“We were seven in a room which just held seven small toilet tables on a shelf running round the wall, and a narrow walking space from the door to the window in between.  This dressing-room was two floors below the level of the street, and the one window opened on a passage covered with thick glass, so that there was no direct air channel.  Next door was a man’s urinal used by about forty men—­actors, stage hands, and scene shifters.  A pipe from this place came through the dressing-room; the smell sometimes, even in the winter, was overpowering; and we ourselves bought Sanitas and kept sprinkling it on the floor of the room and the passage.  Added to this was the fact that the stairs from the stage led straight down facing the entrance of this men’s urinal, and not infrequently the door would be open and shut as we came down, and it was altogether very objectionable.”

The report of a young artist who toured for some time with a comedy sketch in the music halls shows equally bad conditions.  This sketch was sent out by a first rate London management, and the halls visited were on the first-class tours.  She told me that in one of the largest towns in England the Music Hall had only one ladies’ lavatory, which was on the stage exactly behind the back-drop.  A horse was necessary for an Indian sketch on the same bill in which the comedy sketch was played, and the recess by the lavatory was found to be the only safe place to stable the horse.  The door of the ladies’ lavatory was therefore nailed up for the week.  Should anyone wish, she could, on explaining to the ushers in the front of the house, receive a pass of admission to the ladies’ cloakroom, but to reach the front of the house meant a walk of four minutes round a complete block, and, even if it had not been winter time, it is almost impossible for any actress, when once dressed for her part, to go into the street without attracting a great deal of notice, and also very likely entirely spoiling her appearance, as theatrical “make-up” is only meant for the dry atmosphere of the theatre.

On this same tour, in a famous south coast resort, this lady had to dress in an underground dressing-room with twelve others, and the only lavatory for women’s use was opposite the stage-door box, where all letters were called for, and the stage hands lounged about the whole evening.  In the most important town on this tour the dressing-room in which she was directed to dress had, for its sole ventilation, the door by which one entered, exactly facing the one general lavatory.  The aperture, high up in the wall, opened into another room where, during this week, fifty cocks and hens, used in an animal turn, were kept.  It would be quite impossible to describe the sickening smell which all this meant.  The only thoroughly clean, sanitary hall which she visited, was in Scotland.