The Times of Monday contains a powerful impeachment of the
minor music-halls as forcing-houses of " Hooliganism " from the pen of a School Board manager. He describes in detail, with extracts from the songs and " sketches " per- formed, a four-hour programme of eighteen " turns," given last week at a music-hall situated in one of the roughest districts of London, and devoted, with hardly an exception, to the glorification of lazinese,(dishonesty, robbery, perjury, immorality, and above all, drunkenness. "It seems poor policy," he concludes, "to spend millions on elementary education, and allow these ' night' or continuation' schools, under the name of music-balls, to propagate the worst forms of immorality." No charge, be it noted, is made against the West-End music-halls, where the standard of decency has been greatly raised since the days of Colonel Newcome, but even here there is admittedly room for improvement. A writer in the Commonwealth, dealing with the same subject in a very sensible article, suggests, as an obvious remedy, the appointment by the County Council of a Censor, "a man whose reputation and position would ensure his having the public confidence, whose duty it would be to put his veto on the flagrantly degrading items on the bill." Committees, as he points out, are a discredited means of coping with the difficulty. For ourselves, we have never been able to under- stand why music-halls should not be placed on the same footing as theatres in regard to censorship, but we should prefer the State to the Municipality as Censor.
Previous page
