Pickard’s Panopticon, 1906–1938: Commodification and the Development of Urban Entertainment Culture

Abstract

The period from the 1890s to 1914 constituted a key transitional phase in urban entertainments during which theatre genres such as variety competed against both new technologies, notably cinema, and resurgent forms of older fairground-based amusements, in a sophisticated entertainment economy. The Britannia’s transformation into the Panopticon, when A.E. Pickard combined it with the adjacent American museum to offer waxworks, freaks, menageries and films, mirrored this diversity. The chapter examines Pickard’s promotion of freaks in European markets, use of populist associations, and approach to modernity and tradition. It argues that his management of the Panopticon as a small working-class variety theatre that survived into the 1930s providing films, live acts and community-based entertainments like amateur nights constitutes an important alternative model to that of syndicated variety.