University of Virginia Library

OF THE "PENNY GAFF."

In many of the thoroughfares of London there
are shops which have been turned into a kind of
temporary theatre (admission one penny), where
dancing and singing take place every night.
Rude pictures of the performers are arranged
outside, to give the front a gaudy and attractive
look, and at night-time coloured lamps and
transparencies are displayed to draw an au-
dience. These places are called by the costers
"Penny Gaffs;" and on a Monday night as
many as six performances will take place, each
one having its two hundred visitors.

It is impossible to contemplate the ignorance
and immorality of so numerous a class as that
of the costermongers, without wishing to discover
the cause of their degradation. Let any one
curious on this point visit one of these penny
shows, and he will wonder that any trace of
virtue and honesty should remain among the
people. Here the stage, instead of being the
means for illustrating a moral precept, is turned
into a platform to teach the cruelest debauchery.
The audience is usually composed of children so
young, that these dens become the school-rooms
where the guiding morals of a life are picked
up; and so precocious are the little things, that
the girl of nine will, from constant attendance at
such places, have learnt to understand the filthi-
est sayings, and laugh at them as loudly as the
grown-up lads around her. What notions can
the young female form of marriage and chastity,
when the penny theatre rings with applause at
the performance of a scene whose sole point
turns upon the pantomimic imitation of the un-
restrained indulgence of the most corrupt appe-
tites of our nature? How can the lad learn to
check his hot passions and think honesty and
virtue admirable, when the shouts around him
impart a glory to a descriptive song so painfully
corrupt, that it can only have been made tole-
rable by the most habitual excess? The men
who preside over these infamous places know
too well the failings of their audiences. They
know that these poor children require no nicely-
turned joke to make the evening pass merrily,
and that the filth they utter needs no double
meaning to veil its obscenity. The show that
will provide the most unrestrained debauchery
will have the most crowded benches; and to
gain this point, things are acted and spoken
that it is criminal even to allude to.

Not wishing to believe in the description
which some of the more intelligent of the cos-
termongers had given of these places, it was
thought better to visit one of them, so that all
exaggeration might be avoided. One of the
least offensive of the exhibitions was fixed upon.

The "penny gaff" chosen was situated in a
broad street near Smithfield; and for a great
distance off, the jingling sound of music was
heard, and the gas-light streamed out into the
thick night air as from a dark lantern, glitter-
ing on the windows of the houses opposite, and
lighting up the faces of the mob in the road,
as on an illumination night. The front of a
large shop had been entirely removed, and the
entrance was decorated with paintings of the
"comic singers," in their most "humourous"
attitudes. On a table against the wall was
perched the band, playing what the costers call
"dancing tunes" with great effect, for the hole
at the money-taker's box was blocked up with
hands tendering the penny. The crowd with-
out was so numerous, that a policeman was in
attendance to preserve order, and push the boys
off the pavement — the music having the effect of
drawing them insensibly towards the festooned
green-baize curtain.

The shop itself had been turned into a
waiting-room, and was crowded even to the top
of the stairs leading to the gallery on the first
floor. The ceiling of this "lobby" was painted
blue, and spotted with whitewash clouds, to re-
present the heavens; the boards of the trap-
door, and the laths that showed through the
holes in the plaster, being all of the same
colour. A notice was here posted, over the
canvass door leading into the theatre, to the
effect that "Ladies and Gentlemen to the
front places must pay Twopence."

The visitors, with a few exceptions, were all
boys and girls, whose ages seemed to vary from
eight to twenty years. Some of the girls — though
their figures showed them to be mere children —
were dressed in showy cotton-velvet polkas, and
wore dowdy feathers in their crushed bonnets.
They stood laughing and joking with the lads,
in an unconcerned, impudent manner, that was
almost appalling. Some of them, when tired
of waiting, chose their partners, and commenced
dancing grotesquely, to the admiration of the
lookers-on, who expressed their approbation in
obscene terms, that, far from disgusting the
poor little women, were received as compliments,
and acknowledged with smiles and coarse repar-
tees. The boys clustered together, smoking their

[Description: 915EAF. Page 041.]

pipes, and laughing at each other's anecdotes,
or else jingling halfpence in time with the tune,
while they whistled an accompaniment to it.
Presently one of the performers, with a gilt
crown on his well greased locks, descended
from the staircase, his fleshings covered by a
dingy dressing-gown, and mixed with the mob,
shaking hands with old acquaintances. The
"comic singer," too, made his appearance among
the throng — the huge bow to his cravat, which
nearly covered his waistcoat, and the red end to
his nose, exciting neither merriment nor sur-
prise.

To discover the kind of entertainment, a lad
near me and my companion was asked "if
there was any flash dancing." With a knowing
wink the boy answered, "Lots! show their legs
and all, prime!" and immediately the boy fol-
lowed up his information by a request for a
"yennep" to get a "tib of occabot." After wait-
ing in the lobby some considerable time, the
performance inside was concluded, and the au-
dience came pouring out through the canvass
door. -As they had to pass singly, I noticed
them particularly. Above three-fourths of
them were women and girls, the rest consisting
chiefly of mere boys — for out of about two
hundred persons I counted only eighteen men.
Forward they came, bringing an overpowering
stench with them, laughing and yelling as
they pushed their way through the waiting-
room. One woman carrying a sickly child
with a bulging forehead, was reeling drunk, the
saliva running down her mouth as she stared
about her with a heavy fixed eye. Two boys
were pushing her from side to side, while the
poor infant slept, breathing heavily, as if stupi-
fied, through the din. Lads jumping on girls'
shoulders, and girls laughing hysterically from
being tickled by the youths behind them, every
one shouting and jumping, presented a mad
scene of frightful enjoyment.

When these had left, a rush for places by
those in waiting began, that set at defiance the
blows and strugglings of a lady in spangles
who endeavoured to preserve order and take the
checks. As time was a great object with the
proprietor, the entertainment within began
directly the first seat was taken, so that the
lads without, rendered furious by the rattling
of the piano within, made the canvass partition
bulge in and out, with the strugglings of those
seeking admission, like a sail in a flagging
wind.

To form the theatre, the first floor had been
removed; the whitewashed beams however
still stretched from wall to wall. The lower
room had evidently been the warehouse, while
the upper apartment had been the sitting-room,
for the paper was still on the walls. A gallery,
with a canvass front, had been hurriedly built
up, and it was so fragile that the boards bent
under the weight of those above. The bricks
in the warehouse were smeared over with red
paint, and had a few black curtains daubed
upon them. The coster-youths require no very
great scenic embellishment, and indeed the
stage — which was about eight feet square —
could admit of none. Two jets of gas, like
those outside a butcher's shop, were placed on
each side of the proscenium, and proved very
handy for the gentlemen whose pipes required
lighting. The band inside the "theatre"
could not compare with the band without.
An old grand piano, whose canvass-covered
top extended the entire length of the stage,
sent forth its wiry notes under the be-ringed
fingers of a "professor Wilkinsini," while an-
other professional, with his head resting on his
violin, played vigorously, as he stared uncon-
cernedly at the noisy audience.

Singing and dancing formed the whole of the
hours' performance, and, of the two, the singing
was preferred. A young girl, of about fourteen
years of age, danced with more energy than
grace, and seemed to be well-known to the
spectators, who cheered her on by her Christian
name. When the dance was concluded, the
proprietor of the establishment threw down a
penny from the gallery, in the hopes that
others might be moved to similar acts of
generosity; but no one followed up the offer-
ing, so the young lady hunted after the
money and departed. The "comic singer," in
a battered hat and the huge bow to his cravat,
was received with deafening shouts. Several
songs were named by the costers, but the
"funny gentleman" merely requested them "to
hold their jaws," and putting on a "knowing"
look, sang a song, the whole point of which
consisted in the mere utterance of some filthy
word at the end of each stanza. Nothing, how-
ever, could have been more successful. The
lads stamped their feet with delight; the girls
screamed with enjoyment. Once or twice a
young shrill laugh would anticipate the fun — as
if the words were well known — or the boys would
forestall the point by shouting it out before the
proper time. When the song was ended the
house was in a delirium of applause. The
canvass front to the gallery was beaten with
sticks, drum-like, and sent down showers of
white powder on the heads in the pit. Another
song followed, and the actor knowing on what
his success depended, lost no opportunity of in-
creasing his laurels. The most obscene thoughts,
the most disgusting scenes were coolly described,
making a poor child near me wipe away the
tears that rolled down her eyes with the enjoy-
ment of the poison. There were three or four of
these songs sung in the course of the evening,
each one being encored, and then changed.
One written about "Pine-apple rock," was the
grand treat of the night, and offered greater
scope to the rhyming powers of the author
than any of the others. In this, not a single
chance had been missed; ingenuity had been
exerted to its utmost lest an obscene thought
should be passed by, and it was absolutely
awful to behold the relish with which the
young ones jumped to the hideous meaning of
the verses.

There was one scene yet to come, that was
perfect in its wickedness. A ballet began be-
tween a man dressed up as a woman, and a
country clown. The most disgusting attitudes
were struck, the most immoral acts represented,
without one dissenting voice. If there had been
any feat of agility, any grimacing, or, in fact,
anything with which the laughter of the unedu-
cated classes is usually associated, the applause
might have been accounted for; but here were
two ruffians degrading themselves each time
they stirred a limb, and forcing into the brains
of the childish audience before them thoughts
that must embitter a lifetime, and descend from
father to child like some bodily infirmity.

When I had left, I spoke to a better class
costermonger on this saddening subject. "Well,
sir, it is frightful," he said, "but the boys will have their amusements. If their amusements is
bad they don't care; they only wants to laugh,
and this here kind of work does it. Give 'em
better singing and better dancing, and they'd go,
if the price was as cheap as this is. I've seen,
when a decent concert was given at a penny, as
many as four thousand costers present, behaving
themselves as quietly and decently as possible.
Their wives and children was with 'em, and no
audience was better conducted. It's all stuff
talking about them preferring this sort of thing.
Give 'em good things at the same price, and I
know they will like the good, better than the
bad."

My own experience with this neglected class
goes to prove, that if we would really lift them
out of the moral mire in which they are wallow-
ing, the first step must be to provide them with
wholesome amusements. The misfortune, how-
ever, is, that when we seek to elevate the cha-
racter of the people, we give them such mere
dry abstract truths and dogmas to digest, that
the uneducated mind turns with abhorrence from
them. We forget how we ourselves were origi-
nally won by our emotions to the consideration
of such subjects. We do not remember how our
own tastes have been formed, nor do we, in our
zeal, stay to reflect how the tastes of a people
generally are created; and, consequently, we
cannot perceive that a habit of enjoying any
matter whatsoever can only be induced in the
mind by linking with it some æsthetic affection.
The heart is the mainspring of the intellect, and
the feelings the real educers and educators of the
thoughts. As games with the young destroy the
fatigue of muscular exercise, so do the sympa-
thies stir the mind to action without any sense
of effort. It is because "serious" people gene-
rally object to enlist the emotions in the educa-
tion of the poor, and look upon the delight which
arises in the mind from the mere perception of
the beauty of sound, motion, form, and colour —
or from the apt association of harmonious or
incongruous ideas — or from the sympathetic
operation of the affections; it is because, I say,
the zealous portion of society look upon these
matters as "vanity," that the amusements of the
working-classes are left to venal traders to pro-
vide. Hence, in the low-priced entertainments
which necessarily appeal to the poorer, and,
therefore, to the least educated of the people,
the proprietors, instead of trying to develop in
them the purer sources of delight, seek only to
gratify their audience in the coarsest manner, by
appealing to their most brutal appetites. And
thus the emotions, which the great Architect of
the human mind gave us as the means of quick-
ening our imaginations and refining our senti-
ments, are made the instruments of crushing
every operation of the intellect and debasing our
natures. It is idle and unfeeling to believe that
the great majority of a people whose days are
passed in excessive toil, and whose homes are
mostly of an uninviting character, will forego all amusements, and consent to pass their evenings
by their no firesides, reading tracts or singing
hymns. It is folly to fancy that the mind, spent
with the irksomeness of compelled labour, and
depressed, perhaps, with the struggle to live by
that labour after all, will not, when the work is
over, seek out some place where at least it can
forget its troubles or fatigues in the temporary
pleasure begotten by some mental or physical
stimulant. It is because we exact too much of
the poor — because we, as it were, strive to make
true knowledge and true beauty as forbidding as
possible to the uneducated and unrefined, that
they fly to their penny gaffs, their twopenny-
hops, their beer-shops, and their gambling-
grounds for pleasures which we deny them, and
which we, in our arrogance, believe it is possible
for them to do without.

The experiment so successfully tried at
Liverpool of furnishing music of an enlivening
and yet elevating character at the same price as
the concerts of the lowest grade, shows that the
people may be won to delight in beauty instead
of beastiality, and teaches us again that it is our fault to allow them to be as they are and not
their's to remain so. All men are compound
animals, with many inlets of pleasure to their
brains, and if one avenue be closed against
them, why it but forces them to seek delight
through another. So far from the perception of
beauty inducing habits of gross enjoyment as
"serious" people generally imagine, a mo-
ment's reflection will tell us that these very
habits are only the necessary consequences of
the non-development of the æsthetic faculty;
for the two assuredly cannot co-exist. To culti-
vate the sense of the beautiful is necessarily to
inculcate a detestation of the sensual. Moreover,
it is impossible for the mind to be accustomed to
the contemplation of what is admirable without
continually mounting to higher and higher
forms of it — from the beauty of nature to that
of thought — from thought to feeling, from
feeling to action, and lastly to the fountain of
all goodness — the great munificent Creator of
the sea, the mountains, and the flowers — the
stars, the sunshine, and the rainbow — the fancy,
the reason, the love and the heroism of man and
womankind — the instincts of the beasts — the
glory of the angels — and the mercy of Christ.