it procured me the same office the ensuing winter, at Drury Lane, where I acquired intrepidity, the crown of all my virtues....  For I think, sir, he that dares stand the shot of the gallery, in lighting, snuffing, and sweeping, the first night of a new play, may bid defiance to the pillory with all its customary compliments....  But an unlucky crab-apple applied to my right eye by a patriot gingerbread baker from the Borough, who would not suffer three dancers from Switzerland because he hated the French, forced me to a precipitate retreat.”

Mr. Richard Jenkins, in his “Memoirs of the Bristol Stage,” published in 1826, relates how one Winstone, a comic actor, who sometimes essayed tragical characters, appeared upon a special occasion as Richard III.  He played his part so energetically, and flourished his sword to such good purpose while demanding “A horse! a horse!” in the fifth act that “the weapon coming in contact with a rope by which one of the hoops of tallow candles was suspended, the blazing circle (not the golden one he had looked for) fell round his neck and lodged there, greatly to his own discomfiture and to the amusement of the audience.”  The amazed Catesby of the evening, instead of helping his sovereign to a steed, is said to have been sufficiently occupied with extricating him from his embarrassing situation.  Winstone, indeed, seems to have enjoyed some fame on the score of eccentricity.  He took leave of the stage in 1784, being then about eighty years of age.  But he was at this time so afflicted with deafness that it was impossible for him to “catch the word” from the prompter at the side of the stage.  To assist him, therefore, in the delivery of his farewell address, one of the performers, provided with a copy of the speech, was stationed behind the speaker and instructed to keep moving forward and backward as he did, like his shadow.  The effect must certainly have been whimsical.  Winstone had been a pupil of Quin’s, and had played Downright to Garrick’s Kitely in “Every Man in his Humour,” at Drury Lane, in 1751.  He was a constant attendant at the Exchange Coffee House, the established resort of the Bristol merchants.  “He had the good fortune at one time to win a considerable prize in the lottery, and often looked in at the insurance offices, where he sometimes received premiums as an underwriter of ships and cargoes.”  In consequence, he obtained much patronage, and always inserted at the head of the playbills of his benefit, “By desire of several eminent merchants.”

Garrick, in 1765, after his return from Italy (according to Jackson’s “History of the Scottish Stage"), introduced various improvements in the theatre, and amongst them, the employment of a row of foot-lights in lieu of the old circular chandeliers over head.  The labours of the candle-snuffers in front of the curtain were probably brought to a conclusion soon afterwards, when oil-lamps took the place of candles.  The snuffer then found his occupation gone.  Probably the trimming of the lamps became his next duty; and then, as time went on, he developed into a “gasman,” that most indispensable attendant of the modern theatre.