Can you tell me about Thomas’ work?
Q
My grandfather, Thomas Henry Green (born c1876), was shown on the 1911 census as working in the animated-pictures business in Nelson, Lancashire. On his 1913 marriage certificate, he was recorded as a picture palace proprietor. By the time my mother was born in 1922, he worked in the mills. How can I find out more about his business in the pictures industry?
Judith Tozer
A
Your grandfather worked at the cutting edge of the entertainment industry. Picture palaces were elaborately decorated motion picture theatres, which appeared in Edwardian Britain not long before the 1911 census was taken. They showed short, black-and-white, soundless, animated films specifically designed to cater to the tastes of the working classes. Peter Sagar’s Chronicles of Pendle Picture Palaces (published in 2000 and available for free on the Internet Archive at archive.org) mentions your grandfather together with Herbert Green (most probably his brother) as the proprietors of the Royal Picture Hall, Southfield Street, Nelson, in 1909. Like other picture palaces, this one came to life in a building that had formerly served other purposes (as a church mission hall and then a brewery for herbal beers, in this case).
Excitingly, the book mentions a photograph of Tom Green and the staff of the Royal Cinema before 1918 that was printed in the Nelson Leader on 2 August 1963. The newspaper is part of the collection on findmypast.co.uk, but unfortunately it does not go up to 1963. You might, however, be able to trace a paper copy at a local archive once these open again after the lockdown.
If you are interested in learning more about picture palaces in general, some early films can be viewed for free on the British Film Institute’s website (player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/animated-britain).
Listen also to the oral history account of Clifford Whittaker, an elderly cinema enthusiast, who recalls many different aspects of the early cinemas of Nelson and Oswaldtwistle, including the slides shown to cinema audiences during the First World War naming local casualties (see the item 2014.0260 in Lancashire Archive’s online catalogue at archivecat.lancashire.gov.uk/calmview). You can also view images of the cinemas in the area at cinematreasures.org.
Ruth Symes