The 'portly grabbers of 75 per cent. ': capital investment in the British entertainment industry, 1885-1914

Le résumé fourni par la source

This paper takes as its starting point the assertion that our increasingly sophisticated analyses of the consumption of commercialized leisuse in Victorian and Edwardian Britain have outstripped our knowledge of the economic processes involved in its production. This paper attempts to address this imbalance though a systematic study of patterns of investment in the entertainment industry based on a quantitative analysis of music hall company records. It explores when investment in the entertainment industry intensified who provided this investment and why. The impact of limited liability legislation on investment is considered. It is argued that a narrowly capitalist attitude to investment was more evident in entertainment than in other sectors of the leisure industry. The financing of the most highly capitalized music hall companies (primarily located in major cities) became integrated into wider circuits of domestic industrial capital investment. Nevertheless, more traditional patterns of investment based on informal and local sources of capital continued to be significant in lower-cost locations.

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