Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 157

Transcript

The days of old – Amusements years ago

For a long time Foley’s circus 1856-7 was the landmark from which events dated. Foley, the amusement provider of the old stagers. He planted his show somewhere about where now is Simpson and Williams, then a vacant block, owned by an absentee. There he pitched his tent and a glorious trade he did while the show lasted. He was succeeded for a considerable time – by no one. Then who came next as an entertainer? Was it Mr Furby, an 1858 eccentric old gentleman who got a full house in the old wooden town hall with “Mirth, Magic and Music”? or a German female itinerant who gave solos and tambourinals, and other little sundries. Then about 1859-60, John Lawrence Hall, the identical Johnny, appeared upon the scene, as clown and general all round man of a dog and monkey show, upon the site of Nancasson’s fruit shop rear the White Hart. Then, soon after, in company with Mr B.N. Jones, now stage manager in Sydney, they gave glorious entertainments 1859-60 in the Town Hall, in which the piece de resistance nightly, was B.N’s Other side of London, with variations appropriate to local doings which was rigidly encased, and the chorus given of the melody of the voices of the gay old boys of those times, mostly now dead and gone and passed into oblivion. They were easily amused, and not so oratorical as their successors have become. Rough benches sufficed for them, and oil lamps and candles shed ample light. They were not exacting.

A change was now coming. Those were the gold days. 1861 saw the Otago rush, and with it the adventurers of every description that a rush brings in its train. Johnny Hall launched out into a theatrical manager in Dunedin, and a year or two after opened the first theatre in Christchurch on its present site. He went largely into matters, ran an Opera Company, and other expensive ventures and landed in what became his almost unvarying haven, Queer Street. That was the beginning of a Theatre proper, where were seen and enjoyed by the homely people old John Dunn, Pollock, Fawcett, Cassy Matthews, Anna Fow, Jenny Nye, Julia Matthews, Wiseman, Miss Cleveland, Mrs Stirling the celebrated London actress, (who it may interest some to know, when celebrities of all sorts are enquired about, occupied a little cottage in Montreal Street opposite the police barracks) [continued next page