Leicester's
only surviving Victorian theatre is located at the
junction of Wharf Street and Gladstone Street.
Today, the building is sad and uninspiring, functional
rather than decorative. There is little to indicate its
fascinating history except the facade above the first
floor windows with its theatre-style motifs.
On Saturday 15 May 2004 a plaque was unveiled on the
Gladstone Street exterior of the building to commemorate
its associations with Joseph Carey Merrick, the Elephant
Man. |
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building began life as the Gladstone Hotel and was built
in 1862 by W. Hancock. Originally it included a third
storey. As a hotel, it was not a success and instead
became used as a meeting hall for religious groups, and
later for the local Ragged School Mission. By 1880
had become known as the Gladstone Music Hall, or the
Gladstone Vaults. |
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A
new chapter in the building's life began with its purchase
in 1883 by Sam Torr, who owned the nearby Green Man public
house. Sam came from Nottingham, and before becoming a
licensee had made a name for himself on the London variety
stage. It was to Sam Torr that the young Joseph Carey
Merrick - the Elephant Man - wrote from the Leicester
Workhouse in 1884, suggesting that he might use his
appalling disfigurement to some monetary advantage on the
stage. Merrick had been born just yards away from the
theatre at 50 Lee Street. |
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After
visiting Merrick in the workhouse, Torr agreed to his
request and set up a group of four theatrical
businessmen to develop Merrick's `career', although
there is no firm evidence that Merrick ever appeared
on the stage in Wharf Street.
Torr
re-opened the Gladstone Vaults as the Gaiety Palace of
Varieties. Again, it failed to prosper, and he
sold the theatre just two years later. By 1895 it was
under new management again, this time as the New
Empire Theatre of Varieties. It has been
suggested that at times, the wrong sort of `clientele'
was attracted to the limelight, because it is rumoured
the adjacent building at 27 Wharf Street later to
become famous as Lief's pawnshop, served at that time,
it is alleged, as a brothel.
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Torr's daughter, Clara, kept a diary in which she recorded
the last days of her family's involvement in the building
that was their life and livelihood: |
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"Everything was going lovely
as we thought. We had a manager. He looked like a parson and knew
about as much as one concerning the profession. We had
several barmaids sometimes taking farthings for half-sovereigns.
We had several waiters always missing when they were wanted... We
also had a chairman which they played all kinds of jokes on... But
the crash came all too soon. One morning my dear Mother came to me
in terrible distress saying, `Clara, everything will be sold in a
few days and we shall be homeless. Whatever will become of us?"
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Incidentally,
Lief's was built originally as two separate shops (by Isaac
Barradale in 1880), numbered 27a and 27b. This numbering was
necessary because part of the building occupies the original
access to the Cricket Ground which lay behind that side of
Wharf Street. When the ground was sold for
development, the original No 27 was demolished, and the new
building, partly across the entrance to the old ground
became two properties.
The theatre lights finally dimmed soon after the First World
War, and in place of live theatre came the big screen
because, in 1922, the Hippodrome became a picture house, and
later changed its name to The Empire. At last, the
building had found its niche in the lives of the people of
the area, and it prospered through until the 1940's.
In the 1950s, the building fell into disrepair. It is
not listed in Kelly's 1957 Street Directory. Today the
former theatre is home to a thriving motor factoring
business, but its glory has departed, and there is little to
remind the occasional visitor of the time when it paid a
central role in the lives of the people of Wharf Street.
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