Bill, poster

In the 18th and 19th centuries Londoners flocked to the capital's pleasure gardens to enjoy an evening's entertainment outdoors. Venues competed to attract visitors, vying with each other to offer evermore extravagant and spectacular entertainments.

Cremorne Gardens opened in 1846 by the River Thames between Fulham and Chelsea. It offered, amongst other delights, a Chinese pagoda, Indian temple, bandstand, dance floor, circus, menagerie, American bowling saloon and shooting gallery. It flourished until the late 1870s.

This playbill advertises the programme of entertainments at Cremorne Gardens in September and October. (The year is not printed on the bill but it is probably 1851 or 1856.) The programme includes an appearance by the "Italian Rope Dancer and Ascensionist", Signora Pauline Violante. Violante, whose real name was Selina Young, was famed for her tightrope-walking skills. She amazed audiences by walking tightropes in dangerous ways, for example, in a suit of armour, in a sack and pushing a wheelbarrow. In 1858 she became the first artist to cross a high wire at the Crystal Palace.