This photo of a group of children in Newcastle has baffled people for years. The location is easy enough to identify, they were on Neville Street near the George Stephenson Monument and you can see the Church of St John the Baptist on Westgate Road in the background. But nobody knows what the bairns were gazing at, so it’s time this mystery was finally solved.
The engraving below the photo appeared in the Illustrated London News on February 12th 1898, with no information except that it was by the Newcastle artist Ralph Hedley. The location is also easy enough to identify, it’s the same scene as the photo but from a different angle, with the Express Hotel now in the background. It shows the bairns were watching a Punch and Judy show.
The show was likely provided by Mawson, Swan & Morgan who sold stationery and fine art, but also boasted the largest roster of entertainers outside of London. Their shop at that time was a couple of hundred yards away on Grainger Street West. They employed a Punch and Judy man called Professor Huli who was accompanied by a performing dog called Toby; there’s a smartly dressed dog in the engraving, perched on the booth with that name on his coat.
The company’s Punch and Judy shows were usually watched by better-off children whose parents could afford to hire them for birthday parties, but during the Festive Season they entertained the town’s waifs and strays free of charge. These poor bairns were given Christmas presents too, a small toy for the girls and an orange for the boys.
Mawson, Swan & Morgan advertised their entertainers as being “refined” and free from vulgarity. The urchins in the photo would have been disappointed if this were true, they seem to be enjoying Punch and Judy screeching insults and braying the living daylights out of each other.