reported: ‘London cannot boast of another spot where an equal amount of aspiring fallen humanity vegetates’ – plainly the author had not visited parts of the East End. ‘What a chronicle of misery and woe … of innocence betrayed and vice made more vicious would not Leicester Square yield if it could be made to speak … Its internal filth and outward show are all French and even the dirty urchins who wallow in its gutters are tainted with French notions. “Ici on parle francais” is written on every front, upon every window, on every shopwoman’s and shopman’s countenance.’ Francophobia, it seems, was alive and well in mid-Victorian London.
Smith had been refused a licence to run the Alhambra Palace as a theatre for legitimate drama, but was granted a music licence by local magistrates. At a cost of £120,000 he converted the circus ring to an open area for tables and chairs, and added a proscenium and a stage. The Alhambra became one of the largest music halls, with a capacity of 3,500, and Smith employed the pugilists Tom Sayers and John Heenan to give exhibitions of boxing there. Sometimes popular taste outran official approval: in 1870 the theatre fell foul of the London County Council when the Colonna Group, featuring ‘Wiry Sal’, danced the can-can with an enthusiasm that was far too racy for officialdom. For a brief time the theatre was closed.
The shape of the Alhambra reflected its past. In contrast, the South London Palace not only had a circular structure with the proscenium, but at the rear of the hall, beyond the tables and chairs set out for dining, were benches ranked ‘theatre style’, with shelves on the back of each to hold glasses. It also offered arm-height shelves around the perimeter of the hall, where customers who chose to stand could place their drinks. This was a glimpse of the future, but further refinements had to await sites in the prosperous suburbs, where land was cheaper and space was less of a constraint.
The building programme in the quarter of a century following the opening of the Canterbury was frenetic, but many of the new music halls had short lives. Some were lost to new development, or poor management, or changing fashions. But the greatest hazard was fire. Like its namesake in Sheffield, the Surrey Music Hall in Blackfriars was destroyed by fire in 1865. The Royal Standard, Pimlico, burned down in 1866. The South London Palace, where the interior resembled a Roman villa, was destroyed by fire in March 1869, but reopened a mere nine months later with its audience capacity tripled to around four thousand.
Charles Morton’s Oxford was burned down in February 1868. The audience had left, and Morton was making a final check of the auditorium when he noticed a flickering light in the gallery. By the time he reached it a couple of seats were on fire. He tried to extinguish the flames, but they soon defeated him. Horse-drawn fire engines arrived in short order after the alarm had been raised, but the fire spread to the paint on the Corinthian columns supporting the extravagantly ornamental roof, which was soon ablaze. Furniture and fittings, hangings and carpets, the wardrobe full of costumes, the contents of the bar, which helped to fuel the flames, were all consumed. Only the wine and spirits in the cellar survived. Just a month earlier, Morton had sold or sub-let the Canterbury to William Holland, so he now had no theatre to manage, and the jobs and prospects of the entertainers and support staff at the Oxford were lost. Morton being Morton, he arranged a benefit concert at the Crystal Palace to help those in need. This provoked its own controversy, and a famous impersonation. Morton sold the ruin of the Oxford and moved on.
It is reasonable to speculate that the fire at the Oxford was caused by an unextinguished cigar. Smoking was commonplace during performances, and with fumes from gas lighting,† wooden construction and a large number of people in a confined and poorly ventilated space, it made a combustible mix.
A new Oxford, rebuilt by M.R. Syers and W. Taylor, and designed by the architects Edward Paraire and William Finch Hill, opened in August 1869, only to be burned down once more three years later. Syers, who by then had parted company with Taylor, opened a third Oxford in March 1873. Once again designed by Paraire, it differed from its predecessor in one very important detail: the tables and chairs for eating and drinking had been replaced by rows of comfortable seating. This was part of a trend. The simplicities of the earlier designs – an empty floor space bordered by grandeur – no longer met the demands of management or audience, and music halls began to move recognisably towards the variety theatres of later days. The third Oxford was renovated again in 1892, reopening a year later. It survived as a theatre until 1927, when it became a Lyon’s Corner House.
The worst disaster in the history of British theatre occurred when a fire broke out at the Theatre Royal, Exeter, on 5 September 1887. During a performance of the romantic comedy Romany Rye a naked gas flame did its worst and flames billowed from the stage. There was panic in the auditorium. One hundred and eighty-six people, mostly in the upper galleries, died from asphyxiation or being caught in the crush to get to the upper tier’s only exit. Just two years earlier the first Theatre Royal in the town had burned to the ground, without loss of life, but lessons had not been learned. On the morning of 6 September all that remained of the theatre was a smouldering shell. Blame for the tragedy was placed upon the lack of a safety curtain and insufficient exits.
Partly as a consequence of the fires that destroyed so many theatres, health and safety requirements were a perennial irritant for owners. In 1878 the Metropolitan Board of Works (later the London County Council) introduced a Certificate of Suitability which had a profound effect on the economic viability of music halls. Most of the new regulations were sensible and simple, but expensive enough to destroy profitability, and music hall was always a business: no profits, no performance. Up to two hundred halls closed down because their owners could not afford to reinforce shaky floors or install safety curtains as a barrier to fire. But the old halls were unsafe, and many of the new breed of owners saw the legislation as a catalyst for new development and the plusher facilities we now associate with the golden age of music hall. Vast emporiums of gilt, with upholstered seats and decorations of nymphs and cherubs, became fashionable. They were made so by Frank Matcham.
In the vast explosion of theatre-building after 1850, Matcham was the leading figure. He was not the first Victorian architect to specialise in designing theatres: that distinction goes to C. J. Phipps, who built the Garrick and Her Majesty’s in London, as well as regional theatres including the ill-fated Theatre Royal, Exeter. But Matcham become the pre-eminent architect of music halls, and was responsible for the design of more than two hundred theatres. His first success was the Elephant and Castle Theatre in south London, which introduced elephant motifs and the Moorish and Indian styles that went on to characterise so many Victorian and Edwardian buildings. His designs were in huge demand. In 1888 alone he was working on the Alhambra, Brighton; the Mile End Empire and the Grand Theatre, Islington, in London; a major remodelling of the Grand Theatre, Douglas, Isle of Man; and preparatory work on theatres in Blackpool, Bury, Halifax and St Helens. It was exhausting, but Matcham was changing the face of theatre. The Matcham style spread even more swiftly once he began to build for the syndicate-owners Oswald Stoll and Edward Moss in around 1890.
Matcham introduced many innovations: more and better exits to reduce fire risk, push-bar bolt exit locks, and the use of steel to support balconies, which brought to an end the need for pillars that obstructed sightlines. His style had important aesthetic benefits, with curved tiers that seemed to float on air and were visually very attractive. He increased the number of seats, much to the delight of the owners. Matcham’s greatest attribute was his ability to create a different ambience for each theatre. He used a dazzling array of styles, both interior and exterior, drawn from all manner of historical and cultural sources. He was able to create theatres of such elegance and style that even the largest auditorium felt intimate. Sadly, many of his palaces have fallen victim to German bombs and soulless planners. Unenlightened eyes saw his theatres as gaudy, kitsch and deserving of demolition; others, sometimes too late, regarded his designs as temples of pleasure as worthy of preservation as a Roman bath complex. Matcham worked consistently until 1920, leaving a legacy of theatres including the Coliseum, the London Palladium, the Victoria Palace and the Grand Theatre, Blackpool.
Just as architecture and design were
