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a ‘music hall’. In 1864 it was rebuilt as the Sun music hall, reputedly one of the finest in London.

      Taverns had a key role in promoting music hall. Every publican became a mini-impresario. The image of the jovial ‘mine host’ still persists, but a more accurate image would be of a man with a steely eye for profit. In the first half of the nineteenth century, publicans presided over small businesses catering to all comers, rich and poor. Much more was involved than selling drinks: business acumen was needed to organise fairs, Derby sweepstakes and trips to beauty spots. Pubs housed catch and glee clubs, harmonica clubs and evenings of variety. In Sketches by Boz (1836) Dickens describes ‘Mr. Licensed Victualler’, a Liverpool publican with a singing room, as ‘a sharp and watchful man, with tight lips and a complete edition of Cockers Arithmetic [the accountant’s bible] in each eye’. Mr Victualler’s tavern has ‘a plate glass window surrounded by stucco rosettes, a fantastically ornamental parapet … a profusion of gas lights in richly gilt burners … beyond the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon … with a gallery equally well furnished’. Providing, as it did, a dazzling contrast to the darkness and dirt of the street and the cold and wretched home of the working man, it is no surprise that the sumptuous saloon tavern and the warm and well-lit gin and beer shop had great appeal.

      Their popularity was also an unwanted, and unintended, result of government policy. To promote free trade, the duty on spirits was severely reduced in 1825. Unsurprisingly, cheaper drinking led to more drinking, and it was a boom era for publicans – by 1836 there were 36,000 licensed public houses in England and Wales – who used every inducement to promote custom. Brightly decorated windows and gas lights were installed to lure passers-by from the stinking, ordure-covered streets into warm, well-lit, ornate interiors with comfortable seating and the promise of diversion. In the landlords’ battle for customers, ‘singing saloons’ became an important element.

      If a saloon did not have a licence to play music, the law was easily bypassed: payment was made using a token bearing the name of the pub, with a value that entitled the holder to a specified amount of food and drink, and entry to the show. When this ‘wet money’ expired customers were pressed either to leave or to buy more drinks as the waiters hovered and the chairman plied his trade. Soon the saloon theatres, often the more profitable part of the business, became distinct from the tavern or pub in which they were housed. Back-room theatres were upgraded to purpose-built halls with the ambience of a theatre, and public houses became a hybrid: half theatre and half public house, usually sited in their own pleasure grounds.

      Among the early saloon theatres in London were the Effingham in Whitechapel Road, the Globe Gardens in Mile End, White Conduit House in Pentonville, the Bower in the Lower Marsh, Lambeth, the Albert in Islington, the Britannia in Hoxton, the Union in Shoreditch, the Yorkshire Stingo in Paddington and the Mogul Saloon in Drury Lane. Outside the capital, the Millstone inn, Deansgate, Manchester, led the way. Many of the saloons that opened in London in the late 1830s and early 1840s were either in the rough, tough, deprived East End, or at the northern and southern limits of the City. The Grecian Saloon – part of the Eagle tavern complex on City Road – became one of the most popular.

      The Eagle began life as a downmarket pleasure garden, the Shepherd and Shepherdess, but its rural tranquillity was shattered in 1825 when the new City Road was driven straight through the centre of it. It was reincarnated as the Eagle tavern, and became famous when its owner Thomas Rouse, a builder by profession and a publicist by temperament, arranged balloon ascents in the garden. Charles Sloman’s song acknowledged its fame:

      Up and down the City Road,

      In and out of the Eagle,

      That’s the way the money goes,

      Pop goes the weasel.

      Rouse was so successful that in 1831 he built the Grecian Saloon, decorating the entrance with bunting that had been used to adorn Westminster Abbey for the coronation of William IV in September that year. The interior was painted by a pupil of the famous naval artist Clarkson Stanfield, and contained an organ and the latest word in entertainment technology – an automated piano. When it opened for business in 1832 the Grecian was an instant success. It was a class above many saloons, with ‘a spacious apartment containing boxes, pit, orchestra and stage, disposed as in ordinary theatres’. The stage was small, but in the pit ‘in front of each seat there is a narrow level table … adapted [to hold] liquor and refreshments’. Rouse sat in a box, leading the applause and earning the nickname ‘Bravo’ for his enthusiastic endorsement 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

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