George Robert Sims
Sims began writing lively humour and satiric pieces for Fun magazine and The Referee, but he was soon concentrating on social reform, particularly the plight of the poor in London's slums.
His parents were George Sims, a prosperous merchant, and Louisa Amelia Ann née Stevenson, president of the Women's Provident League.
He had begun to write poetry at the age of ten,[1] and at Bonn he wrote some plays, including an adaptation of Dr. Wespe by Roderich Benedix.
He began to publish pieces in Fun in 1874, succeeding editor Tom Hood and making friendships with fellow contributors W. S. Gilbert and Ambrose Bierce.
[1] In 1876, Sims penned a satiric open letter "To a Fashionable Tragedian", humorously accusing actor-producer Henry Irving of inciting mass murder by emphasising the gore in his Shakespeare plays and of paying bribes to critics.
[2] In 1877, he began contributing to a new Sunday sports and entertainments paper, edited by Sampson, The Referee, writing a weekly column of miscellany, "Mustard and Cress", under the pseudonym Dagonet, until his death.
Its zealous social concern aroused public sentiment and made Sims a strong voice for reform, dramatising the plight of suffering Londoners.
Many of these were later published in book form, such as The Theatre of Life (1881, Fuller), Horrible London (1889, Billing and Sons), The Social Kaleidoscope, and The Three Brass Balls.
In particular, in 1881, Sims and Frederick Barnard wrote a series of illustrated articles entitled How the Poor Live for a new journal, The Pictorial World.
[9] At Arthur Lambton's Crimes Club, Sims took pleasure in discussing cases with Max Pemberton, Conan Doyle and Churton Collins.
Sims later sacrificed some of his standing among progressives with his 1906 campaign in The Tribune, titled "Bitter cry of the middle classes", in which he criticised organised labour and argued that lower middle-class tradesmen and workers were over-taxed in the name of statism.
His first hit play, Crutch and Toothpick, based on a French farce by Labiche, was produced at the Royalty Theatre in 1879 and enjoyed a run for 240 nights.
[10][11] All of the cast and crew survived the fire, which mostly killed audience members in the pits and gallery, and the tour continued, although at the following performance, costumes and scenery had to improvised and borrowed as they had all been lost in the blaze.
[14] Robert Buchanan and Sims co-authored five melodramas at the Adelphi between 1890 and 1893, including The Trumpet Call (1891), starring Mrs Patrick Campbell early in her career.
[15] In 1896, Sims wrote the melodrama Two Little Vagabonds with Arthur Shirley (an adaptation of Les deux gosses) which was a hit at Princess's Theatre and enjoyed many revivals.
Sims invented a tonic, Tatcho, that was marketed to cure baldness, but his friends found this a source of mirth when it did not stop his own hairline from receding.
[2] Sims used the Daily Mail to wage a campaign to secure the pardon and release of a Norwegian, Adolph Beck, who had twice been imprisoned because of mistaken identity.
