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THE OUTCOME OF THE CONTROVERSY After weeks of commingled outcry and exultation over the recommendation of the Theatres and Music Halls Committee and its overwhelming endorsement by the London County Council, together with the wearied capitulation of the Empire management to the stipulations linked to its license (which had not yet been delivered), the air itself might well have been redolent of the scent of victory for the advocates of purity in social life, or acrid with the smell of defeat for those whose pleasures, or profits, had been compromised. On 4 December the Theatres Committee had been officially informed by the county council of its approval of drawings encapsulating the alterations the Empire management had agreed to make in order to carry out the council’s conditions for the renewal of its music and dancing license. Further, the superintending architect had informed them that the council’s requirements had been carried out satisfactorily .1 For the moment, the militant forces campaigning for an end, or at least a curtailment, of immorality in and around the five-shilling lounge of the Empire would seem to have emerged triumphant. And yet the victory proved to be short-lived. On 24 September 1895, the Theatres and Music Halls Committee received notice that George Edwardes’s application for renewal of the annual license for the Empire Theatre of Varieties would be filed on 2 October — weeks later than the required interval between filing and action, and perhaps an indication of some time-consuming testing of the waters. The notification took the form of a letter from Edwardes’s solicitors Allen and Low informing the committee that the application would be for “an ordinary full Music and Dancing License, unhampered by the restrictions or conditions imposed last year, or any other restrictions or conditions; in other words, we shall ask for the renewal of the License in the form in which it was originally granted in 1887 and regularly renewed until last year.”2 5 : Why They Attacked the Empire  The transcript of shorthand notes taken by its clerk during the licensing committee session of 2 October 1895 records C. F. Gill’s long speech of justification on Edwardes’s behalf. Edwardes was then called and examined. It was “absolutely untrue,” he said, according to the Era reporter, “that women were admitted free.” Great care was always taken, and a large staff was present to keep order. He said he had lost “nearly£20,000” as a result of the restrictions of the previous year; asked to clarify, he explained that this meant “a less sum made” — that is, “less money taken at the door.” He went on to complain of an effective handicap imposed by those restrictions, consisting of the freedom of potential customers to go to other halls a short distance from the Empire and take a certain kind of refreshment “in a private box”; such clients no longer had this privilege at the Empire.3 Edwardes’s reference was clearly to the Alhambra, a two-minute walk diagonally across Leicester Square to the southeast, and the implication was, just as clearly, one of unfair competition underwritten by government fiat. Asked about the dividends paid to shareholders in the last year, Edwardes replied that they were 30 percent or 40 percent, compared with 75 percent the year before. These percentages, he was careful to note, were on the old stock value; anyone buying it now of course pays “a very large premium.” Edwardes added that, because of the financial losses he had described, the Empire had also not been able to provide the same quality of entertainment. In particular, he complained, the last three months of 1894 were “absolutely disastrous for the Empire.” For all that, he went on, the sale of intoxicating liquors in the house was the same, the only difference being that many more people were now congregating around the bars, since drink was no longer available in the auditorium, and “causing greater obstruction.” The number of casual patrons, on whom the Empire had greatly relied in the past, had considerably diminished, he said. And as for the structural alterations imposed by the county council at the recommendation of the licensing committee, he thought they resulted in keeping the promenade from being used as intended. A member of the committee, Mr. Jerome, asked, “It is a sort of gangway now?” “Yes,” Edwardes replied, “and rather dangerous.”4 Evidence was presented, as memorialized in later printed...

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