Life in Old Ghosts
By Judith Bowers (re-written in 2011)

In 1857 Alexander "Greek" Thompson was creating his masterpieces of architecture all over the city of Glasgow and was already being heralded a genius by many of his contemporaries. One of these contemporaries was Thompson's own biographer and City Architect Thomas Gildard. Gildard and his colleague Robert H. M. MacFarlane received a commission to find a new use for an old warehouse building on Glasgow’s Trongate. At first they had intended to rebuild the warehouse as a department store, but the Trongate was not the affluent area it had once been. The Tobacco Lords and Merchants who had once promenaded along the Trongate and given it the reputation of being the most salubrious street in Glasgow had long since moved to the new town in the west end and by 1857 this little street was described by the North British Daily Mail as “one eighth of a mile of iniquity with over 200 shebeens (illegal drinking houses) and 130 brothels. The Trongate of 1857 was now the domain of the poor and the working classes, so the two architects decided to convert the warehouse into something that would benefit the people of the east end. A Music Hall.

The Britannia Music Hall was an instant success and over a thousand working folk of Glasgow’s east end crammed in four times daily to see the saucy dancing girls, singers and comic turns. Poor these audiences may have been, but they came often, even nightly, and Britannia rang with the sound of the noisy crowds who would make known their opinion of every act, cheering the good and pelting the bad with whatever ammunition came to hand; urine, horse manure, fish heads and ship yard rivets were amongst the most popular. It soon gained the reputation of being a house where they left no turn un-stoned.

In 1866, Dan Leno performed with his cousin Johnny Danvers as the "Brothers Leno, the popular great little dancers". Dan Leno was five years old at the time, but he grew up to become one of the most popular entertainers of the 1880’s & 1890's and in 1901 was proclaimed the "Kings Jester".

In 1868 John Brand (who had been the first of many proprietors), sold Britannia to H. T. Rossborough. Rossborough saw great potential in this little hall and set about changing the decor, building a new stage and supplying the audience with a new front entrance.

True the Britannia was now more glamorous, but the audience hadn't changed, they still existed amongst the ranks of the hard working, under paid and over-crowded. The Britannia was a home away from hovel. Put your feet up on the bench in front (if you could), sup your beer and watch the entertainment unfold. Forget the rent, the rumbling in your belly, the long hours in the ship-yard, mill or steamie. Spend 2d and bust your gut laughing for as long as the management will let you. The management would pack the audiences in and there was always room for one more. Weans would sit on their mothers knee and bottoms would shuffle up the hard, wooden, pew like benches and when the benches were filled to creaking and straining with the weight, every inch of floor space would accommodate more bodies standing, held up no doubt by the press of surrounding humanity. The air, not ventilated, was thick with pipe and cheroot smoke and the smell of steaming whelks (the first popular take-away food of Glasgow). Gas lights blazed and open fires roared. It's a wonder people didn't suffocate.
By 1881 the Britannia Music Hall was billed as "Pre-eminently the best and most popular place of amusement", offering the Glasgow audience the latest entertainment's of the day, like Hotine the champion swordsman, the Royal Aquarium Hippodrome of Dogs and Monkeys (twelve in all), Picard the boy comique and the Great Solid Man (a strong man). People poured in and so did the money, night after night hundreds were turned away as Britannia was filled to bursting at the seams. Then in 1892 a new owner arrived, a man who was to prove himself an innovator, William Kean.

Kean had an eye for unusual talent. One of the first acts he engaged was Mademoiselle Paula the Reptile Conqueror. Mademoiselle Paula “would allow serpents to entwine around her body and played with viscous crocodiles as if they were children” (according to her billing). This entertainment was so popular that Mademoiselle Paula found herself re-engaged "at enormous outlay" for an extra week.

In the summer of 1896, Kean closed Britannia for a couple of months whilst he made a few alterations to the successful little place. On August 25th, people flocked back to the newly titled "Britannia Variety Theatre" to see what changes had been made. The following advert was issued that day in the Daily Record:

"Mr Kean has much pleasure in announcing that during the recess the entire building has been painted, re-decorated, upholstered and a complete installation of the electric light throughout the entire building.

First appearance at the "Brit" for one week only of The Cinematograph or Animated Pictures. The Marvel of the Nineteenth Century. They will nightly give selections from the following Pictures: The Blacksmiths Forge, Comic Scene at a Restaurant, Cock Fight, Mexican Duel, Rescue from a Fire, Boxing Match, Buffalo Bill, Lynching Scene, Japanese Dance, The Prismatic Skirt Dance by Loie Fuller as a Finale each evening."

The Cinematagraph went down a storm and became a permanent feature as early cinema swept through Glasgow music halls. The Daily Record reported the Great success of the Cinematograph with:

"Money was refused at the Britannia last night. No more need, therefore, be said about the size of audience"

In a rival establishment on Sauchiehall Street, the Skating Palace, Arthur Hubner beat William Kean in being the first proprietor to show regular moving pictures, Hubner sold his interest in the Skating Palace, (which soon after became Hengler's Circus and in more recent years the ABC Cinema) and brought the Britannia off Kean in 1897. On February 1st 1897 Hubner offered the Britannia audience statue dancers, banjoists, knockabouts, mimics and performing dogs amongst a huge programme of performances and continued to show the Cinematograph throughout his short reign.

In 1906 A. E. Pickard, a young man in his early thirties, took over the building and re-opened it as The "Britannia and Grand Panopticon".

It was Pickard for whom many remember Britannia today. The name Panopticon meant “to view everything” (from the Greek, Pan = everything & Opti = to see) and in the Panopticon (or Pots and Pans as it became locally known) much more than cine-variety was on offer. Pickard opened the top floor of the building up to the public as a "Roof Top Carnival" offering such wonderful delights as pipe breakers, Aunt Sallies, fortune tellers, love in a tub, cockernut (Mr Pickard’s spelling) saloons and all the latest, up-to-date amusements. In addition to this, Pickard also excavated the basement and opened it up as "Noah's Ark", a zoo containing a monkey house, bird house, reptile house and bear house. Noah's Ark also housed: "Colourful prints of Chinese tortures, rich engravings by W. Hogarth and other eminent artists, while there are distorting mirrors and other things to amuse the public, not omitting a grand organ, which will play some lovely selections while the public are promenading round seeing the sites..."

In the American Museum next door, which was also owned by Pickard, you could see Freak shows and wax work exhibits. The "Freaks", which included Monsieur Beaute the man who held the world record for fasting, Leonine the Lion Headed girl, Tom Thumb, who was twenty-three inches in height and twenty-four pounds in weight and the Human Spider, performed daily in the American Museum, but resided in the Roof Top Carnival above the Panopticon, where they could be viewed whilst at their leisure and all of this for the one ticket price. This vast array of entertainments had been inspired by the great American showman P.T. Barnum.

Pickard always liked to stay ahead of the game and was fiercely competitive. In opening "Noah's Ark" he was trying to compete with Bostock and Wombwell who declared that Pickard's moth-eaten collection of animals did not warrant the term "zoological collection".

Pickard also fancied himself as a bit of a talent scout, which can’t be disputed as he gave two great cinema heroes their first chance on the stage of the Panopticon. The first of these was a young man whose father managed a rival music hall on Stockwell Street, the Metropole (formerly the Scotia Music Hall). Arthur Stanley Jefferson aspired to be a great music hall comedian and at the age of fifteen he had decided that he had learned everything that school could teach him so he started to bunk off school and spend his afternoons in the Panopticon instead where he watched all the comics with studious concentration, memorising the best gags which he would then perform for his bed ridden mother. His mother had once been a performer too and encouraged her son, who, a month after his sixteenth birthday, decided to ask Pickard if he could perform at the Panopticon amateur night. Pickard agreed, and that Friday the young lad got his chance. He jumped onto the stage in his father’s best suit with the trousers cut up to fit in a comedy fashion and launched into a series of jokes and songs. The act wasn’t going terribly well but the boy soldiered on until he saw his Father sitting with Pickard at the front of the Stalls. The boy froze then jumped from the stage terrified at what his father would say. Pickard was always proud of that night and the young lad he had let perform, for that young lad eventually sailed to America where he met Oliver Norvall Hardy. Together they became the world’s most famous comedy duo, Laurel and Hardy.

In 1911 another young man debuted at the Panopticon. A dapper young gent from Helensburgh found himself billed as a new act and vainly tried to sing to a full house of Glasgow's most notorious audience. His voice failed to rise above the jeers and shouts and when his number was finished the poor young lad thought his career had ended before it had begun, but the manager booked him in for a week anyway and the lad was paid in full before going to Edinburgh where he played in the Empress (Festival Theatre) to a full house of absolutely silent spectators. This young lad was Jack Buchanan, the heart throb of a million women and the star of such films as "Band Wagon" and "Bulldog Drummond".

With Pickard’s constant search for new and unusual entertainment's the Panopticon continued to thrive and so did he. He proclaimed his wealth by stating that he had so much money he couldn't count it all and he brought theatres and cinemas all over the city: The White Elephant, Seamore, Gaiety, Black Cat, Casino and Norwood to name but a few. He also owned a number of warehouses, offices and tenement buildings which he never maintained and on one occasion, whilst arguing with a local councillor, Pickard declared "You can't throw a stone in Glasgow without hitting one of my buildings". To which the Councillor replied "And if it hits it, it'll fall down".

But as Pickard thrived with his ever increasing list of cinemas and theatres, the Britannia Panopticon had begun to age. People began to flock to the modern, purpose built cinemas like the Salon and the Cosmo, leaving this little Victorian wooden auditorium behind. Finally the depression of the 1930's saw the end for this little Music Hall and Pickard sold it to his tailors in 1938. The balcony was sealed off and a false ceiling erected above the stalls to make way for a factory and warehouse. The Trongate entrance was removed and replaced with large plate glass windows, which over the years since have given the window shopper a view of all kinds of goods. Even the rats have long since left this sleeping beauty which has slept through the Second World War, mans first steps on the moon, the invention of television and the dawn of the computer age. From penny farthing to mountain bike, horse drawn carriage to BMW, Britannia has seen it all.

As I write this potted history whilst sitting in what was once the manager’s office, I can hear the bingo caller’s voice drifting up to the office window and the noise of the traffic as buses and cars stampede by in noisy, fume emitting herds. Many of the old tenements are gone and so have the slum conditions and cholera that thrived in them. The Trongate at the beginning of the twenty first Century seems far removed from the days when Britannia was the most popular place of amusement. What does the future hold for this charismatic little building which contains such a large piece of theatre and cinema history, encapsulated in dust and peeling paint?…

Well for the last fourteen years I have campaigned with the help of a loyal band of supporters to bring this old relic back to life and now the building has a new roof and façade and gable end (thanks mostly to Historic Scotland, our local THI* and the wonderful Mitchell family who own the building). Music Hall shows can been seen throughout the summer months and every year more and more people come and visit the oldest surviving music hall in the world – so why not join them, visit our events page for more information. And don’t forget, my book “Stan Laurel and Other Stars of the Panopticon the Story of the Britannia Music Hall"is available from all good book shops or from Amazon or if you’re in Glasgow, why not pop into our charity shop at 49 High Street.