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
