On the evening of Wednesday 13 June 1866, the boys of Newington College, ‘…assisted by several Gentlemen’, presented a Mid-Winter Entertainment. One of the treasures of the College Archives is a printed program for the event. It is our earliest documentary evidence of the performing arts at the College, although the program describes the event as ‘their usual Mid-Winter Entertainment’, indicating that it had been done before.

The program comprised a series of recitations and dialogues, several songs and duets, and two ‘drawing room scenes’. All eleven recitations and three dialogues were performed by the boys. They included well-known pieces, such as ‘the Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna’ by Charles Wolfe, recited by William Neill, and ‘Hamlet and the Ghost’ by William Shakespeare, performed by William Andrews and Brier Mills, along with pieces apparently composed for the occasion.

Mr McManis, the Music Master appointed the previous year, performed two solo songs and joined with a student, Alfred Golledge, for Hérold’s ‘Overture to Zampa’ and with Miss Fletcher, the President’s daughter, for ‘The Cure Quadrille’. Joseph Coates, teacher of History and Classics and better known outside the classroom as a first grade cricketer, sang ‘Thou art so near, and yet so far’. There was more music, but the program provides no further details.

The stars of the ‘drawing room scenes’ were Joseph James Fletcher, the President’s son and William Henry Higman, one of the original students from July 1863. Fletcher played Mr Harold Hairy, ‘a hirsute gentleman out of employment’, opposite Higman’s Mr Shav’em-close, ‘Hon. Sec. to Anti-Beard and Moustache Association’, in the untitled first piece. In the second piece, ‘Married by Mistake’, Fletcher was Captain Heavyside, while Higman played both Mrs Smith (opposite Mr Coates’ Mr Smith) and Mrs Annabella Potts.

We are indebted to Mrs Elizabeth Tomlinson for donating the program to the College in 2011.

David Roberts
College Archivist