David Prince Miller (1809?-1873) was a travelling entertainer and the manager of the Adelphi Theatre.
Miller came to Glasgow with his family in the late 1830s and set up a “penny geggie” on Glasgow Green. He stayed on after the Glasgow Fair to stage many popular entertainments, including Shakespeare’s Richard III, which he would stage up to twenty times in three hours, and The Battle of Waterloo, in which he played the entire French Army. He was briefly jailed for performing without a licence.
In 1842 Miller built and became manager of the Adelphi Theatre, a wooden building on the Green, opposite the Jail. The Adelphi was very popular, but in 1848 the (uninsured) theatre burned down and Miller ran into business difficulties. He went back on the road as a travelling showman, returning to Glasgow only near the end of his life.
Reference: Mitchell Library, 920.04BAI
Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning
Keywords:
Adelphi Theatre, entertainers, fires, Glasgow Green, penny geggies, theatre managers, theatres
You have 1 image in your photo album.
