Handbook of Birmingham / Prepared for the Members of the British Association, 1886

by British Association for the Advancement of Science

In 1881, the movement assumed a more representative character. The then Hon. Sec. (Mr. T. Rose), assisted by some of the leading members of the Committee, took steps to organize a Sunday Lecture Society, and a Meeting was held on July 1st, 1881, under the Presidency of Mr. William Harris, J.P., when the present Society was publicly inaugurated, the objects being—“To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Borough of Birmingham, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere of lectures upon subjects calculated to promote the social, moral, and intellectual well-being of the community at large, as hitherto conducted by the Committee of the Sunday Evening Meetings for the People.”

The constitution of the Society also provided that a minimum subscription of One Shilling per year should constitute membership, and that any pecuniary profit should be applied to the further promotion of the objects of the Society. Mr. Sam: Timmins was elected first President, and the management of its affairs was entrusted to a Committee of 30, exclusive of Officers, to be elected annually from amongst the body of members.

In the first year of the Society’s existence the members numbered 80, including the names of many of the most influential public men of the town, and the subscription list amounted to £45. 14s. 6d. The number of members is now 168, and the subscription list amounts to £70; the income being further augmented by the collections taken at the various lectures (which are thus largely self-supporting). Nearly all the lectures being given voluntarily, the cost of working the Society is comparatively small, and is fully met by the income derived from subscriptions and collections. Five of the principal Board Schools are engaged every Sunday evening throughout the winter season, from October to April, and at intervals special lectures are delivered in the Town Hall. During the season from 1885 to 1886, 71 lectures were delivered at the Board Schools, with a total attendance of 23,150, or an average of 326 to each lecture, and 10 lectures were delivered at the Town Hall, with a total attendance of 33,000, or an average of 3,300 for each lecture. Ald. R. Chamberlain, M.P., is now President of the Society, as well as one of its most popular lecturers. In Councillor R. F. Martineau, the Committee possesses a most able and energetic Chairman. Mr. W. B. Smith is the Treasurer, and Mr. J. H. Forrester, No. 1, Summer Hill Terrace, worthily fills the office of Hon. Secretary.

Newspapers.—[Sam: Timmins.]—The earliest known Birmingham Newspaper was “The Birmingham Journal,” published by Thomas Warren, in 1733. It was at first published on Thursdays, but afterwards on Mondays. Only one copy has survived, that of May 21st, 1733, No. XXVIII. The “Journal” is interesting as it shows some traces of the style of Dr. Johnson, who very probably assisted Warren in his newspaper. “Aris’s Birmingham Gazette” was first published in 1741, and its original title is used on the Saturday issue from the Daily Gazette Office to this day. It was originally published on Mondays, and some of its earlier issues bore another heading, for special County circulation. “Swinney’s Birmingham Chronicle” was published for several years, from 1796 to 1816, but no complete file has been preserved. Jabet’s “Commercial Herald” was issued from 1804 to 1813. The “Birmingham Journal” was revived in 1825, by Wm. Hodgetts, and was continued until absorbed in “The Daily Post.” The “Birmingham Advertiser” was commenced in 1833, and continued till 1845. In 1836, the “Midland Counties Herald” was begun on a new plan of gratuitous circulation and is continued as a sheet of advertisements and news relating to the land and agricultural interests to this day. The “Birmingham Morning News” appeared in 1871, with George Dawson as its first editor, and was continued till 1875.

“Aris’s Birmingham Gazette” was one of the first two country papers which began a series of “Local Notes and Queries” in 1856. The example has been very generally followed, and the series continued in the “Weekly Post” and the “Weekly Mercury,” and many important facts of local history have thus been discovered and preserved.

The removal of the “taxes on knowledge”—the stamp duty and advertisement duty and the paper duty—soon produced local daily papers, the first being the “Daily Press,” in 1855, edited for some time by George Dawson, and followed by the “Daily Mercury.” In 1857 the “Daily Post” was started, and in 1879 the “Daily Globe” appeared. In 1869 the “Midland Illustrated News” was begun, but it survived only about a year and a half. Among the other newspapers were the “Birmingham Chronicle” (1823); the “Midland Chronicle” (1811); the “Philanthropist” (1835). Many other short-lived newspapers have been issued from time to time—many of which are to some extent preserved by odd copies in the Reference Library, and among them a German newspaper of which only one number appeared. Birmingham was one of the first towns which produced a Sunday newspaper—the “Sunday Echo,” and some others have been issued since. The “cheap press” secured a very large number of readers, when the first halfpenny daily evening paper, the “Daily Mail,” was established in 1869, followed for some time by a similar issue from the “Daily Gazette” office, and afterwards by the “Midland Echo.”

Many monthly pamphlets—practically newspapers—were issued, such as the “Independent” (1827), and “Inspector” (1817); the “Weekly Recorder” and “Register” (1819), by George Edmonds; and many serials, sarcastic or humorous, have appeared from time to time. The scurrilous “Argus” of fifty years ago, and later the “Town Crier” (1861), “Brum,” “Graphic,” “Dart,” “Owl,” “Free Lance,” &c., with our illustrated “Phonographic Punch,” and one local monthly, “Edgbastonia,” in which many interesting biographies of local celebrities have appeared. On several occasions Sunday sermons have been published in serials such as the “Birmingham Pulpit” (1871-73). Other attempts to establish newspapers for discussion rather than mere news have been tried as in the “Liberal Review” (1880).

Theatres.—[Sam: Timmins.]—Birmingham has been famous as a theatrical town for nearly a century, and especially as the “training ground” where many of the leading actors of the present century learned their art and won their first laurels. The stage was, however, rather a late creation in Birmingham, and no traces are found earlier than about 1730, when mere booths served the purpose of a “play-house,” and actors were only “rogues and vagabonds” according to law. “A shed in Temple Street” and a “stable in Castle Street,” with admission threepence each, and the small band parading the town during the day, in the absence of newspapers, to announce the performance, formed, according to Hutton, the “rise of the drama” in our town. As early as 1750 travelling circuses and theatres appeared in Coleshill Street; and in 1802 the famous Astley brought his circus to the “back of the Stork Hotel.” In 1730 a temporary building was erected in Moor Street, in 1743 another in New Street, in 1747 another in Smallbrook Street, and in 1776 a more important and permanent theatre was built in King Street—a street covered by the railway station and Stephenson Place, and the site of the theatre being now that of the front of the Exchange. This became an important theatre, and existed till late in the century in competition with the present Theatre Royal, which was founded about the same date. The few play bills which have survived, and the expenditure on the building, show that every effort was made to do justice to the drama a century ago. At this date theatres were merely tolerated, but in 1777 an application was made for a licence for the New Street Theatre to play for “four months in the year,” and this application was somewhat famous, for it was eloquently supported by Edmund Burke, who used the phrase—since so well-known and so little understood—that Birmingham was the “great Toy-shop of Europe.” The phrase, however, was not new, but was used in a book by Sir Samuel Morland a hundred years earlier to describe the shops where trinkets and small steel and iron wares were sold, and not in connection with children’s “toys.” The second reading of the Bill, to enable His Majesty the King to grant a Patent was, however, lost, but the enterprise was continued, and in 1780 the present front of the Theatre Royal was erected with a commodious theatre, well lighted by wax candles, and with “the passages warmed with stoves” as the performances were to be given in the winter as well as the summer months. It was not till 1807 that a “Patent” was secured for the Theatre which then became the Theatre Royal, and still remains under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain. In 1778 a “wooden building” was erected as an “opera house,” near the Plough and Harrow, in the Moseley Road, but this was burned down soon after. In 1792, the Theatre Royal was destroyed by fire, and again in 1820, but the front remained unharmed in these two great fires and the medallions of Shakespeare and Garrick remain as placed in 1780. In both cases the fires were believed to be incendiary and with good reason too. In 1795 the Theatre was rebuilt and re-opened by William Macready, who remained till 1810, in which year, on June 11, his future famous son, William Charles Macready, appeared as Romeo,—“a young gentleman and his first appearance on any stage.” In 1813, Macready was followed by Elliston, as lessee, and in 1819 he was succeeded by Alfred Bunn. During all this period all the great actresses, and actors, and singers, and celebrities of the time appeared on the Theatre Royal stage, and a very complete series of Play Bills has fortunately been preserved. The present lessee, Mr. M. H. Simpson, and his father have had the Theatre Royal for fifty years, and recently additions and alterations have been made, not only in the Theatre proper, but in the accessory rooms for actors and scenery which have never been surpassed for extent and convenience. The Theatre Royal was, practically, the only theatre for many years, but in 1853 a dramatic licence was granted by the magistrates for a building on the Bingley Hall site: in 1856 the “Music Hall” in Broad Street was built, but in 1862 it was converted into a theatre, and opened as the Royal Operetta House, by Mr. W. H. Swanborough. In 1866 it was bought by Mr. James Rodgers, and in 1876 was practically rebuilt, and additions and alterations are now in progress under Mr. Rodgers and his Son. In 1879 a license was granted to the Holte Theatre, in the Aston Lower Grounds; and the Grand Theatre, Corporation Street, built and managed by Mr. Andrew Melville, was opened November 14, 1883. In 1785 an Amphitheatre existed in Livery Street and was converted into a Chapel: in King Street the Theatre was also converted into a Chapel, and afterwards back again to a Public Hall; and in 1827 the Circus of James Ryan, permanently built some years later, was converted into the Circus Chapel. In short, the great progress of Birmingham in the second half of the last century was felt in every way: the Musical Festival was founded, and the drama grew rapidly as the town extended and the taste of the public improved.