Page 70 - All About History - Issue 52-17

Magic lantern

An

industry

is born

Meeting the demands of a public
hungry for more
Yorkshireman James Bamforth completely embodied
the surge in commercial value of the magic lantern in
the late 19th century. Originally a photographer, he was A slide projector
certainly a man to spot an opportunity, and used his advert from 1878 in an
ready-made studio in the Yorkshire village of Holmfirth American newspaper
to create and produce photographic lantern slides on an
ever-increasing scale. Using live models, who were quite A Christian morality
often his family members, friends and local villagers, message from the
Bamforth began to specialise in narrative tales that Victorian period
told a story, quite often with a religious or temperance
theme, that were to become the soap operas of their
day, creating demand for more and more episodes.
This would develop into slide sequences to accompany
well-known hymns or poems that had a particular
theme or message.
In 1885 Bamforth produced Christmas In Paradise,
which was based on the ballad Christmas Day In The
Workhouse, and it turned out to be the most popular
magic lantern story of all time. Bamforth certainly
came to know his market well, and made sure that
he responded to demand. By 1890 this was such
that his factory facilities had to expand in order to
accommodate the rise in production. And where he
had led, inevitably others soon followed. Towards the
end of the 19th century there were at least 20 major
slide manufacturers in London alone, and the sheer This popular slide shows
rodents jumping into a
breadth of subject matter and variety of the lantern
sleeping man’s mouth
shows meant that even large companies like Bamforth’s
had to work very hard indeed to meet the demand of
what had truly become a new mass media, accessible An organ grinder
carrying a
to everyone.
lantern on her
back creates a
multimedia show
The Bamforth factory built
to meet the boom in slide
production in 1890

Indian girls arrive at school c. 1875. Lives in other lands
were a popular theme in magic lantern shows

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