JKG History Page

John Kilby Green & the History of the Toy Theatre

Chapter 7 – The Toy Theatre after JK Green – The Redington Era

• The Green’s sell up

According to George Speaight, JK Green’s youngest son George James Green continued to sell a few sheets of combats after JK Green died, both from 9 Thurlow Place and 6 Chatham Street, Walworth. He appeared at the latter on the census for 1861 and gave his occupation as “Copperplate Printer”.

George James Green’s works were limited to just a few sheets on combats. He did not produce any plays. From the few examples I have seen his ability as an engraver was adequate but crude. He hadn’t inherited his father talents or been taught well enough to continue on his own quality. However his father’s plates were still in the family’s possession.

Here is a very poor example of George James Green’s work – Green’s New Sixteen in Dred.

• Redington’s Last Laugh

However it was not George James Green or any other members of the Green family who continued to sell their father’s works, but his old agent John Redington.

David Powell writes: -

It has often been assumed that Redington "inherited" Green's plates, and that, as his principal agent, he was also his chosen successor. But the fact is that they had quarrelled by the time of Green's death, and that Redington had been replaced in Green's favour by G. Harriss of Bell Street, Marylebone. The quarrel is mentioned by AE Wilson, and is supported by the evidence of JK Green's sheets. Redington is named as usual in the imprint of “The Daughter of the Regiment” in September 1857, but is conspicuously absent from that of “Goody Goose” (which was the pantomime produced at the Marylebone Theatre for Christmas 1858, and may even have been chosen by JK Green as a compliment to Harriss). In addition, Green was starting to add Harriss's name to his old sheets as he reprinted them.

When JK Green died, his children wasted little time in selling their father's surviving stock of plates and prints to the highest bidder. Why there was such a rush to sell of the stock and plates is unknown, perhaps they couldn’t decided between themselves who should have the stock (both John Kilby Green, junior and George James Green continued in the printing trade for many years after their father’s death and Clara Green was shown as a “toy maker” on both the 1871 and 1881 censuses) or perhaps it was just the old question of money.

One theory of why Green’s plates mostly ended up with Redington, was that Redington may already have had the plates prior to Green’s death in 1860. The only objection I can give against this theory was that Green’s & Redington’s printing paper was quite different. Green’s prints were consistent throughout most of his second career, where as few original Redington prints survive, as the paper he used was very brittle in nature. I have not seen any of Green’s sheets on such paper. Upon Green’s death, Redington wasted little time in change the imprint to his own

David Powell continues: -

Apart from Redington, probably the only other person interested was W. G. Webb in Old Street. Both managed to buy part of what was on offer, with Redington buying most of the plays, and Webb most of the portraits and miscellaneous items. It would appear that the plates were made up rather carelessly into lots, because Redington got a few of the portraits, etc. (including the Fours in Dred), while the play of Blue Beard ended up being divided between the two purchasers. Webb got all of the characters and Scene 1, while Redington got the rest of the scenes. Both men were likely to be annoyed by the results of the sale. Webb issued a version of Blue Beard using Green's characters and his own scenery (some of it inspired by the old West version of the play), while Redington had rather crude copies made of Scene 1 and the character-plates, though he never seems to have had them printed. Webb was probably the more annoyed of the two men, since Redington, a relative newcomer to the trade, had come away with much more than Webb had. Webb actually went as far as to make drawings (closely copied from Green's prints) of Rookwood and other plays, evidently with the intention of producing his own versions in rivalry with Redington's.

Redington’s reprinted version of Blue Beard compared to Webb (late Green’s) version

The subtle differences are hard to see, but most obvious are the foot shadows.

The sale must have taken place very soon after JK Green's death, because Redington had already done quite a bit of reprinting of the plates before mid-1861. This can be deduced because many of his reprinted sheets give the address of his agent J. Webb as Brick Lane, a street name that was changed to Central Street in 1861. But this flurry of activity soon slowed down, as in 1862 (or thereabouts) there occurred a mysterious downturn in the toy theatre trade, from which it never recovered. When Redington died in 1876, he had less than twenty of Green's titles still in print, and Webb's drawings were never turned into actual publications.

If George J. Green's activities in the production toy theatres and plays continued after his father's death, the crash of '62 would probably have put an end to them. If he had inherited his father's plates and stock, he might have stood more of a chance. Otherwise, the "halfpenny" period of toy theatre publishing was very monopolistic, with fewer than half-a-dozen major publishers and hardly any minor ones, so things would have been difficult for a newcomer. But he didn't have his father's plates and stock; Redington and Webb had them. In the absence of a will, would Green's effects have been regarded as the joint possession of all his children, or would they have been claimed by George's elder brother? In either case, ready cash may have seemed more tempting than a joint effort to continue the business, let alone handing over everything to George.

Whatever the argument between JK Green and Redington had been about, which saw the ending of their agency, it was Redington who ended up with the majority of Green’s plates and stock after the latter’s death.

John Redington was born 9^th November 1819 in Hackney and was baptised at St Matthew, Bethnal Green on 15^th May 1820 – the son of John Redington and his wife Mary Ann. On the 1851 Census he appears at 208 Hoxton Old Town, which was just a stones throw away from the Britannia Theatre, or the “Old Brit” as it was commonly known.

Census Extract 1851

HO107-1536-Folio 93-Page 9-Schedule 34

208 Hoxton Old Town, St Leonards, Shoreditch, London

Names	Relation to Head	Age	Occupation	Place of Birth
John Redington	Head	31	Printer, Compositor, Tobacconist & Stationer	Middlesex, Bethnal Green
Eliza Redington	Wife	26		Surrey, Croydon
John Redington	Son	6		Surrey, Newington

As yet I haven’t been able to trace the marriage of John Redington to an Eliza. Their first child was named after Redington and Redington’s father, both called John. Interestingly he was born in Newington, Surrey; the same area of south London where the Green family resided. Maybe their link together resulted from a meeting before Redington’s move to 208 Hoxton Old Town.

Sometime around 1850 Redington started a long running series of single portraits and a limited number of his own plays. George Speaight wrote, “Redington’s plays are the crudest examples of what might be called the original toy theatre”. DL Murray described the characters in “Baron Munchausen” as “superb Cruikshankian grotesquerie”. Although Redington’s own plays may not have been the best and were obviously the work of a self-taught artist, he did bring an enthusiasm to his work that helped preserve a dying tradition of the juvenile drama.

Redington’s portraits were mostly portrayals of actors and actresses that appeared at the “Old Brit”. Redington must have frequented his local theatre on a regular basis and probably had an intimacy with the performers that only an enthusiastic regular could have. Like his plays there was a crudity about his work, which I can only put down to being self-taught. There was an element of caricature about his work rather than classic portraiture. The fact that he produced so many portraits would indicate that his subjects were relatively happy with his characterisation of them and that they were popular with the paying public.

John Redington became JK Green’s agent around 1851. This can be shown to be the case from the playbooks, as it was from plays released in 1851 and onwards that displayed the name of Redington as agent. Redington’s name appears on character and scene sheets dated before 1851, but it is thought that these are re-prints and Redington’s name was added to the original plates retrospectively. (See the appendix “Dating Play Sheets”.)

Redington described himself as a Printer, Bookbinder and Stationer; Tobacconist; and Dealer in miscellaneous articles. His shop at 208 Hoxton Old Town had a fascia board that proclaimed the shop as a 'Theatrical Print Warehouse'. He particularly asked Green to produce a scene in one of his plays to depict Redington’s shop. This Green duly did, but it wasn’t quite what Redington wanted, as the famous guiding lamp of the Adam and Eve Public House next door was missing. Green then added the lamp to the plate but the bricks underneath could still be seen – not the best job Green did. The bricks seem to have disappeared on later sheets of the same image but this has been achieved on the lithographic stone as it hasn’t been amended on the original plate (as can be seen from the 1960’s pull from the plate below).

Harlequin & Oliver Cromwell – Scene No. 11 – Redington’s Theatrical Print Warehouse (27^th December 1852)

Printing direct from the plate in the 1960’s

By 1861 two more children had joined the family at 208 Hoxton Old Town

Census Extract 1861

RG9-240 Folio 67-Page 19-Schedule 114

208 Hoxton Old Town, Tower Hamlets, Shoreditch, London

Names	Relation to Head	Age	Occupation	Place of Birth
John Redington	Head	41	Compositor	Bethnal Green
Eliza Redington	Wife	37		Croydon, Surrey
John Redington	Son	16	(undecipherable)	Lambeth, Surrey
Eliza Redington	Dau	7	Scholar	Hoxton
William Redington	Son	1		Hoxton

After Green’s death, Redington started to re-release some of the plays he acquired from Green’s estate. Redington rarely used the copper and zinc plates he had acquired from Green. Virtually all his work was produced on the lithographic stone. Whereas Green looked for ways to keep the selling price as cheap as possible limiting himself to halfpenny plays entirely after 1835, Redington, however, commissioned and printed large scenes for half a dozen of Green’s plays and were priced at one penny. He changed the imprint to his own and removed the original date, so that the true age of the piece was unknown to the casual purchaser. Alas historians too are unable to calculate when they were actually published. In all he reproduced 19 of Green’s plays, with three more in an incomplete state, these were: -

Douglas	The Miller and his Men
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves	Brigand
Lord Mayors Fool	Lord Darnley
Children of the Wood	Timour the Tartar
Cinderella	The Corsican Brothers
The Daughter of the Regiment	Waterman (Slight alterations)
Sleeping Beauty	Dick Whittington and his Cat
Aladdin	The Silver Palace
Blue Jackets	The Battle of Waterloo
Jack the Giant Killer	Richard III (Not completed)
Red Rover (Not completed)	Blackbeard the Pirate (Not completed)

Redington did produce other reprints such as a playbook for Harlequin Riddle-Me-Ree, but these were created to enable the sale of the remaining stock of Green’s works.

To add to these Redington produced seven plays of his own; these were: -

Don Quixote	Oliver Twist
The Mistletoe Bough	Paul Clifford
Charles II	Baron Munchausen
King Henry

By 1871 John Redington (junior) had flown the family nest. He had married and started his own way in the printing world as a printer’s apprentice.

Meanwhile the rest of the Redington household remained at 208 Hoxton Old Town, renumbered to 73 Hoxton Street in 1866.

Census Extract 1871

RG10-453 Folio 73 – Page 21 – Schedule 114

73 Hoxton Street, Shoreditch, London

Names	Relation to Head	Age	Occupation	Place of Birth
John Redington	Head	51	Printer Compositor	Middlesex, Hackney
Eliza Redington	Wife	48		Croydon, Surrey
Eliza Redington	Dau	18		Middlesex, Hoxton
William Redington	Son	10	Scholar	Middlesex, Hoxton

John Redington

Redington continued selling JK Green’s works until his own death in 1876 and throughout this time he traded from 73 Hoxton Street. It had been believed that his business was taken over by his son-in-law Benjamin Pollock. However Benjamin Pollock wasn’t Redington’s son-in-law at the time of Redington’s death. He may have been engaged to Eliza Redington and ingratiated himself upon the household, but he didn’t marry Eliza Redington until the second quarter of 1877 (Hackney District Reference 1b 629). Their first child Eliza Louisa Pollock was born in the second quarter of 1878, so it wasn’t a “shot-gun wedding” either. Therefore, Pollock didn’t inherit Redington’s business as previously thought; he married into the business and took over control from his wife. But it more than conceivable that Pollock was proprietor designate due to his enthusiasm for Redington’s works, which he must have demonstrated prior to Redington death. He is believed to have frequented 208 Hoxton Road, whether it was to view Redington’s works or to woo his daughter will never be known.

Redington had two sons, John, nine years older than Eliza and William, some seven years younger than Eliza. In 1881 William was living with his mother at 115 Columbia Road, Middlesex. William’s occupation was given as “Printer & Compositor”, whilst his mother was in the “Stationery Line”. John Redington, the younger, was also in the printing business and on the 1881 census was shown as a “Printer Compositor” like his younger brother. He was married with a large family of his own (8 children), living at 4 Newton Road, Tottenham and probably already well established.

As to why Redington’s widow or his two sons John and William didn’t take over the family business is yet another toy theatre history conundrum yet to be solved. Perhaps they just weren’t interested and went their own way.

Click here to see the Redington Family Tree

Chapter 8 - Benjamin Pollock - The Last of the Toy Theatre Makers

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