John Hollingshead (1827–1904)

by unknown photographer

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Hollingshead, John (1827–1904), journalist and theatre manager, born in Union Street, Hoxton, London, on 9 September 1827, was the son of Henry Randall Hollingshead (1800–1873) and his first wife, Elizabeth, née Phillips (1806–1849). The father failed in business, and was confined in the debtors' prison of Whitecross Street, but became in 1847 clerk to the secretary of the Irish society for administering the Irish estates of the London corporation, retiring on a pension in 1872 and dying the following year. Sarah Jones, great-aunt of John's mother, was long nurse to Charles Lamb's sister Mary, who lived for the last six years of her life (1841–7) under the care of Miss Jones's sister, a Mrs Parsons, at her house in Alpha Road, St John's Wood (E. V. Lucas, Life of Lamb, 1905, 2.285–6). Hollingshead as a child saw something of Lamb, and as a young man saw much of Mary Lamb and her literary circle. After education at a Pestalozzian academy at Homerton, Hollingshead at an early age took a nondescript situation in a soft-goods warehouse in Lawrence Lane, Cheapside. A taste for literature early showed itself, and he read in his spare time at Dr Williams's Library (then in Cripplegate), and at the London Institution. He quickly developed an ambition to write for the press; at nineteen he contributed to Lloyd's Entertaining Journal an article called 'Saturday Night in London', and soon sent miscellaneous verse to The Press, a Conservative newspaper inspired by Benjamin Disraeli. After some experience as a commercial traveller, he entered into partnership as a cloth merchant in Warwick Street, Golden Square; the venture failed, and he turned to journalism for a livelihood. On 4 April 1854 he married Martha Charlotte (1823–1890), daughter of Daniel James, a clerk in a victualling yard, of Kent Road, Camberwell, and his wife, Ann; they had two sons and a daughter.

In 1856 Hollingshead became a contributor to The Train, a shilling magazine founded and edited by Edmund Yates, and then joined his friend William Moy Thomas as part proprietor and joint editor of the Weekly Mail. In 1857 he sent to Household Words, then edited by Charles Dickens, a sketch of city life, called 'Poor Tom, a city weed'. The article pleased the editor, whose sentiment and style Hollingshead emulated, and he joined the staff. He was a voluminous contributor of lively articles, chiefly descriptive of current incident and of out-of-the-way scenes of London life. 'On the canal' was the title of several articles describing a journey in a canal boat from London to Birmingham, and he reported the classic boxing match between Tom Sayers and John C. Heenan. He collected many of his contributions to Household Words and other periodicals in volumes entitled Bow Bells (1859), Odd Journeys In and Out of London (1860), Rubbing the Gilt off (1860), Underground London (1862), and Rough Diamonds (1862). He published his recollections of Dickens as a reader in 1907. He was one of the first contributors to the Cornhill Magazine, founded in 1859. When W. M. Thackeray, the editor, asked him where he learned his 'pure style', he replied, 'In the streets, from costermongers and skittle-sharps.'

In 1861, during a period of extreme hardship for the London poor, Hollingshead wrote for the Morning Post 'London horrors' (republished as Ragged London the same year). He also wrote much in The Leader for his friend F. J. Tomlin, for the London Review, edited by Charles Mackay, and for Good Words, edited by Norman Macleod. Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, a commissioner of the Great Exhibition of 1862, entrusted him with the historical introduction to the catalogue. From 1863 to 1868 he acted in succession to Yates as drama critic to the Daily News. He wrote from time to time for Punch when Shirley Brooks was editor, and in 1880, under Sir Francis Burnand's editorship, became an occasional contributor. In its pages he used satire to argue for improvements in the government of London, especially attacking the duke of Bedford, whom he christened the duke of Mudford, for his mismanagement of his Bloomsbury property. His articles entitled 'Mud salad (i.e. Covent Garden) market' and 'The gates of Gloomsbury' attracted wide attention. Many of his contributions to Punch, in verse and prose, reappeared in his volumes Footlights (1883), Plain English (1888), and Niagara Spray (1890).

Meanwhile Hollingshead took a spirited part in other public movements. In 1858 he became a member of the committee for the abolition of the paper duty, which was achieved in 1861. With Dion Boucicault he agitated in favour of free trade for theatres, and against the licensing regulations. In 1866, and again in 1892, a special committee of the House of Commons reported favourably on his general view, but no action was taken. To his efforts was largely due the Public Entertainments Act in 1875, sanctioning performances before five o'clock, which the act 25 Geo. II c. 36 had made illegal. In 1873 he led another agitation for the reform of copyright law so as to prevent the dramatization of novels without the author's sanction. A royal commission reported in 1878 in favour of the novelist. From 1860 onwards he fought the closing of the theatres on Ash Wednesday, and in 1885 the restriction was removed by Lord Lathom, then lord chamberlain.

Hollingshead helped to found the Arundel Club and the New Club, Covent Garden (Hollingshead, My Lifetime, 2.209), and joined with zest in Bohemian society. He first turned theatrical manager in 1865. Although he did not abandon journalism, his main interest lay for nearly a quarter of a century in theatrical projects. From 1865 to 1868 he was stage director of the Alhambra, where he thoroughly reformed the performances. For acting a pantomimic sketch in contravention of the theatrical licensing law he was fined £240 or £20 a performance.

On 21 December 1868 Hollingshead, as manager, opened the Gaiety Theatre in the Strand, which had been newly built by Charles John Phipps for Lionel Lawson. A theatre and restaurant were now combined for the first time in London in one building. At the Gaiety, Hollingshead made many innovations, including the system of ‘no fees’, and inaugurated continual Wednesday and Saturday matinées. In August 1878, outside the theatre, he first introduced the electric light into London, and later was the first to make use of it on the stage. He mainly devoted himself to burlesque, which he first produced in three acts. In his own phrase, he kept 'the sacred lamp of burlesque' burning at the Gaiety for eighteen years. His chief successes in burlesque were Robert Reece's Forty Thieves, Hervé's and Alfred Thompson's Aladdin, H. J. Byron's Little Dr Faust and Little Don César de Bazan, and Blue Beard, Ariel, and other pieces by Sir Francis Burnand. His actors included John Lawrence Toole, Edward Terry, Nellie Farren, Fred Leslie, and Kate Vaughan. His scene-painters were Thomas Grieve, Telbin & Son, John O'Connor, and W. Hann, and his musical conductor was Meyer Lütz.

Hollingshead did not confine himself to burlesque. He produced serious new plays by T. W. Robertson, W. S. Gilbert, H. J. Byron, Charles Reade, and Dion Boucicault, as well as operas and operettas (in which Charles Santley and Emmeline Cole sang) by Hérold, Hervé, Offenbach, Lecocq, and Suppé. Shakespeare and old and modern English comedy were interpreted by, among others, Samuel Phelps, Charles Mathews, Toole Compton, Hermann Vezin, Forbes Robertson, Ada Cavendish, Matilda Vining, and Rose Leclercq. He produced Thespis on 26 December 1871, the first work in which Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated, and was the first English manager to stage a play by Ibsen (Quicksands, or, Pillars of Society, 15 December 1880). Some of the work which he produced was from his own pen. He wrote the farce The Birthplace of Podgers, first performed at the Lyceum on 10 March 1858, in which J. L. Toole acted the part of Tom Cranky for thirty-six years; the plot was suggested by Hollingshead's investigations in early life into the identity of the house in which the poet Chatterton died in Brook Street, Holborn (Hatton, Reminiscences of Toole, 1889, 1.96). In 1877 he adapted The Grasshopper from La cigale by Meilhac and Halévy. In 1879 he arranged through M. Mayer for the complete company of the Comédie Française, including Sarah Bernhardt, Got, Delaunay, the two Coquelins, Febvre, and Mounet Sully, to give six weeks' performances (forty-two showings) from 2 June to 12 July. He paid £9600 in advance, and the total receipts were £19,805 4s. 6d., an average of £473 for each performance. ‘Practical John’ was his theatrical nickname. With characteristic public spirit, benevolence, and success, he organized many benefits for old actors and public causes.

At Christmas 1874, in addition to the Gaiety, Hollingshead took and managed for a short time the Amphitheatre in Holborn and the Opéra Comique in the Strand. In 1888 he resigned the management of the Gaiety to George Edwardes. The receipts from the theatre, which contained 2000 seats, were, for fifteen years of his control (1869–83), £608,201. The theatre was closed for only eighteen weeks in seventeen years. Hollingshead was responsible for 959 matinées in the period. In eighteen years Hollingshead made £120,000 profit, after paying out about £1.25 million. His salaries were high: he paid Samuel Phelps, Toole, and Charles Mathews £100 a week each for appearing in a revival of Colman's John Bull in 1873.

On 12 March 1888, at a hall near Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster, Hollingshead started a spectacular panorama of Niagara, which he carried on until 29 November 1890. In his later years he contributed a weekly letter to The Umpire, a Manchester sporting paper. His practicality deserted him at this time and the fortune which he had derived from the Gaiety was lost in speculation in theatres and music-halls.

Hollingshead published several volumes of miscellanies between 1865 and 1900, recorded his life at the Gaiety in Gaiety Chronicles (1898), and in 1895 published My Lifetime in two volumes. His recreations included 'trampling into every hole and corner of London, or any other city' (Who Was Who). He died of heart failure at his house in the Fulham Road on 10 October 1904, and was buried in Brompton cemetery near Sir Augustus Harris and Nellie Farren.