The Canterbury Hall
Mr
Charles Morton, publican of the Canterbury Tavern in Lambeth opened the first
purpose built music hall, The Canterbury Hall, in 1852. It held
700 people. Audiences were seated at tables, and food and drink
was served throughout the performance, which took place on a
platform at one end of the hall under the watchful Chairman,
the vocalist, Mr John Caulfield.
Entrance was by a sixpenny refreshment ticket and the star
was Sam Cowell, who had been lured from Evans’ Supper Rooms.
So great was Cowell’s success that Morton had to build a larger
hall on the same site. The more ornate hall opened in 1856 complete
with chandeliers, balcony and art exhibition. It held 1500 people.
Admission was sixpence to the floor and ninepence to the gallery.
Refreshments, now charged separately, were served at tables.
Mr Chairman sat at a table on the stage.
Ladies’ Thursdays
Morton encouraged women into his music hall, believing it
to have a civilising influence on the men. He introduced Ladies’
Thursdays, where women could accompany a gentleman to the
hall. However gentlemen did not necessarily take their wives
for a night out. Prostitutes would walk up and down the aisles
of the auditorium touting for customers, and the halls developed
a vulgar reputation.
New Music Halls
Inspired by the success of the Canterbury, music halls opened
up across London. These early halls including the Oxford on
the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road (where
Virgin Records now stands). By 1875 there were 375 music halls
in Greater London, which meant a lot more performers were required.
Throughout the 1860s it became more common for women to perform
in the halls. Performing was a way of escape and independence
for working class women. Many women achieved, if not stardom,
a decent living on the halls.
Singing and the comic song remained at the heart of music hall,
but gradually the acts increased in diversity. All sorts of
ingenious and strange speciality
acts developed.
The Origins of Music Halls
