My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall

The Cellars offered top-class food and wine, and throughout the 1840s and ’50s its stars were familiar names: Charles Sloman, Tom Hudson, John Moody and Tom Penniket were among those who appeared there regularly. The entertainment was predominantly vocal, although variety was offered by conjurers and jugglers. Among the singers was one whom the more fastidious Evans’ would never employ: W.G. Ross, a former compositor on a Glasgow newspaper.

Ross was a character actor-singer of enormous power. Born in Scotland, he enjoyed success in the north of England before heading south, where he found fame at the Cyder Cellars. He sang many songs – ‘Going Home with the Milk in the Morning’ being a representative example – but his fame rested on a dramatic ballad depicting the tragic fate of a chimney sweep: ‘Sam Hall’. With this song, first sung in 1849, Ross attracted all London, and the Cyder Cellars overflowed nightly, with latecomers turned away. The most boisterous house hushed and the drinking ceased when it was announced that Ross would sing ‘Sam Hall’.

Many were shocked – and even repelled – by the song, but far more were fascinated. The merciless lyrics of ‘Sam Hall’ explore the turmoil and emotion of a man, convicted of a capital crime, about to die an early and unnatural death while thousands look on – thousands who will then return home to their suppers, their futures, their families, while he will be dead. Hall’s emotions turn from frustration to bravado to terror, and finally to hatred of those about to kill him. There is fear in the song, but no plea of innocence and no repentance. Sam Hall does not seek sympathy or express regret, he simply spits out his pent-up anger and rage.

It must have been a striking sight. A bearded Ross, in the character of Sam Hall, sitting astride a wooden chair in a cell, bearded, dressed in filthy, torn clothes and a battered hat. At first he would sit silently, his eyes darting in every direction like a terrified animal in a trap. He would then, slowly, light a grubby pipe, on which he would suck as the tension mounted. The silence was broken when he began to sing:

I goes up Holborn Hill in a cart,

In a cart,

I goes up Holborn Hill in a cart,

At St. Giles takes my gill,

And at Tyburn makes my will,

D—n my eyes.

Then the sheriff he will come,

He will come,

Then the sheriff he will come,

And he’ll look so gallows glum,

And he’ll talk of kingdom come,

Bl-st his eyes.

Then the hangman will come too,

Will come too,

Then the hangman will come too.

With all his bl—y crew,

And he’ll tell me what to do

Bl—t his eyes.

In the repetition of the opening lines one can feel the horror that returns unbidden to the mind of the condemned man. As he curses his tormentors, he turns to spit on the cell floor. Ross’s performance was a savage rendition of a bleak song, and its emotional impact made it one of the most dramatic acts ever seen on the variety stage. Its power was such that when Ross finished singing the room would empty, and for ten years it would be a cult song. Ross entered show-business history with his performances at the Cyder Cellars, but he did not gain – or at least keep – wealth or position. He drifted and declined until he hovered – barely recognised – on the edge of the profession. He died in obscurity in the early 1880s.

The Cyder Cellars was in close proximity to the Coal Hole, where William Rhodes had appointed his brother John, a sometime poet, as manager. John Rhodes was a big man, with a fine presence, and under his guidance the Coal Hole flourished. A raconteur with an outgoing personality, he sat at the head of the singers’ table, conducted the evening’s frivolities, joined in the glees and sang solos in an excellent baritone voice. Apart from being the ideal concert chairman, he had a passion for silver plate, and boasted of his collection of silver tankards, goblets, flagons and loving cups that ‘the like could [not] be seen elsewhere in London’. Despite these pretensions, the Coal Hole became notorious for drunken rowdiness. Among the celebrities it attracted on a nightly basis was the actor Edmund Kean, a frequent patron and serial carouser.

In many ways, the Coal Hole was a mirror image of the Cyder Cellars. In addition to engaging the same performers, the tone was similarly low-brow. Joe Wells, a ‘dreadful old creature’, sang ‘very coarse and vulgar’ songs with great gusto; Charles Sloman improvised more spicily than elsewhere. A young singer, Joe Cave, introduced the banjo as accompaniment to ‘Ethiopian’ (Negro) songs in addition to his traditional fare of ballads and opera excerpts. Static near-nudes made their debut in the delphically entitled ‘poses plastiques’. And from the early 1850s the self-styled ‘Baron’ Renton Nicholson presented his infamous ‘Judge and Jury’ trials. Oddly, women were admitted for the poses, which were presented, rather unconvincingly, as classical art – but not the ‘trials’.

Nicholson, ‘a clever, versatile, wholly unprincipled fellow’, had a chequered career. He had owned a scurrilous gossip journal, the Town, before purchasing the Garrick’s Head tavern, where he instituted the ‘Judge and Jury Society’ which later translated to the Coal Hole. The entertainment was comprised of sketches, written by Nicholson, and usually parodying contemporary events. Nicholson, in full wig and gown as the Lord Chief Justice, heard cases argued by a ‘barrister’ and ‘witnesses’. The mock trials were witty, laced with innuendo, often vulgar and irresistible to those who recognised the victims.

At the height of the supper clubs’ fame in the 1840s, the entertainment at venues like the Coal Hole may have been bawdy, even filthy, but few were offended – and certainly not the writers, journalists and intellectuals who were their habitués. If offence was taken by sensitive members of the audience, their ire could swiftly be soothed by devilled kidneys, oysters, Welsh rarebit, cigars, brandy, stout and cider, all of the highest quality.

The Coal Hole attracted a wide cross-section of society. William Makepeace Thackeray, who had a lifelong passion for the theatre, was a frequent attendee, and offers his own recollections of the Coal Hole and the Cyder Cellars. In The Newcomes, John Rhodes, manager of the Coal Hole, is depicted as Hoskins, landlord of the ‘Cave of Harmony’, with, as an added clue, Charles Sloman as ‘little Nabob, the Improvisatore’. In Pendennis, Thackeray describes a bass singer named Hodgen who enjoyed success with a song entitled ‘The Body Snatcher’ – it is clearly W.G. Ross and ‘Sam Hall’ that is being depicted. Thackeray’s description of the ‘Back Kitchen’ where Hodgen performs may be taken as a reflection of the clientèle of the supper clubs: ‘Healthy county tradesmen and farmers … apprentices and assistants … rakish young medical students … young university bucks … handsome young guardsmen … florid bucks from the St. James Clubs … senators, English and Irish … even Members of the House of Peers’.

The song and supper clubs overlapped with the birth of purpose-built music halls which eventually forced them out of business. When William Rhodes died, his widow took over the Cyder Cellars, but it soon declined under her management. At the Coal Hole, John Rhodes was succeeded by his son, who ran it until his death in 1850, after which his widow, and later John Bruton, attempted to revive it, but its day was done. As audiences fell, the content became more lewd, and the authorities pounced: both the Cyder Cellars and the Coal Hole had their licences revoked in 1862.

Evans’ Late Joy’s lingered on, and Paddy Green was host to the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, on a number of occasions – the first public nod to the supper clubs from a member of the Royal Family. One attraction for the Prince appeared to be a singer, Victor Liston, and his popular song ‘Shabby Genteel’, which highlighted a very British trait that still exists:

Too proud to beg, too honest to steal,

I know what it means to be wanting a meal,

My tatters and rage I try to conceal,

I’m one of the shabby genteel.

From the early 1860s, ladies were permitted to enter Evans’ and listen to the entertainment from specially-constructed boxes in the gallery, provided they had a male escort, gave their name and address (as a disincentive to undesirables) and remained hidden behind a screen; notwithstanding these impertinences, many women did attend. Mrs Louisa Caulfield was the first woman to sing there, around 1860, and included ‘Keemo Kino’, a minstrel song, in her repertoire. At that time such songs were enormously in vogue, but were not universally popular. The poet and lawyer Arthur Munby’s diary records supping at Evans’ in March 1860 amid ‘a hubbub of nigger howlings’. Later, Paddy Green – or his successor Mrs Barnes, it is not clear which – went even further than offering female singers, by admitting women to the floor of Evans’. As dancing was introduced, Evans’ became a market for vice and a meeting place for seedy London. In 1872 the law changed and Evans’ needed a licence to offer entertainment after 12.30 a.m. – which it did not obtain. This marked the end of the song and supper rooms.

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At the Fringe (#u7d2b65db-34ec-5f6b-b39e-e51127a2107f)

‘Never was a theatre so full – never was an audience so excited – never did the scum and refuse of the streets so liberally patronise the entertainment.’

J. EWING RITCHIE, WRITER AND CAMPAIGNER, ON ‘PENNY GAFFS’, FROM HERE AND THERE IN LONDON (1859)

As well as song and supper clubs, concert halls, variety saloons and ‘free and easies’ in pubs and pleasure gardens were nurturing the pre-natal life of music hall. So too, at a less salubrious level, were the infamous ‘penny gaffs’.

The Dr Johnson Concert Room in Bolt Court, Fleet Street – named after the great lexicographer, conversationalist and writer, who had lived in Bolt Court – had many similarities with the supper clubs. The audience, however, comprised neither the animated bohemians who flocked to Evans’, nor the raucous lower end of the market. The food was good, and alcohol plentiful. No prices were advertised, and the all-male clientèle paid their bills upon departure. A chairman kept order – the most notable being the actor and singer John Caulfield – and the performers were frequently the same as those in the supper clubs. Sam Cowell, Joe Cave and Tom Penniket were regulars, often joined by the singers John Moody and George Pervin, and variety acts like the violinists the Brothers Holmes. The diminutive singer Jenny Hill, who learned her trade in less reputable halls, had her first upmarket booking at the Dr Johnson Concert Room, and went on to become one of the most glittering stars of the early music hall.

The variety saloons had their roots in the seventeenth century, when music flourished in the back rooms of public houses. The progression from back rooms to singing rooms to music halls took two hundred years. From the earliest days publicans have looked for legal ways to add to their takings, and – time and again – governments have unwittingly helped them with legislation that backfired. In the early eighteenth century gin was the drug of choice across all classes: ‘Drunk for one penny, dead drunk for tuppence,’ claimed bill-posts all over London. Hogarth’s famous print Gin Lane was created in support of what became the Gin Act of 1751, which attempted to curtail the consumption of spirits by prohibiting distillers from selling gin to unlicensed merchants. But drunkenness remained a serious social problem, and in 1830 the Duke of Wellington’s Tory government tried to alleviate it by introducing a Beer Act to promote a weaker alcoholic alternative to spirits. This well-meaning innovation had an unexpected outcome: it led to the creation of vast numbers of public houses seeking to exploit the huge demand for getting drunk. As competition became fiercer they sought to attract customers by offering increasingly opulent surroundings and more entertainment. The Rising Sun, which opened in 1830 in a Georgian red-brick house in Knightsbridge, was a typical product of the public-house revolution. Twenty years later it was licensed for music and dancing, and a concert hall was added as 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,