of his own shows. The entertainment was varied. Concerts of music by Rossini, Handel or Mozart were accompanied by embryonic music hall fare from J.A. Cave or Robert Glindon. Musical drama and dancing were regular features, and the theatre began to attract family audiences. Up to six thousand customers passed through its doors in a single day. It was big business, fuelled by the growing purchasing power of the working population.
The entertainment at variety saloons was essentially the same as at song and supper clubs: ballads, comic songs, dance acts, jugglers and comedians performing over a hubbub of conversation and the clatter of table service to an audience intent on eating and drinking. Amid the din, a chairman kept a semblance of order and moved the show along. Once happily refreshed, the audiences joined in cheerfully with the familiar songs of favourite performers, and heckled those who disappointed. An evening in a saloon theatre had the strong participatory flavour of the early catch and glee clubs. It was, in essence, music hall proper before astute marketing labelled it as such and installed it in its own theatres.
The distinction between the entertainment offered at the various forms of theatres was minimal, but the facilities offered to them varied with the social strata the proprietors were seeking to attract. Between the upmarket song and supper clubs at one extreme, and the chaotic, ramshackle penny gaffs at the other, there was a huge gulf.
Charles Dickens, who had a lifelong fascination for the theatre, set out in 1850 to discover how the ‘lower half’ of London amused itself. In this quest he visited the Britannia saloon in Hoxton, and wrote of a mythical Mr Joe Whelks on an evening out. The cost of admission to the Britannia was one shilling for a box, sixpence for the pit, fourpence for the lower gallery or threepence for the upper gallery and back seats. Dickens was not impressed by the clientèle, who were, he wrote, ‘very dirty people’; moreover, they smelled. A large proportion were very young, including ‘girls grown into bold women before they had ceased to be children’ – Dickens observed that these were more prominent in the theatres than at any other assembly ‘except a public execution’.
Dickens found the audience was very attentive to the show, turning lustily on anyone interrupting it while consuming ham sandwiches, oranges, cakes or brandy-balls, and drinking porter which was passed around the galleries in a large can. He described the theatre as spacious, well-lit, and with a large stage. The organisation and management of the audience were businesslike, which was essential in order to accommodate the ten thousand customers who paid to attend the Britannia each week.
Mr Whelks also visited The Cut, Lambeth, where the Royal Victoria (now the Old Vic) could accommodate an audience of three thousand drawn from the slums crammed closely together in the nearby streets. The seat prices were similar to those at the Britannia, and so were the packed and overflowing galleries. Dickens was no kinder to the occupants of the pit at the Royal Victoria than he had been to those of the Britannia. He noted the presence of ‘good-humoured young mechanics’ before painting a disagreeable picture of their fellow theatre-goers. They were ‘not very clean or sweet-savoured’, and as they sat in their seats they ate cold fried soles and drank from flat-stoned bottles. Many of the women carried babies on their hips. The boxes, mercifully, lacked the fish-eaters and the babies, but were still not very salubrious. Among those seated in them Dickens saw pickpockets and soldiers, and observed that his neighbour ‘wore pins on his coat instead of buttons’, and was ‘in such a damp habit of living as to be quite mouldy’. On both of his evenings out Dickens saw plays, so he did not witness the audience participating when familiar songs were performed.
Every karaoke evening organised today is a direct descendant of the ‘free and easies’ of the past. These were the poor man’s song and supper clubs, situated in public houses where entrance was free of charge, with the publican relying on attracting an audience that would boost his sales of food, drink and tobacco – and thus his profits. They were similar to the singing rooms and harmonic meetings that flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and are a genuine precursor to music hall. In many free and easies customers would be invited to contribute a song, but more astute landlords recognised that popular acts were a greater draw. Often the artistes’ wages were linked to alcohol sales: one singer, Thomas Weldon, earned a penny for every pint drunk by his audience while he was singing. In such an environment rousing entertainment and drunken revelry went hand in hand, but the wise landlord, conscious of the need to keep his licence to trade, tried to keep order by acting himself as chairman of the evening. Sometimes the entertainment was bawdy, but working-class audiences were often more prudish than the bohemian clientèle of the sophisticated song and supper clubs or the underclass who frequented the penny gaffs.
Apart from the landlord, the key figures in the free and easies were the chairman – familiar from the catch clubs, harmonic meetings and song and supper clubs – and the pianist who accompanied the singers. For many years the chairman would remain a central part of the music hall formula. His role was twofold: to keep order, and to pace the performance to ensure there were ample opportunities for customers to purchase refreshments.
The pianist was also pivotal. A minority could sing as well as play. Most were men, but the largest crowd-pullers were the small number of young women. They not only had novelty value, but were an obvious attraction to a largely youthful male audience. Contemporary advertisements in trade journals such as the Era offered a salary of up to £2 a week, with the added enticement of full bed and board. Although advertisements often specified ‘steadiness’ and ‘gentility’ as necessary qualifications for the job, prudish authority took a dim view of female pianists: as late as 1880 Bradford Council banned their employment in city taverns – perhaps the requirement to ‘be agreeable to customers’ aroused suspicion.
Nonetheless, whether male or female, competent accompaniment to the singers was essential. The artistes might be professional, semi-professional or amateur, but before 1850, when sheet music became cheap enough to be commonplace, many might simply hum the tune and then expect the pianist to improvise while they sang. Even with sheet music, pianists would be expected to be able to change key to match the vocal abilities of more hapless performers. It was a great relief to everyone when the pianist was familiar with the singer’s repertoire.
Most of the songs were rousing choruses, sentimental ballads, patriotic anthems or celebrations of working-class people and their lives. Almost fifty years later, the theatre manager John Hollingshead recalled the free and easies of 1840, and his description reveals how closely they resembled music hall: ‘The long room of the pot-house was the auditorium and, at a table larger than any other in the room was the stage, round which was seated the professional talent. The Chairman was a necessity to keep order and to draw out any volunteers who wished to distinguish themselves.’
Although the free and easies are poorly documented compared to their smarter cousins, there is one contemporary source that offers a unique insight into their world – the diaries of Charles Rice, a British Museum porter by day and ballad singer by night. They are a rich source of information written from the perspective of a performer.
Rice was born in 1817, the son of an optician, and his love of show business was evident from an early age: at eighteen he would copy out and collect performing bills from newspaper advertisements. We know nothing of his education, but his handwriting and observations reveal a certain level of sophistication. This was not reflected in his comparatively humble daytime employment, which was merely a backdrop to his evenings as an entertainer. He began at the British Museum as a twenty-year-old assistant messenger in 1837, and remained there, barely promoted for thirty-eight years, until he was sacked after lengthy periods of absence from work. His work day began at 7 a.m. – a punishingly early hour after late nights in smoky free and easies – and ended at 4 p.m. By the time he was sacked his pay had risen to £100 per annum, but in poor health and, so far as we know, without alternative employment, he died the following year at the age of fifty-eight.
Rice loved performing, and the money he earned enhanced his lifestyle. In the 1840s his salary at the museum was between £1 and thirty shillings
