Mrs Midnight and Other Stories Read Free

listers who were asking silly money anyway. In the end it was Jill who spurred me. She rang me up and asked me how the research was going. I was vague but invited her to have dinner with me in a couple of day’s time when I would tell her all about it. The following morning I took myself off to the newspaper library at Colindale.
    I had already got the bare facts about the Old Essex from Mander and Mitchenson, that the theatre had suffered a very damaging fire on Saturday December 1st 1888 from which its fortunes had never recovered and it had been abandoned as a place of entertainment very soon after. So I began my researches by looking in the newspapers of that period for reports of the fire at the Old Essex.
    Most of the national dailies contained little more than a few lines stating that the fire had been started shortly after the Saturday night performance and that there were no ‘human fatalities’, but that one man, a Mr Graham, had been severely injured. I did, however, come across a passing reference to it in a letter to The Times on December 5th, stating that: ‘the recent riot and conflagration at the Old Essex provides further evidence of the extreme unrest among the denizens of Whitechapel following the appalling murders recently perpetrated in that district.’ I presumed that the writer meant the Ripper murders, the last of which had been committed in November 1888. Rather fatuously the letter ended by urging the Metropolitan Police to ‘redouble their efforts in hunting down the person responsible for these unspeakable atrocities.’
    Eventually I tracked down a more detailed account of the fire in a local paper called The East London Gazette. Monday December 3rd 1888 . In it I read as follows:

    ‘. . . the evening’s entertainment at the Old Essex was proceeding as normal when, towards the end of the bill, there was introduced an act known as Mrs Midnight and her Animal Comedians . In it a lady by the name of “Mrs Midnight”, dressed as a gypsy vagrant (but in reality personated by a Mr Simpson Graham) appears on stage with a number of animals, including a cat, a Learned Pig, a miniature bulldog, a cockerel and a Barbary ape. These creatures under instructions from Mrs Midnight performed a number of astonishing mental and physical feats. Especially notable we are told was the “Learned Pig” Belphagor who was capable of solving elementary mathematical conundrums with the aid of numbered cards. On this particular evening, however, parts of the audience, especially those who had been drinking at the bars, became restive and took against Mrs Midnight. These vulgar objections reached their height while the Barbary ape, called Bertram, was performing the act of rescuing the miniature bulldog, Mary, from the top of a miniature tower of wood and canvas, designed to look like a castle keep. Coins and other small hard objects were thrown onto the stage, one of which hit Bertram, the ape. The animal was so provoked by this act that he became visibly agitated and having reached the top of the tower, instead of rescuing the bulldog, Mary, he bit her head off.
    ‘That disgusting incident, needless to say, only incensed the troublemakers further and a full scale riot ensued. The local constabulary was summoned and the theatre was cleared. The artists appearing on the bill, which included Mr Dan Leno, were led to safety, but Mr Graham remained behind because he was fearful of being set upon by the mob who were indeed calling for him. It was at this point that smoke was seen to be coming from one of the dressing room windows at the back of the theatre, though precisely when and how the fire was started has been disputed. Our reporter who arrived on the scene with the fire brigade was told by one member of the crowd that the reason for the animus surrounding ‘Mrs Midnight’ was that her impersonator Mr Graham (formerly, we understand, a medical practitioner) was suspected by many to have some connection with