Workhouse
Love on the workhouse stage
Post by Jenny Hughes The Pall Mall Gazette on 6 June 1900 included a slightly ‘arched’ report on the extraordinary care for the ‘aged poor’ in a workhouse in Copenhagen, who are provided with ‘a theatre of their own to which they may go in the evening’. To ensure readers […]
The only way is Rochdale (1) …
Post by Jenny Hughes One of the ways I am taking this research forward is to focus on a specific locality – Rochdale in Lancashire, home of the Rochdale Pioneers and the cooperative movement, and a centre of Chartist fervour leading up to and around the period of the Reform […]
Amateur performers in the workhouse
Post by Jenny Hughes This is a follow up to the post below … another debate about the ethical value of theatre in the workhouse, this time from 1894. It also provides a nice antidote to the Marylebone Guardians’ snubbing of amateur dramatics below! Here, the writer is concerned to […]
Should poor children be allowed to go to the pantomime?
Post by Jenny Hughes This question was debated by the Board of Guardians of the Withington workhouse in Manchester in 1881. In the latter part of the 19th century, there is a fair amount of evidence of performers of various stripes – singers, music hall entertainers, amateur groups, choirs, magicians, […]