Advent Calendar December 9
The Christmas Panto and The Workhouse
If you go to the Theatre Royal in Brighton look out for a gilt-framed illustrated letter displayed on the stairs leading to the Royal Circle. It is addressed to Ellen Nye Chart, who took over the running of the theatre after her husband’s sudden death.
Dated 1888, the letter is a bold and beautiful thank you from the 1000+ men, women and children incarcerated in Brighton Workhouse.
Ellen’s imaginative business flair brought commercial and artistic success to the debt-ridden theatre, making it one of the best known outside London.
She put on Gilbert and Sullivan light operas as, as well as Faust and Carmen, and exploited the reliable train service to bring popular London West End shows to the south coast while they were still running in the capital. It is hard to imagine but the entire cast – PLUS scenery and props – would travel down to Brighton in the morning, perform in the afternoon, and be back in London in time for their regular evening performance.
Her pantomime season was spectacular and played to packed houses, but every year she would close the theatre to paying customers for one day. That was the day she opened the theatre to staff and residents of Brighton Workhouse.
The carefully preserved letter reveals what this meant.
…. One of the few Bright Spots in the necessarily dull Routine of Workhouse Life can be realised by none but those who live among them and sadly witness how little joy enters into their Lives….
Ellen died at the age of 51 and her funeral was one of the largest Brighton has ever seen. Workhouse residents lined the streets to say goodbye. Staff at the Theatre Royal sometimes feel that Ellen has never left the building and she is a benign ghost still wishing them well.
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what an amazing woman ahead of her time, living in the workhouse would have been a very hard life
She sounds wonderful – a go-ahead business woman with a heart as big as the theatre she ran.
Ellen Nye Chart (Ellen Elizabeth Rollason) was my ancestor. According to her baptism record, she was born on 6 October 1838 in London. In 1892, she became unwell on the London train and was taken to the Grosvenor Hotel next to Victoria Station where she died on February 23 1892. She remains one of the two most fascinating people in my family tree. Later this year, I hope to make a pilgrimage to the Theatre Royal as it features heavily in my new novel.