Music Hall Memory Box
The Multiple Pasts of Victorian Halls
Music halls were multi-faceted and the experiences of the audiences, performers, songwriters, musicians, stage hands and mangers cannot be condensed into a one-dimensional story, as the accounts below demonstrate.
Some contemporaries perceived the halls as dens of immorality, while others saw them as a place of grandeur to take the family of an evening. Some perceived the lyrics of music hall songs as crude, while others thought they were harmless fun.
It is hard for historians to incorporate all these opposing voices into their accounts of the halls, and therefore interpreting the past is always complex.
‘The room is crowded, and almost every gentleman has a pipe or cigar in his mouth. Evidently the majority present are respectable mechanics or small tradesman with their wives and daughters and sweethearts’.
J.E. Ritchie describing a visit to the Canterbury in 1857.
‘Going to the Canterbury was dreadful. I remember the shock I got when I went under the railway arch, down the dingy, dirty narrow street, the greasy sidewalk, the muddy gutter, full of dirty babies, the commonplace-looking public house. I felt I could not go in, but I did…The pictures delighted but the smell of beer and stale tobacco smoke revolted me…I held my head very high and by my manner conveyed my utmost scorn for the Canterbury and all its surroundings’
Emily Soldene (a music hall performer) recalling her visit to the Canterbury in 1865.
Both the above accounts describe the Canterbury. However, they portray the clientele and atmosphere of the place in a remarkably different manner. Did the venue really change that drastically in eight years or rather, did the two individuals simply perceive the Canterbury differently?
These are judgments historians have to make, but with such varying evidence, historians often formulate opposing interpretations about music halls.
‘It is impossible to contemplate the ignorance and immorality of so numerous a class as that of the costermongers, without wishing to discover the cause of their degeneration. Let any one curious on this point visit one of these penny shows, and he will wonder that any trace of virtue and honesty should remain among the people. Here the stage, instead of being the means for illustrating a moral precept, is turned into a platform to teach the cruellest debauchery’.
Henry Matthew describing a Penny Gaff in his survey London Labour and the London poor (1851-52).
‘Mrs. Reginald Radcliffe and Miss Macpherson were passing through Grace's Alley into Wellclose Square as the evening performances in the music-hall were proceeding. The dreadful hubbub that came from the hall startled them. They paused to listen, and were so impressed that they paid the admission fee and went in to see really what could be going on. The sights on the stage and the entire condition of things became so awful to them, that they fell down on their knees together, in the centre of the hall, and in view of the stage and crowd of onlookers, prayed that God would break the power of the devil in the place, and bring the premises into the use of Christian people’.
Henry Walker, 1896, East London: Sketches of Christian Work and Workers.
People's beliefs and motivations will cause them to perceive experiences in a particular way, and this must always be considered when interpreting the past.
For example, from the mid-19th century the middle classes began to fear that a working class political revolt could at any moment break down social order. To avoid this, moral reformers took it upon themselves to educate and elevate the masses. They strongly disliked music hall entertainment which they saw as degrading and instead tried to introduce rational recreation. This context explains the scathing accounts above.