drama or light entertainment. The wrong choice could mean ruin – as it did for the Grecian Saloon in City Road, when it chose drama and alienated its clientèle – whereas the right choice could mean riches.
Charles Morton’s Canterbury Arms, which opened in Lambeth in 1852, is generally regarded as the first purpose-built music hall. It set a trend that popularised the music hall genre, and was widely copied. Morton, born in Hackney in August 1819, grew up among the poor with an appetite for work and a sharp eye for detail. He saw his neighbours warm to street singers, cluster around peep shows, applaud itinerant performers and, when the pennies permitted, visit the cheaper inns and taverns. The theatre drew him like a magnet, and he attended shows whenever he had the means to do so. Aged thirteen, his first visit was to the Pavilion, Whitechapel – familiarly known as ‘the Drury Lane of the East’ – which specialised in plays catering for sailors and the large Jewish population that thronged the East End. At the nearby Old Garrick Theatre he saw the tragi-comic play Damon and Pythias, starring Charles Freear and William Gomershall, an actor famed for his comic impersonation of Napoleon. The young Charles Morton became a habitué of East End theatres, and grew familiar with public tastes.
Once his elementary education was over he worked as a tavern waiter, and saw at close quarters how entertainment and food and drink brought in the crowds. He earned extra cash, and a reputation for honesty, as a runner for the ‘list men’, the early pub-based bookmakers. At the age of twenty-one, in 1840, he became the licensee of his own pub, the St George’s tavern in Belgrave Road, Pimlico. Pimlico was a brand-spanking-new development, a world away from the East End. It was close to the pleasure gardens at Ranelagh, Cremorne and Vauxhall, where young Morton continued his education by seeing the talent available for hire.
As a licensee, Morton put all he had seen and learned into practice. His guiding principle was excellent service, food and drink, and to these he added a ‘free and easy’ room with amateur talent performing, ‘For Gentlemen Only!’, free of charge. These were common features at many taverns, but Morton’s astute business brain and engaging personality made them very attractive, and as the St George’s became more profitable he hired professional acts to lure more customers. Some of his regulars were servants at Buckingham Palace, and they invited him to dine with them in their quarters. He returned home with a tablecloth full of delicacies from the royal pantry.
Morton was a natural entrepreneur who understood the power of promotion. Bookmaking was a profitable sideline, and he promoted his sweepstakes for big race meetings by advertising in the Era.
Morton worked long hours to earn a more comfortable way of life. He was a very visible host, but, unusually for the time, he was abstemious, having no wish to drink away his profits. He walked and fished for recreation, making plans as he did so. As business prospered he traded up to the Crown in Pentonville, and then to the far more fashionable India House tavern in Leadenhall Street in the City. His credo was to exceed the expectations of his customers. At the India House he abandoned entertainment to concentrate on offering good fare in a congenial atmosphere – ‘Only one quality – the best’ had become his motto, and would remain so throughout his long life. The absence of entertainment defied convention, but in the City, where men met to eat and drink and discuss business, the India House was a haven – and a shrewd business move.
Despite the lack of song and dance at his City tavern, Morton never lost sight of the profit to be gained by feeding mind and body at the same time. He was a regular visitor to every sort of entertainment venue, and made note of money-making opportunities that were missed. He saw that the shows catered only for men: there were no women, no girls with their boyfriends, no families. Half the population was being ignored. Morton saw a huge untapped potential, and pondered how to exploit it without losing male patronage.
The solution was not obvious. Women had little or no money of their own, and even if they had, the social conservatism of the age would prevent them from attending taverns without a male escort. Morton realised that if men were accompanied by their wives or girlfriends, they would spend only the same sum between two customers. There was no extra profit in that. Worse, there might be a loss, since the entertainment mix would need to take account of females in the audience. The dilemma was still unresolved when Morton and his brother-in-law Frederick Stanley bought the Old Canterbury Arms in Westminster Bridge Road (then called Lambeth Marsh) in 1849. It was an ancient alehouse, once owned by the Canon of Rochester, and named as a homage to the medieval pilgrims who fed and watered there en route to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket.
The Canterbury Arms was in a squalid neighbourhood, but it had a theatrical pedigree stretching back three hundred years. It had been a favoured haunt of the Elizabethan actors of Bankside: Burbage, Henslowe, Jonson and Shakespeare were all said to have supped there. At the time of Morton’s purchase it had a regular clientèle who flocked there both to hear amateur talent in the modest music room, and to enjoy the four skittle alleys at the back.
Morton took over the Canterbury Arms’ licence in February 1850, but little was heard of him in the press for over two years, apart from a brief burst of publicity when a notorious skittle sharp, Joseph Jones, attracted police attention for his activities there. Morton’s uncharacteristic reticence ended as soon as his new hall was complete. In the Era of 16 May 1852 he promoted his new venture by funding a competition to determine the ‘champion swimmer of England’ between George Pewters and Frederick Beckwith. ‘Money ready’ for the winner, it said, at ‘Mr Morton’s Canterbury Arms, Lambeth’. In the news section of the same edition there is an entry: ‘The Canterbury Arms. A new and elegantly fitted up hall … and rumour speaks highly of all the arrangements.’ These news snippets suggest that Morton had delayed promoting his venture until he was completely satisfied with all the preparations. Now his vision was in place, and a notice the following week informed readers that ‘The Canterbury Music Hall offers superior talent … every attention paid to comfort and amusement … suppers, chops, steaks, etc etc. Admission by refreshment ticket, sixpence each person.’
The music room was adapted to a club room, where ‘free and easy’ concerts were held on Thursdays and Saturdays. With his usual attention to detail Morton set about providing excellent value in food and drink, but he was careful not to make changes that alienated the existing customers. More comfortable furniture and better lighting were introduced, and the walls were decorated with paintings and prints. There were roaring fires in the hearths, and spills to light pipes, cigars, and later the cigarettes popularised by soldiers returning from the Crimean War. Morton’s Canterbury was a warm and congenial environment, far more appealing than the cold, damp, cramped back-to-back houses that were home to so many of his customers. So they came and they stayed and they spent. As his profits grew Morton commissioned a new hall, to be built over the ramshackle skittle alleys.
He also hit upon an idea to attract women to the Canterbury without losing his existing customers. Rather than facing down social convention, Morton decided to bypass it. The admission fee of sixpence, which included drinks, was his answer to the conundrum of how to profit from women patrons. Since women rarely drank their full entitlement this proved a lucrative form of entry, and he actively encouraged them to attend his hall. A ‘Ladies Night’ was introduced in the club room once a week, which was a triumph. Morton’s brother Robert, a charmer with an excellent tenor voice, compèred evenings of entertainment that were packed to capacity. The mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, fiancées and girlfriends thoroughly enjoyed it, and their menfolk asked for the ladies to be admitted on other nights as well. Morton acquiesced, the objectors were outfoxed, and no one was offended.
Soon performances were staged every night, not just twice weekly. The Canterbury was no longer a pub, but a music hall. The package was complete: payment for entrance, refreshments available, entertainment based around comic ballads but with a wide variety of acts supporting them – and joyous, often uproarious participation from an audience of both sexes. The evening’s entertainment began at 7 p.m. and ended at midnight. And the money rolled in.
The Canterbury’s
