1. Bergman, Cösta M., Lighting in the Theatre (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977).Google Scholar On the physical sizes and shapes of oil lamps in general, see Robins, F. W., The Story of the Lamp (London: Oxford University Press, 1939).Google ScholarO'Dea, William T. is concerned more with their use in The Social History of Lighting (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1958).Google Scholar

2. Because Hayling's connection with theatre has not been known, he does not appear in Highfiil, Philip H. Jr., Burnim, Kalman A., and Langhans, Edward A., A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols, in progress (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1973–).Google Scholar The opera did not publicize its staff, and despite his long-standing arrangement with the King's Theatre, Hayling was still regarded as an outside supplier – a ‘tradesman’ rather than a ‘house servant’.

3. The suit is P.R.O. C12/1989/86; the dismissal on advice of counsel is reported in C33/466, Decrees 1785B, fol. 453.

4. Unless otherwise credited, all quotations will be from this suit, C12/2147/14, begun on 15 March 1787. The dismissal is reported in C33/470, Decrees 1787B, fol. 259. I have expanded most abbreviations and regularized citations of money and dates.

5. Begun, on 29 04 1788Google Scholar, the final suit is C12/624/2; for the dismissal, see C33/476, Decrees 1790B, fol. 441.

6. P.R.O. C31/243, no. 332 and C31/247, no. 58 document delivery of subpoenas to him there.

7. By the 1720s, shops in St. James's Market were thought to be pricey, according to Seymour, Robert's Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster (1735)Google Scholar, quoted in the Survey of London, 29 (London: Athlone Press, 1960), p. 217.Google Scholar Goods were ‘usually a fourth Part dearer than in the Markets about the City of London, most of the Provisions being brought from thence, and bought up here by the Stewards of People of Quality, who spare no Price to furnish their Lords Houses with what is nice and delicate’.

8. Hayling, 's will of 9 01 1796Google Scholar was proved on the 23rd of the month (P.R.O. PROB 11, 1270, fols. 174r–175v). In it he mentions a [step]-daughter Mary and a son Joseph; a second shop in the Adelphi; at least four men, two of whom were shop employees; and two servants. He also left property in Herefordshire, where he was born, probably inherited from his parents. He is listed in the London Directory of 1780 as a brazier and in Wakefield's… Directory of 1790 as a lamp contractor and oil merchant. By 1791 his letterhead, samples of which survive in the Bedford Opera Papers, carried royal appointments.

9. Early in 1782 the Morning Herald carried several advertisements from George Perry, who would deliver ‘best Chamber Oil’ from his shop in Covent Garden at 5s a gallon; but that price did not include equipment or maintenance. See also Rogers, James E. Thorold, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, vol. 7, 1703–1793 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), Pt. 1, pp. 487, 488, 491.Google Scholar

10. Bergman, , p. 198Google Scholar; following quotation from p. 197.

11. Quotation from Bergman, , p. 201.Google Scholar

12. The accounts mention a variety of small purchases made for members of the Haymarket staff, including such items as six candlesticks for the ‘Musick Porter’ on 27 11 1782Google Scholar and a ‘glew pot for Mr Coombes’ on 22 01 1782.Google Scholar Hayling never names the music porter, but Mr Coombes is probably the same man who was making properties at Covent Garden in 1790. (See the Biographical Dictionary, III, 475Google Scholar, where he is said to have been in London ‘by’ 1789.) Hayling provides a ‘Spring Barrell for Mumford… Is’ on 13 12 1781Google Scholar, an entry that puts John Mountford on the Haymarket staff two years earlier than he had been recorded there (X, 352). Three other people get small quantities of oil from Hayling for unnamed departments within the theatre: a MrsDoyle, (25 11 1780)Google Scholar; a MrsRogers, (from 28 01 1782 on)Google Scholar; and ‘Porter Brady’, probably Charles Brady, the stage door keeper (from 2 January 1782 on: II, 289).

13. For discussion, see Croft-Murray, Edward and Phillips, Hugh, ‘The Whole Humours of a Masquerade’, Country Life, 2 09 1949, pp. 672–5.Google Scholar

14. Maria, AntonioSacchini, Gasparo, Rinaldo (London: E. Cox, 1780)Google Scholar; Bertoni, Ferdinande Giuseppe, Ifigenia in Aulide (London: H. Reynell, 1782).Google Scholar

15. W. J. Lawrence discusses the first traces of such lightning effects in Elizabethan drama at about the time Serlio was translated into English. See The Elizabethan Playhouse, Second Series (Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press,1913), pp.17–22. Alan St. H. Brock writes dismissively of theatrical fireworks in A History of Fireworks (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1949)Google Scholar, ostensibly because he feels they were not ‘true’ pyrotechnical art, but more likely for lack of evidence.

16. British Library scrapbook, Theatre Cuttings 42, fol. 56r, dated by hand 18 December 1796, but without identification of newspaper. The review of L'A mour et Psiché in the 19 12 1796Google ScholarMorning Chronicle suggested that ‘the strong reflection from the glass pannels of the new boxes’ had made the spectacle unduly frightening, but only to part of the audience (see The London Stage, Pt. 5, under 3 12 1796).Google Scholar

17. 4 January 1782 Morning Herald. This may be something of a joke, since a description of ball gowns printed on 19 January did not mention the colour. The shower of fire is also connected with Medea in a topical satire, The Opera Rumpus; or The Ladies in the Wrong Box! (London: R. Baldwin, 1783), p. 14n.Google Scholar

18. See Noverre, Jean Georges, Alceste: or, The Triumph of Conjugal Love, bound with Bertoni's Giunio Bruto (London: E. Cox, 1781), p. 2.Google Scholar Copy used: BL 11714.b.39(6).

19. The entry for 28 March 1781 shows that there were at least 70 lamps in the flies, probably with 2 lights each.

20. Noverre, Jean Georges, Rinaldo and Armida, in The Works of Monsieur Noverre, Translated from the French, 3 vols. (London: G. Robinson et al., [1782]–1783), 3:49–51.Google Scholar

21. Negative criticism of any kind is unusual in opera reviews in this paper; reports are suspiciously laudatory. Among the social notes in the same issue, someone complained that the ‘infernal spirits’ need not have ‘approached so near the stage-boxes as to terrify the ladies. Although no harm could have ensued from their blazing torches, nothing could have justified this inattention, but the supreme delight which was diffused through the house by so many lovely faces being rendered more conspicuous by the proximity of light’.

22. Noverre, Jean Georges, Renaud et Armide, Ballet héroïque (Milan: Jean Montani, 1775).Google Scholar Copy used: BL shelfmark 906.e.3 (2). The text reads, ‘Armide en revoyant la lumière ne peut plus douter de l'inconstance de son Amant… Elle s'arme du flambeau de la Vengeance, elle embrase son Palais. Le tonnerre gronde, les éclairs percent la nue, une pluie de feu le détruit entièrement; elle monte sur un char: la Vengeance, la Haine, & la Fureur se groupent autour d'elle; elle se fraye une route dans les airs. Dans cet instant tout le Palais s'écroule, et l'on n'aperçoit qu'un désert épouvan table habité par des Monstres.’

23. This description actually comes from the end of Rinaldo and Armida in the 1783Google Scholar translation of Noverre's Works. Whether the translator confused the two ballets, or the river of fire was added to Armida, Hayling's records show it first with Medea in 04 1782.Google Scholar

24. See the 1 August 1792 lease of the rebuilt opera house from Sheldon and Holloway to Taylor, quoted in P.R.O. LC 7/88, pp. 55–57.

25. P.R.O. C24/1939 and 1940 contain depositions intended to support Taylor's claim that performers were supposed to pay for light out of their benefit profits. Some of the witnesses deny that they know Hayling, which says something about his status in the playhouse (though their testimony on a number of points is of dubious validity). Peter Crawford, treasurer and part owner since 1765, testifies that he has known Hayling since about 1765. Hayling's response to Taylor's claim is that if he had not been separately paid within 24 hours of a benefit, he solved the problem by adding the cost to his weekly bill, rather than dun individual performers himself. According to the schedule, three benefits were the only performances for which Hayling was paid in 1781–2 before he sued.

26. The ‘Regulations in force at the Teatro Reale, Turin, 1834’ for the lamp man begin, ‘The lighting apparatus must at all times be kept clean, and therefore all glasses and reflectors are to be thoroughly cleaned every day, and all Argand lamps of every kind must at the same time be filled with oil to their full capacity. All the wicks must be trimmed with scissors level with the fittings in order to avoid an uneven flame…’ Although late in relation to the Hayling schedules and bureaucratically overstated, this eleven-point list, complete with fine schedule, gives a clear idea of the job the lamp man performed. It is quoted in Rees, Terence, Theatre Lighting in the Age of Gas (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1978), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

27. British Library Egerton MS 2272, fol. 4.

28. By way of comparison, on 10 June 1769 the Covent Garden accounts note, ‘Paid Mr Patrick for Lighting the Lamps at the Masquerade… £54 14s’ (BL Egerton MS 2275, fol. 2).

29. See The London Stage under 29 01Google Scholar, 2 February, 2 May, and 11 June 1782. The 25 January 1782 Morning Herald describes the new decorations in some detail.

30. In C12/624/2 Hayling says that ‘in his Judgment no Tradesman in this Defendants line of Business could have been found to have supplied & served the said Theatre with Oil & Lamps in 1781 and 1782 considering the then high Price of Oil & the Number of Lamps to be lighted in the said Theatre for two thirds of the Expence charged.’ He goes on to say that the person who provided light ‘this last season’ (presumably 1788–9) charged much higher rates, though the price of oil was ‘considerably lower’.

31. The lawsuit answers come from ‘Joseph Hayling, one of the people called Quakers’, and they are ‘affirmed’, not sworn to. His long-standing association with the theatre is the more unusual in that his wife Hannah ‘came forth into the ministry’ about 1778, according to the notice about her in Testimonies Concerning Deceased Miniters, vol. 4, p. 124Google Scholar, in the Library of Friends' House, Euston Road, London.

32. Patrick is listed as ‘lamp & tin-man’ among creditors from 1782–3 and earlier whom Taylor wanted employed in 1785–6 as a step toward paying them (LC 7/3, no. 187; cover letter, no. 195). Like Hayling, Patrick came out of his experience with Taylor all right. In the London Directory for 1780Google Scholar he is listed as ‘tin-plate worker, 94 Newgate street’; by 1790 he had become ‘pin maker to her Majesty, 27, Holborn & 43 Cornhill’ (Wakefield's Directory).

33. The ‘Memorandum… 1784’, Bedford Opera Papers 2.A.29, may refer either to 1783–4 or 1784–5.

34. ‘Veritas’, Opera House: A Review of this Theatre (London: for the author, [1818?]), p. 52.Google Scholar

35. Research for this article was carried out under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.