‘I Like to Be a Swell’: Paupers at the Pantomime

Abstract

In January 1866, journalist James Greenwood entered the Lambeth Workhouse disguised as a vagrant. Greenwood's account of his experience inspired a host of imitators, and inaugurated a mania for slum journalism. Critics have noted the voyeurism and the homoerotic subtext of Greenwood's ‘A Night in a Workhouse', but the impact of Victorian popular theatre on his narrative has received scant attention. This essay recuperates the links between workhouse and theatre: examining paupers' reception, criticism, and appropriation of popular forms of entertainment such as the pantomime and the music hall song, analysing the representation of the workhouse on the Victorian stage, and finally proposing the concept of the workhouse itself as a performance space. Greenwood provides a valuable source of information about the theatregoing habits of the houseless poor, the most marginalised demographic within audiences at the Victorian theatre.