The music hall in 1859

This is one of a series of entries are drawn from chapter 7 of my book, Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World, and they all deal with life in that era. For background on the book, see the first entry in the series, Life in 1859, but if you just want to see the others, use the tag 1859, which appears at the end of each entry.

Until the place closed in 1859, 'well bred' young men of a certain kind visited Vauxhall Gardens, founded in 1661. The Gardens offered food, drink, pantomimes, fireworks, dancing, balloon ascents — and dalliance, which was why the young men went and  nice young ladies didn’t, but the fashion died. Once the gentry stopped coming, the gardens closed, and many patrons moved to the music halls, a new craze which spread well beyond London.

Wilton’s Music Hall opened in 1859, with splendid décor of white, gold and mirrors, a ‘sun burner’ chandelier with 300 gas jets to light the stage, and room for 1500 patrons. Bought by the Methodist church in 1884, it became a soup kitchen, and saw its proudest hour as the HQ for those who saw off Mosley’s bully-boys in the 1936 Battle of Cable Street. Wilton’s was the location where ‘Champagne Charlie’ was first heard (and some say the first English can-can took place there), but the suggestiveness of acts generally grew over time.

Charles Morton let women into his Canterbury Hall from 1852, but created two more halls in 1859 and 1861, while Glasgow’s Britannia Hall was started in 1857 and opened in 1859. After 1859, the numbers swelled as more people acquired enough money to afford tickets. London had 200 halls by 1868, 347 in the 1870s.

In Massachusetts, Theodore Parker preached each Sunday in the Boston Music Hall, and in London, Charles Spurgeon made use of the Surrey Music Hall.

To some of the very pure, all things are impure, and one of Spurgeon’s deacons urged against using “that devil’s house”, but the preacher was more practical: “We did not go to the music-hall because we thought it was a good thing to worship in a building usually devoted to amusement, but because we had no other place to go.”

All the same, Spurgeon used the financial clout of a regular Sunday morning booking to get the management to agree to close the hall on Sunday nights. When the foundation stone of a new tabernacle was laid in July, The Times attacked the proprietors of the Surrey Music Hall for wanting too much for the use of the hall for a celebratory breakfast, pointing out that the hall was getting £780 a year for rentals, and was likely to do so for some time to come.

In the end, the Surrey Music Hall management decided the loss of Sunday night trade was more than they could wear, and Sunday night concerts began, late in the year. On December 14, The Times reported that Spurgeon had decided not to preach again at the Surrey Music Hall, as it was now opened on Sunday evenings for music, “although chiefly sacred”. He moved his services to the rather smaller Exeter Hall instead, until the new Tabernacle opened in March, 1861.

The 1843 Theatres Act forbade legitimate drama in British music halls, though dramatic interludes and sketches were allowed. Christy’s Minstrels were on tour in Ireland in January, but the Ohio Minstrels (15 vocalists, dancers and musicians) were in London, as were ‘The Coloured Opera Troupe’, who, dressed in Court costume, offered “refined NEGRO CONCERTS” at the Oxford Gallery, before a provincial tour in February.

In January, The Times indicated that Mr Dickens was offering a few more “Christmas readings”, with performances on January 6 and 13, for prices ranging from 1s. to 4s. Elsewhere, Mr Barnum repeated his lecture on ‘The Art of Making Money’ with prices from one to three shillings.

For those wishing to avoid theatres, there were glee clubs and home entertainment. The same page of The Times revealed that evening parties could be entertained by “Her Majesty’s Ventriloquist and Magician”, Mr Wellington Young, who had entertained HM, one night in 1846, but was still trading on it. A Young Married Lady was willing to entertain on the pianoforte or play for juvenile balls and evening parties for 3s. 6d. an evening. More upmarket accompaniment could be had from quadrille bands, though budget quadrilles could be danced to just a cornet and piano.