Alice Lethbridge, performer with the London Gaiety Burlesque Company. Photo / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Theatre entertainment in 19th-century New Zealand tended to be somewhat proper and certainly a lot less daring and explicit than we’ve become used to over the last 50 years.
So, when the London Gaiety Burlesque Company toured New Zealand in 1893 with a series of stage shows that were rather bawdy by Victorian standards, it caused some controversy in some parts of society, particularly in Dunedin where the show was performing at the Princess Theatre in High St.
A column in a local weekly newspaper — The Otago Worker — attacked the show, suggesting “scandalous behaviour” by some of the young women involved, comments that led to the editor being horse-whipped and his newspaper office wrecked.
Precisely what owner and editor, Samuel Lister, writing under the pseudonym “The Chiseller”, said about the young ladies is not clear, other than his comments had “cast aspersions upon their character” by suggesting the performers were paid so badly that they must have been forced to resort to prostitution to survive.
Obviously the young women were unhappy at the suggestion — so unhappy in fact that on June 5, 1893, they chose a deputation armed with horse whips and — backed by their management, their male counterparts and stagehands — headed to the newspaper’s office in Kensington to remonstrate with the editor and demand an apology and retraction.
Williamson and Musgrove’s London Gaiety Company had been performing to packed houses in Dunedin as part of a seven-week-long New Zealand-wide tour with shows such as Miss Esmeralda, Faust Up to Date and Carmen Up to Date, the latter two based on the operas Faust and Carmen.
The 90-strong cast and crew had arrived in Dunedin aboard the steamship Rotorua on May 27, and their performances opened that same evening to a rapturous reception from the sold-out house. The performances of the leading ladies of the shows, and consistent crowd favourites — Addie Conyers, Alice Lethbridge and Alice Leamar — brought standing ovations every night. Special trains were put on from Ōamaru and Invercargill, to allow locals to attend the shows.
The shows were the first of their kind seen in the colony and by all accounts, everyone was delighted by the performances, apart, it seems, from Lister. After the publication of the allegations, the actors met with Williamson and Musgrove management with everyone agreeing that the comments couldn’t go unchallenged, and failing a published apology, the editor should be horse-whipped.
Two days later with no apology forthcoming the cast met again and according to contemporary reports, “six of the most stalwart ladies of the chorus were picked out to represent the whole number in seeking satisfaction for the aspersions that had been cast upon their characters”.
Then armed with “property” horse whips they marched to the offices of the newspaper in south Dunedin.
Three of the company’s management — H. Musgrove, W. Hughes (the business manager) and E.J. Lonnen — went in first to talk to the editor and demand a printed apology, which Lister was not willing to concede, whereupon the ladies of the chorus “who had been deputed to vindicate the honour of those who had been maligned” entered the office “in dramatic style” and, on identifying the offender, promptly attacked him and began to “lash their whips vigorously about his head and shoulders”.
At this point Lister’s two sons, John and Alexander, and the newspaper’s compositors came to his aid. The attacking actresses were driven back by the newspaper’s staff, but then the attackers called in reinforcements in the form of some of the stagehands who had been waiting outside, at which point a full-scale brawl broke out in the office.
According to newspaper reports at the time, the whole of the premises were turned upside down and every window in the place was smashed in the conflict. While the free fight was proceeding between the stagehands and the compositors, the ladies re-entered and made havoc of the office — tearing up manuscripts and throwing documents about with a most sublime disregard for their literary value.
The one of the defending force who fared worst was in the act of flight when he was intercepted by a couple of the attacking party, who smeared his face so that he resembled an “Australian blackfellow”.
Having wrought sufficient havoc to satisfy their wounded feelings, the attackers were withdrawing and about to return to the theatre, when the local policeman — Constable Higgins — appeared on the scene and was quickly enlightened of the attack by Lister. He urged him to arrest three of the attackers who he said had caused most of the damage and assaulted him.
Constable Higgins arrested the three men and took them to the Dunedin police station where formal charges were laid against them.
That didn’t satisfy Lister, however, because he believed the whole theatrical company had been involved and he demanded that charges be laid against them all, finally identifying 14 others involved who were arrested and charged. In total 10 men and eight women were charged in connection with the attack.
An Otago Daily Times reporter on the scene at the police station appeared to be enjoying the spectacle, pointing out that large numbers of the public gathered outside the station to watch proceedings and they were sharing the good-hearted and humorous mood of the accused.
While the officer whose duty it was to record the charges against the accused was busily engaged in taking down their names and making out the several charges against them, they beguiled the time with talking jovially over their recent exploit, their conversation being enlivened with merry laughter and frequent jest. It seemed indeed as if a picnic party had paid a surprise visit to the police station and were jocularly pretending to be implicated in some offence against the law. What further gave their visit to the station the appearance of a picnic was the fact that at frequent intervals members of the Gaiety Company who were not under arrest appeared on the scene with refreshments which were demolished by the party in custody with evident zeal.
When the police had completed their processes, the accused were driven away from the police station to the police court, not in the customary dingy vehicles in which accused are generally conveyed to the police court, but in carriages drawn by high-stepping steeds. It seemed as if they were riding in triumph to some joyful event — the reward for their past victory — rather than to the awful precincts of the police court.
Even in the courtroom, their high spirits were undiminished, and they “appeared as excited and jubilant as players who had achieved a success before a large audience”. And they did indeed have a large audience, because a huge crowd of spectators had gathered in the courtroom to watch proceedings. They were charged before three Justices of the Peace with wilfully and maliciously damaging property of the value of £10 at Kensington, belonging to Lister, and with assaulting Lister and his two sons.
But the case came to an end when, apparently with the agreement of Lister, the prosecutor asked for the charges to be dismissed, which the defence agreed to and to which the police presented no objection. When the charges were withdrawn, and the offenders discharged, they “shook hands cordially with the police, thanked them for their courtesy and withdrew, still jubilant, from the precincts of the court”. Contemporary reports say public sympathy lay with the Gaiety Burlesque Company, which continued to enjoy full houses for the rest of its week-long season in Dunedin.
Edited extract from Our Untold Stories: Extraordinary Tales from New Zealand’s Past, by Tom Clarke (Bateman Books, RRP: $45.99).
Emergency services were called to the scene about 8.30pm.