Collins's Music Hall

[2][3] He was also a theatre manager, having bought a pub in Marylebone High Street and rebuilt the adjacent auditorium as Collins's Music Hall in 1858.

[5][6] Collins bought both the pub and the hall, selling his establishment in Marylebone to finance the purchase and reconstruction of the Islington premises.

No expense was spared to provide an entertainment that should amply delight the most exacting, and we were pleased to observe that the efforts of the proprietor had not only attracted a crowded house, but fully succeeded in amusing them while there.

He was described as "ever on the alert to detect the double entendre", and as a result of his strictness Collins's acquired the nickname "The Chapel on the Green".

[11] In the 1880s Collins's had its last regular chairman, John Read, who introduced the acts from his desk at the side of the proscenium, facing the audience.

This was the norm in music halls of the day, but by the end of the decade it had become the practice, at Collins's and elsewhere, to display at the side of the stage the details of each act, and the chairman's role became redundant.

[12] The regard with which he was held by his peers was shown by the banquet marking his retirement, given by his fellow music-hall proprietors and other friends and admirers, to celebrate "twenty-five years of conscientious and meritorious work as a caterer for the healthy amusement of the people".

After the initial years of the new hall, there followed what the historian Bill Manley describes as "an unsettled period till after the Great War".

[16] Attractions ranged from boxing tournaments,[17] to Fred Karno's troupe, in which the young Charlie Chaplin played an upper-class drunk in the sketch "Mumming Birds".

[16] In the later 1930s an attempt was made to establish a repertory company at Collins's, presenting favourite old plays including Mr Wu, Tilly of Bloomsbury, The Ringer and White Cargo.