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Buckleys’ New Minstrel Hall and Aquarial Gardens, Corner of Summer and Chauncy Str., Boston: Buckelys’ Serenaders’s Program.
Boston: H. & F. F. Farwell Printing, [ca. 1860]. Broadside, 30 cm x 11 cm, text in one column below four-line heading. CONDITION: Good, old folds, minor loss to margin in lower right corner. A rare, jam-packed minstrel show playbill with blackface performances by Buckleys Serenaders in their Boston theater, brimming with ‘comic’ descriptions of three acts plus general information. Part I of this program includes melodies such as Darky Felicity and Farm Yard; Part II features variety acts such as the song and dance version of “Sally Come Up”, and a violin solo by F. Buckley; Part III is a three-scene lampoon of the 1858 Swill Milk scandal but entitled “The African Cousin.” Listed is a “Nigger-atis Personae” with characters such as Hannibal Done-Harry, a colored Xquisite Xtraordinaire, and Mary Milkin-Pump, a Swill-Milk Maid. The last scene features the “First appearance of that extraordinary and novel quadruped, the Milk-Pump Cow, though not accustomed to a barn, she might be deemed a wonder to Barn-Um.” Buckleys’ Serenaders was a family minstrel troupe, with father James and sons R. Bishop, G. Swayne and Fred. They toured the U. S. and England, and operated the Boston Minstrel Hall from June 15, 1863 to April 6, 1866. Fred, the composer and orchestra leader, died in Boston in 1864; The Swill Milk scandal took place in N. Y. C. in 1858, when children were fatally sickened by tainted milk from cows fed with distillery mash and colored with Plaster of Paris; the filthy dairies were protected by Tammany Hall politician Michael Tuomey, known as "Butcher Mike”, but outrage helped create perhaps the first food safety law in 1862.
Item #5392
Price: $350.00