William Thomas Moncrieff (1794-1857) Act 2 Scene 6, “Tom and Jerry; Or, Life in London”. Cumberland’s British Theatre. Vol. 33. London: John Cumberland, [n.d.].

Tom and Jerry was an extremely popular play during the 1820s and 1830s. Moncrieff’s script was an unauthorized adaptation of a book Life in London (1820-21) with text by the well-known sporting journalist Pierce Egan with illustrations by popular caricaturists Robert and George Cruikshank, it opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London in November 1821. It quickly spread around the United Kingdom: productions were mounted in towns and cities from Bristol to Edinburgh. The play crossed the Atlantic to appear at the Park Theatre in New York in March 1823 and soon spread to Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston. It remained as a standard part of the transatlantic theatre repertoire into the 1830s and beyond.

The play did not really have a story, but instead showed its white middle-class protagonists Tom, Jerry, and Bob Logic taking in the sights and activities that London had to offer. In Act 2 Scene 6 the friends visit a tavern in the St. Giles area of London (known as the Holy Land because of its large Catholic Irish population) where they find many of the famous beggars of London dancing and singing, including Billy Waters (c. 1776-1823). Waters was a Black man born in the United States who arrived in London after his discharge from the British Navy. He lost a leg in an accident at sea, so turned to busking to supplement his pension. His act and costume were depicted in many images of the time and also discussed in periodicals and other texts: he became something of a celebrity. Waters is turned into a fictionalized version of himself in this scene, which was performed by a white actor in blackface. Waters’ speech conforms to the racist stereotypes of the “comic” stage Black in the early nineteenth-century. The depiction of Waters turns him into a violent caricature who, along with other beggars, angrily berates the Landlord for serving hot roast turkey without sausages and mocks members of the public who give him money for his busking. This had a direct effect on Billy Waters himself, whose living from busking subsequently dried up. The scene was compressed in the Edinburgh, Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia versions but the basic characterization of “Billy Waters” remained. This scene gives the character ‘Billy Waters’ a voice and a kind of agency, but ultimately it dispossessed Waters himself of the ability to perform on stage, undermined his skills as a professional, and silenced him. It demonstrates the belittling representation of Black people on the transatlantic stage, and the ways in which ideas about race were circulated, constructed, and experienced through performance.

This entry was edited for the web by Dr. Mary L. Shannon.