Edward Mullaly
The Saint John theatre riot of 2 April 1845 was caused by Henry W Preston's production of a lost political satire entitled The Provincial Association, written by a Fredericton author and newspaper editor, Thomas Hill. While newspaper descriptions of the riot reflect largely on the personal animosities of the writers involved, the event itself provides an early Canadian illustration of theatre's power to move its audience to emotional extremes.
L'émeute du théâtre a Saint John de 2 avril 1845, fit precipitée par la mise-en-scene d'une satire, maintenant perdue, The Provincial Association écrie par l'auteur et redacteur d'un journal de Fredericton, Thomas Hill. Quoique toutes les descriptions de l'émeute réflechissent les animositées personnelles des écrivains entraînés l'événement elle-même, fournie une illustration canadienne dès les premiers temps, de la puissance du théâtre de remuer ses spectateurs à l'extrême émotive.
Theatre riots are, paradoxically, signs of theatre health. London's anti-management OP riots in 1809 were motivated, at least in part, by the theatre public's unwillingness to suffer the deprivation that Kemble's increased prices would cause. New York's Astor Place riot in 1849 measured, at Macready's expense, the depths of national pride in American actors. In our own century, the Dublin riots over Synge's work, in 1907, and O'Casey's, in 1926, indicated how strongly audiences could be moved by a playwright's images. Each of these riots focuses on one of the three elements essential for the production of live theatre: the management, the actor, and the playwright. Together, they illustrate the passion that theatre could once arouse.
While not in the same league as its historically more important counterparts, the Saint John riot of 2 April 1845 had a complexity all its own. Judged by the newspaper accounts, the destruction in the Saint John Theatre was simply an emotional response to a political satire, Thomas Hill's The Provincial Association, mounted by the resident actor/manager, Henry W. Preston. But beneath the reports of the riot was a tangle of human foibles more intricate, and much more theatrical, than the play, the riot, or even the newspaper descriptions. While it is possible to explore the motivation behind those more significant riots by studying Kemble's management of Covent Garden, audience relationships with Macready and Forrest, and scripts behind the Dublin riots, research aids are almost entirely lacking in a study of the Saint John riot. No study of Preston or his company has been made, and the script of The Provincial Association remains lost. The only source of information concerning this riot is the local newspapers. And an analysis of this source aptly illustrates the pitfall of taking as true and perfect what appear to be impartial accounts of such events.
The production history of The Provincial Association shows that the riot was far from spontaneous. Thomas Hill's satire had been first performed in Fredericton on 25 February 1845, in a professional/amateur co-production so ill-prepared that its author had apologized to the public from the editorial pages of his newspaper.1 It was performed again in Fredericton two nights later to a complete lack of critical response. When it was first mounted in Saint John the audience response was unremarkable. But by the time a second performance was offered to the public there, on 2 April, those who had seen themselves so unhappily satirized by the script had organized their response. Supporters of the Provincial Association had stationed themselves both inside and outside the Theatre, and had agreed to use the opening curtain as their cue. Those inside opened the doors for their ticketless compatriots and, in the grand tradition, the mob vented its anger over the script by attempting to demolish the building.
The possibility that the newspaper editors were less than impartial in their reactions to the event becomes evident in the focus of their editorials. The Saint John Herald took the road of moral indignation against the rioters:
On Wednesday evening last this place of public amusement was a scene of uproar and confusion which reflects the deepest disgrace on the parties who composed the mob. It appears that a gang of reckless and unthinking persons took offence at the new play which was announced for performance on that evening, and were predetermined to suppress it at all hazards. This they effected -for so violent was the tumult in the Theatre and in the street that it was impossible for the performers to get a hearing. Not satisfied with their disgraceful achievement in stopping the Play, they proceeded to injure the building by breaking the doors, pulling down the stovepipes, and materially injuring the adjoining premises.2
Editor George Fenety of the Morning
News, on the other hand, began his account of the riot with a strong
moral statement on the nature of theatre and the justice of the rioters'
cause:
It is very seldom that we condescend to notice this sink of iniquity; and we only do it now, in order to bring out some facts, connected with Wednesday evening's performances - and so remind the Manager of the Theatre of his audacity, for coming before the public, to libel certain members of the community, on account of certain principles which they profess to uphold.3
His relishing of the details of the
actual riot reflected his distaste for things theatrical:
After some other trumpery was got through with, the grand piece of the evening, called 'The Provincial Association,' was brought on by the troupe; and this was the challenge to arouse the angry passions of the multitude. War was immediately declared after the sounding of the tocsin; then all Bedlam broke loose - the first attack was upon the stove-pipe; this was demolished in a twinkle, while the hissing, yelling, hooting, whistling and stamping, we are told, was awfully terrific.
The crowd outside took up the response, the doors were forced open, and the rabble entered 'upon the free ticket,' and took possession of the citadel; some of them were armed with clubs, sticks, and other implements. Every moment now increased in interest - and the work of destruction was going on among the benches and other appointments at a fearful rate.
Editor Fenety goes on to describe the
ineffectuality of the Mayor's appearance, the incompetence of the Police,
and the crassness of the plays defenders. He ends with the disgruntled
observation that 'this is the second row in St. John within a few weeks;
and this might have been prevented without any difficulty, had proper steps
been taken for that end.'
That there was a riot is made obvious from this quick perusal of the newspapers. But the motives behind each newspaper's approach to the destruction - the Herald's quiet moral stance against the perpetrators of the riot, in contrast to editor Fenety's obvious support of the mob and his enjoyment of the production's difficulties - become evident only when the relationships among the play's author, its producer, and the newspaper editors are explored. And thus to understand not merely what happened, but why the newspapers responded as they did, it is necessary to leave the newspaper accounts of the event and move up the Saint John River to the play's beginnings in Fredericton.
The author of The Provincial Association was Thomas Hill (1807-60), one of the most intriguing characters in New Brunswick in the mid-1800s. To his enemies, who were many, he was a drunk, a gambler and, most likely, a deserter from the American army and a bigamist. Further, these same enemies took satisfaction in the belief that he was a hypocrite, a liar, a convict, and an irresponsible rabble-rouser. Some of this was true, although no one had ever been quite sure just how much of it. To his friends, who looked beyond his flaws, he was an ardent Royalist, the champion of press freedom in New Brunswick and a man of unwavering principle. He did found the Orange Lodge in Fredericton. He did marry a Catholic. He did publish volumes of poetry and prose - his own and others'. Most important, he was, from the editorial pages of the Loyalist in the 1840s, and in the columns of Headquarters in the latter 1850s, the voice of political conservatism in the province. Through these same editorial pages, especially during his 1843-47 period as editor of the Fredericton Loyalist, he amassed a collection of political and editorial enemies second to none in the province. And such enemies were more than willing to pillory any idea or writing emanating from him.
While Hill's strongest enemies were the politicians he had savaged in his editorial columns either for lacking personal integrity or for being imprudent enough to have espoused the cause of responsible government, he also managed to sustain life-long editorial wars with most of southern New Brunswick's other newspapers; for instance, in 1844-45 Hill battled all three competing editors in Fredericton. Against the unfortunately named editor Hogg of the New Brunswick Reporter Hill ran a continuing satire entitled 'Hoggianna.' The editor of Headquarters was the recipient of a string of similarily personal attacks which questioned whether he had the ability to write his own editorials. And, just before his newspaper office burned down and he left town in 1844, Edmund Ward's editorial battles with Hill had reached the point where Ward's Sentinel had been provoked to accuse Hill publicly of being a fellow
who left his wife and family to starve in another land [the United States], or to be supported by the precarious bounty of strangers, where they may now be perishing for aught he knows, and who for months was the inmate of a house of ill-fame, and formed part of its materiel....4
While Hill might revel in the thrust
and parry of such wars he would also be certain not to receive editorial
support for his one and only play.
If his fellow editors would be gladdened by any failure of Hill's, the politicians would positively gloat. Hill had attacked too many of them too often in his constant campaign against responsible government for him to have many friends in the assembly. Just twelve months prior to The Provincial Association he had been brought before the bar of the legislature for a particularly scurrilous editorial against one of its members. Hill, instead of kowtowing to that August assembly, sued the sergeant- at- arms for false arrest and, in winning his case, struck a major blow for freedom of the press in New Brunswick. The politicians, outraged, were powerless to retaliate. And their hatred of the editor deepened.
Such was Hill's political sense that he might well have realized how victims of his satire would receive his play. His one previous venture into drama, which had taken place on the theatrical boards of Saint John a few years prior to his writing of The Provincial Association, had taught him the principal danger of live theatre:
We never supposed that we possessed the powers of a Garrick or a Kemble, but we were once advised - perhaps ill advised - to take a part with the St. John Amateurs. It happened that most of the occupants of the Gallery on that evening were our personal or political enemies, and the moment we appeared on the stage we were hissed. We were not hissed off, however ... but went through the part.5
Hill's one and only play provided him
with both the opportunity to respond in kind to this theatrical ambush
and to add to his burgeoning collection of Saint John enemies by satirizing
an organization which included many influential Saint Johners, the Provincial
Association. This powerful group of merchants, recently formed to lobby
for provincial protective tariffs, considered Hill a turncoat because he
first supported and then condemned their ideas in his editorial columns.
Marked thereby as a traitor to the merchants' cause, the playwright had
nothing to lose by subjecting the Provincial Association to public ridicule.
If Thomas Hill knew exactly what he was doing in writing a play which satirized not only the organization but also particular members of that group who happened to live in Saint John, what about the actor/manager Henry W. Preston who mounted the production? Why was he willing to risk the physical damage to his Saint John theatre that such a production might spark? What was the tradeoff which might make such a gamble appealing? The answer is to be found in Preston's life-long inability to grasp the brass ring of theatrical success. By 1845 he had been a travelling actor/manager for over a decade. He had left behind him a trail of failed theatrical ventures in cities stretching from Canada to the southern States. Rarely had he succeeded in setting up shop for more than one year in one place.6 His most conspicuous success, in fact, had been in the Maritime Provinces. He had come to Saint John in 1839, immediately after his theatre in Albany had been converted by its owners into a church. For the next three years, using Saint John as a base, he had operated a Maritime touring circuit including Saint John, Halifax, and (most likely) Charlottetown. When his 1841 season ended in Halifax, Preston sailed to Newfoundland for a planned six-week season. Newspapers for 1843 show him attempting to establish a theatre in St. John's with some of the same company that crossed the gulf with him from Halifax in 1841. Despite his attempts to strengthen his troupe late in 1843 by bringing in new American talent, success still managed to elude him. Preston decided to leave Newfoundland in June 1844. By August he had arrived in Charlottetown, where his attempt to mount a summer season at the Masonic Hall was marred by an incident in which about two hundred young boys 'assailed the [theatre] with stones, and did not desist until they had broken nearly every pane of glass in the front of the building, besides the window sashes.' 7 His Charlottetown season continued at least into September but offered no hope of long-range success. Once more he moved on and, with the coming of winter, his meagre band of ragged thespians could be found announcing to the people of Fredericton their intention of offering
an Entertainment of Vocal and Instrumental Music, interspersed with DRAMATIC READINGS, from the most approved Authors, on Saturday evening next, the 14th December, 1844; on which occasion, Mr. James, the celebrated Violinist, and Miss Hildreth, well known as a Vocalist and Actress, will perform a variety of English, Irish, and Scotch Melodies, to which will be added Shakespeare's HAMLET, (compressed in three acts); to be followed by two acts of Sheridan's School for Scandal.
To conclude with Mrs. Charles Kemble's beautiful Petite Comedy of THE DAY AFTER THE WEDDING.8
As well as giving the program for the
evening, this notice also made obvious the reduced circumstances of the
travelling troupe. Preston's luckless company now consisted of one fellow
thespian and a musician. Preston, Mr James, and Miss Hildreth, in the tradition
of impecunious actors between engagements and bereft of the paraphernalia
of their trade, were travelling the dusty roads and playing for room and
board.
In Fredericton, Preston's luck seemed to turn for the better. Joining with young amateurs of the town, Preston mounted a season which included, as well as the above-mentioned plays, The Stranger, Richard III, The London Merchant, Pizarro, Venice Preserved, and Jane Shore. This new theatrical activity was well supported by the local newspapers, especially by Thomas Hill's Loyalist. But, as had happened many times before, success led Preston to reach beyond his fiscal grasp. And, as had happened on those previous occasions when the chimera of success had lured the unlucky Preston into financial chaos, he and his troupe were once more forced to shoulder their theatrical trappings and steal quietly from town one step ahead of the bailiff. Shortly after, a long satiric poem in the New Brunswick Reporter immortalized Preston's midnight flight to Saint John as 'The Retreat of the Thespians.' The crucial episode in this self-styled 'Pindaric Ode' recounts Mercury's sending of a 'wily sprite' to warn Preston of the Bailiff's imminent arrival. The 'Chief,' as Preston was known, seized his chance, and fled:
When friendly Night her sable veil let fall
And Somnus in his mantle shaded all,
The cautious Preston with his hardy crew
To Fredericton for ever bade adieu.
No boastful drums were beat upon the way
No spangled banners wooed the winds to play -
With prudent haste he bravely led the van
Behind the Chieftain came his faithful clan.9
At the time of this forced exit Preston
was in the process of mounting Hill's play. Preston, having produced a
number of plays with the aid of the amateurs of the Histrionic Society
in their 'neat little theatre fitted up in Mr. March's building,' 10
had decided to rent the space and to renovate it so that he could offer
to the public a 'Parquette,' which was designed expressly 'for the reception
of the gentry, the Members of Assembly, and strangers visiting Fredericton
during the ensuing Session.' 11
The more lowly members of the Fredericton community were invited to find
seats in a spacious gallery, for which tickets could be purchased at half
price. In this renovated space, now grandly called the People's Olympic
Theatre, The Provincial Association was first offered to the Fredericton
public in rather ill-prepared form on 25 February 1845. The performance,
even its author admitted, could not be termed a total success:
The two first acts were well sustained, and produced frequent rounds of applause, but the tragical scenes which followed were too intricate to be well performed on a first representation; added to which some confusion with respect to the scenery, one or two of the Amateurs being deficient in their parts, and many other difficulties Mr. P had to contend with, rendered the last acts a partial failure.12
Despite the problems of opening night, Preston and Hill had sufficient confidence to offer it again two nights later. Of course, since the satire was not aimed at the Fredericton audience, there was little danger of violent audience reaction. And the local newspapers would realize that even to condemn Hill's play would be to give it free publicity. Thus, Miss Hildreth was safe in using the second performance as the vehicle for her benefit. Only one week later, thanks to forewarning of the Fredericton bailiff's imminent arrival, the resilient Preston fled Fredericton under cover of night and opened his fourth season in Saint John.
After less than a month in the port city, Preston turned once again to The Provincial Association. As Thomas Hill had first arrived in Saint John the year after Preston had left, the actor/manager might well have been unaware of the depth of political animosity Hill's writings would raise. Preston's unhappy Newfoundland sojourn had also caused him to miss much of Hill's editorial battling over the aims of the Provincial Association. And he would certainly be unaware that some of the play's characters might resemble well-known Saint Johners.13 At the same time, no one could be more haunted by the spectre of failure than Preston. His theatrical ventures, stretching from Montreal to Raleigh and Richmond, had never succeeded. Within the past year alone, his Newfoundland company had broken up, his performance had been stoned on PEI, and he had lost his newly renovated theatre in Fredericton. Lack of audience response to his new season in Saint John had already forced him to lower his ticket prices.14 And thus the chance for a controversial success must have been too much for this actor/manager to resist.
Preston's first performance of The Provincial Association in Saint John passed without incident at the end of March 1845. Recognizing the financial potential of his production, he quickly scheduled a second performance for 2 April. The interim between the two performances provided Hill's enemies with the time needed to mount their riotous response. And the results of Preston's impetuousness are chronicled in the Saint John newspapers for April 1845. Recognizing that such accounts lack any sense of the animosity with which Hill was viewed by at least a segment of the Saint John public (who had already tried to boo him off the stage once), or any acknowledgement of the rancour which existed between Hill and other journalists, or any awareness of Preston's motives for mounting such a production, these evaluations of the uproar must be taken as less than complete.
The Saint John Herald makes it plain that the problem was not in the play but rather in the minds of the rioters:
The unmerited prejudice against the play originated in complete ignorance of its meaning. The silly supposition that Mr. Preston, or any other manager, would produce on the boards of his theatre, a piece that would hurt the feelings of the public, is too ridiculous to be entertained by anyone.... And ignorant indeed must that man be who supposes for a moment that the Play of the 'Provincial Association' is any thing more than a sportive delineation of the incident upon which it is founded.15
The purity of the Herald's motives
in defending the script, however, might well be called into question by
the fact that the newspaper's office was selling tickets to the production.
According to Fenety in his Morning News, the Herald's editor
did not care 'whether he fell from the dignity of his profession, and turned
himself into a vender of Theatrical tickets or not, so long as it was in
the cause of pounds, shillings, and pence and he could realize "something
worth while" by the prostitution.'16
If the Herald's apportioning of blame was truly shaped by this prostitution, only Fenety's Morning News remains to provide an unbiased chronicle of the event. But the extent of Fenety's objectivity must be balanced against his personal attitude toward the playwright. George Fenety and Thomas Hill had begun their editorial battles in 1842, the year the Loyalist was published in Saint John. Fenety and Hill, both mindful of the laws of libel, attacked each other indirectly with as little subtlety as possible. Hill, through indirection, found direction by railing against a non-existent cretin named Fenerty. Fenety, in turn, poured forth his vituperation on a journalistic dolt called Gill, whom he described as
one of those ruffianly and libellous scribblers, who, for the sake of notoriety, would descend to anything, if they thought they could cheat the gallows ... He perpetrated upon the people of this city some of the most foul specimens of orthography and grammatical innacuracies that ever disgraced the newspaper press ... He is so far beneath mediocrity, that he is not even fit to blacken an Editor's boots.17
Hill had dismissed this invective as
merely 'the splenetic excresence of a jaundiced mind,' and went on to delineate
Fenety in terms similar to those Fenety would use two years later against
the editor of The Herald:
lacking the talents necessary to furnish a paper which should be read by the upper and middling classes of society, [Fenety] has pandered to the tastes of the vicious and corrupted; and among them his paper obtains its principal circulation. He will insert anything, no matter what, if thereby he supposes he can sell a few extra copies ....18
The editorial war between Hill and
Fenety had gone on unabated during the three years prior to
The Provincial
Association. And Hill's accusation concerning Fenety's willingness
to publish 'anything' to turn a profit must have been in the back of Fenety's
mind as his Morning News
covered the riot: 'Now, as regards the
worthless fellow who wrote the piece, of course nothing better could be
expected of him, for such a mercenary dog could be hired to do anything
- for a shilling he would hang his mother.' 19
The animosity existing between these two men would continue into the next
decade. And, certainly, Fenety's evaluations of the events surrounding
Hill's play must be read in the light of this animosity.
The production history of the play ended shortly after the riot. Preston's Theatre was quickly reopened and on the following Monday, 7 April 1845, The Provincial Association was once more placed before the citizens of Saint John. Fenety has favoured posterity with an epic account of Preston's attempt to mount his third performance of the play.20 After much to-ing and fro-ing by Preston, the mayor, and the deputy sheriff the production was scheduled for one o'clock in the afternoon - a move calculated to force any rioters to pursue their wicked designs in broad daylight. As well, in an effort to keep out the riff-raff, Preston, guided no doubt by the purest motives any actor/manager faced with a potential sell-out audience could have, took the noble course of doubling his ticket prices. And as a final precaution, tickets were sold only to persons willing to sign a requisition stipulating that they were particularly desirous of having this particular play performed. Under these circumstances, according to Hill's account of the afternoon, the piece was performed 'before a respectable audience, and went off without any riot ... and some of the prompters of the riot being present, seeing the play, for the first time, performed, are said to be heartily ashamed of the course they have hitherto pursued.' 21
There is no reason to doubt that the performance went smoothly, once it got underway, and possibly the moral reform at which Hill hints did take place in the minds of some of the earlier riot's instigators. But what Fenety found particularly ironic in the mass of troubles surrounding this performance concerned the relationship between Preston and the character he portrayed. Apparently, the play ends with the principal characters (one of whom was being played by Preston) being carted off to prison. Preston, having last left Saint John with his bills unpaid, was no stranger to the threat of a similar fate. In a conflux of Art and Nature which Fenety understandably found most appealing, as Preston entered the stage from the wings one Officer Busteed mounted that same platform, seized Preston, and carted that unfortunate actor off to prison for his old debts. When the significance of Preston's sudden removal from the theatre sank in, the audience was understandably nonplussed. All the efforts involved in remounting the play seemed to have come to naught. In Fenety's words,
It was a trying moment; and what was to be done under the circumstances? Finally it was concluded, rather than be made April fools of, after getting along so far, and so well - that poor Preston should be liberated from durance vile, by some of the company going bail for him. This was accordingly done, and the Chief was liberated, and came forward and performed his part to the edification of the audience.22
With this performance, Thomas Hill's
play began its quiet slide into obscurity. Preston was left to produce
the rest of his season with the memory of the day his tickets sold for
5s. And Fenety, with one eye cocked toward Hill's editorial columns, was
free to aim his persiflage elsewhere. Hill's career as a playwright had
been almost as short as his career as an actor. But at least Fenety and
Hill could return to the relative comfort of their editorial chairs. The
luckless Henry Preston would see his Saint John theatre burn down before
the end of the year, try briefly to open once again in Halifax, then move
back to the United States where, after thirteen more years of theatrical
failure, he would commit suicide in 1859. 23
Beyond all the personal and political haze clouding every account of these events, there remains the fact of the riot. However mixed their motives, an audience did wreak havoc on the hapless Preston's theatre in response to Hill's play. This protest was aimed at Hill's politics but also, like the protest at Ireland's Abbey Theatre, at the manner in which the playwright's Art mimicked Nature. A study of the Provincial Association riot therefore provides a lesson for researchers unwary enough to take newspaper accounts as unprejudiced truth. More importantly, it reinforces a sense that, in Canada too, there have been times when drama really mattered.
Notes
THE SAINT JOHN THEATRE RIOT OF 1845
Edward Mullaly
1 The Loyalist,
27 February 1845
Return to article
2 The Herald, 4
April 1845
Return to article
3 The Morning News,
4 April 1845
Return to article
4 The Sentinel, 22
March 1844. Ward (1787-1853), a Wesleyan Methodist who edited newspapers
in Bermuda and Halifax before coming to Fredericton, never forgave Hill
for entering into competition against his Sentinel. At various times,
he threatened to expose Hill's sordid past. Hill, in turn, hinted darkly
as to Ward's hidden reasons for leaving Bermuda and Halifax. After the
fire, Ward worked in New York for a while and then went back to Bermuda.
Return to article
5 The Loyalist, 5
December 1844
Return to article
6 Besides the newspapers
accounts in the various cities where Henry W. Preston worked, very little
has been written about him. The Montreal Gazette of 6 August 1831
provides the earliest information I have found on his career as an actor.
J.H. DORMON's Theatre in the Ante Bellum South Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1967, pp 150f chronicles his brief failures as
a theatre manager in North Carolina and Virginia in 1835-36. He was in
Montreal in 1837. He managed a company in Albany for two seasons in 1838-39,
before the theatre was closed down for lack of profit. His Saint John career
is recounted in MARY SMITH's Too Soon the Curtain Fell Fredericton:
Brunswick Press, 1981. He left the Maritimes in 1846. Newspaper accounts
from the various cities in which he mounted seasons from 1847 until 1852
show that he retraced much of his earlier route to the American south,
to Montreal, and then to Albany where, presumably, his career as an actor/manager
ended in 1852 when he, once more, lost his theatre. I have found no record
of his life between 1852 and 1859, the year of his suicide.
Return to article
7 The Islander, 23
August 1844
Return to article
8 Headquarters, 11
December 1844
Return to article
9 The New Brunswick
Reporter, 21 March 1845
Return to article
10 Headquarters, 1
January 1845
Return to article
11 The Loyalist,
23 January 1845
Return to article
12 The Loyalist, 27
February 1845
Return to article
13 This was an accusation
Hill dismissed. See The Loyalist, 10 April 1845.
Return to article
14 Smith, p 54
Return to article
15 The Herald, 4
April 1845
Return to article
16 The Morning News,
9 April 1845
Return to article
17 The Morning News,
31 May 1843
Return to article
18 The Loyalist, 5
June 1843
Return to article
19 The Morning News,
4 April 1845
Return to article
20 The Morning News,
9 April 1845
Return to article
21 The Loyalist, 10
April 1845
Return to article
22 The Morning News,
9 April 1845
Return to article
23 Cf The Albany Evening
Journal, 4 May 1859
Return to article