- demonsnated such clannish support in 1856. Together t h q solicited the help of
their companies in an attempt to raise a subsaiption b t would AOWthe late harlequin, Mr wlliam Chadton, a decent burial, that haIlmark of respectability. According ho Neale,
1 undertook the responsibility of arranging with the undertaker and the
body was removed h m the wotkhouse on Thucsday moming to a relative's, there to await the fimeral.'
He added that the fimeral which was held at Stepney Church five days afkr the harfequin's death was "respectable." The bliowing day, a gentleman associaoed with the Fielding Fund, which was possibly connecteci to the Fielding Cl&, residence.
d e d at hi9
T was not at home when he d e d "but remembered that "he left a note
stating that he had lefk three sovereigns with Mr Searle of the City of London Theatre for
the use of Mrs Charlton.n6 The gentleman h m the Pund not o d y wished a> alleviate hks Chariton's immediate distress, but he endeavored "to procure for her h m the same fund five shillings per week for some period"which was done.' Mrs Charlton, like most wives of deceased clowns, was a needy aid recipient.
Accordhg to many contemporaries, the d m ' s occupation was a parricufarly lm-payirig and unstable one that rende&
the performer and his fàmiiy members iikeiy andidates
for poverty in tirnes of distress. Charlie Keith said that the "typicai"d m earned f3 a week
- a figure that slightiy underestimated the sums that appeared in the bliowing
weekly salary List, possibly h m Charles Hengler's cirnis in Liverpool in the late-1870sor early 1880s: -
- -
--
--
'"The Late Harlequin, Mr Charlton,"Ba, 3 August 1856, 14.
The Fieldhg Club was a d i n ~ . gclub, estabiished in 1852, which had late-night Eàciiities that catered to those actors who wanted to get th& dinner a k r the evenïng's performance. As today, performances a cenhirp ago g e n e d y ended at 11:00 pm. The Fielding Fund to which Neale dluded was ràised in all Iünllhood by members of this Club but this conneaion is tenuous at this present stage of m y research. For a disamsion about theatrid club ME, see Michael Baker*Tbe Rfse of t h VictOtlCUt Actor (bndon, 1978),72, 166.
Table 3.1:
Saiary List of Clowns d a t e 1870s/eady 1880s'
Neddy Vokes, &MO Prossini (Ginnen's Circus), E4-W Frau Greville rutor's Cirw), E3-û-û Tom Hall, monkey act, i5-15-10-0 St. Leo and T a o , gymnast and clown, vudor's Circus), f8-û-û (for both) W.Mardiews (Cirque Scarboro),t4-10-0 Bros. Nap[?] (Quinette's Cirw),tl2-W (for the group) Fred Lemaine (Powell and Clarke's), E3-10-0
Ln cornparison to the company's trapeze urisr,Bonsdo Demon, who eamed ll5-û-O a week, or the tumblers, George Teru and F a ~ ywho , together earned Q5-û-û a week, the clown was indeed the lowest on this pay List? Furdiemore, since the clown's work was based on week, month or seasonal engagements, he had no long-rem contracnul connections and therefore had no guarantee
of a steady salary. For those who were forninate enough to arrange consecutive engagements with various companies, as Crouene did when he performed with six different ones between 30 June and 20 October 187S10,it w u possible to prevent hardship. Seen from a more suiguine perspective, the g0wt.h of commercialized enterrainment provided many employment oppominities for the talented. Many clowns (and other versatile urins) thus found engagements in music halh and theaten, as weil as cireuses. Such opportunities were most common during the Christmas season when clowns were in great demuid for the pantomimes that flooded the London and provincial nages. But the fluid synem of engagements sornerimes had adverse effects on the circus clown,
parriculvly when comics from music h d nages adopred
'CFA, salary Ln,possibly for Hengler's Cimis Liverpool, clate 1870s-1880s. %id. loseepages 77-78for a reference to Croueste's engagements during rhis season.
the unprokssional practiœ of accepting engagements h r th& own Une of business and giving their services as clown btee or for an extm altle...when they fèeI funny, not thinking at the time that they were ddng anything detrimental a> the [circus dm's] w&ue..hephg the kglama0 and profksseci downs out of engagements and bringing down mes.LL
T'us, by ofkring to perfOrm as downs 'for frec or an extra aifie,' music hall vrlsts threatened to make the circus down redundant. The situation, which was also ardcuiated
by Mayhew's street down in an earLier chapter, was made worse by the Eict that the drcus d o m ofmi made more money h m stage engagements than fiam c h u s ones and
therefore had much to lose h m this wunpmfessionalpraeaice' among mmic artkts.
we
have seen, the one who secureci a music hall aigagement could cun betweai 58 and
£12 per weekU Exna expenses proved to be an added drain on the drcus down's small
and unstable incorne. In tenns of his costumes, the Qrcus clown had two kinds [ofdothing] to purchase
-
- pecforming dresscs and ordi go to the urgently needed Aston Hall fund which was set-up in 1857 in order to aiiow the town to buy the park h m a group of proprietors into whose han& the property, which had br
'"kaer k m the Queen to the Mayor of Birmingham,' Era, 2 August 1863, 11. 6BCR, mss. 744, "AstonPark: Propose!d Address h m the Mamgers to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesry," Speech deiïvered on 15 June 1858.
'"Letter kom the Queen," Era, 1 August 1863,5.
146 centuries belon@ to the welllescdbiished ~ o l h m i I yféll? , Regardllenr of the benevolmt A
circumstances, the result of the exhibition was of greater importance and agreement with the Queen was widespread, as letfers to the editor and newspaper columns of various
local and national newspapers in July 1863 made GU. Many such opinions wndemned managers of acrobatie performers and of parks and other places of public resort and, hirrhermore, d e d for a stop to dangerous arhibitions in the ht~re.~ While the niry continueci in the press, Selina P&'s
husband sat in the coroner's
inquest a n s w e ~ g pointed questions about his wifé's deged "murder." The coroner asked Mr Powell about his involvement in setting up the rope, which he had a k q s done
br his wifk, and about the degree a> which he was -a be dangerous
- particularly given her pregnant condition.
that bis wife's crossing I t might
To this he replied, "shewas
always smng at such t h e s , ' thus raising intereshg questions not only about the Eimüy's
financial necessity but also its views on pregnancy.'* Fudermore, he continued, th& eamings h m such performances were greater than they muid expect by any other
means. When asked about their income,the husband replied that they eamed afm expenses, such as radway costs, 58 or £9 per show. But a f k the accident, the distresseci husband, now the breadwinner of the W y , which inciuded seven chiidren and an aged
'Histo~ of tbe Cbpmation of Birmfngbam (Birmingham, 1885), ~01.2,197;Aston Hull: A A u C Guide (Birmingham,1987), chp. 1 "Hhtory, the Holtes and their Successors." 9see "Sad kath of Madame Genieve, the Female Blondin,"Era, 26 July 1863, 11; "Public Meeting at Town Hall,"~inningbam JO@, 25 Jdy 1863,7;"Shocldng-th
the Female Blondin,"BfnnfngblunJO@, 25 July 1863, 7; " T eat Aston Park," BfnningbamJoumul, 25 JJul1863,5;"ShoclsngDeath of Another F e n d e Blondin," Times, 22 Jdy 1863, 12; "ShockjngDeath ofhother Female Blondin,"&II's Ufe in httdon, 26 Jdy 1863, 3; "FatalAccident a> a Femde Blondin,"Stockton H e m 4 South Durbarn and C&w&zttd A d v ~ L s e r 24 , July 1863,3.
' W e Accident to the Female Blondin,' Bhmit2gbamJournal, 25 Juiy 1863,5.
of
147 mother-hiaw, had scarcefy any means of support; rope walbing was the hniky trade on which he, his wik and even theh chiidren
- a theme to which 1 WUreturn -
depended, This cottage-like enterprise where d the h d y members were hvolved in some aspect ofthe performance was not unusual, and indeed nperlenced grrJwth f h n the mid-
nineteenth cenniry onwarüs, as the foiiowing figures in table 4.1 suggest:
Table 4.1: Year
I n c f i v K l d & m i î y kmûas,
1867-1878 Individual
Family TroupeU
These troupes may have induded individuais who describeci themselves as brothers or families, but were, in fkct, not reiated. Regardes9 the numbers do provide a broad
outline of the family-oriented nature of the Pade, particuiarly if they are collsidered in proportion to individual players Cor the same set of
Accordhg to a contemporary
of Powell's, who calleci hunself the manager of a troupe that consisad of bis wifk and two daughters, aii of whom performed on a tight wire and sdla,
the Eunüy by itseif can give an entemainment that iass an hour and a haif aitogether. 1 don't perfonn...but 1 go about making the arrangements and engagements foi rhem. Managers write to me 6rom the country to get up entertainments for them and to undertake ~pecuiation.~
"Ibid. It was not unusual for husbands to act as managem mer their wives'careers. This may not have been the ody reason why Mr Powell did not take part in the performances since the reporter Cor the BfnnfttgbamJoMial said that he was a "crippled husband." 'mese figures are based on the reporfed n u m k of acmbats and ggmnast~that appeared in the Era Alttzanuc9 (1867), 69;(1877),83; (1878). 84.
148 Not only was the business family run, but it was also inherited h m previous himlly
membeis, as the manager continued, "rnyfàther was in the pmkssion f f i r e me,and m y
cornmonplace, a fàct which helped perpetuate the likeiihood that the chüdren of these perfomers wouid participate in the made as weU. Codirming the unhappy juxtaposition between financiai necessity and the lack of
alternatives, which Paweii duded to during the coroner's inquest, another contemporary
- aibeit l e s farnous - rope waIker insisted that t h e in the trade, like himseff, were One day 1 may pick up 5s; that's a fhst rate riay fbr street W O In ~ bad weather I can do nothing..A couldn't undertake to depend on 10s 6d a week if 1 codned myseif to outdoor @rmances..and the jeweis and the spangies wom by perhrmers like me are a sort of rnockeryockeryu Not oniy was it difficult to e a m one's daiiy b
d but so #M was it hard to remove oneself
from the made, apeciaiiy if the performer was train& b r nothing efseand furthemore had a M
y to support. And, when the acrobat reached old age, the contemporary
continued, "you are Lüre a wom out horse, eeckoned 6t for n~thing."'~ Hard w ~ ~ hardly rk ofirecl the hope that the acrobat's later years would end in materiai cornfort and SecuTity.
The General Dramatic, Equestrian and Musicai Agency and Sick Fund, created in 1855, remaineci outside the reach of many tank and file perhrmers dose un~teadyincorne offered littie chance of yearly contributions to such a society. Given theïr unsteady and small incornes, any attempû at regdation, which aisued aCm the 1863 addent, were
141bid. '>''A GGLimp~eof Law Lifé," Derby Merçury, June 5, 1850, 4.
I6Ibid.
existence.
S e a s o n a i changes aiso governed-theeconomy of the acrobat's trade. Accordhg to one perfbtmer whom Henry Mayhew intemiewed,
[w
in the winter the, w e genexaiiy goes a> the theatres. W e are almat always engageci for the pantomimes to do the sprites. W e atwlgs reckon it a good thirceen weeks job, but in the country it's onlp a month. If we dcm't appiy f9r the job, they corne aftar u s.' Aibert Smith observed that th& appearanc$n
the metropolis oarurrcd a f k race
meetings, such as at Epsom, were held." Complementing the comment d Mayhew's interviewee, Smith addeci, that these tumblers also h
e by
d m r k M e n the
pantomime [season] begins [at Chrisnnas]."LpAnd, when they perfbrmed in the
pantomimes as "the Mexican Wonders or the Thornasi F d y...y ou wodd hardly rrcognize p u r old acquaintances at the race c ~ u r s e .But ~ the actobat who was fortunate enough
ro get seasonai work in the pantomime s u f k f f d h m the stigma of being at the botînm of
the performance hierarchy. This status reflected the fact that there were many more acrobats looking for work during the off seasons than the theaters and music halls muid
possibty employ. In order to pro-
themseives h m the onslaught of itinezant zurobats
wishing to enter the music hall ranks, Charlie Keïth d e d in 1879 that "15 or 20 yeys
ago music haii [manageml ofkm had irtserted at the bottom of th& advertisements 'no
150 m b a t s need apply'."'
The aeatment which the acrobat and the sought-afkr music hall
performer encountered hthe manager could not be more stark W e the hmer was eschewed, the latter commandeci engagements at more than one music hall in a single
evening and couid be seen crossing the Thames by cab p i n g h m an engagement in Lambeth to one on Oxfôrci Street.D
Lf the acrobat was fortunate enough to have secured
an engagement at a hall or theater, his employnient security was temporarg. Once the winter season ended, he advertised in national aade papers, such as the Em, in order to
-
get other engagements. During the suIllIller months, he usualiy turned to employment
out of doors, in parks, fairgmunds,
meetinp and cornmonspot merely because the
weather permitteci it but atso b u s r many prwinciai and London theaters closed between Mar& and Seprember.
This itinerant &style meant that these perhrmers Iodged in dïikemt categories of accommodation. If settled in Lnndon, they occupied residences such as the Hercuies
Buildings in Lambeth, which sheltered a variety of bndon performer~.~ Such a
community arguabiy helped secure common bonds of W y - l i k and professional loyaities
which were naturally intermineci for these people. If on the d as part of a troupe or ~ ~ C U Company, S
they were Uely to stay in boarding houses o r Law grade hoteh and inns
21CharlieKeith, C i r w Life and Amusements, (Derby, 1879), 24. %e Peter Bailey, "Custom, Capital and Culture in the Vimrian Music Hall" in Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteentb Century E n g w ed. by R D . Smrch (New York, 1982), 189-190.
"For example, the Hercules Buiidin&shoused various prominent pantomime artists, such as Richard Usher who died there in 1843 and Richard Flexmore, wbo died at the same -idaice in 1860.As wd,Amye Reade's Ruby mfkm to the Hercules Buildings as the place where Ruby, the young, innocent M d , is taken and meas the cruel trainer, Signor Enrico and his -y, with whom she spends her unhappy pus. see Amye Reade, R b y : A Novel Founded on tbe Lfe of A C i m Girl (kmdon, 1889), 260.
151 known within the pehnnance community. Alphonse Esquires, a joumaiist who travelled
with a àrcus troupe in the 1860s, recaUed that
[amvcd at] a rather decent ho* which was situated off the hIgh road and amaaed but fkw visitors. Here 1 Zound assembled a pu* a conjurer,an acrobat and some orher individuais belonging 00 the numaous fieemasonry of Engiish races and faim." we
If they aavefled with carsvans, the troupe needed to h d a vacant lot whae they could set up th&
camps and there they lodged cornmunally. If a c o m m d identity e m a g g l
from their living and work arrangements, it raises problems about how this state of mind was negotiated with respectable society in Victorian Britain whose value were inttiateiy
connecteci to property ownership as a means of dkiefinition and active politid participation. Seai b m this perspective, an itinerant Ufessrle dto detach and
disenfranchise the perhrmer, partidarly the one belonging 00 the "invisibledrcus," h m
n1. Parliament and the De&ate Over Rietom The legal challenges that a w e d 6rwi the 1863 accident intensifieci such fèelinp. Nowhere childten was made dear: that is, bp prohibithg perbrrners, such as S e h a Powd, h m Paining h a chilcimm to do the same
tri&
as
she did, the next grneration would be without its m b a a . As the Earl de la
Warr, brmerly
Lord Buckhum, said: "if pmons did not commence the practœ
of such pefformances when they were chlldren, they would nor be able to accomplish hem in [adult] fi.* The Dangernus PertOtmances Bill was passed in its inidai brm in
1879,prevmting chiidren under 14 h m king trained and h m perfotming feats "that were injurious to Lik and W, in the opinion of a wurt of summary jurisdiction," and
hirther stated thac any "parentor guardian or any person having the custody of suc& a child who s h d aid or abet the same, SM severally be guiity of an ofhce apainst rhis Act
and shall k...liable for each o b c e to a penalty not atcecdlng &IO.*
In the event of
an accident, the law stated that the court "SU have the power of awarding compensation
not exceeding 520 to be paid by the employer [ofthe place of entertainment] to the ~hild."'~
37Hamurd,3d ser., vol. d v i , (1879),c. 1407.
~PubZicGeneral Statues, Chiidren's Dangerous Performanœs An, 1879,42/43 WC.,ch. 34, s.3.
158
ui 1880 John Edward Jenkuis, an Evangelical and Radical MP for Dundee, inaoduced a private Bili into the Gommons which threatened to increase the onus upon employer responsibility. As the author of Ginx's Baty: His Birtb a d Otber Mtsfortunes
(1873), Jenkhs was a part of the child-welEue lobby in Parliament and, as such, he proposai to extend the Dangerous Perfi,rmancesAct. Jenkins's B U set out to "imposea
penalty o f £50 fbr each exhibition on the fÙst conviction and, on the second SIûû...to lessees or occupiers of places of public perhrmanœ...whether under the supemision of
the Lord Chamberlain o r ~therwise."~~ "In the case of a Company being the o h d e r , "it continued, "the person to be punished W rhe manager and if there be none, the
the Times that rhe proposed
BU %as stopped engagements ali over the country,"an
exaggerated comment that said more about the adsting dimate of anxiety among performers than the reality of th& employment? It was rhe case, howwer, that some managers were so unsure about the currient state of afhirs that they qressed reluctance to hire acrobats of any age.
O n 12 August 1880,Karl Rozel, who d e d himseif the
"ElectricStar Gymnast," wrote a letter to the Lord Chamberlain's Office nrlmitting to the
confusion which Jerikins's BU prwoked: Sir, 1 take the liberty to write to you conceming the Phühamonic Palace of Varieties, having appiied to that hall lbr a situation for m y performance...the proprietor said that he thinks it wodd be the Lotd Chamberlain. So therefore, 1 write to you to ask you br your m o n to perform at the W in the perfbrrnance termeci, 'the leap b r iifè', an mtidy safè
"sec "Acrobatie Performances,"TimesT1 March 1880,7;cf., BUS, Public; etc, A Bill to Prevent the Exhibition in Places of Amusement of Aaobatic Perfio1111i111ces, 1880,10 February 1ûûO.
""Acrob~ticPerîormances,"Times, 17 March 1880,8.
pedormance... having nothing in view [ h mwhich to eam a Living] at the present excepting the Philharmoni~.~ In response to Rozel, Spencer Ponsonby Fane mate that the Lord Chamberlain desires me to say that he does not inadkm with regard to the decails of the management of theatres. The niles furnished m the managers forbid dangernus performances and the manage^ are held
responsibie in the matter? Since the 1879 Act, to which Ponsonby Fane Rkrred, only applied to those under
the age of 14, the issue remaineci open-ended and unciear Lor adult perfotmers, such as
Rozel, who were technically not induded in the new legislation. Some managers, such as those at the Philliannonic, had reason for adopting a prudent attitude, despite the public's desire to see adults perform dangerous m. After d,the Aquarium was singleci out in this period by the inrd Chamberlain's Office and Home Office as an eample h m which
other theaters were m a t to take a lesson. The Chief Commissioner of Police -te
to
the manager of the Aquarium: Mr. Secretary Cross directs m e to give you notice that if the performance of Zazel,[the gymnast]...is continued, or [if any accident occurs]...it will be m y duty to communicate with the Licehging ust tic es.'
Clearly there was a double standard involved in m n t 1 0 h gdangerous performances. Whereas Ponsonby Fane sateci k t the b r d Chamberlain's Office did not license speci6c performances, such a s Rozel's, fiis office was instructed by the Chief Commissioner of
"PRO, LC 1 370,LC In kt~s, h m Karl Rozel, 12 August, IWO.
''PRO, LC 1 370,LC In ktters, Letter h m Mr. S.l?J?.of the hrd Chamberhin's Offiœ to Mr S. Harwood, the Philharmonie Theatre, 22 Sepcanber 1880. '?CC, Munby CoUection, 110.13 (21), Chief CommilEcioner of Poiice and W.W. Robertson to E.Y. Haderson, 21 April1877. ~ntemstingiy,Munby bUowed the Dangerous Performances debate as it appeared in the newspaper and he managed to get a hoid of this p ~ t correspondence. d
160 Police to rike an active role in controhg the perfbrmance of fernale acrobats, Liloe &el.
When the manager of the Aquarium did nothing to stop Zazel and other f;emaleaaobats
fiom performing, rhe pressure mounted. At a meeting of the Middlesex Magismas, the Hon. E.C. Curzon moved that
the Court disapproves of exhibitions dangerous to iife and Limb..andchat the manager of the Aquarium WUbe informeci that performances simüar to those given at that establishment by Zaeo and Zazel will undoubtedly cause the [drinking] license of the Aquarium to be brfèited." A result of this -tic
suppression was a sense of panic among perhrmers who were
placed in an increasingly vulnerable economic position and who wete f o d to ded with loopholes in exkahg licensing reguiations and rnenacing Biiis. Jenkins's Bill was in many ways a l o g i d outcorne of the regdatory lmpholes
which the 1879 law created and the b r d Chamberlain and the Police were responsible for applying to fernale acrobats. In part, Jenkins's B U aimed m revise the 1879 law so that it
induded both adult fernale and M d performexs acting, among other things, on the "uapeze or on bars, ropes or swings in any hall, @en,
theam, pavilion, public house, or
other place where money is taken h r achibition."ls The new Bill also laid down a requirement for nets and other sakty equipment, which wiii be discussed in the final
section of this chapter, stating:
nothing contained shall be taken ta forbid...ordinary acrobatie performances on the stage! provideci that women and children under 14
"t'DangerousExhibitions,"Times, 23 Febbniary 1880,7. I t is interesthg that it took m the t h e the h t waming was issueci h r the Aquarium's license to be removed.
three years h
4sBii&s,Public etc A B U t o Prevent the Exhibition in Piaces of Amusement of Anribatic Performances Dangernus to Lifk and Limb, 10 Febniary 1880,66.
SM in no case incur peril of a EiIl of more than 6 Ceet on any insuffiaentty proby cushioas or nets? Not surprisingly the BU, although dismisseci in P;iriiament, promiceci a wave of
heated response outside it. In another letter of mmplaint directeci to Edward Jenkins, a group of "professionalgymnasts and acrobats,' numbering
upwards of 150..seved of d o m specificd8y came h m Liveqmo1, Manchester, keds, Birmingham, etc. [in order] to take part in the
P--@, argued that many of the "clauses [had to bel more spedicaiiy defined.m Other opinion
cowidered that Pariiammt's attempts to pass the Bill's provisions were a>o littie and tao Iate for those who needed protection. One writer fw the P e m y Illicsru&d Paper,for
had Mr ~enkins'srational measure [oq restriction been in force, the young woman who went by the name of the ' F d e Blondin' would not have faiien from a tight rope at a giddy hdght in Aston Park, Birmingham in i 863.=' Jenkins's Bill was not passed,but a decade iater, d e n a simiiar measure was introduced in Parliameni, some groups outside Westminster argued against goveniment
controis, turning to the weii-esrabiished "Eur play and ike trade"debate that infOrmed
previous discussions of theaaicai regulationd2 The Dai& TeCegrapb, for example, ran
Sa"TheDangernus Pehrmances BU,"Times,3 March 1880,7. The meeting was arranged in nsponse to the B U pro@ by Edward Jenkins, M.P. several weeks earlïer.
'*The fdi extent of this issue that relates to the long history of abokhing the monopoiy which the Theatres Royal Dmry Lane and Covent Garden hdd mer the theatrïcal trade. Standard works on the subject inciude Watson Nicholson, Shuggk forA Fme Smge (New York, repr. 1966); AUardyce Nicoli, A History of EngZlfsb D r . (Cambridge, repr. 1852-59); Dewey Ganzei, "PatentWrongs and Patent Theatres: Drama and the Law in the Early Nineteenth Century," PMU, UMVI (1961): 3843%. For work that de& with the complacity of d-g the h, and new theatrid genres thaf wac
162 several opinion pieces on the subject in the Spring of 1891. Perhaps SUreeiing h m the Middlesex Mag*trates' earlier opposition a> his house, G.M.F. Molesworth, the manager of
the R o y d Aquarium wrote: it behows managers of theam for th& own professicmal reputation and hancial success to keep up that high standard of art which meets with the approvai of hndoners and visia>rs h m ail paro of the world. if anything objectionable shouid creep in,such matters can be betrer dealt with by the proprietors of the theahtes and the Lord ChamberLain in a Quiet, gentlemanly way than by bodies inexperienced with theatrid requirements?
Simiiarly, Robert Budianan of the LHc Club responded: "al gcmernment restrictions on
public amusernent are certain to becorne crass and tyrannical since good taste is not a sentiment to be a-eated by an Act of Parliament? Despite the outay, the revised Biii which was introduced by Jesse CoUinp Pb.-b;onaS?
Bumingham, Bordsley Div.) and the Secretary of Srate, Sir Matthew Whie Ridley, became law in August 1897. Howwer, it took considerable a r t to bring MPs to agreement upon various clauses wifhin it, particularly those conceming women and the age Mt for
training dùlciren and allowing thern to perfonn. The Attorney General, Sir Richard Webster, wrote to the Home Office on 26 January 1897,to Say bt,if women were to be
left in the Bill, "such an enamnent would promote considerable opposition...[aldrough Il have no particular objection to the prohibition of such performances by wornen?
d i f f i d t to categorize within it, pareiculariy before the 1843 revision, see Joseph Donohue, "Burletta and the Early Nineteenth Century Engiish Theatre,"NttLeteentb Gmtzq Cenhayatm Researcb 1(1)Spring 1973: 29-51. 53"Theaagand Music Halls,"Dai& Tekqp-upb,3 March 1891, 4.
-"To the Editor of the Dai& Telegapb,"Dai& Tekgmpb, 6 March 1891,3.
%PRO, Ho 45,10125/B 13853~itr., h m Attorney G e n d to Home O f B q 26 Jan1897.
Ultimately women were left out of this measure whose -p
m œ m was tn p m t
young persons under the age of 18 h m PerfOrnUlng dangerous hts. V[he Biii thus] goes as
Eir as public opinion will agree to for the moment," said Coiiinp in the wake of
an acadent involving an aaobat-giri at CardEY
Yet, many within the drcus esabiishment again Mt chat this regulation would cause considerable damage to th& livelihoods. An imporent pressure group, the
including JesseCollings and White Ridley, in order to vent the amcerns of the hsociation's members who induded performers, as weU as pmpnetom, despite the
organization's narne. Expressing the vulnerability holt by its members, Mr Rutland, the solicitor o f the Association, stated that the Act of 1879 is a pend measure...it makes us liable of a criminal o h c e and the decision of the magistrate is to be baseci not upon evidence but upon
his opinion?' Their concerns took o n an inaasingiy d o u s pitch when they were tied to practid
for the last five yeam w e have beai seriously harasdad by exrrane persans and we want to prrvmt a repetition of that sgstem [since] [theAct noy] &ives two kinds of punishments, one, a penalty off 10 and [two, the obligation to] compensate any young p e m n who shall susîain acniaI personal injury.'"
"PRO, Ho 45, 10125 B 13853/6,ln.,Jesse Collings to Sec of State, Home Office,17 February 1897.
"PRO, HO 45, 10125 B 135853J5, The Proprietor of Entermhmmts Asoc., represented by J.H. Jennings, chairman, Mr k Moal (Alhambra), Henri Gros (Meuopolican), J.BrU @oyal), J-Chappai (Queens), Mr.Tozer (South London), and Philip J. Rutland, solicitor, with Sir Matthew Ridley, Mr Jesse Cohgs, Mr Cunningham, Mr Longley and Mr Guest. Notes on Deputation, 30 April 1897.
164 Furthermore, R u h d pleaded, "we hope that you WUnot n since] the proprietors think that would be a great hardship?
d [the minimum age,
He agued, dthough
erroneously, chat since there had been no prosecutions under the Act of 1879,the good-
will of managers to obey the legisfation has been b O l l S t r a f e d . hdeed, he contended
that the Bill was "adead letter.40 Sir Matthew White Ridley however took a dl&rent view and argueci that "the purpose of the Act of ParliamentAs not intendeci oniy m
punish but to prevent."6L Finding themsefves at a seiiemate at thig meeting, the m e r s of the Association later issued a statement suggesting chat the exïshg law of 1879 mnœmhg "dangerous
performances" not be extendeci*but that if it were, then the minimum age for @nning should be set at 16 years oid, rather than at 18 years, as the B U proposal. This request, they believed, would complement a provision within the P-ion Act
of Cmdy to Children
of 1894 which prevented childten under 16 from king trained as gymnasts,
contortionisa or other circus performersa In addition, the Association added that the
proposeci B U should "not apply to gymnasts, acrobats, contortionists or ckms
~ R OHo , 45, 10125 B 13853fi, leîter h m Phüip Rutland, solidtor forthe Proprietors of Enterrainers Assoc., to the Rt Hon., Jesse C o h p , ME, 4 Mag 1897; cf. Public General Statutes, A n Act fbr the Preventicm of Cmelty to C h i l b , 1894, 57/58 Vic. 27. The link between restrictions on emplogmenr, as provided by the Prevention of Cruelty to Chiidren Act, and the creation of the school baard sptem was, as John Giiiis argues, an important development in the creation of cbildhood and adolescent culture., see John Giiiis, Yoircb and History: T r d i f t m a d Cbange in Eutr,pem 4ge R e t a t i m (New York, 1981).
165 p e h î ~ e r s The . ~ Association was not alone in wishlng for this. An e a r k letter h Mr Byme,
m
MP,to Mr Digby, MP, had sirnilarly suggested that "exhibitionsof skifi and
suength not be considered dangerous exhibitions under the Act by a magbtrate?''
But
these proposed restrictions seemed r i d i d o u s to many concerneci with the pâssage of chir piece of legislation. H A Taylor,MP, fOr example, replicd causticaity to Rudand's q u e s t :
if it is the intention of the govemment to exdude acrobats, contorîionists, and circus performers..siay 1 ask..wfiat people are 00 be induded if these are notPs
The dSEicuity of de8ning preaseiy what constituted a "ciangemusperhrmance," evidenced by Mr Byme's letter and Mr Tayior's comment, was dcmonstrated. There was
hrther inconsistency and confusion in the sense that the Prevention of Cmelty to Children Act of 1894 prohibiteci childm under 16 h m king trained as acrobats while the rwised Dangernus Perfbrmances Biil sought to prevemt those d e r 18 h
m
perfiïrming as acrobats. Seen Erom o n e perspective, this proposed Iegislation was harmful to many circus Eamilies in the sense that the two year intervai between 16 and 18,the
period during which rime children were bdng trained, also marked a time when families
could not reap the economic ben&=
of the* chiidrens' practice.
The Proprietors of Enterminmens Association continueci to put pressure on Parliament and to express its opposition to the BU. In the p r o a s , its members made
their professional unity and strength Mt Confirrning the strength of opposition to the
63PR0, Ho 45, 10125 B 13853c/5, letter h m Phihp Rutiand, soiiamr fOr the Propnetors of Entertainers Assoc., to the Rt. Hon., Jesse CoIlings, MJ., 4 May 1897.
6sPR0, HO 45, 10125 B13853/6, letter h m H A Taylor, M.P., to Phiüp Rutiand, the Proprietors of Entertainments Assoc., 2 May 1897. If thb date is correct, there appears to be an inconsistency between this date and the pcevious letter daoed 4 Map 1897 h m Phiiip Rutland.
BU h m within the perfi,~znanceestabiishrnent, Charles Gmingtm, the Lord Chamberlain between 1892 and 1895,wrote to CoIlings m g , i hope p u WUstand ânn with p u r Dangerou Perfbrmances BU. When 1 was Lord Charnberiain, 1 was m m anxious to get somediing done in dS direction but the pmfkssional oppition is verg ~ t r o n g . ~ ~
H e then implied a distinction between managers of "visiblearcuseSlnwho he assumed
were respectable, and those of "invisiblecinrusesud o s e practces towmds children, he
beliwed, might be cruel in the sense that they involved instruction in a variety of physidly demanding acts. Carrington stated:
no doubt in the great 'troupes'there is not much crudty. But [th- is such treatment] in travelling citcuses,where the poor chiidfen are not confineci to specialty a m , such as 'ridùig', 'rope dancing' etc. but have to iearn werythlng?
young pesons. In its h a 1 hm,the Act raised the minimum age for performing acrobaties "in piaces of public amusement"h m 14 to 18 Cor girls and h m 14 to 16 for boys.'
Predictably, these weifare laws
that of 1897
- that of 1894 which reniaineci unchangeci and
- produceci a new set of eccmomic exigenties for circus hmiiies.
At another
general meeting of acrobats and 8ymnasts on the eve of the revised Bifi's passage, the Chairman, Mr. Richard Wamer, echoed the fears of many by anticipating that if [it] passed, [it] wodd inflict cruel injhes upon the acrobats and gymnasts of Engiand...rob[bing] many fàmiiies of th& üveiihood...ff the
"PRO, Ho 45, 10125/B13853c/5,lemer h m Charles Carrington to Jesse CoIlings, 50 Grosvernor Square, 3 May 1897. 671bid. %&lic Genetal Statutes, Dangerous Perfbrmances Act, 1897,@/61 Vit, c52, S. 1.
age iimit were increased to 18,it would be impossible to get acrobars at
dl." Furthemore, he continued,
people liked this class of perfOrmers and it ought not be interkred with in the manner proposeci. If it were stoppeci, gymnasïums should be stoppeci also,and children shouid not be allowed to ride bicycles in the smxs." Since the trade was a fiimily enterprise, any employment reguiations impinged on both the
Eamily incorne and the p a r e n t d d reiaticmship. From the acrobat's perspective, this intervention, initiated in the name of sakty and morai impmvement, violateci a series of rights which were at the mot of a fitee society, particulariy, the parents' rights to rear theh
children as they saw fit. That ParLiament could fiirthermore inter&
with their ability ta
eam a living raised important questions, namelyyat what point would reguladon stop? Many beiieved that once the door of regulation was opened, as it had been in 1879,it
would be impossible to shut it. Based on the fàct that the laws of 1894 and 1897 M e r
regulated the acrobat's trade, these fears were weii-Dunded. Acrobats had M e r reason to
f w for their livelihoods. Under attack was not only tfieir emnomy and hmiiy
structure, but, as we will see, a system of aesthetic d u e s that made the acrobatie art unique.
W . The Controversy over Aesthetics: Sexuai Pleasure, Atfiteticism and Danger
Despite or perhaps because of the straigth of moral opinion which was set aaaihft
"dangerousperbrmances,"the public continued to paPonize these -dons
idter Seiina
Powell's fail. The question ofwhat motivateci the popular impulse to see them was a
168 cornplex one, driven by pop*
interest in sexuaiity, athleticism and danger. As the
femaie acrobat provoked this interest, her work was seen as contnmeRial and, to m e onlookers, as unrespectable- Catirming the public's desire for dangerous pedbrmanœs, Charles Sturge, the Mayor of Birmingham,who was irnplicated in the S e h Powell a&ir
for having his name on the bills as a patron of the exhibition, publidy responded to the Queen's protestations in July of1863 with the excuse that he had no idea thac a
dangerous performance would be attempted and as a result,
there is not in the kingdom an individual who lamen6 more sinœrely than myseif not onfy the meiancholy accident to which pou refèr, but the depraved taste for the barbarous s@es of amusement *ch unhappily has becorne popular not oniy in the metroplis but in aii parts of her Majesty's home dominion?' Of course, the Selina PoweU case was doubly controvezsial given the fact that a woman and a pregnant woman, at chat
- performed the h t s .
-
But,whüe most opinion in
Birmingham agreed in horror that Selina Powell did not belong on a high wire whiie pregnant, more generai opinion concerning the presence of women on high-whs was highly fragmented. The distinction between her pregnant condition and her sex was important as the latter fisa began to eclipse the debate sunrounding dangerous
performances.
Consistent with Birmingham's dvic ~ n i t ya, m ~ernorial was issued immediateiy
alter the accident,conraining 1,dl6 signatures drawn h m all classes including the "clergy, magistrates, bankers, merchants, manufacturem and othm residing in Birniingham? -
-
''"The Femde Blondin Caolstrophe,,"Era, 2 August 1864, 11. %ee Asa Briggs, "Birmingham: The Mahlng of a Civic Gaspei," in VictOtjCUt CfWs (London, repr. 1968).
nPRO, Ho 45,7472, 1 August 1863, Memorial of the undersigneci Cl-, Bankers, Merchants, Manuhcmms, and 0th- r-esidingin Binninpham.
h&@rrates,
169
The document stated that "such exhibitions [as the S e l i Powell ~ one] are in the highest degree degrading and injurious to the wdl being of ~ociety."'~ Alpeeing with the
sentiment,W
i Montague of the Thtzatre at Lewes,amdemned "suchexhibitions where
b a l e s are placed in jeopady" and, in a spirit of bottbomie, enciosed "2s.66 in stamps oo
the children of the late Mrs Powetl," adding that he hoped 'many 0thexample on behalf of the motherless children? women =bas
will fbiiow my
While the exact ratio between men a>
is unknown, some specuiated that the latter outnumbenxl the former
and therdbre anracted wider attention. One gymnast said it was unfair that "them œ celebrated Brothers Chillin-orie
[sic] are ourmipped by the appearance of a
flying lady," adding that "anybody that understands the art of gpmnastIcs WUlook upon these ladies as a mere decepcion?
Another h d e contemporary, writing of the Ropal
Aquarium, remarked that managers evidencly prefèrred putting women's h e s in pail
eittier because they believed that there wexe too many women in the world or b u s e
they were cheaper and l e s troublesome to train tban men." What was dear, h m t , was that
women fai ofiener than men, are to be seen risking th& Lmes m g , pleasure to a crowd which is tao bmtaiized to c m br any l a s stimdating a ~ n ~ r n t ~ ~ ~ Their performances were controversial not oniy due to the danger involved in them but also b u s e of the sexuai messages they wnveyed to their audiences. One
"Ibid.
""To The Editor of the Era," Era, 2 August 1863,11. " m e Gymnasts of the Period: To the Edimr of the Era," Era,
19 September 1869,7.
""A Cruel Sport,"Satwday Revfew, 7 Feb, 1880, 173-4.
.
781bid.
.
170 London County Cound inspecter remuked that the architecture of the gaiiery where Zaeo performed necesitateci that she hover over the heads of the audience and
he added
that, "itis not altogether desirable to place a fernale in this indelicate position, pfoviding to the Era, condemning
dl with a view of her f b m ~ S. i~ m h r b one commentatm -te those "proprietorsand that certain dass" who "[are in-
in m g ] the sen we
look...to for modesty and refinement instead [rah on] a brazen appearanœ.".o The costumes that acrobao wore caused quite a controvemy in this regard, =me observing that they lefi littie to the imagination. Simllar to the woman in BLm who is the objea of the male spectator's "gaze"dexribed by Laura Mdvey, the f b d e -bat
was
"isolateci...on display and Sexualized."' On one occasion Munby, who ftequented the
-
M o r d Music HaLl in London, noted that "a very pretty Engüsh girl, of 18 or 20,aim and
slight and shapely standing about 5'4" pedbrmed [one m g ] with a~robats."~ His idiosyncratic interest in the livg of "inkrior"women
male
made him acutely
sensitive ro the female acrobat's moral and physicai befng. He observeci h a perfi,tming with her companions:
The only clothing she had on was a biue satin doublet fitting ci- to her body and having very scantly truck hose below it. Her anns were aü bare; her legs, cased in fleshing, were as good as bare, up to the hip?
79seeTracy C. Davis, "SB< in Public Places: the Zaeo Aquarium Scanda1 and the Victotian Moral Majority,"Tbeatre Histoty Studfes, (1990): 1-14.
.OnTheGymnaso of the Period: To The Edimr of the Eru,"Era,
19 September 1869,7.
"For a psychoanalytic treatment of the voyeufisticapophiiic look that relates to women in h, see ïaura Mulvey, Visual Pleasures and Narra* Cinema,. Serran 16.3 (Autumn 19751,13. 9 e m k Hudson, Munby: Man of T m Ww&, 182&29ûû Wndon, SaturdayJune 11, 1868 enrry.
lm),285,
Such dress
- worn by lemale dancers as well - inspirrd the Lord Chamkriain to issue a
waming in 1869 to aii theaters and public plaas of amusement in the metropok whf& stated,
the Lard Chamberiain has learned with regm that there is much rrason m cornplain of the impropriety of cosnime of the ladies in the pandomimes, burlesques, etc. whidi are now being perfOrmed..he has bem m a unwilling to inte* in a matter which he considers ought more properly be lefi to the disaetion and good ~ s t o ef the managas... now hcmever, that the question has been QIren up by the press and pubiïc opinion...he kek himself compeIied to d it to the serious attention of the managersm
Of course, the munter-argument used by mamïgxs
such atmcks by the Lord
Chamberlain and the press, was that "shortdresses, etc... [were] obviously worn to assist rapidity of motion, ease and gras."Reinforcing the memorandum of 1869,the Lord Chamberlain issueci another
urgmtiy repeat[ing] the a p p d made to than to assist in abating die then growing scanda1 which has now reached a dimax [regading]...the indecent dances and the immodest dresses which now form so prominent a pan of the aitertainmeno at some theaters..and o n e more [asking] th& assisrance and cooptation in putting a stop to it.'
No doubt many perceiveci that the fernaie atmbat's costume enhanceci the erotic appeal of
her display, parricuiarly when she Performed with men. Munby d o s e views, althou@ extreme, were likely shared, aibeit in a Iess intense way, by that "certain class" of spectators to which the editorialist in the Era reférred, witnessed Madame StemenbSLch at
rhe St. James Hail, and made diagrams of her in his diary of, "ha body and loins [which]
&PRO, LC 7 16,lener h m V i i u n t Sidney to the Managem of the Theatres in the Jurisdiction of the Inrd Chamberlain, 28 Jan1869.
""Music Halls," GGounuorm a d Emning Nws,2 Feb~ary1868,2.
&PRO, LC 7 16 (1873-1881me), Lprd Chamberlain's Memorial, 21 December 1874.
172 were cased ui close fiaing spangles, and her l w , up to the very hips were naked?
Perfbnning with her husband, the latter
held her out or upwardsÜpon her head [as she lay on his back]...he tossecl her about h m side to side, placing the sole of his fbot actually in the fOrk between her thighs...he chen flung her b d m a d s mer into a somersauit."
"The pretty Engiish girl" about whom he wrote at the -rd
Music Hall, also insplred
eroticism fbr Munby:
[She slid] d m headfimmost mer the body of one of the men, and then catching her feet under his armpits and mming upon again by gnsping his body between her knees and his I e g with her han&, whIlst she brought her head and shouiders up by a s-g muscuiar efféct? Yet, while the ambat's performances may have given rise to sexuai interpretation, her "strongmuscular conditionnspoke to the ways in which contemporay discousse concerning physical development aanslated into a sgstem of discipline, order,and
neatness, partidarly among boys and giris.'O Besides schools where 'pou wiil find in
the tecfeational grounds, gymnastic apparatus etc.," working men's ciubs provideci such equipment? kcording to J.W. Cragg, who unüke most aaobats, was not born into the trade and initialiy worked in the machinery department of a p ~ t i n office g in Manchester,
"TCC, Munby Diaries, ~01.33,25 April 1865.
900nthis point,see John Springhall, Youtb, E+ and Socfety: BHtfsb Youtb 1883-1340 (London,l977), ch. 3 "PIaying the Garne" and ch. 4 "Dutyand Dkcipüne"; cf. Raphael Samuel, ed. FaMot h Mùking and U d n g of Identfty,ml. 2 Minoritia and Outsiders -don: 1989) tbr a COZtSideration of the negotiation berween Britishnesr and imperhi c u l m . Movements,
9LwTo the Editor of the Times,"Times, 10 Jufy 1872, 12.
1 practiced everydq, almg with my mate, on the bars and handles and levers and such Wre in the machine room...[lam joining] the Working Men's Club where there was a gpmnasium, fitœd up with trapezes, rings, parailel bars and the usual W t u r e in such a place?
The eiusive marter about the extent to which the fimale aaobat saw hem& as an object of sanial or of athietic interest was a d d d in a defedve smement by one
h a l e acrobat called Zaeo. Dismisshg the daim of impropriety in her displags, she instead focused on the healthfulness of her work. When asked a question in an inmview
with the Dai& GmpMc about whether she thought that sewe muscular training was bad
Ior girls' health, she stated, Bad! Why [acrobatie training] is the very best thing in the word fOr them. Look at me. I was a P r , slender, prreakly chilci and now 1 weigh 12s. 2ib. 1 never have a cold, a cou*, a day's iiiness of any sort!1 cmly eat two meais a &y, very simple and susraining in m y early breakfast and late suppa and never eat or drink between the mm. Some day I may open a ggmnartic class for girls myself, as 1 have a k i i n g that it would help to make young women h o w how vaiuable such training is to di& hture health. But 1 am @ad to see, both on the Continent and in England, much more attention is now king paid to the physid training of o u sex!'?
-
Her desire to teach gymnastics was consistent with contemporary trends,such as the
Swedish D d i , which were designed to promore physid de~elopmentfor girls in Britain. Indeed, girls' gymnastic schools, such as the Orion Gymnastic Club on Cadeton St., Hadaiey that ofireci "a ladies dass [which] meets for practice on Saturday moTningsn
mushrwmed in the lare-nineteenth cencury and chereby complemented the d d o p m m t in boys' and men's physical training?" Aomrding to the (iynoiasr, a mnoemporary
*CFA scrapbook, Robert Machray, "The Greatest of Acrobat~:The Mandous Craggs," W i d o r Magazine, n-y.,198-90. grThe Makuig of krobats: An Interview of Zam," Dut& Grapbic 13 Pebniary 1892,5. %F.Graf(ofOrion Gymnasiurn), Hints to Ciyrnnasts: Beîng hrgsound Advfœ und Hints to Leuders a d Teaders in Gymnustics and Scbook (Lundon, 1898).
exercise magazine, which had a dub direc#,ry of gymnasiullls throughout Iandon and the
Provinces, thex were ten such plaas rhroughout the rnepopolis that o&rrd ladies
dasses" with speciai lady instructors. Subsaiptions Yaried, but cust 7/6 per e w q six mondis with an entrance fèe of 2/6" at Wdthamstcnn Gymnastïc Sodetg in North East London and "1% per am." at Northampton and County Amateur Athletic Club in Northampton. While men had more clubs to ch-
h m in b d o n than women,many
of the Iargest clubs catered to both sexes, such as the Orion Gymnastic Society, Walthamstow and others. Basexi on the listings in the dymnast, Croydon's Frauiein Will Ladies and ûentiema."%
Remarking on this trend, Punch ran three illustrations which have for their subjects the now khionable sport of cycling and go1f...this shows the grip that outdoor sports has obrained upon iàshionable society and when in addition to this we îhd upon the bookstaiis half a dozen weekiies and monthlies devoted to Ladies' cycling, we reaiize t h the stmng tide of athletidsm is sweeping a c ~ a ythe long
dierished prejudicer [about women and sport] of our forefithers?
G y m m , 1 April 1894, 2(33), 193-4. %
dymnast, 1 December 1896,(64), 2.
9 7 n P ~ cand h Sport," dymnaFt, 1 June 1896, v(59): 505.
175
The appearance of the Gymnast rxqpzine and a host of gpmnastic manuab, such as William Blaüde's Sound Bodiesfor Bgys and Girk (1884) and FJ. Harvey's PbysfcaC
Enercfsesfor GfrLF (1896)attested to the growth of sports for giris. These and othes
man&
were dear in distinguishing the gender cüvide, suggcsting the kinds of actmities
suitable for each sat Accordhg to the 1898 pamphlet, H i e to Gymnass: m
g Sound
Advice and Hfnts to LeQders a d Teucbers, the weaker sex aill nanirally not require such difBCU(t or hard work as boys; it should never be the object of the tPiICher to maloe girls under him m u d a r or 'stmng women' but rather sound, heaithy women...Jt is best a> avoid for girl's ciasses such exmcbes as wide saaddling or wide lunging movemen~.~'
For f b d e acrobats and other such Performers engageci in kars of strength? it was important to create an image of kmininity, on one hand, and athletidsm, on the o u . According to Madame Vicrorina, who carrieci a cannon weighing 300ibs,with 56 ib
weighs artacheci to it at the Trocadero in London befOm a ci^^^ who iived next dmr put pressure on the management to withdraw the act: " . . . t h is only what 1 cal1 playing at
the business, as 1 do not want to make m y show look d i s p d d . " Ha husband interjected, "Madame means that to put f h h her full strength entaiis snaining and e h n
and would look ungracehil. pomen] must not [simpiy] lin heayr weights, but Lift them with apparent esse? Thus, the comection benmm gracefulness and kminhity, so
Pg"Heminesof the Hour: Madame Victorina,"Lioensed Victudém' M i m , 17 Deoembkr 1889, 5, ciipping hund in Munby D i q , 110.13 (14).
apparent withui Victorian advertising, Cound its place within the dnw ring, music hall and pleasure ground.'"O
The very basis of the aaobat's succes depended upon the ptxhrmer negotïating various atshetic codes chat werr sometimes in d m 1 0 1The w o n ,fbr o r p I e , between the public's approd of her "lady-likenathletic exhibitions, on the one han4 and the controversy surrounding her sexuaiiy-ploy0cative
and costume, on the other,
made her task of aesthetic negotiation inherently problematic and compler in the course
of her display, the acrobat confused respectable and unrespectable d e t i c coâes, paradoxidy creating market demand. hporcurtdy, the negotiation pmœss in which she was engageci meant rhat she abandoned both aesthetic extrema and, in exchange, played a garne with the audience in
which it appeared thar she might aansgrss behavioral
boudaries but, in k t , stoppeci short of doing so?
For example, although Zaeo and
others wore costumes that made thern appear nude, they we!re not nude on cioser inspection and rhey did not mnwe any articles during th& performance, as in ppuiar burlesque, to M e r excite or alarm the audience. The point hem is that the =bat
was
lWFor a recent treatment of women and changing cultural ideas, parti&@ with respect to kmininity, in the context of late-Victorian adveftising, see Lori Anw Loeb, Connrming Angek: Ad~enirfng and VidOrfatt Women (NewYork, 1994).
'''For a discussion about the compromise between respectable d u e s and leisure among the middle dass,see Peter Bdey's " A Mingled Mass of P a f s d y Legitimate Pleasures': The Victorian Middle Class and the Problem of Leisure," Vict-tt Srudies 1977 (22) no.1. For music hall audienas see, Dagmar Hoher's "The Composition of Music Hall Audiences, 1850-1900,"in Music Ha& %BUSfness of Pbasure ed. Peter Baitep @fikm Keynes, 1986), chap. 4. '020n transgression see Sdiybrass and White, Politta and POetfcs of Tratt~gressim (London, 1986), 21-33; c.f. Mikhail Bakhrin, Rabehis mid HLr W d ,trans. H&e IswoLksky (Bloomington, 19û4). See ch.3. "PopularFestive Forms and Imslgesnand chp.5 "TheGrotesque Image of the Body and Its Sources"; on wider issues of interpredng frrahte behavior in which the acrobat might be seen a1 be engaged, see P e m Phiherty, "Rradiag Carnival: Towards a Semiotics of History," Clio 15.4 (1986): 411-428.
177 engaged in symboüc play arising b
m opposing aesthetic impulses wWui the pubiîc
domain that stemmed h m community ssandards as well as hiiman intesest and desire. It was a g m e that was uitimately conditicmeci by nuieheanth centurg values conceming the
human body?" Despite the partial sublimation of her sttength to her gender identity, the essenœ
o f the acrobat (and other athietic performers) was her superhuman dexterity. Her
anempn at defying gcavity placecf her in the mle of a culairal figure rebelling against static forces, eaectively dniorcing herseif h
m the outside world. The Éunlliar Past-
Impressionist image of Miss La La at tbe CfrqueFernatZdO1wpainted by Edgar ï k g a s ( c o i n t i d e n a ~in~ the same year that the Brst Dangerous Performances Act was passedl suggests this view. Above the spectators's heads appears Miss La La who strains herseif
upwards by clutching a rope in her mouth until she &es
the high wire. Not ody does
she divorce herself ternporarily h m the outside world but she furthet detaches herseif from her vieweis
- a point to which 1 wiii rerum - in diis elevated state.
The culturaUy-
coded reasons for the audience's attraction to these b t s raises some larger questions
conceming the society's relationship to nature (ie: are heights something a,be fèared?)
and the relationship between people generaiiy (ie: dws it matter if she Eillsl) during this period. The issue of danger thereby takes on an interesting dimension which the legal
evidence conceming acrobats, described in the second seccion, ody touches.
- -
- -
- -
- -
-
- -
--
'"%ctor Turner, F m Ritual to Tbeatrie: î?w Huntcuz Serjolcstzess of PCixy (New York 1982). Turner places particular importance cm the d e that leisure plaged in the industrial world in order to invert, parody, satirize, lampooril burlesque or subdy put down the central values of the basic work sphere society- a aeed, he would agre!e with Bakhtin whidi is prcsait in all societies. CC. Saven Marcus?Tbe O t k VicïOtfattS (London, 1966) for a nineteenth century view of the body and h m this rrlates a> Turner's inversion thesis conceming "piay"in the industrial period.
-
'"1 am hoping that its f h i b r i t y will excuse its non-reproduction here.
I t is worth mentiorhg parenthetidly that other gravity-g
amusements such
as ballcmning gained incrasing popdaritg in this period. Perœived as dangerous on one band, but scienaficaiiy innovative on the other, balloons could be scen asclendhg
regularly h m Vawhall and Cremome M e n s in London. Combining acrobaties with ballooning, G A Farini inaoduced a leap h m a balloon in the Alexandra Park. Reporting on this one commmtator said that several members of the House of Lords seem ferribîy mubled by the announcement that the feat would be atmnpted and since its accomplishment it has been descrikd in ait sorts of opprobrious te= ,...Weff, some terrible things have been said about most inventicms and discoveries...the taik about trainways befbre railwags came hto use gave rise to ail sorts of alarmist feats.'"
O n e important aspect which sgmed to provoke outrage and dIsapproML was the
blurred meaning of these high wire or balloon acts, an ambiguity which could only be resoived by darifying the situation in which they were performed. That is, acmrding to one viewer who watched Mdm. Blondin at the Alhanibn Paiace in 1861,
if a poor needle woman worn out with care and Eatigue, becornes wearied of her hard Life [and] throws herseif into the Thames, she is taken behre the Magistrates and perhaps imprisoned...[whezea~] a poor litîie woman who assumes the name of the Female Blondin ascends [for rnoney] h m the stage to the top of the Alhambra upon a wire which is of a verg ciangemus chafacter [and is applauded by her audience] in a relateci way, Munby d e d a fémaie anobat at the Oxford Music Hall and said that if
she had not been a perfomer, "every man present would have rushed m the rescue or asist her; as it was, she had hired h e d to d o such a thing, and they sat
to see her
do it."'07 In the c o n t a of the commercial market Zor Leisure, audiences paid for the
'-CFA, scrapbook #604,%.
L 0 6 P ~ 0LC , 1, LC In-ktters, 20 July 1861,Ltr. to the Lord Chamkrlain fiom W.Gare*
'07H~dson, 287.
179 uncerrainty that lay behind the resuls of these dangerous acts, a fact which
-y
inside and ouside Parliament pause to think.
Thus, looking beyond the aiterCainet. the question conceming the Qu-
and
other disapproving observers was, what made popuiar taste amaned 00 these acîs? According to Aiderman Lloyd at a meeting of the Town Council of Birmingham imrnediately after the Seha Poweii accident [aimost]...eveqwhere and in every description of public entertainment there was a morbid craving for sensational excitement.'"
In Oldham, fbr example. at the Adelphi Music Hall in 1871."the Brothers Banarecuted sorne daring h ts on the
trapeze thxi at a height of 20-30 -.and
one of the
three men kU into the orchestta hPiidfDtem0st." The response of audiences, accordhg to the report, was a single one of "panic"where 'men yeiied and women saeamcd''O)
Another writer suggested that
[evenwhen the act is performed pmperiy] and the actor only l o o k as though he would slip h m the Pape, as if he were fàüing head f o ~ e m o s t on the people beneath him and then catches hirnself with his feet on the horizontai bar..xrcams [are generally eliated] 6rom the femaie portion of the audience, and kquently h m the s t e m m sar a l s ~ . ' ~ ~ But for performers such as Blondin, the h o u s Yero of Niagara, (Incidentaiiy fimm
whom Madame Blondin derived her name) such ans were denised ta give the iIIuson of
danger. For him, the tension was not between lifk and death, but between illusion and reaîity. In an interview he recalled the only time in his career when he met an accident
LmVublicMeeting at the Town HA,"BimingbamJoMial25 J d y 1863,7. Serious Trapeze Accident," Abytwytb Obsetwr, 4 Febmary. 1181,2.
L'%orrifying Acadent in a Music Hall,"E a ,12 February 1871,12.
Palace [ d e n ] the man who was Ietting the &eworIs did not understand his business and [as a d t ] he knoclred me off m y rope...[but] 1 caught the rope with m y legs and 1 did it so that the public thought it was part of the performance and criecl 'Doit again'.LLL
at the Crystai
He added b
t in
contrast to arnateur @mers,
"I never Iose m y presence of mind...no
matter what takes p l a ~ e . "Codirming '~ his molness, one obsemer who -mess&
Blondin said, 'concem for the pgfomer's safccy is d e p i d on the iàœs of the spectators....Blondin shows n ~ n e . " However '~ great Blondin's talents, there was
nothing iiiusionary about the ptactical dangers that were invorved in these am. Responding to the attack made on his "dangernusprokssion," he -te
immediately afrer the Çelina Powell inadenf that "e!veryaccident which has befülai mpe-
walkers is amibutable entireiy to th& profwion they were engageci in."'"
want of knowledge and experience of the
The comment, however, fàïied a> address the
practical problems asscxiated with fàulty equipment, as in the Selina Poweii case. Even so,the prolikration of "amateurs"within the aade p e Performerq such as Blondin,
reason for repmf. Munby noted in a visit to the Cambridge Music Hall near Shoreditch Station that
the boxkeeper idbrmed m e that 'Zuleiiah', [the acrobat perfbrming] is a Miss Foster, a publian's daughter of the neighborhood; that she only became an acrobat two or three months ago, stimulateci Like the rat of them by the success of La Pereira [a b o u s wntemporary a m ~ b a t ] . ~ ~
lLLBCR, Theatre Saapbook, 'Blondin Intemiewed,"10 September 1873.
Luanon.W o d e @ U Won&&U W-tI Blondin, tbe Ascerztionfst (London, n.d.), 10.
Ibe Lfe and lWnw~dinaryC a m of
LL4"Hi@ Rope Performances," &a, 16 August 1863,11.
181
Following fhis Wit on the same d
g at around 10:00,Munby stoppeci into the
Temperance Music Hall, where admission was one penny in order to see ' a Jewess"by the
name of ütde Azella who "is only nine year old." Standing next to the perfbrmer's sLPm, the latter infOrmed Munby that "LittieAz&
[ d o s e real name is I3eisy Asher] ...bas o d y
beem at this three weeb, besides 8 days and that she practices at home."" For Blondin and others, the respectabiliy of their sade, which was constantiy in question, depended on their physical safiety. Despite Blondin's deknse, t h e is h i e
doubt that the built-tension between life and death represented the very essence of the acrobatie art, particularly where there was no net - a h c ~ s which, r some contempoTaTies
assumeci, attfacted audiences. This observation, made by Alderman Lloyd and others, raises interesting questions about the tension betweai spectacie for the
of hin and
spectacle for the sake of danger and the uisson arising h m rhis t d o n for the spectator. Remarking on the crowds which went to see Blondin at the Crgsral Palace in 1861 "Tor a
cost of one shilling,"just
W P
years before the Sellna Powell accident, Munby recorded,
the Palace was crowded with holiday folk [on account of the Queen's Binhday]. Dense rnasses of working people wae stn~ggiingout of the gardens as I suuggled in. 1 stood... next to a robust servant girl.'" And, obseming Blondin at the Crysal Palace one year later, he -te,
-
The...banks and terraces were covered f b m end to end with people some 50,000, 1 conjecture - standing or sitting rapt in contemplation of the melancholy business aiof in the 1879 painting Mfss h Lù at tba
Cirqze Fersando. Her positioning was not unlikt the Victorian barmaid who, as Peter
Bailey has discussed,stood behind the bar counter and was therehre out of reach
cg .
the c u ~ t o m e r .But ~ ~ unlüIe the barmaid, who was an agent invoived in a larger process
of consumption (e-g. selling drink), the acrobat's display was the object of amsumption
par excelllence as she posed both in h n r and on top o f the platf'orrn or ring for dI to observe ar a @ce. That her costume was ~cant,as discussed in the sewnd section,
f ù d e r brought attention to her already conspicuous role and added to her controvecsiai repucation. The significance of the fernale's public visibility was not just that she
provoked sanial messages but that she was a b , as Bailey has argue4 the "bearer of @amour, arguably a distinctiveiy modem visuai propertg and central to orthodox bourgeois notions of sexuaiity thar were hugbt with imperatives of reiease and s u p p r e ~ s i o n . "Baiiey's ~ analysis associates giam0u.rwith "magicalor fictitiow beautf as i n d u c e d by the poetic vocabulary of Sir Walm Scott and can thereby be identifieci with other dewtions concerned with distance to which the acfobgt's art obviousiy mnf;ormed.
Distance thus helped to perpetuate the "magicalnqudties that surromdeci the acrobat
and also created an important division between her and her audiena, the expression and consummation of whose desire was necessarily stymied by her elusiveness. In the min& of some opponents of anobatic displays, the connection berweai the -bat sexuality tmk on an added meaning in the con-
?i3ailey, "PafaSexuajity and Glamour,"148172.
lSIbid., 149,152.
and
of consumeriSm, rendering the art as a
189 brrn of fémaie solicitation, disering h m prostitution parity because ofits more pubiic
orientation. This viiew was perhaps no where more d a i y expresseci than in a letter by Laura Ormiston Chant to the Theatre and Music Halls Cornmittee which was set up in 1889 by the ne*
created London County Councii. She said,
we the women of England, in whname 1 speak today..say that [although] these poor [acrobaq giiis...[who] are shamelessly eKposed do not mind it, 1 say that a gvilized comrnunity is not to take its standard of decency h m those *o..not in a position to hold [it at its] highest...the amusements of our great city shaU be such diat young men can go to them without king entrappeci and seduceci by these sad, paor ~ornen.~'
In a sense, the acrobat was unfkvorably associateci with the actress, on the one hand, who was traditionaiiy connecteci to the "low"(aibeit increasingly axnmetcialized) culture of the
theater and the prostitute, on the other, at a time when the inspection of both these uades effected legai change and muniapai reguiati~n.~
By "entrapping"and "seducingnyoung men br a price, such kmale performers were thought by some to cater b r a market that was aimed principally at male audiences.L39 Given this view, they sometirnes encountered criticism h m other ( d e ) patrons when they attendeci these displays. Reflecting on this double standard, O d t o n
Chant r d e d that
'"J. Donohue, The Empire Theater of Varieties Liœming Contmvemy of 1894, "NineteentbCentury TbeaterResearcb 15.1 (Summer l987), 59.
-sec Trac y C.Davis, Actresses; cf. Judith R Wallrowie, PIDstiltutlon and VictOrjCUC Society (Cambridge, 1980). '*~ee Thomas Richards, 2Be - d i @ of Culture itz a d Spectack, 1851-194 (Scanford, 1990).
VictOtfCUt E1lt8h-d:A
d m g
Two Frenchmen stood behind the scalls [at the Empire Theatre] behind my sister and myself and wondered [how] any pirtuous woman wdd look upon such a performance as that upon the stage'.'* As late-nineteenth centwy British and American historians have argued, sexual p d œ s and their meanin= were becoming increasingîy disengagexi h m procreation, at leas among the white rniddle dass, rendering sex a more inrimate and non-reproductive practice - a c u l d shifi which enabled some male spemators, to defight in the acrob~t's perfOrmance, perhaps as the two Frenchmen intended to do (pretiecably without the
Mvertising became another m u e of contestation which opponents of 'dangerous
performancesnpursueci. This was paniculaTly enlivened by the "indecent"poster of Zaeo
of the Royal Aquarium. Upraised arms, smiiing and wearing a tight bodice with apparently no tights, Zaeo, the Human Cannon-bd, appeared on a poster which
distributeci
throughout London in 1890 and which was the fbcus of a ansoring campaign by the National Vigilance Association (NVA), as Tracy Davis has already describeci.'* For Chant
and others, " r d ladies"did not 81aunt their physique either in the temporary space of the ring o r the more pefmanent realm of advertising. Whether people paid to see Zaeo at the
Aquarium or not, the force o f her advertisement propeiied a wave of opinion that
pressureci the managers of the Aquarium to adjust the poster so that Zaeo's apparently
bare legs were coiored blue and her ch&
Eace was made serious. Attempts at
censorship only backfkd since the adjustments added nothing to the moral improvement
'7.Donohue, "TheEmpire Th-
licensing ContMrnersJIIn59.
L4vudith R Walkowitt's City of DneCICifirl Delfgbtr Narrutims of S&mdDanger in ïute Victorian London (London, 1992), 5-6. 'UTracy C. Davis, 'Sex in Public Plaresu; idem, A ~ ~ ~ s s120. Bs,
191
of the poster which s a fèammd Zaeo's muscular body and which became a commerciai opportunity, as the managers ironicaiiy advertised, "wmein and see Zïeo in her modest attire."lU The p r d e n c e of the poster in the day-ta-day hfk of the Lcmdoner, or city
or taken for & r a n d . As
and town dweller in generai, should not be undMunby m k e d in 1868,
the streets are phcadeci with postws announcing F
W Troupe of Femde
Acmbats [which] has hem mgaged at an 'enoous expense' and 'tonight they appear for the k t tirne at the London Paviii~n.'~
The degree to which such visual images, as Zaeo's poster and others, BLtered into the s u b conscious of the passerby poses some interesthg questions. Seen in terms of an imagineci community, these posters created a highiy democratic culture through mass advertking in which the important comection b e e n sex and mmmodification carried highiydmrged cultural codes for aii rnembers of urbgn society who did not have to attend the music hall, circus or pleasure ground, in order to observe th=,
but who merety needed to wallc
down the ~ t r e e t .Without ~~ even wishing to panaLe of it, the passerby was nec-
integrated into the performance world through his wnscious or unconsdous observation
of Street advertking in the form of the poster-biu
- a notion which meant that the
commerciaiized performance world was engaged in performance outside the music h d ,
park o r circus and inside the imaginations of the wider public. That biii-posters were also distributed and plaranled in shopwindows and on
shopwaiis reinfOrced the messages h m the sidewaik. According to the testimony of one
"'TCC, Munby Diaries, vo1.36, 9 November 1868.
'*sec Benedict Anderson's Imagined Comrnrrniries (New York, 1983) fOr a discussion about the culturai construction of difhent h m of consciousness.
of the witnesses ar the coroners' inquest on S e h a Powell's death, posters were put up a f o h g h t in advance vloouncing 'the Female Blondin, Mdm. Geneive, the o d y r d , legitimate performer of Blondin's great fats."" He conrinued, "thousandsof these were [posted] and put up in shop ~ ~Lancashire, the zookeeper of the Preston windows within a radius of 40-50 miles of A S ~ O I I ? In
Pkasure Gudens, commenting on the menu of advertking, said that these gay bills [announcing new animais such as the pigrail monkey and the newly acquired armadillo] are pmed up inside the tramcars [and] in public houses, coffee taverns, and barber's mansions, and [other such places] where gossip is rife.'48
In theu discussion of early modem EngIish consusnption spaces, Nigel Thrift and Paul Glennie have righdy pointed out that the social practices of shopping induded more than just the exchange of items but exrended to social interaction between the shopkeeper and his wi&
lient te le!'^ Thus,
the culture of commodification, the bill-poster played an important role as the focus for
conversation or casual observation. Given the uncontrollable nature of this sort of interaction, groups such as die NVA found both a moral imperative and cause for immediate action in their
drive to censor bu-posters, such as that of Zaeo, specifically, and to pnvenr sex from being made into a commodity, in genenl.
"'The
~ c c i d e nto t the Female Blondin,' in BiminghamJoumal, Juiy 25, 1863,5.
"'Ibid.
14'LR0, DDCm box 26, mss. HeadkeeperPsReport, 24 August 1884. l4?ad Glemie and Nigel T M ,'Consumers, Identities and Consumption Spaces in Early Modem England,' Hisroncal Geography Seminar, Institute of Hinorical Research, 14Juiuary 1995.
193 In the market of specede, more than just the act of commercial exchange (e-g. money for aesthetic enjoymait) occumd. The proccss of creating meanhg and represeritation of the thhg which was being archangeci
- the acrobat and her art - was
also raking place. As both a COlSUmer and producer, her rok was m p 1 a r . The reasons for this stemmeci h m the underlining tension beraPn her succumbing to safey precautions, on one hand, and her embodying d t y , on the other. CemiMy, the growth of the gymnastic industry - both in tems of equipmait and training schools
-
prwided the context in which the acrobat codd justilp the popularity and perhapE even the respeccability of her trade-
Yet, given the heights at which she pedbrmed, she
symboiized the "spectade,"hovering above the public sphere and chailenging atabiished
-
-
sanial codes whiîe encouraging in the eyes of opponents new ones m be formeci. Like d l other types of entertainers d o arperienced the pressure of cornpetition, she
bund herself forceci to obqr the standards which popuiar taste dictateci chrough market pressure in Victorian society
- standards which were beyond the control of legai bodies or
moral pressure groups.
VI. Conclusion What was of interest about the Selina Powell case of 1863, b i d e s its basic
gniesomengs, was the range of issues and con-
which grew h m it. The accident set
in motion a series of parliamentary debates that l a d for thrre decades and diat d t e d in two parliamencuy statutes conceming the acrobatie aade and it prompteci many to
pause and ash, why were such exhibitions popular? The question was a cornplex one that highlighted the pubfic's appetite br and interest in sex, athleticism, and danger. The tension between what constituted innocent amusement and what de5ed saiacious
degradation effectively made the acrobat's trade equivocal in the iate-ninetgenth century.
194 Issues concerning crueIty, sexuai immor;itityt danger and comnmdifition provideci che
fuel with which cunpaigners, s a ~ g g h g against aaoktic àisplags, hught thdr banle. If the banle was between a moral mhority and kmate acrobatst then the war was between
an impotent legal - and kqd public taste.
- authority and a vibrant CoIlSuIIIer w r l d controiied by
1. Inaoduction
The Victorians lived in a world where attitudes a&xting chiidren took an increasingiy interventionist character.' Like children who worked in codmines and
agriculture, those who worked in the circmi attraaed the attention of Parliamentarians
and moral ceformers. In 1879,a s we have seen in the previous chape, these attitudes gaineci srpression in an act of Parliament: the Dangernus Performances Act. Sime the passage of the statute, however, it became evident a, xnany concemeci with the welfaff of
the circus child that there was stiii much that needed to be done. Priecisely how much remaineci an unanswerable question for many observem.
In 1887, during the inquiries of the Royal CommiiPcion on the Education Acs,
Millicent Fawcett of the National Vigilance Association. suggested that there were about 1,000 iondon children employai as s u p e m u m ~ i e sduring the London Christmas
''ïhere is a large litemture on the history of chüdhood. Standard texts that relate to indude Ivy the relationship between childrwi and the industrial revolution Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Cbicdtien in Engltsb Socfsly (London,1969-73)vol.2; C. Nardinelli, C b W L h r and tbs Ittdusttfal Rewfzdfotz (Bloornington,1990); also see J.S. Branon, Tbe Impaa of VfctorianCbfUm'sFiction (Ix>ndon, 1981) and John SomerPille, Tbe Rise and Fall of CbfMbood (London, 1982); dong the same hes of "dedine" which characterizes Somerville's work, see L Rosi=, Tbs Ension of C & U b d : CbfCd Oppression in Btjtain, I&29-2918 Poor, a text which takes the historiography one step hrrther by focusing on chiidsen rather than the idea of childhood which had k e n the focus of his#,rians of the 1 s t gaieration. For a historiographicai overview,see Hugh Cunningham,CbfCdmrz and CbfCdbood In WestSoc&4 Sfnoe 1500 (London,1995), ch.1.
197 pantomime season, rnany of whom performed in the circusl In Pmtomime Waifs,an
scample of waif fiction, EUen Barlee estimateci that between 4,000 and 12,000girfs were employed acms the country "in traveuiing theam, drcuses, and the fow kind of music
hall..for dancing and gymnastic exhibitions? Ghren their desire to heighten public awareness about these nurnbers, it might be assumeci thac both women OvereStimated the number of chiidren engaged in perfbrmance- Neverthefess, more recent computatiom have tended to confhn the larger figure.
Tracy Davis, the theater historian, fbr example,
has suggested that there were perhaps 5,000 chiidren mipfoyed throughout the country in the theater alone.' In marked contrast t c ~aii these observations, the cemus report for 1881 suggested that a mere 444 children d e r 15 @med
pmksionally thtoughout
the Kingdom.' While circus children remaineci an anonpous figure in these dcuiations, or
perhaps men completely uncounted, t k y were incongruously the fausof much attention
among Pariiammtarians, noveists and philanthropists. This chapter asks why, given their marked anonymity within the contemporary statistics and given their numerical
negligibiüty in relation to other trades in wbich children more commonly labomi, such as
manufacnuing, agriculture o r domestic service, did children of the ring provoke a range of
*PP,Tbird Report of tbe Royal CommissionAppointed to Iiquim into tbs W&izg tbe ECemet~taryEducatfonActs, rwr, 1887,30, 310. 3EllenBarlee, Puntomime Wu&
of
Or, A Piea for Our C i e CbfCdm (bndon, lût%$),57.
'Tracy C. Davis, "TheEmployment of Chifdren in Victorian Theatre: Tr;tining, Exploitation and the Movemenr for Rebm,"Nav îk&m Qzuzer~&, ~01.2,no.6, M a y 1986, 117-35.
of Engiùd and WaCes,(Lundon, 1904), 257 "Appmdix 3 4 Tabie 3 4 England and Wales Occupations of Males and Females at each of the Thee Censuses, 1881, 1891, 1901."
responses h r n 1879,when ParLiament passed the fim piece of legislation that arpiiatfy related to circus chiidsen, to 1897 when it revised the statute?
The h
t
section of this chapter wiii develop our examination of the debates in
Parliament p d i n g the circus child, an Bicaminatim which provides a whil mmview of
the state of the public mind on the subject. Section cwo explores the adult male
- pardcularfy
- patronage of child-acrobat exhibitions and the conflicts which thw9as spectators,
arperïend. F W y poised against this interest was a moral minoriy of novelisa and phüanrhropists which became increasingiy vocal h m the earfy 187Qs,ushaing in a new era within a pre-BtiSting "childsaving" campaign.
Borrowing h m the recent work of Judith WaLkowitz, it is assumeci that the patronage of child exhibitions helped to construct a reformer's and spectator's gaze mer
the circus child? In general, soda1 rebrmers hund chiid displays d i f f i d t to control,
parcicularly @en
the strength of the market for them and the ambivalent fkdngs
contempoLafies had towards them. Some patrons todr pity on these c h i i h while others ma~veIiedat the abüities of those "amazingprodigies." Othgs adopted both, albeit
6A few comments about ter-ology and the distinction drawn between chiidren and youths in this smdy are necessary. This is ùifDrmed by the ciifkences drawn betweai the two categories in the legislation beginning with the ChiIdren's Dangernus P 6 r m a n c e s Bill in the 1870s. The latter in its initial Bill b r m in 1872 -was d e d "An Act to frevent the Employment of Young Pemns As Acrobats...,"but the mm 'poung personsuwas later supplanteci by that of "children,"a category taken to indude those under 12 yeacs of age, and was rwised under the 1879 statute to include those under 14. By 1897, as we have seen in the last chapter, the Dangerora Performances Act had been cevised and disringuished between boys who were under 16 and girls who wae under 18. The term "youngpersans," therefore, which was indudeci in the initial debates of the 1870s had k e n dropped, and replaced by the wider term,"CbLldren." Thus, for the sah ofthis dirussion the t e m "young pnsons" and "diildrennWUbe mkpsed into the atteg~ryof "children,"in keeping with the spirit of the iaw, but distinctions between age groups will be made where the historid evidence allows.
-
'see Judith Walkowitz, City of D r e d f C Deligbt: Nurra&es of &xzd Danger in meVictOrfan & d o n (London, 1992), ch. 34.
199 confiicting, views. Adult-constructed notions of the drcus chlld and his/her imagineci existence behind the scenes were at rhe very core of the discoume sufzounding
welfare, a view which is in agreement with Carolyn Steedman's ana-bat?
of the child
The chiid perfonner and M e r display occupied an equisoQl mie, as did the
frniale acrobat, in the second haif of the nineteenth œntury and thus intorms us not only about circus life but also about the conflicting d u e s chat &hed the age.
II. Pariiament and the Circus Child i. The Key-Note
When the Dangerous Perfhnances B U was inttoduced in the Lords br its h t
reading in 1812, Lord Shaksbury said tbat it did not go fu enough: "It only prohibitcd dangerous performances of chiidren as acmbats,' he sai4 "anddid not deal with the[ir] training...where m a t of the mischidlay? The probiem a> which he painted was not
remedied with the passage of the Dangerous Performances Act, as we have seen, since the statute
only prohibiteci the performances of child acrobats under the age of fourteen. Not
only was the
law hadequate but, as time passed, it bsame dear to Shaftesbury and other
concemed onlookers that it was not k i n g obeyed. in 1883 he told the Peers that the
provisions of the 1879 Dangerous Performances Act were, in k t , king "almgether ignoreci." At this tirne, he said, the eviis of dangerous exhibitions perfimned by children "prevailedto a greater e ~ e nthan t [they] ever did before."'o He drew their hrdships'
'Carolyn Steedman, Stnmge DfsCocatiotts: CbiCdbood and the I&a of hum^ Inten*ortty,I78M93O (bndon, 1995) see ch.6 "StrangeDis1o~ations:Chiid As Acmbat-" 9Hancard, 3rd series, vo1.212 (1872), c.1502. ' O W u ~ a r d3rd , series, ~ 1 . 2 8 2(18831, c. 1462.
200
attention to a letter of the previous &y p ~ t e in d the editorial column of the Times h m a vicar in Bmon-on-Trent which stated,
some weeks previously 1 drrw the attention of die H a w Sarerarg to a perfofmance in Eastbourne of what was d e d the 'Human Serpent' [do] is a lide girl and is made to thmw her head b d m d s and to bend her spine so that her head not touches the pund, but is bent completdy under her x, thar her face looks out 6rom berwca h a 1 e p . d tb.is i m p k a long previous training.''
The response of the Home Secrecary, W i l l i a m Harcourt, according to the vicar, was that "sudi t o m is perknly legalnaccording a> the mnis of the 1879 statute which did not
allow any interference in children's training but onEy in petformance. The vicar then appealed to the h l of Shaftesbury 'who[se chamam],if he does not move his hand and voice, 1 shall have v t l y mistaken."* The problem was hirther dismssing because of
the duration of the training, claimed Shaftesbury, and he rrad to the Lords a letter wriby another correspondent who claimed to be a member of the p r o h i o n :
-
thex wretched diüdren..are taken at a very tender age the eariier the better under the guise of apprentices, and the rnasters daim mntrol over them until [they are] 21 gcars [ ~ l d ] . ~
-
These observations led Shaftesbuy to suggest that "the training for such perhnnances was cruel and dangerous in the exareme.""
Shaftesbury proposed that the help of the school boards k e n h e d in order to help solve the p r ~ b l e m ."School ~~ and acrobat training couid never go on together," he
lL"TheTorture of Chiidren Not Illegai,"Times, 2 August 1883, 2. Lq bid. L3Hanrard, 3rd sefies, vol. 282 (1883), c.1463.
"Ibid., c.1464. '%id.
201 believed.'%j.
Mundek, the Vice President of the Cound on Educatim said he was
optimistic about the e&rc that the Educational Acis would have on this group of 'pe~ais
of wandering habits who attend races, him and simiiar placg of res0dt7 Spealdng in J a n w of 1881 when the Education Act of 1880 first came into hîce, he said,
the local authorities [now] can proaed . a@nst parens h r a simple absence so if the local authorities do their duty, this class of chiidrem can be much more easily xached than hrmeriy.'8
However,in assuming, as they did, that eicher the Education Act of 1880 would bring arcus children under the authority of the school system, Shaftesbury and Mundella d
e
an emneous Ieap of Caith. Beionging a,an idnerant body, the chiidren of drcus hmiiies
typically traveiled and were not permanent residents in any mmmunity long enough to warrant th& registration in a local school district. Even if they and/or their parents cca
trainers perfonned in a resident cimus, th& engagements were u s d k y no longer than several w e e b or possibly one or two months. In cases where the chiid was pan of a
travelling brcus, the problem of uuancy was made worse since hekhe movcd fimm tcmm to tom
on a more kequent basis than the child belonging to the resident citcus.
O n this point, Mundella added that if anything more were to be done, such as registering "travellingcarts, vans, etc., it must be done, as is the case of the canai boatts, by the Local Govemment ~ o a r d . " Whether ~~
he reaüzed it or not, Mundella had predictecl
the future campaign of one concemed observer, George Smith, d o s e pian to bring the
lqbid.; for a background on MundWs work as Vice President of the Coundl on Education, see W.H.G.Armytage, AJ MuttdeICa, 2 8 2 ) I 8 ' 7 : ï?w L i b e m l B r r a b g n d to tbe Lcz6our Moventetzf (London,1951), ch.11.
202
van d w e h g population within the grasp of the settied population was a> be introduced in Pariiammt rime and again over the next decade.
ii. Smith's Solution
The arguments containeci in Smith's proposai legisfatin were not just tied to z d o u s moral crusading but to more mahmem ideas about the contamination of min&
and bodies. That is, Smith's ausade United the traditional anti-vagnmt p-udice
of nual
magistrates and constabularies 6 t h a late-Victorian version of the hthat vagrancy was
infecrious." But it was the weahess in the speditity of Srnidi's proposais
- particularly
with regard to supervision and enfbrœrnent - that ultimateiy leci to the BU'S defieat, Still, the idea of rehrrn enableci Smith to get the attention of Muential people,
including W.T. Stead. Stead went so far as as set up the 'George Smith Fund" and gave
hancial support to Smith personally, a geshrre which was particuiarly needed since the latter had been unemployed since 1874 when his bosses at the Whitwortb Coliiery in
Coalville grew tireci of his ausading.2' As editor of the faClMcJi Gazette, Stead d its pages in order to issue a notice fbr contributions for this fund which was said to ime
yielded £800 in 1884, Lord ShaftesburyySir S&rd Frederidc Leighton were among those who made o
Northcote, Lord Fortescue and Sir
h of help. Stead made sure that
"everypenny subsaibed shodd be handed mer without any deductiom Tor
advertisements" to Smith for him and his f k d f s securit~~.~ SO gratefiil was Smith that
he wrote in his diary in 1884: "We are betœr off [now] than we have been b r manyymany
203 years?
An aify of Smith's, Stead had his own moral r e h campaign *ch
h
d
expression in a senstionalized aposé that appeared in the P d M d Guze#e in J d y of 1885 and fevealed the problem of chiid prostitution in I X K L ~ O C I . ~
Although Smith's campaign was aimed at the larger population of van cfwelle~s, who induded not oniy circus people and th&
children but aiso gypsies and other van
dweflers, the Moveable DweIlings B U that he inspireci offieffd a cure EDr the ptoblem that Shaftesbury describeci and which Mundelia assumed would take care of itself under the existing education legislation. In part, the Bill, which was first introduced in the
Commons in juiy of 1885 by E.H.T. Digby (Cons.-Dorset), demandeci that the child of a inoveable dwelling be considered as a cesident in the school disana where he/she
camped? A system of regisaation was proposed whaeby the van In which the M
y
dwelied was required to be registered with the county authorities Thtough the process
of regismtion, the van would be connected to the school district. It was propœed thaz a passbook system be introcluceci so that in the event the Eimily m&
barn one school
district to another, the child's passbook would fUrnish the new school authorities with
hisher record of attendances and progress* But the Select Cornmittee cm Tcmporary
DweLiings Bill, which was set up in 2887 to examine the merits of the BU,questioned just
how usehl it was for the child to be shifred h m one school m another.'
in pracaice,
"sec Waikowia, City of DreadfiC Lkligbt, 81-170;a b , VI. Jones,Saint w Sen~acionafkct?:me Story of W.I:Stsad (Fst W1ttefiDg, 1988), 22-34; CS.Deborah Gorham, "TheMaiden Tribute of Modern Babylon Rearamined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Lare Victorian Engiand,"VictmfianS u i e s 21.3 (Spring 1978): 353379.
=PP,SC on tbe T e m p a r y DtmIIings B U , xiii (1887),In. 479, 27.
204 then, the only way of ensuring that the children of van dweiiers attendeci school h r the
minimum number of days (and profiteci h m the experiarce) was by brcïng them to
senfe in a parti&
district and by preventing them firom travelling with their parents
until they had satisfied the School Inspecter.
The way in which George Smith conceived the BU was not in terms of antiuuelty legislation, as Shaftesbury would have it, but in terms of an educationai m e a s w tbat would cure the problem of ateracy within the van dwelling mmmunity. The
was, he
toid the Select Cornmittee,"thereare about 30,000 tramhg children living in mns and other temporary d w e b g s and going without educaton to an almost alarming extent."" Of this number, he estimateci that a q m , or 7,500, belonged to showmen's families
-a
figure that approximates the average figure of travelling child performers estimateci by ELlen B a ~ l e e .His ~ findings were based on selective observation that took on a highly emotive, melodrarnatic tone? H e persuadeci one of the mernbers of the Select Cornmittee, John Richards Kelly (Cons.-Camberwell), that "notone in a thousand of these
diüdren [has] any reiigious education or wouid attend Sunday s c h ~ l Religious . ~ education, Smith believed,was a panacea for curing odier problems mmected with their lifestyle, narnely illegithacy. But in cases where births from mamiages tesulted, t h e were still problems. he believed, that had to be addressed. At diis moment in the, he
told the Cornmittee, "thereis scarcely a camp..mithout an idiot or an Unbaile.m' Givai
"Ibid., In. 365, 21.
-Ibid., In. 365, 22; cf. h.2.
=sec Mayafi, Qpsy
TraveICers, 130-1;simiIarly, see George K Behlmer, "Ihe Gypsy
Problem,"231-253. w P ~SC , m rbe T m p o r a r y DweIZings BfU, xiü, (1887),
In. 389, 23.
205
their tradition of intermarrying, he b e l i d that the chiidrerr of these people, if left alone, would inherit the same characteristics as their predecessors. Thus, he argue4 somahiag
had to be done immediately to stamp out the "infrcton"that the currrnt gerieration was assurned to carry. In surn, his goal was to "elevate"them, through religion and education,
"into respectable citizens of society"and he klt sure that they would one day thanL him fbr his efforts. Smith's attempts to evoke a positive response h m Parliiunent met with
disappointing resuis. Henry C. Stephens (Cons-Hormey), who was an outspokn opponent of the BU,was moved to ask during the debates when the B U was reintroduced in the Comrnons in 1893,
what good can a M d receive h m being brced to attend a school for the &y, or the Limiteci cime during which a mmeable van may be passing through a district?..suchpowem would injure the school, retard school work, and dis& and dishear~enthe school management, wihout [any] compensating benefit to moveable dwelluip chilcirera." Besides this, the notion of enforcing mmpulsory schoohg on a nomadic population
ofknded notions of individual liberty which Stephens defknded vehmently. Strüàng its own ernotional pitch, in mponse 00 Smith, the Van M e r s
Association, which was set up in 1891 in order to oppose the Ba,launchad a countercrusade which helped in the eventual dekat of the proposeci legishtion-%One member
calleci Mary Tyler argued that Smith's assumption that drcus children received no education was mistaken: 1 myseif was one o f a W y of seven girls and two boys, aii of whom haw been brought up in the trayelling business, and every one reœived a good
3mMoveableDwehgs Bill,"Era, 4 Febniarg 1893, 16.
"Murphy, who quotes the lerters connecfed with this c o u n t e r d e , does not speafy where they were printed, see 19-27.
education....He calls them 'poor van children' Lez him take back his sgmpath~-~
Outrage was met with action by the Association which designed an educational scheme to help srave off Smith's accusations of ignorance. Hadng previously bunded the National
Union of Total Abstainers in 1880,a group wh-
mission was to bring the gospei oo
travelling communities of fkiqpund performers, Miss E. Billington helped in the
development of the Association's school scheme? She said at the Van DweIIers Association annual general meeting in 1833 that the school scheme which the organization had brought hrth...was bringing to them sympathy and help [from] all over the country. There were now about brty attendances every morning at the school in th(e Agricuftural Hall in Inndon] and they had a grand school where there were a number of boys and girls who muld read and write exeedingty -6
Furthermore, plans were being made to anend the program throughout the country and Billington called on her fellow h a l e supporters to help in the *rt.
To this end, the
Association proposed to send out four school vans at a cast of El50 each in order to provide some education to the children of van dwellers? As a consequence, the Association's minister, Thomas Home, argued at the same meeting that "itwas not
necessary to 'rescue' the showmen [and his cbild~en].~ Undertying his argument was
an important distinction between showmen and the "wretcheddrink-besotten gypsy?
3m
Fenwick, "At Work Among the Van Dwellers," Tbe ~ i m September , 1899, in 944/655 Road Show and Circus Cunings, September 1899-January1903. "Van Dwellers Association,"Era, 28 January 1893,8. "Hodder, George Smitb, 228.
""The Van Dwellers Association,"Era,21 January 1893, 18.
207
Whatever the différences, many MPs and Peers wcre not ccmvinced that the cirnis
child - whether he/she belonged to "-liloe"
camps or not
- should be left aime. As a
consequenœ, many in Parliament began a> think of new wags, quite apart fian Smith's
Bill, of d&g
with the chiid of the ring.
ui. The Anti-Cruelty Lobby
In the late 18805,Pariiamentary saategia Cor putring an end to circus training pmctices for children SM h m education to the more direct m
m of pfosecuting
the parent or guardian. S h c e b r d Shaftesbury'sdeath in 1885,the child protection ouse was taken up in Parliament by kJ. M u n e (Lib.-ShefEeld), who,as Gladstone's former Education Secreeuy, had enough arperience to know that Smith's bill was impracticable. As one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society for the Pierrntion of Cmelty to
Children. he also had the intereses of this extra-pariiamentarypressure group in mind. Although it grew into something more fàr-reaching the biiowing year, Mundella's Cmelty to
Childm B U of 1888allbrded Pariiammt with an opportunity for dealing with the
problem of chiid training in the same period that Smith's bill was initiared. The B U aimed to make pemns Iiable to the charge of a misdemeanor and stated,
any person who treats, neglects, or exposes any chiici under the age of 14, or causes or procures such a chiid to be treated, neglected or arposed in a mariner cuicuhted to cause unnecessary su&ring [shall be &ty of such an olfence].'O
This aUowed for a broad interpretation of "crueltj+'b
d on the notion of perœived
intent of the accused. In order to estabiish "perceivedintent"the character of the accused no doubt had to be taken into account by the court. Such information opened the
'OBfICs,Public, etc, "A Bill Cor the better prevention of cruelty to chiidren,' (2) 1888, Siii 378.
208
fioodgates to hearsay. That is,since the= was no need fw an acnial act of crudty to have
k e n cornmineci but only an act that might be "caiculated" m cause such injury, the problem of disproving an accusation was d to
the harshness of the Bill, es-
e even more difficult. Çome MPs o b j e d
since it aimed to Impose "the heaviest of peoalties
-
six months imprisonment o r a possible fine o f f IOO.ML Since the Bill served to protiect ail chiidren, Mundeiia ciaimeci that no group of
guardians or parents, whatever th& dass or occupation,muid be above the law. The
B U also containeci more spedfic ciauses that singied out any p e ~ o n.who causes any child under the age of ten to sin& p e h m or play in any p u b k place*
During the
debates of 1889 when the Bill was b e h g read, some MPs believed that this meastue did
not go as far as they would have iiked. In the spirit of Shafksbury's eariier comments, WH James said: " p u have arcludeci h m the operation of this clause chiidrrn...cmployed in painhi exhibitions...in places of public amusement in our large towns.- W h n
Noble (Cons-Hastin@) raised a similar concern severai days iater when the bill was read
the B U alluded to performances in any street...[and] 1 cannot help beiieving that under those circwnstances [it] will not prohibit pedbrmances of chiidren in àrcuses... 1 thhk some provision should at all eoentts be made for the prevention of aaobatic performances by chiidien at cireuses and similar placesM
O n Noble's urging, the terms of place were made more explicit in the statute of the following year calteci the Act for the Prevention of Cmeity to Chiidren o f 1889 which
%i&,
B U 378.
Public, etc, "A B U for the beaer pievention of cnieity to chifdren,"(2) 1888,
209
prohibited any "child under the age of ten to be at any rlme...in any circus or other place
of public amusement for the purpose of singing or playing?
The only mitigating
provision was one that dowed a chiid befween the ages of 7 and 10 the rfght to pedbrm if he/she had a iicense h m a pettg sessional court or,if in Scotiand, h m a School Board? In arguing for the indusion of the drnrs in the Bu's pdbrmance restrictions,
Noble stated, whatever may be said of the unplopment of c h i i h in w d theatres and places of that kind [wbich were aiso discussed in the debcms], there surely m o t be any doubt that it is undesirable to aiiow chiidren to perform as aaobao in Pavelüng c i r c ~ s e s . ~ This represented a sleight- of- hand on Noble's part as he urgexi that all dtcus
perjiormances 6y cbiIdretz undor IO be deemed iUsgai and yet argued his case by dixring only to the chiid-acrobat: the child acrobat, who was already prohibited h m dangerous
performances until hisher buneenth birthday according m the 1û79 statute, was a bad scample for Noble's argument. SigniScantly, no one in Parliament seemed to object to Noble's understanding of the law and, i n d d support for his view grew. The expression
of this support was embodied in Lord Herscheii's amendment duMg the lare summer,
which was incorporateci into the Bill. It calleci for circuses and travelling shows [to bel placed on the sarne footing as theatres [which was brought under the Bill's restrictions] with regard to the
employment of children?
i 5 ~ ~G bem l iwu ~C Starutes, An Act for the Prevention of Cruelg 52/53 Vic. c. 4, sec.3, dause c.
Children, 1889,
161bid.
"~unsard, 3rd series, ~01.337,(1889),c.819; He repeated the argument on 8 August 1889, see Hansard, 3rd senes, vo1.339 (1889)c.718. "Stage inhnts," Era, 10 August 1889, 9.
210
The coiiapsing of theaters and drrxcses symbolized another steight-of-hand apinst which the theatrical community continued to rage: Herschd's amendment, by making the comection befween cimuses and theaters within the con-
of an anti-auelty law, made
the latter seem guiiîy, by association, of licensing cnieiîy. But this was m y i unhir, said
Henry Labouchere (Radical-Northampton) 1~1usticaUy "theatricaipeople were very kindiy.
The oniy injury to the children was injury to th&
and cakes."*
stomachs from too man? sugar plums
Furthermore, where there were probiems with chiidren's perhrmance, the
anti-cruelty measure was the wrong pface to deal with the matter, argueci the Earl of
Dunraven. "If there is to be any legiskative interkence, it ought to be in the hm of an amendment to the Factory A m ?
While those supporters of a nomintederence poiicy
fàiied in 1889 to oppose successîüiiy the antiauelty lobby, they fbund that in the 18%
the situation had changed siightly as their own lobby grew. At no rime was this expressed more clearly than in 1894 when the 1889 P m t i c m
of Cruelty $0Children Act was revised. According to the new statute, the parent of the circus chiid was rernoved
h m legal liability.'L Curiousiy, whiie paremts escaped this
provision, managers did not. Furthermore, managers were required to obtain licences if
they trained children who were under the age of sixteen.52
4 9 ~ ~ u 3rd r d series, , vol.338 (1889)~ 1 9c-f. ; "Chilcimm on the Stage," Era, 13 July 1889, 16-
m ~ a ~ u r3rd d ,series, vol.338 (1889),c.958. sLPublfcGenerafStatutes, An Act for the Prevention of Cmeity to Chilcifa, 1894, 57/58 Via., c. 27.
'qbid., 98-99, see seccion 2 (c), 2(d) and 2(iii), 2(iv).
The division list for the amendment aiiowing parents the nght rn min th& chiidren wifhout a iiœnse shows that no dear party lines were drawn in the CommonsR
The vote r e f i e d a dmersity of ages, nrmi 6rontbenc.h MPs: HH.Asquith, AHD. Artand?J. Bryce, G.O. Trevelyan, and H.Campkil-Bannefman, among the Liberals,and M. WhiteRidley, J. Sr. John B d c k , JhChamberlain, AE. F d o w e s v and M ~ ~ B e a carnong h,
the Tories, joined togethes Ï n support of this measure- Table 5.1 shows the party s p d
on this issue:
305 (AF)
Tocal Vote:
107 (Noes)
Breakdawn: Liberal : Tory: Irish Nationalists: Other
If a distinction can be drawn between the ayes and noes, it may be said that an overwhelming number of Irish MPs voted in h
r of hap.ing parents rakr out a license in
order to ûain their chüdren and this was reflected in the Parlïamentacy debates
- a fàct
any deliberate policy on the part of the lrish MPs mwids the brcus. Howfter,
if the Irish
did have strong feeüngs about the circu~,these map have emerged h m the faa thaf many
of the major circus troupes were indeed Irish, such as Fosett's and Ginnett's, or were
English but performed in Ireland, such as Hengk's. These Irish MPs map have seen or
53Dfvfsf00n List,
-%id.
57/58V i n , (London,1899,187-189.
particularly if the Irish
heard about cruelties in training and wished to put a stop to th-, Church expresseci concern about the issue.
Many MPs hrther hesitated to interfixe in c i r a s a f k h d e n another amendment
calling for the nght ofinspection o f private training was proposeci. nK division iîst fa this measure suggested again no dear party split, as cable 5 2
d:
Breakdown: Liberal:
Tory: Irish Nationaiists.: Other: Despite the work he did in this p e n d to promote more stringent Eactory inspection laws,
especidly for women, Herbert Asquith voted a@mt this amaiciment.'
Whüe he agreed
with the idea that children w h o were aained br pedormances in pubiic should not be subjected to cruelty in private, he chought the proposed amendment was bad
law.
Expressing doubt about the eEèctiveness of such an amendment, he said, %en
we are
making changes of this kind, w e shouid be very carefül not to carry the Iaw m
d the
point to which it can legitimately be carrîed."n Such an argument rerninded MPs that
there were clear practical limits ofenforcement that ought m be dected in ParIiamentary Iaw. Given Asquith's prominence within the Party) orher Liberals
- particuiariy those
representing London constituenaes who knew that the pehrmer's hdihood w a a~
ssDi~*sion List, 57/58 Vict., 184-6. "H.H. Asquith, F@y Yeart of ParZfament (London,1926), 214. nHansard, 4th series, vo1.24 (1894), c.1673-4.
North, argueci that,
to give an inspecter the absolute right to visit at ail times the homes of these poor pemcms..such as -bars and people of that sor~underthe pretext that children were king iM treabed was at once a n d and ciangemus thing to do, a view that was reminiscent of the one taken by Henry C. Stephens years earfier when the Moveabie Dwellings Bill threatened to institute the same kùid of praœdure on the van-
dwelling population." Sir. J. Goldsmid
m.Uni&
StPan~~as S.) addecl, =the
tendency of such legislation was to divide the English pubiic im bpectors and Inspectecl?
J. Lowther (Cons- Kent Thanet) fimher argueci, "Parliamentought to
hesitate before it created further obstacies in the path of those who sought to earn an
honest Iivelih~od."~~ In addition to training clauses, performanœ ciauses were also addd to the 1894 statute, apparently dowing the circus community more
freedorn h m legiskative
infingement Whereas the 1889 Act only aiiowed the chiid aged between seven and ten to perform if a license was granteci to the parent or manager, the 1894 revision offiereda less restrictive poiicy. Accordingly, c h u s children under the age of eleven who were
aained by th&
parena or guardians were exempred h m the prohibition that removeci
them from the ring. The manager, in cocontrast, was dowed this right if he had a license
kom a JTfor the child (no age restriction pending) to perfi,rm. The distinction between the parent and manager within both the pesfbrmance and training dauses was important insofk as it dected Parliament's reluctance to inrerfere
YIbid.,c.1666-7; see chapter 3, 2425. Tbid., c.1670. qbid.
214 with M
y affairs, and yet represented an acknowledgement that the profession needed
to be put under suLYeiflance in some .-nr
Establishing such contmls was also aimed
at prohibiting diose novice chiidren who were not bom in- the drcus profession, who
were susceptible to accidents, and who, acmrding to some contemporaries, were the
cause of ail the bad publiaty that surrounded the trade. One gymnast argued many pars earlier, if [circus] proprietors were to engage proper talent...it wodd panty be the meam of saving accidents, which genarur through a i g i n g inexperiend boys, who understand as much about gymnastics as a wooden monkey on a stick6'
Rather than Parliament making the law aEecthg training and perfOf~nancemore stringent, it became more lax with the 1894 amendment
pde
- at least with qpd to the bona
Ncus W y . Whüe the new system of liceming for uaining and performance may
have seemed relatively restrictive fiom the manager's point of view, it was a better option than the total prohibition of chiid labor h m his troupe which the law othawise
promised. Whiie the ciausg in the 1894 Act relating to training and performances were apparenrly straight-forward and lenient, the question of auelty remained, in 1894 as ir
had in 1889, arnbiguous and m>ublesome. niat is, either of these faws mdd affst at
random trainers whatever th&
le@ right to nain or exhibit child perbrmers until the
latter were 16 years of age.
iv. The Law Further Extendeci: 1897
The randomness was in large measure a d d o n of the haphazard way in which infomers, or so d e d "faddists,'took the laws a&ccing children performers into theV
own hands and went "amundthe country maücious[iy] and annoying[ly] persecut[lng]
''"~r.Editor," Ern, 11 Juiy 1869, 11.
215
[managers]?
Perhaps no group complained more about the "fiiddise" than aaobats
and others engaged in dangerous performances. Acmrdingly, Pariiammt sought to revise the 1879 Dangerous Puformances Act in 1897 by imposing a clearkd&ed
procedure for
enforcing the law. The revised law proYideci that
srcept where accident causing bodüy barm arurs to any chüd or pung person, no prosecution or other pro