LONDONS VICTORIAN PENNY GAFFS AND FREAK SHOWS

‘Language of the most revolting kind is voiced, and plans of robberies, concocted,’ claimed a letter to a London newspaper in 1838.

A ‘penny gaff’ portrayed cheap Victorian theatres which flourished in London between 1830 and 1900. These were normally sited in empty shops, warehouses, pubs and anywhere else to house paying spectators. The traditional penny gaff theatres were feared as rearing grounds for criminals by Victorian reformers.

Their programmes were a combination of drama, variety acts, and freak shows. The props and scenery hardly comprised of more than a stage and a piano. The hirer of the venue would stand near the stage, calling out when each act should finish enlarging the evening’s income. If time were called, it would have to be stopped regardless of what point the entertainers had reached.

As penny gaffs became widespread, bigger, more expansive venues opened to house them, The Rotunda in Blackfriars Road was the biggest venue in London. It could seat 1,000 people and at its peak. It exhibited shows lasting up to two-and-a-half hours.

Sweeney Todd, the tale of a throat-slitting London barber who turned his dead clients into meat pies, is now known as a famous musical with several film versions, but it started life in a Victorian penny gaff. Sweeney Todd was first shown in 1846, in The String of Pearls, the first story to feature the homicidal barber.

The gaff, meaning a place of amusement in Cockney slang, was an inexpensive form of theatre focussing on the working class. They became illegal, but went on anyway, concentrating on dreadful tales of horror, murder, crime, and violent drama. The ‘coster lads’ who made up most of the audience were the roughest in London; always ready for a fight or a row. They organised rude pictures of the artists outside, to give the front a garish and eye-catching look, and at night, they lit coloured lamps and transparencies to draw in the audience.

In 1869, James Greenwood stated the Penny Gaffs were both extensive and perilous, and also stated ‘that within four miles of St. Paul’s, there were over twenty of these dangerous dens of amusement.’

So, what was it like to attend a Penny Gaff? The cost of entry was a penny, and on entering you might find a place to buy something basic to eat or drink. The Penny Gaffs, according to the journalist George Augustus Sala, were ‘abominably dirty, smelling of filthy bodies and tobacco.’ As you entered the show area, there was frequently a pit that held around forty to fifty people. After a warm-up, the show started. It was normally composed of songs and quick sketches. It was usual for there to be a patriotic nature to play with the crowd’s feelings.

A certain type of penny gaff controlled Victorian London, though. The ones that openly flaunted freak shows. And if you wanted to see one of these curiosities, you’d definitely be going to one of Tom Norman’s Penny Gaffs. One day, Tom Norman attended a penny gaff in Islington. He was awestruck with the exhibition and realised its profitable potential and successfully put his own on in Hammersmith. Over the next couple of years, Tom Norman’s shows starred Eliza Jenkins, the ‘Skeleton Woman.’ and ‘A baby with a head like a balloon. He also showed a family of midgets, which was made of two men and a rented baby.

In 1884, Norman met with Joseph Merrick, a young man from Leicester who had severe deformities. Powerless to find work because of his appearance, Merrick ended up in a workhouse. In 1884, he left the workhouse and worked for music-hall directors, J. Ellis and Sam Torr. They showed Merrick as ‘The Elephant Man.’ They realised they could not show Merrick for too long in one place, and at the end of 1884, they communicated with Tom Norman and reassigned the management of the Elephant Man to him.

Merrick travelled to London and into Tom Norman’s care. Merrick’s appearance traumatised Norman, and he was hesitant to display him. He revealed him at his penny gaff in Whitechapel Road, across the road from the London Hospital. Because of its proximity to the hospital, the penny gaff received medical students and doctors as paying guests. One of them was surgeon Frederick Treves, who took Merrick into the hospital to be examined.

The showing of the Elephant Man was popular. However, public attitude about freak shows was changing, and the display of human novelties was being seen as offensive. After a couple of weeks with Tom Norman, the exhibition was shut down by the police, and Norman and Merrick separated. Dr Treves then arranged for Merrick to live at the hospital until he died in 1890.