"Voyages to the Moon, Haunted Shops and Human Flies" Or: R.W Paul and the Victorian Film Industry:

Something that has always fascinated me about the Victorian era – and one of the many reasons why it is my favourite period of history – is that during mid nineteenth century we made our first tentative steps into so many areas of technology that we take for granted today. The telephone and the camera, for instance, were huge technological leaps when they first came about, but today, most people have an amalgamation of the two sitting in their pocket.

Forgetting the telephone, the camera is probably the technical breakthrough I thank the Victorians for the most, as it gives prying eyes like mine a wonderful opportunity to actually see Victorian people. We can see what they wore, the houses they lived in, the streets they walked down, and the people they worked with, and we can compare the Victorian world to our own. Queen Victoria was our first monarch to be photographed, which means, unlike predecessors such as Elizabeth I and Henry VIII (who had flattering portraits painted of themselves) we can actually see what she looked like in the flesh.

However, whilst Victorian photography is a joy, and something I could look at for hours, the good old Victorians also developed their photography theories and, towards the end of the century, started making films. These films, of course, were usually quite basic, and looking back now it’s easy to laugh at the hackneyed effects or the simplistic nature of them, but it must be remembered, these were the very first films to be made, and taken in that context, some are actually very impressive, none more so, in my opinion, than ‘The Haunted Curiosity Shop’ by Victorian film-making pioneer Robert W. Paul.

‘The Haunted Curiosity Shop’ was made in 1901 so it’s right on the verge of being Victorian. In the film, the owner of a shop is visited by all manner of ghastly apparitions, such as a floating skull and a ghostly woman separated from her bottom half.

A Still Image From 'The Haunted Curiosity Shop'

Robert Paul began his working life as a scientific instrument maker, working for Elliot Brothers in The Strand, London. Instrument makers were usually mathematical or scientific, and made things such as barometers and microscopes etc. At Elliot Brothers, Robert would learn basic technical skills that would be put into good use in his later life as a developer of filming equipment. He later set up Robert W. Paul Instrument Company in Hatton Garden, London, deciding he was capable enough to go it alone in the industry.

R.W Paul

His first introduction into the industry that would make him famous came when, in 1894 he was asked by two Greek businessmen to build copies of the Edison Kinetoscope. Presumably they wanted a cheaper version of Eadweard Muybridge and Thomas Edison’s original, which was handsome, if cumbersome contraption that used levers and cogs to pull a strip of film containing images – each slightly different to the last – to give the illusion of movement.

Robert initially refused this illegal business, but then discovered that, for some reason – probably by sheer mistake – Edison had not patented his Kinetoscope in Britain, and copying it, therefore, would be perfectly legal.

Muybridge's 'Child Bringing Bouquet to a Woman. Scroll up and down, you can see the movement.

Inspired, Robert went out and purchased one of Edison’s contraptions, and immediately set about dismantling it to see how it worked, before building his own version. This went well, and he managed to build a few, and even sold one to Georges Méliès, the famous French film-maker and former stage magician who pioneered many early forms of special effects in films, and whose most famous film, ‘Le Voyage dans la Lune’, released in 1902, contains that famous and much parodied scene of the man in the moon being hit in the eye with a space rocket.

Robert encountered a problem after he had sold a few Kinetoscopes to customers: the film that the machines used was only to be supplied to people who held a license for the official Edison machines, and therefore anybody who had purchased a machine from Robert could not obtain any films to show in them. This rendered Robert’s machine’s virtually useless – a little bit like buying a DVD player before DVD’s were invented.

Robert decided that the only course of action he could take was to produce his own films that could be watched on his machines, and in order to do that, he needed a camera on which to produce them.

Birt Acres

Birt Acres was a photography expert, and had made some preliminary designs for a moving-picture camera. In 1895, Robert and Birt began working together, and within a month they had produced a camera, and used it to make the film ‘Incident at Clovelly Cottage' – believed to be the first film ever to be made in Britain – which simply depicts Birt’s assistant, Henry Short, outside Birt’s home, Cleverly Cottage, in Barnet, London.

The camera, known as the Paul-Acres camera, was the first camera made in England. It used 35mm film which was compatible with the Kinetoscopes copies that Robert had made, and there was only one, final task left; he needed to make some films for his customers to watch…

At this short interlude, I have included a couple of Robert’s films to give an idea of what they were like. There’s more on Youtube, but I’ve chosen my favourites:

His first few films were relatively simple affairs, such as this, from 1896:


'Hyde Park Bicycling Scene' (1896)
The title is fairly self-explanatory. Anything that depicts every day Victorian life I find absolutely invaluable – this really is the closest thing there is to actually being there.

Robert began to work with the illusionist W.R Paul, and together they produced all manner of special effects in their films, such as these:

'An Extraordinary Cab Accident' (1903). 
I think the special effect is great on this, and I’ve seen it used in plenty of modern films and soap operas. There is another ‘disaster movie’ a bit like this one called ‘The Train Crash’

'The Haunted Curiosity Shop' (1901). 

This is probably my favourite. The still picture I showed earlier really cannot do the film justice. I’d have loved to have watched this in 1901 when it was released. It’s difficult to grasp what the feeling would have been like if you’d never seen anything like this before. I love the menacing music, too.

'Upside Down, or the Human Flies' (1899) 

Another with very clever effects to give the illusion of people walking on the ceiling. You’ve probably seen this effect in modern films too, done in exactly the same way.

It’s incredible to think that the films above are between 108 and 115 years old, and still survive today. Of course, many of them don’t, such as ‘A Soldier’s Courtship’ produced in 1896, which is generally regarded as the first British narrative film ever made – that is, a film that was not factual, such as the Hyde Park bicycling scene above, or a documentary. Robert did make lots of factual films, and films of everyday life and some of his notable works in this vein include his 1896 film of the Epsom Derby, a film of Blackfriars Bridge, one of Brighton Beach, and, in my opinion, his best factual work, the filming of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897:

Back to the story…

Not long after Robert and Birt had manufactured their camera and begun to make films with it, a difference of opinion led to them breaking off their partnership; Birt had decided to patent the camera in his own name; a move that angered Robert, since they had developed it together.

For the rest of their film careers, Robert Paul and Birt Acres were in competition with each other. They both made improvements to their cameras, films and techniques. Robert improved his camera, and also developed ‘The Theatrograph’ – a projector – that he demonstrated at Finsbury Technical College to great acclaim in 1896.

The Theatrograph

The Theatrograph was a great success, becoming the most popular projecting machine in Europe for a short time, and Robert was hired by businessmen all over London, looking to make a profit from his invention. He gave shows at all manner of venues, from theatres to music halls, showing his films. At Olympia in March of 1896 he became the first Englishman in the country to project motion pictures onto a screen for which people paid a fee of admission. Later that year, he was given a two-week booking at the Alhambra in Leicester Square in which to play films to paying audiences. This was such a success, that he remained there for two years.

Designing and building all of his equipment had cost Robert around a thousand pounds, but by the start of 1897, he had made a profit of twelve thousand pounds from his popular ventures.

The following year he began to spend some of these profits, building a film studio in Muswell Hill, North London, to cope with the huge demand for films for his Theatrograph. Muswell Hill was Britain’s first ever film studio. In the year it was built, over eighty short films were produced at the studio. With his colleagues Ernest Moy and Percy Bastie, Robert also started to manufacture supplies for the ever-growing film trade, and built their first camera in 1900. Muswell Hill was at the peak of its powers at the start of the twentieth century, producing its finest special effects and best films between 1900 and 1905.

In 1910, after contributing so much to the industry, Robert had grown tired of films, and closed Muswell Hill, destroying many of the negatives for his films in the process. He returned to his engineering career at the age of forty-one, but remained in it only for a further ten years, leaving in 1920.

Robert Paul died in 1943, aged seventy-four. Despite not having a long career in the film industry – only eleven years – his influence both on the screen and equipment used in the industry were truly great.

Sixty-two of Robert’s films can be purchased on the BFI website here, so you can turn all the lights off in the living room, dress up in a corset or bowler hat and pretend you’re at the Alhambra in 1896.