I typed in google Pantomime...

I typed in google Pantomime and went on images and found this image below.

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I looked at the website it was on and found that this was made my someone called Benjamin Pollock. Below are some more images by Benjamin Pollock. 

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters.

Benjamin Pollock produced 8 sheets of Pantomime Characters sometime late in the nineteenth century or early in the twentieth century. These mostly included the characters from the Harlequinades produced by JK Green, such as Harlequin and the Giant Helmet, Harlequin St George & the Dragon and Harlequin Greenheart. The new pantomime characters included all the old favourites, such as Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, Clown and the occasional Sprite. These characters were interspersed by policemen in various comic poses.

The Policemen.

The policemen were most interesting characters. In Green’s original Harlequinades, he too had policemen, but these were more of the “Peeler” variety. In Pollock’s time of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century, few people would have been able to identify a “Peeler” as a policeman. Therefore Pollock had to create the policemen of the day. Deep in the vaults of Pollock’s Toy Museum I discovered an old pull from a plate. It contained just policemen, those same policemen appear on all of Pollock’s Pantomime Character sheets. These were definitely pantomime policemen. When coloured they wore the customary blue uniform, with round semi-pointed hats, but it was the shoes that made the difference. They were white with red stripes. These policemen so amused Sacheverell Sitwell when he visited Pollock’s shop with Diaghilev and the Russian ballet company that the characters were used throughout the ballet they created; “The Triumph of Neptune” as performed in 1926.

The Harlequinade Characters.

All the other characters that appeared on Pollock’s Pantomime Character sheets came from Green’s plays.

After many hours scrutiny I have tracked down every image to its original location. These are shown below.

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.1
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Harlequin	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	6
Top Row 2	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 3	Pantaloon	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	1
Top Row 4	Clown & Chinaman	Harlequin Robin Hood	5
Bottom Row 1	Clown & Pantaloon	Goody Goose	8
Bottom Row 2	Nursemaid & Clown with baby	Goody Goose	8
Bottom Row 3	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.2
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 2	Clown	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	8
Top Row 3	Tumbler	Uncle Tom’ Cabin	6
Top Row 4	Clown	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	8
Top Row 5	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Entire Bottom Row	Punch & Judy with Human Pyramid	Harlequin Robin Hood	5

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.3
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 2	Fishmonger & Clown with Fish	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	6
Top Row 3	Pantaloon	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	7
Top Row 4	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Bottom Row 1	Columbine	Goody Goose	8
Bottom Row 2	Clown & Pantaloon at Tea	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	7
Bottom Row 3	Harlequin	Goody Goose	6

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.4
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 2	Clown & Pantaloon	Goody Goose	6
Top Row 3	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 4	Pantaloon being carried by Clown	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	7
Bottom Row 1	Columbine	Goody Goose	6
Bottom Row 2	Clown with Union Flag	Harlequin Robin Hood	5
Bottom Row 3	Harlequin	Harlequin George & the Dragon	8
Bottom Row 4	Pantaloon & Clown – Polka Dance	Harlequin George & the Dragon	8

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.5
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Clown	Uncle Tom’ Cabin	6
Top Row 2	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 3	Pantaloon	Uncle Tom’ Cabin	6
Top Row 4	Columbine & Harlequin (dressed as a sailor)	Harlequin Robin Hood	7
Bottom Row 1	Columbine & Harlequin – dancing	Harlequin Robin Hood	5
Bottom Row 2	Pantaloon	Harlequin George & the Dragon	1
Bottom Row 3	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Bottom Row 4	Clown - smoking	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	8

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.6
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Clown on Ladder	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	7
Top Row 2	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 3	Clown	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	7
Top Row 4	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 5	Pantaloon	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	7
Bottom Row 1	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Bottom Row 2	Clown with meat cleaver & side of beef	Harlequin Robin Hood	6
Bottom Row 3	Pantaloon	Harlequin Robin Hood	7
Bottom Row 4	Columbine & Harlequin	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	7

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.7
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Clown	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	1
Top Row 2	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Top Row 3	Pantaloon	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	1
Top Row 4	Clown & Fishwoman	Harlequin George & the Dragon	8
Bottom Row 1	Harlequin & Columbine	Harlequin George & the Dragon	1
Bottom Row 2	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Bottom Row 3	Clown in hat	Harlequin George & the Dragon	7
Bottom Row 4	Pantaloon	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	6

Pollock’s New Pantomime Characters No.8
POSITION	CHARACTER	ORIGINAL PLATE	PLATE NO.
Top Row 1	Baker & Butcher - fighting	Harlequin George & the Dragon	7
Top Row 2	Clown	Harlequin George & the Dragon	7
Top Row 3	Pantaloon	Harlequin George & the Dragon	8
Top Row 4	Policeman	Pollock’s Policemen
Bottom Row 1	Harlequin & Columbine	Harlequin Oliver Cromwell	1
Bottom Row 2	Pantaloon	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	8
Bottom Row 3	Landlady & Clown	Harlequin & the Giant Helmet	8

  
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I wanted to know more about Benjamin Pollock and found this website all about him and his toy theatre.

Pollock's - The History

Benjamin Pollock 1856-1937

In 1856 there was born in Hoxton, a poor quarter of London, a boy called Benjamin Pollock. In his youth Pollock worked in the fur trade: along the road was the shop of John Redington, who described himself as a Printer, Bookbinder and Stationer; Tobacconist; and Dealer in miscellaneous articles. Its fascia board also proclaimed the shop a 'Theatrical Print Warehouse', and there was another sign which read 'The Trade supplied with Plays and Characters'. Pollock was a regular visitor to the shop; he fell in love with Miss Eliza Redington; and when still in his teens married her.

When Redington died the Pollocks inherited the business, and Benjamin abandoned the fur trade. He thus became involved both in conserving theatrical history and in catering for a home entertainment which had over 60 years of tradition behind it. For the 'theatrical prints' in his 'warehouse' were the copperplate engravings and lithographs which sold as souvenir 'pin-ups' of stage stars of the last half century in their most popular roles: Mr. Kean as Iago, Mr. Macready as Rob Roy MacGregor, and so on; while the 'plays and characters supplied to the trade' were prints of the scenery and cast, in miniature, of successful plays from the London theatres - each sheet costing 'a penny plain' or 'two pence coloured'. Redington had printed his sheets from hand-engraved copper plates: Pollock adopted the lithographic press - much more economical, but the correct preparation of the stones required skill and patience, and throughout the 60 years he kept shop in Hoxton Street he never entrusted the job to anyone else.

The trade which Pollock inherited was, however, no longer a flourishing one. In its heyday, around the 1830s, there had been dozens of little jobbing printers plying the toy theatre trade (or Juvenile Drama, as it was then called), many of them with shops in the Covent Garden area bordering on the West End. These men themselves belonged to the fringe of the theatrical world, and their customers were mainly quite well-to-do. In the 1840s an enterprising East End family, the Skelts, brought the toy theatre into shops all over the country. But by the next decade the 'quality' trade was being invaded by the agents of German firms; and as with dolls and other high quality toys, to possess a German toy theatre gave a middle-class family cachet. For this theatre, though less lively, was more 'artistic' than the English one, and instead of an earthy pantomime like Harlequin Dick Whittington you could do Wagner's Flying Dutchman on it.

So the traditional English toy theatre, with its folk-art designs, bright hand-colouring, and lowbrow but rumbustious repertoire of plays retreated to the little known district of Hoxton, where it was kept alive by Benjamin Pollock and - less than half a mile away, but apparently without communications between them - a Mr.. W. Webb, who in 1890 was succeeded by his son H.J.Webb. The Webbs were a talented family - old Mr. Webb himself drew and engraved the sheets he printed - and certainly more distinguished than the painstaking but unimaginative Mr.. Pollock, who after issuing some fine new sheets for The Sleeping Beauty in 1883 never afterwards did more than reprint from existing plates.

The man who brought Pollock's name into the limelight, and has kept it there, was Robert Louis Stevenson. As a boy he had discovered Skelt's sheets in an Edinburgh shop and in the 1880s, when in London, went in search for more. He went to Webb's and apparently quarrelled with him. So the essay he wrote afterwards, and which was reprinted in Memoirs and Portraits, did not mention Webb but concluded

'If you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock's!'

By the 1920s a pilgrimage to Mr. Pollock's had become a natural for luminaries of the London stage. Ellen Terry, Gordon Craig, Gladys Cooper and Charlie Chaplin went there; Sacheverell Sitwell brought Diaghilev whose Triumph of Neptune, presented by the Russian Ballet in 1927, had décor 'after Benjamin Pollock'. In 1925 the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild was founded, and helped to keep the toy theatre alive among enthusiasts; in 1932 there appeared the first complete history of the Juvenile Drama, by A.E. Wilson, drama critic of The Star; while in the same decade J & E Bumpus, the Oxford Street booksellers, for several years ran successful five-week Christmas seasons of toy theatre performances by George Speaight, then an aspiring bookseller only recently out of school.

In 1936 an exhibition of the Juvenile Drama, with performances of scenes from the plays, was held at the George Inn, Southwark, to celebrate Mr. Pollock's 80th birthday. But he could not be present himself; he was ailing, and the next year he died, having become a legend in his own lifetime: 'the last of the toy theatre makers'. Though he remained to the end a simple, modest man, quite unaffected by the attentions of the great, he was perhaps conscious of occupying his little niche in history. He is buried in a common grave in Chingford Mount Cemetery, North East London; but his passing earned him an obituary of 8 column inches in The Times.

Pollock's Limited 1945 to 1954

Eliza Pollock bore her husband 8 children, but she died in 1895 and of her sons the one to succeed Benjamin in the business, William, was killed on the Western Front in 1918. His eldest daughter Louisa, however, came back to the shop to help him in his old age, particularly in the skilled job of hand-colouring the toy theatre sheets; and on Pollock's death her sister Selina, also unmarried, joined her there. Between them they kept the place going, but they could not manage printing from the heavy litho stones, so sheet after sheet went out of print.

By the time 1940 and the bombs came, they had decided to call it a day, and Louisa Pollock was in correspondence with George Speaight about stocks and a possible purchase price. George Speaight was then claimed by naval duties abroad, however, and it was not until 1944 that a deal was finally clinched with Alan Keen, an Irish antiquarian bookseller who had visions of a grand toy theatre revival. In August 1944 the stock was removed to a place of safety: a month later a flying bomb blew in all the windows and made the Hoxton Street shop uninhabitable. And thus it remained, boarded up, until along with its neighbours it became inevitably the prey of the post-war demolition men.

The stock which Keen took over consisted, in round figures, of 1,200 copper and zinc engraved plates; 60 lithograph stone blocks and a lithographic printing press; over 170,000 'penny plain' sheets of scenery and characters and 13,000 of theatrical portraits; and 15,000 playbooks. The plates, when Keen took them over, were in perfect condition: one of the reproaches he must bear with from posterity is that owing to improper packing for storage a high percentage of them, while in his keeping, were irretrievably ruined.

Anyone more unlike Benjamin Pollock than the man who now set up a limited company using his name could scarcely be imagined. Pollock was cautious, retiring, inconspicuous; Keen was entrepreneurial, and flamboyant. Pollock never moved from Hoxton, lived for his pokey little shop, was unimpressed by fame, and by diligence kept going for 60 years. Keen liked high living and club lunches, rented smart premises in the Adelphi, charmed well-known names into buying shares in his Company, and blew a prestigious bubble which burst resoundingly just 6 years later. To leaf through papers dealing with the Company's affairs during those 6 years is first to be bemused by the repeated folies de grandeur, with expectations wildly outrunning actual sales, and then to watch with horrified fascination the exercises in robbing Peter to pay Paul which alone kept the floodtides temporarily at bay

Ploughing through the sackfuls of writs for unpaid bills which were part of Alan Keen's legacy, one must conclude that he was a bit of a rogue; but it is not for the theatre - not even the toy theatre - to curl the lip at rogues, for has it not always bred them, and perhaps necessarily so? And not all die in poverty as Keen did. Let us rather remember that without Keen the toy theatre could well have died a natural death 50 years ago; that under Keen's regime the production of toy theatres and of plays in colour was modernised; that as well as new plays old plays were reprinted with shorter and more manageable texts; and that a toy theatre club with its own magazine was started. Certainly the directors of Keen's successor company have reason to be grateful to him and his collaborators, for it was in 1948 that in response to an order a parcel containing one Regency Theatre was delivered to them - to change a few years later the course of one, and eventually two, careers.

Meanwhile it is 1951, the receiver is in, and all is gloom. Unanswered correspondence accumulates; the stock remains locked in store.

In 1954 however Marguerite Fawdry, knowing nothing of all this, wanted some wire slides for her son's toy theatre, and found the business closed down. Following enquiries, she was told by a weary accountant:

'I believe there are hundreds of thousands in the warehouse, madam, but there's no one who can look them out for you... Of course you could, I suppose, buy the lot if you wanted them.'

This, of course is just what Marguerite Fawdry did. For a modest down payment, put up by her father-in-law, she became the sole debenture holder and in 1955 took over the stock. The company remained in the receiver's hands; any subsequent profits had to go to pay off its debts; and an annual return, required by the Board of Trade, enabled the Purchase Tax to be paid off bit by bit instead of all at once.

So the entire stock - damaged plates, unsaleable plays, but also some fine old theatres, and sought-after sheets from Benjamin Pollock's stock - landed at Marguerite Fawdry's Kensington house. The better plates were polished up, paper and ink acquired, and the little copperplate press was put to work at week-ends. An attic was rented as office-cum-shop at 44 Monmouth Street, west of Covent Garden. The more readily saleable sheets started to be sold. The site was good for theatre people: they soon found their way up the narrow staircase to the familiar lights twinkling on the tiny stages.

Sales to the trade, gradually took off as client after client discovered to his delight that Pollock's still existed. Peter Adams Turner devised a new form of cardboard theatre which folded up into a neat package. Playtexts were published in several foreign languages to stimulate continental sales and reinforce the claim that this was an 'educational' toy.

In 1970 the handsomely-boxed Regency theatre of wood and plastic, with lighting sets as an optional extra, had sadly to come to an end: it was no longer possible, as it had been 10 years before, to find cottage industries which would make the many parts needed for the theatre. In its place, Peter Jackson designed a version of the Victoria Theatre in book form which was cheaper, escaped tax, and was very easy to pack. The purchaser constructed the theatre himself from the printed boxboard sheets bound into the book. About the same time the Redington Theatre was launched - cardboard too, but machine-cut and much bigger than the Victoria. The book format for the Victoria went so well that within two years Pollock's had a range of six similarly designed theatres available. During the seventies there was some diversification from toy theatres and plays: a hardback, Chinese Childhood, a Victorian scrap album and some dolls' house wallpaper.

Pollocks Toy Theatres Limited

During the eighties Pollock's thrived, Marguerite produced more books and toy theatre sales continued steadily. Then came recession! A difficult time for everybody. By this time Kenneth Fawdry had sadly died and Marguerite was far from well. She died in September 1995 after a long illness, but the toy theatres she loved so much and the museum she created live on. Pollock's Toy Theatres Limited has survived the recession and is hoping in the future to publish new plays and theatres and so carry on the long tradition begun by Benjamin Pollock and his contemporaries.

The Toy Museum 1956

Marguerite Fawdry could never remember just when the idea came to her to start a little museum to attract people up to her attic shop; but it was very soon after taking possession, for with the old toy theatres she already had something worthy of display. Better still, she had three friends with their own collections of quality: Yootha Rose, a theatrical designer turned toymaker; John Noble, an ardent doll lover who for many years was curator at the Museum of the City of New York; and Jacques Brunius, the French poet, filmmaker and critic who had a splendid collection of optical toys. Each lent part of his or her collection, making a very choice roomful.

As the second and first floors were taken over the museum could expand, and so too the shop - well beyond just toy theatre sales. Soon Pollock's Toy Museum (for whose museum could it possibly be but Benjamin Pollock's?) was in many of the guide books and visitors were coming in from all over the world.

Towards the end of the sixties the rent demanded for 44 Monmouth Street started rising steeply, and the long-term fate of the street was anyhow uncertain. It was time, if possible, to get out. It was also time, in the Receiver's opinion, to bring the Receivership to a close so that Pollock's could stand on its own feet with a clean slate. Time, too, to give the Museum an existence independent of the company which published the toy theatres and plays.

All the objectives were achieved simultaneously. The first because Marguerite Fawdry's father-in-law, generous to the last, bequeathed a sum which sufficed to buy the freehold of a picturesque, though jerry-built, 18th century house at 1 Scala Street and the setting up Pollock's Toy Theatres Ltd. as a publishing company in succession to the ill-fated Benjamin Pollock Ltd.

The Museum and its retail shop opened at 1 Scala Street on 1 January 1969; real progress for the museum had, however, to wait another two years. Marguerite had noticed that the adjacent premises, part of a building which housed a pub promisingly named The Hope was being used for storage only. Not long after, Pollock's moved in to 41 Whitfield Street, with a short-term tenancy (later the freehold was purchased) and permission to drive internal passages to connect with 1 Scala Street. The gain was in part the extra rooms, but more important still the second staircase, vastly improving the safety of the building in the event of fire and so allowing the museum, for the first time, to ask visitors for a contribution.

There could also now be visits by school parties, and these were regular features of the museum's life in term-time. Pollock's Toy Museum had come a long way from Benjamin Pollock and continues to bring pleasure to children and adults alike.

Benjamin Pollock's Hoxton shop

Miss Pollock serves eager customers

Miss Pollock at work colouring toy theatre prints

Issue 1 of Keens Toy Theatre Magazine

Chinese Childhood by Marguerite Fawdry

Pollocks First Day Cover

A Pollocks Advertising flyer

Rocking Horses by Marguerite Fawdry

A 1970s Pollocks Sales Catalogue

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I then looked at more about toy theatres and found another website. It is all about the history of toy theatres. I will be taking more research from this website later.