SOURCE: Barrett, Daniel. “It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1865) and Prison Conditions in Nineteenth-Century England.” Theatre Research International 18, no. 1 (1993): 4-15.

In the following essay, Barrett describes the historical sources for Charles Reade's graphic theatricalization of corporal punishments used on British prisoners. Barrett recounts the audience reaction to the first onstage depiction of the grisly conditions of prisoners, noting that the play (an adaptation of Reade's novel) helped pave the way for the presentation of serious social issues in Victorian drama.

The première of It Is Never Too Late to Mend at the Princess's Theatre on 4 October 1865 marked the appropriately tumultuous return of Charles Reade to the London stage after an absence of nine years. That night, one of the most memorable disturbances in the nineteenth-century theatre occurred when the drama critics in attendance, led by Frederick Guest Tomlins of the Morning Advertiser, demanded that the play...