Pablo’s ride to top
“FOR the benefit of Mr Kite, there shall be a show tonight, on trampoline...” The famous lyric - from the Beatles’ album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - was inspired by a poster John Lennon found in an antique shop, back in 1967. With the wordy enthusiasm typical of the Victorian era, the poster advertised a show staged at Rochdale’s Town Meadows by Victorian Britain’s most popular circus promoter, Pablo Fanque. Fanque was a master equestrian and tightrope walker before he set up his own circus. But his ability to enthral a crowd wasn’t the only thing about him that stood out. Fanque was the son of an African, born in England in 1810, and spent much of his life in what we now call Greater Manchester. Here, to mark Black History Month, Chris Osuh looks at the life stories of black men and women from history who left their mark on our city.
LIFE was hard for the working people of Victorian Manchester. Child labour was prevalent; mill workers, factory hands and labourers worked six days a week in the bustling, smoky city.
Against that background the Knott Mill Fair, held every Easter at the bottom of Deansgate, was a highlight of the year.
“Manchester Fair without Pablo’s circus was not conceivable,” the Rev Thomas Horne, chaplain of the Showman’s Guild, wrote at the turn of the 20th century.
Born William Darby in Norwich to an African father and an English mother, Pablo Fanque was just 11 when he first joined the circus as an orphaned apprentice. In his forties he established stables at Wigan, and over the next three decades toured the country with his own show, often partnered with the famous clown WF Wallett.
Seafaring Britain’s expansionism and thirst for commodities like sugar, tea, coffee and cotton created Britain’s diversity – and while Fanque would have attracted stares in many places, he was far from alone. Parish records reveal black men and women were living in the region as early as 1691.
Fanque was not just accepted but loved by British audiences, feted by the press, and admired for his generosity.
The ‘Benefit for Mr Kite’ show memorialised by the Beatles was typical of that generosity - it was one of many fundraisers Fanque staged for circus folk.
Fanque died at the Britannia Inn, a pub which was then at Churchgate, Stockport, in 1871. Three decades later his friend Rev Thomas Horne wrote: “In the great brotherhood of the equestrian world there is no colour line... the camaraderie of the Ring has but one test, ability.”