ABSTRACT
The 1861 census records as actors, acrobats, dancers and so on about 30 5-9-year-olds and 100 10-14-year-olds in England and Wales, but this is certainly a gross understatement; there was a very high seasonal demand for children in pantomime; perhaps the migratory nature of theatrical companies caused them to slip through the enumeration net. In the 1880s it was reckoned that there were ‘as many as’ 1,000 theatrical children in London alone.4
