paper is not, perhaps, the highest ideal of journalism, but it is to many the only newspaper of their week. It is to the discredit of the Pharisee that he has put every obstacle in the way of the Sunday paper to prevent it from developing into a bigger and more useful institution than it already is.
But one’s heart bleeds for the poor Pharisee when the theatre is mentioned. I remember some Bolton Guardians passionately endeavouring to hinder the little workhouse children from seeing a Christmas pantomime. One asserted that theatres “brought ruin to thousands,” and another that “he could not ask God’s blessing on a child whom he took to the theatre.” Fortunately, there was a majority of sinners among the Guardians, the holy men were defeated and the little children were suffered to see the pantomime.
One of the wildest outbursts of fanaticism that I have ever witnessed arose over the licensing of the Palace of Varieties. To anyone who had lived in a healthier and more normal civilisation the affair seemed impossible. For what was the situation? Manchester had a few old-fashioned, out-of-date music-halls and a very large number of singing-halls attached to public-houses—not the most desirable places of entertainment. The directors of the Palace of Varieties proposed to erect a large modern music-hall and give the best entertainment of that kind that could be given. It was a London company, and, from a business point of
view, it made a mistake in not interesting Manchester men in the company in a business sense. But there was no doubt that such a hall was badly wanted by the general body of citizens, and that the men who were going to run the show would never allow any performance that the average Manchester citizen would not like to see, just as his average London brother did. You would have thought that any citizen of foresight would have welcomed such a change. For years the magistrates and rulers of the city had provided this class of entertainment in most undesirable places, and the complacent Pharisee passed by on the other side; it did not come between the wind and his nobility. But this “centre of vice,” as a prominent Pharisee called it, was to be in the Oxford Road. It was to be open and honest, and that was its offence. The Pharisee knew that the Manchester citizens were evil people, that the music-hall was going to be an evil thing, and, therefore, certain to be popular among evil people, and so he opposed it with a vitality of strenuous abuse that was the admiration of all who take pleasure in such manifestations.
The earnestness of the crusade was beyond dispute, and the bed-rock principle of it seemed to be a firm belief in original sin. The youth of Manchester, as I gathered from letters of the protectors of morals, is naturally evil and very prone to vice and immorality. Once it strays from a Sunday school into a music-hall it directly takes to excessive drinking and other immoralities and crime. The
regime of the Sunday school in no way renders the patient immune from these results.
In the interests of this hopeful class of youth, said the Pharisee, the music-hall must be shut. The fact that there are a large number of normal, healthy, young citizens who take no harm in music-halls was overlooked. For weeks before the licence was applied for the correspondence rolled on. Letters in favour of the Palace were generally unsigned, as employees whose employers or directors were of the ruling sect had to be cautious.
Nearly every church and chapel organisation went against the improvement of music-hall performances. I remember one notable exception. The Rev. W. S. Caiger, rector of St. Mark’s, had the pluck to stand up against the overwhelming torrent of holiness that poured through the newspapers. “Mr. Price-Hughes,” he wrote, “talked of the wickedness of men who make a gain out of the exhibition of ballet girls. A ballet girl who is fairly proficient in her profession is in a far safer moral position than the young girls I watched the other day making flannel shirts at tenpence the dozen.” That was a cap that would have fitted more than one leading Pharisee, but the wearing of it might have obscured his halo.
The legal history of the licence is not worth reporting. Licensing by magistrates is not a very exact branch of scientific law. There was the usual canvassing and peaceful picketing by the Pharisees and their opponents. In the first round the former
won, and one of their leaders called for a “great meeting of united prayer and thanks to God for His divine favour to our city.” I do not think this was held. There was then a larger session. Gully applied, Sir John Harwood was in the chair, and the licence was gained by 33 to 27. Thus on Whit-Monday, 1891, Manchester possessed a first-rate music-hall. Since then others have been built and opened to the general benefit of weary citizens who are fond of innocent amusement. And nowadays the Pharisees sometimes patronise them, and so “all’s well that ends well.”