Theatre and public morals 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.

Increasing levels of education and literacy, combined with evening schools and greater leisure as workers began to win on the ‘hours’ front, meant people had more time to think, and more time for leisure. The theatre was widely seen as a place of loose morals and easy virtue, but audiences still flocked to the theatres. In New York, Dion Boucicault opened The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana on December 15. It was seen by many as an attack on slavery, though others saw it as defending slavery.

Boucicault’s most lasting effect came when he suffered piracy of his work in the US in 1853. With R. M. Bird and G. H. Boker, he got a copyright law through the US Congress in 1856, but it took many more years to get clear and enforceable legislation. The Octoroon included a slave auction scene, an exploding river boat, and also an up-to-the-minute plot device when photography was used to solve a crime.

Dionysius Lardner Boucicault was born in Dublin, and may have been the illegitimate son of Dionysius Lardner, a famous 19th century science writer, a man with an eye for the ladies and very close to the family. Still Boucicault kept the name of his mother’s Huguenot husband, 26 years her senior, even after she moved to London with Lardner and her son. Then young Dion got the acting bug, and helped change the way theatre was seen in Britain and the USA.

He even toured Australia in the mid–1880s, outraging the Australian middle classes by marrying an actress in his company who was 44 years his junior. This did a great job of encouraging the curious to come and see the scandalous pair perform, but it helped to confirm the view some still had of theatrical types.

In Indianapolis, the manager of the Metropolitan Theatre offered to hold a benefit for the local Widows and Orphans Asylum. There was soul-searching, with pragmatic board members eager to accept the donation. Others drew the line at accepting “tainted money” from theatre folk, and in the end, the offer was declined.

Still, many upright citizens wanted entertainment. Asked by a reader for the safe and innocent family amusements in New York, Scientific American recommended “Drayton’s Parlor Opera” at Hope Chapel, Broadway. The performances were remarkably spirited, very amusing and “perfectly free from the usual evils of theaters”. All parts in the “entirely unobjectionable” performance were played by Mr Drayton and his wife. The journal described a collection of paintings known as “Waugh’s Italy”, as “also one of the harmless exhibitions which are well worth seeing”.

In London, the brand-new Adelphi Theatre offered private boxes with a saloon holding six for 2 guineas, family boxes holding four for a pound, stalls two feet wide were 5 shillings to 3 shillings, while pit stalls with elbows and cushions were 2 shillings. The cheapest seats were 6d, but for this, you would see a sketch, Mr. Webster’s Company is Requested at a Photographic Soiree, followed by the comic drama Good For Nothing, and a grand Christmas pantomime Mother Red Cap.

Like most of the other pantos, it offered an extravagant ‘Transformation Scene’, and had named stars playing Harlequin, Columbine, Clown and Pantaloon.

Taking The Times around his theatre on December 22, 1858, Mr Webster showed how theatres had improved. All refreshments would be under his control, so there would be no extortionate prices. Spacious cloakrooms for the ladies were on offer, with all the requisites for the toilette–  and no fees would be charged for caring for cloaks or bonnets.

The staff would all be women, reducing extortion or fee-taking, and the whole theatre from pit to ceiling, was fireproof. The many exits would allow the entire audience to leave almost instantly. The reporter was ecstatic, writing “No transformation which this year’s Adelphi pantomime can furnish will be half as great or half so striking as that which the audience will behold in comparing the old theatre with the new.”

The Victoria Theatre may also have been fireproof, but just five days later, people were killed in a fire scare that began when a boy in one of the boxes struck a light and set fire to a box of matches. There was a puff of smoke, some women screamed fire, and panic set in as the people in the gallery burst out, opening the doors. 

There were two performances scheduled for December 27, and the house could hold 3000 people, a third of them in the gallery. This was reached by a spacious staircase with four landings, with a ticket box on the third level. That made the first three flights effectively a vestibule, closed off by a door below the fourth flight.

At the early performance, 800 people were in the gallery, and a crowd was blocking the stairs up as far as the closed door, waiting to get in for the next show. When the fire panic began inside and doors at the top of the stairs opened, the new arrivals surged forward even as others struggled to get out. After 15 minutes, sixteen people were dead.