This clipping from ‘The Daily Telegraph’ includes Maskelyne and Cooke’s Christmas Programme. It mentions the new and original magical romance ‘The Philosopher’s Stone’, Herr Valadon and Animated Photographs.
Other London entertainments are also mentioned.
The first advertisement for Maskelyne highlights the Christmas Holiday Programme. (The Christmas programme usually ran well into the following year.) The second one highlights an animated photograph of the funeral procession of Queen Victoria.
Also advertised are entertainments at the Crystal Palace, London Hippodrome, St. James’ Hall and the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington.
This is from The Penny Illustrated Paper, 14 August 1886, pages 109-110. Apart from the splendid illustration, the accompanying article comments on entertainments at the Crystal Palace, St. James’s Hall (Moore and Burgess Minstrels), Prince’s Hall (Charles Du Val the protean artist and his ‘Lilliputian aristocratic company’) and the Egyptian Hall (Charles Bertram with the Vanishing Lady, and Maskelyne and Cooke).
St. James’s Hall, situated between Regent Street and Piccadilly, was the first central London venue for Maskelyne and Cooke, prior to their move to the Egyptian Hall. People used to reading 19th century newspaper prose will know that it can be, shall we say, over the top. This particular article on pages 145, 146 and 160 would take some beating! Caution must be exercised in believing that the drawings are an accurate representation of the hall.