"Adelaide is a thoroughly modern town, with all the merits and all the defects attaching to novelty. It does not possess the spirit of enterprise to so adventurous a degree as Melbourne, but neither does it approach to the languor of Sydney." - R. Twopeny, 1883

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Saddling Paddock


The Theatre Royal in Hindley Street was the first place in South Australia to show a ‘moving picture’, way back in 1896! It was a beautiful, imposing, multi-storey Victorian building that played host to, among others, Sarah Bernhardt, Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. In 1962, it was demolished to make way for a carpark. The carpark is still standing. It’s near the police station.

There were many hotels on Hindley Street at that time – as there are today, of course – and the one nearest the Theatre Royal was the imaginatively named Theatre Royal Hotel. The Theatre Royal Hotel’s front bar was popular with theatre-goers, but it was the back room that provided a special service. This back room was colloquially known as 'the saddling paddock' and it catered for 'fallen women' and men who enjoyed the company of these women. The proprietor of the Theatre Royal Hotel kept the saddling paddock separate from the rest of the hotel and the Theatre Royal, presumably in an attempt to allow the 'respectable' theatre-goers to have their nightcap after a show and then go home. Licensing laws allowed hotels near the theatre to remain open half an hour later than the other hotels in the city to cater for the audience after a show finished. It was during that half hour that the saddling paddock became a ‘hotbed of evil’.

In January 1879, a journalist for “The Register”, who called himself ‘a midnight rambler’ wrote an article about the dark side of Adelaide, spending a night frequenting various hotels in the city. Of the Theatre Royal Hotel and the saddling paddock, he wrote this:

“The first of the resorts of the demi monde we visited was the much-talked of saddling paddock in connection with the Theatre Royal Hotel. It was then only half-past 9 o'clock and the place was not filled as it nearly always is after the opera is over — or the drama, or   whatever there has been on the boards at the Royal. But even at this comparatively early hour it was half-filled with the gay and fair (if I may use such words in their popular and not their literal signification). The room is a small one — perhaps 15 ft. by 20 ft.— and at one end is a counter at which drink is supplied to the women who frequent the place and who are absolutely refused any refreshment whatever in the front bar. This restriction is a two-edged one. While it keeps the front bar decent it concentrates the defilement, and makes access to it more easy and toleration of it more seemly. While the 'saddling paddock’ is not the scene of such conduct as is 'often described as going on there— it being an ordinary bar-room without sitting accommodation — it is undoubtedly the chief rendezvous for what may be termed the fashionable class of fallen women. The word ' fashion' in such a sense seems incongruous, but I let it stand. Probably the inordinate love of dress and idleness may have led to the fall of some of the gaudily dressed women to be found in this back bar-room.   Anyway the girls seen here are a different class from those met later on in our travels. The air stifles one with its sickly perfumes mixed with the inexpressible flavour of an overcrowded and heated bar-room. Some of the women are dressed in satins and silks, and some are ‘plastered with white and raddled with red,' as Thackeray says of the Court beauties of the time of the first gentleman of Europe.'”

The midnight rambler returned to the Theatre Royal Hotel later in the evening, after the show at the Royal had finished. The front bar was crowded with men, about a hundred, who took a nightcap and, the midnight rambler hoped, then went home. The paddock, however, was now ‘crowded with wanton women’ and an old man waited at the door ‘and in a fatherly way keeps out the boys’. Of the women, the midnight rambler wrote: 

“And the women, though they may wear lavender kid gloves with diamond rings outside, are most of them not unknown either at the Hospital or the Gaol, whence many sickening stories come. They are certainly not fit company for sons of respectable members of society, or for those whose past excesses have already led them once into embezzlement and seem likely to utterly ruin them. Even here there are grades among the women as there are ages— from the wretched old hag whom we saw outside strutting with two girls (having murdered two of her own daughters in the past, one dying in a state too awful to picture and the other committing suicide) to the young creatures not more than sixteen or seventeen, just entering on the abominable life, and to the older one whom we just see purchasing her bottles of spirits wherewith to supply herself and her guests after the ' paddock' shall be closed and the Christian Sabbath morning shall have been ushered in. I shall not speak of the hansom cabmen and the part some of them play in this repulsive drama of real life. I shall not even refer to the very few years that these unfortunates live after they have given themselves up to a life on the streets. It is undoubtedly a short life, and it is not a merry one. My object, however, is to state facts, and not to moralize.”

The midnight rambler’s article caused quite a stir, and three letters to the editor about it are particularly interesting. The first, published on 21 January 1879, was from the proprietor of the Theatre Royal Hotel:

“The general inference in the article so far as they regard the Theatre Royal Hotel, is that that hotel is responsible the fallen women being fallen women; whereas, on the contrary, the Theatre Royal Hotel neither has nor had anything whatever to do with their falling. Women in the ‘transit’ state between virtue and vice of that particular kind which your articles so unmistakenly indicate never appear at the Theatre Royal Hotel until they are full-fledged, Therefore, the hotel cannot fairly be blamed with making them so. The chiefs of the police inform me that I am in a measure bound to supply with refreshments any persons in a sober and quiet state who may ask for them. For this end I have arranged different rooms and compartments for different classes of people. The fallen women who may demand admittance to the Theatre Royal Hotel are admitted only to one particular part of the hotel, so as not to offend by any means any person who may visit any part of the theatre itself or other parts of the hotel, thus preventing by a very simple arrangement the possibility of any occupant of the stalls, pit, or gallery who may choose to take refreshments at the bar of my house from seeing any of these fallen women at all unless they themselves have a distinct desire to do so. Of course the dress-circle refreshment rooms are upstairs, and are kept rigidly select as every visitor very well knows. Another reason why I take exception to the general inference of the article is that while the Theatre Royal Hotel is only one of several licensed public-houses in the immediate neighborhood of the theatre who are granted nightly permits to remain open a short time after the Licensed Victuallers Act allows, and who by the way are as regularly and certainly crowded with fallen women as the Theatre Royal Hotel itself, with this difference, that they are not so carefully restricted to a room by themselves, still they are passed over in silence, and the whole wrath of the writer showered down in a culminating volume on the devoted head of the Theatre Royal Hotel.
None of my barmaids are allowed on any pretence whatever to apprcach the room set apart for  those unfortunates alluded to in your article…Still, if they will come, and I have already said I cannot prevent them it is better in my opinion that they should be kept apart by themselves than be allowed to mix amongst respectable people anyhow. No one wishes more sincerely than I do the arrival of the time when the Legislature will grapple with the enormous social evil, which is rotting to the core thousands of our most promising colonial boys; and when the question is fairly dealt with, and settled, satisfactorily no one will be better pleased, than John McDonald, of the Theatre Royal Hotel.”

The editor replied:

“The writers of the articles referred to had no intention of suggesting that fallen women, owe their ruin to frequenting the Theatre Royal Hotel. We have no doubt that Mr. McDonald's statements as to the style in which he conducts that establishment are strictly correct and that it is managed as well as any place can be where' loose women are allowed to obtain refreshments, the question at issue is whether it would not be better in the interests of respectable playgoers to refuse all such accommodation to persons of that class anywhere on the premises connected with the theatre.”

On 25 January 1879, a woman who called herself “A Young Wife” wrote at her horror of learning about the Theatre Royal Hotel’s shady side: 

“Being a young wife I have a natural horror of any pitfalls (recognised by the authorities) into which my husband may be ensnared. I frequently visit in his company the Theatre Royal, and have never up to the present time been uneasy when he has left me in the intervals to partake of refreshment; but now that I am aware of the existence of such a den almost in the theatre itself I shall be disposed to object to his leaving me for the purpose of entering an hotel containing such a hotbed of vice and debauchery.”

On 30 January 1879, a person known as “Observant” wrote five facts about the saddling paddock:

“1. That the ‘Saddling Paddock’ is allowed to remain through official connivance. 2. That there is no reason why the ‘Saddling Paddock’ should be allowed an existence. 3. That the ‘Saddling Paddock’ is altogether too public (i.e., too open to the public). 4. That it is unnecessary; and 5. That it serves no purpose whatever except the purpose of pollution.”

“Observant” acknowledged that people, especially young people, needed entertainment and the theatre (or, as he or she called it, ‘the drama’) was the place to get it. He or she was outraged that ‘noble Shakespeare’s art’ was being defiled by the goings-on of the saddling paddock, so near Adelaide’s major theatre.

I personally find it very interesting that “Observant” claims that the saddling paddock is ‘altogether too public’, yet “A Young Wife” had no idea of its existence, despite being a regular theatre patron. The fact that women weren’t permitted to front bars in any hotel at that time – in fact, I don’t think they were allowed until the 1960s – probably explains this. Her letter also leads me to wonder how long intervals were in 1879 for her to worry about her husband being ‘ensnared’ whilst partaking of refreshments?   

The saddling paddock was still in existence into the 1880s and remained after a change of management in 1884. In June 1884, a ‘special reporter’ for “The Register” took a similar journey to that of the midnight rambler and documented the experiences in an article. Another hotel on Hindley Street, Tattersall’s, now had a room on par with the saddling paddock. The saddling paddock itself was written about as such:

“The saddling paddock at the Theatre Royal, also known by the sweet name of the 'cowyard,' and by other equally choice titles, is of the same class as the Tattersall's room, but there is a vast difference between the appearance of the two places. The paddock is a snug little room, nicely decorated and set off with pictures representing theatrical stars. No special remarks need be made respecting this place, the existence of which has so long been regarded as a reproach to the management of the Theatre Royal. The hope was indulged in lately that the alterations to the building made by the new management would include the abolition of this undesirable institution, but apparently no steps are being taken in that direction.”

Tattersall’s was next to the Theatre Royal (on its right), so I can only assume that the Theatre Royal Hotel was on the other side. Photos of the Theatre Royal and Tattersall’s from 1878 and 1881 can be found HERE and HERE.

The only references after 1884 of ‘saddling paddock’ are of actual saddling paddocks – i.e. with horses, so I can only guess that it closed soon after the June 1884 article was written.

References:
“The Register”, 20 January 1879, p. 6
“The Advertiser” 21 January 1879, p. 6
‘The Register’, 25 January 1879, p. 11
‘The Register’, 30 January 1879, p. 6
“The Register”, 14 June 1884, p. 6

3 comments:

  1. Hindley Street's reputation is long-lived then! i have just been reading the book, Call the Midwife, memoirs of london docklands in the 1950's and the section on the brothel cafes there fascinated and repelled me!

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  2. Absolutely! Hindley Street itself wasn't too bad, as the prostitutes were generally 'contained' within the hotels and the street itself was rather central and public - it was the side streets that were really bad. If you go to http://www.trove.nla.gov.au, you can access the digitised newspaper articles I read for this post, and there is a whole heap of other hotels mentioned, some of which are still standing (although most have different names now).

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  3. Having just been reflecting on modern-day sexism and misogyny this weekend, I have had a bit of an "allergic reaction" to the Letters to the Editor you cite! Time for a chamomile tea and a few deep breaths. Thank you for this really interesting post.

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Thank you for your comments; I really appreciate them :)