Re-enacting local history in the Stepney Children’s Pageant, 1909

Abstract

The Stepney Children’s Pageant performed at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in May 1909 by six hundred600 local school children, was staged by the social reformers of the non-denominational university settlement, Toynbee Hall. This chapter examines how and why a fashion for historical pageants - – the dramatic representation of chronological scenes of re-imagined local history - – was embraced and adapted for the children of London’s East End. It identifies the principal organisers and demonstrates how they sought to immerse the child actors and their audiences in a locally- grounded version of British history that aimed to provide exemplary models of citizenship from multiple pasts. It explores the children’s experience of participation in a pageant that was promoted as an innovative educational project. This account also considers how the pageant reflected Edwardian perceptions of British history whilst confounding outsiders’ perceptions of the inhabitants of London’s East End.