page_title: Adelphi Theatre
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Adelphi Theatre / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Scene from The Haunted Man at the Adelphi Theatre. (Mr. Wright as "Tetterby.") The Illustrated London News. Saturday, 30 December 1848, p. 603.
context_page_description: The Adelphi Theatre is a London West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals. The theatre was Grade II listed for historical preservation on 1 December 1987.
context_section_description: It was founded in 1806 as the Sans Pareil ("Without Compare"), by merchant John Scott, and his daughter Jane (1770–1839).  Jane was a British theatre manager, performer, and playwright.  Together, they gathered a theatrical company and by 1809 the theatre was licensed for musical entertainments, pantomime, and burletta.  She wrote more than fifty stage pieces in an array of genres: melodramas, pantomimes, farces, comic operettas, historical dramas, and adaptations, as well as translations.  Jane Scott retired to Surrey in 1819, marrying John Davies Middleton (1790–1867).
  On 18 October 1819, the theatre reopened under its present name, which was adopted from the Adelphi Buildings opposite.
  In its early years, the theatre was known for melodrama, called Adelphi Screamers. Many stories by Charles Dickens were also adapted for the stage here, including John Baldwin Buckstone's The Christening, a comic burletta, which opened on 13 October 1834, based on the story The Bloomsbury Christening. This is notable for being thought the first Dickens adaption performed. This was the first of many of Dickens's early works adapted for the stage of the Adelphi, including The Pickwick Papers as William Leman Rede's The Peregrinations of Pickwick; or, Boz-i- a-na, a three-act burletta first performed on 3 April 1837, Frederick Henry Yates's production of Nicholas Nickleby; or, Doings at Do-The-Boys Hall in November and December 1838, and Edward Stirling's two-act burletta The Old Curiosity Shop; or, One Hour from Humphrey's Clock (November and December 1840, January 1841). The theatre itself, makes a cameo appearance in The Pickwick Papers
  The Adelphi came under the management of Madame Celeste and comedian Benjamin Webster, in 1844, and Buckstone was appointed its resident dramatist. Dramatisations of Dickens continued to be performed, including A Christmas Carol; or, Past, Present, and Future opening on 5 February; and Beckett's The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that rang an Old Year out and a New One In. In 1848, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain was performed.
  The old theatre was demolished, and on 26 December 1858, The New Adelphi was opened and was considered an improvement on the cramped circumstances of the original, which had been described as a "hasty conversion from a tavern hall, permanently kept in its provisional state". The new theatre could seat 1,500 people, with standing room for another 500. The interior was lighted by a Stroud's Patent Sun Lamp, a brilliant array of gas mantles passed through a chandelier of cut-glass.
  In the mid-19th century, John Lawrence Toole established his comedic reputation at the Adelphi.  Also in the mid-19th century, the Adelphi hosted a number of French operettas, including La belle Hélène.  In 1867, however, the Adelphi gave English comic opera a boost by hosting the first public performance of Arthur Sullivan's first opera, Cox and Box.
  The building was renovated in 1879 and again in 1887 when the house next door, along with The Hampshire Hog in The Strand and the Nell Gwynne Tavern in Bull Inn Court, were bought by the Gattis in order to enlarge the theatre. They also built a new enlarged facade and part of this can still be seen today above the Crystal Rooms next door to the present Adelphi Theatre.
  An actor who performed regularly at the Adelphi in the latter half of the 19th century, William Terriss, was stabbed to death during the run of 'Secret Service' on 16 December 1897 whilst entering the Theatre by the royal entrance in Maiden Lane which he used as a private entrance.  This is now recorded on a plaque on the wall by the stage door.  Outside a neighbouring pub, a sign says that the killer was one of the theatre's stage hands, but Richard Archer Prince committed the murder.  It has been said that Terriss' ghost haunts the theatre.  Terriss' daughter was Ellaline Terriss, a famous actress, and her husband, actor-manager Seymour Hicks managed the Adelphi for some years at the end of the 19th century.  The stage door of the current Adelphi is in Maiden Lane but back then 
caption: Charles Dickens' The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain at the Adelphi, in the Illustrated London News, 30 December 1848
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