The origins of music halls lay in the street performances, fairs and pleasure gardens of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In the early nineteenth century the new urban working class needed new entertainment and frequented saloons to listen to comic and sentimental songs. The owners liked the stars to sing about drink so that they could sell more of it! The middle classes also wanted new forms of entertainment and began holding Song and Supper Rooms in which women were not allowed. These were much more sedate than the taverns where women brought their children and even babies. Dickens complained that they had become a 'virtual nursery'.
In the 1840's a law was passed stating that these saloons could only be licensed if they were run as theatres and this saw the rise of the Victorian music hall. The Victorians have a reputation for being puritan and straight-laced but the music halls were rowdy, crowded places where people ate and drank as they watched the performers. They cheered those they liked and often booed those they didn't off the stage. Prostitutes frequented these music halls walking up and down the aisles looking for customers. The music halls, perhaps because of this, were extremely popular and by 1875 there were over 300 in London alone.
Music halls began to acquire a bad reputation because of the prostitutes and 'provocative dancing', risqué and even 'blue' songs, drunkenness and general rowdiness. There were complaints about the effect on public morals in the press. The temperance movement and the Purity Party became especially upset about the 'lewd' songs in the late nineteenth century and wanted the stage 'cleaned up'.
A very popular music hall star, Marie Lloyd was famous for her 'double innuendoes'. Forced to sing her songs when the renewing of the music hall licences was opposed by the Vigilance Committee she sang them in a completely innocent way without any of her usual tricks. Then she apparently grew so angry at being forced to do this she sang: "Come into the garden, Maud," in an utterly obscene way and ended up leaving England to visit South Africa.
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