Being For The Beneficence of Mr. Fanque
The "Benefit for Mr. Kite" that was the subject of The Beatles song was just one of many benefits that Pablo Fanque held for performers in his circus, others in the profession, and for community organizations. Fanque was a member of the Order of Ancient Shepherds, a fraternal organization affiliated with the Freemasons, which assisted families in times of illness or death with burial costs and other expenses. For example, an 1845 show in Blackburn benefitted the Blackburn Mechanics Institution and the Independent Order of Odd-fellows, offering a bonus to the Widows and Orphans Fund. He held a similar benefit in Bury the following year. While Fanque's biographer, John M. Turner, writing in 2003, could find nothing in the historical record regarding Fanque's circus activities in 1857 and 1858, Fanque was active during those years, holding at least two benefits among other performances. In 1857, in Bradford, he held a benefit for the family of the late Tom Barry, a clown. Brenda Assael, in The Circus and Victorian Society, writes that in March 1857, "Pablo Fanque extended the hand of friendship to Barry's widow and held a benefit in her husband's name at his Allied Circus in Bradford. Using the Era offices to transmit the money he earned from this event, Fanque enclosed 10 pounds worth of 'post office orders...being the profits of the benefit. I should have been better pleased had it been more, but this was the close of a very dull season.'" In 24 October 1858, The Herald of Scotland reported: "IN GLASGOW, 'Pablo Fanque's Cirrque Nationale' offered 'A Masonic Benefit.'"
At a time when Britain had just abolished slavery and while it was still thriving in the United States, Britons embraced Fanque publicly and privately. The minutes of Edinburgh's Celtic Lodge No. 291 read, "28th February 1853. Deputation to Brother Pablo Fanque’s Amphitheatre. few of the brethren met this evening in accordance with the resolution of the committee meeting of 23rd inst and accompanied the Right Worshipful Master to Brother Pablo’s Fanque’s Amphitheatre to patronage Luin on this occasion of his benefit he Celtic brethren met with several Sister Lodges and had much pleasure to attend."
In 1843, when clergy in Burnley were criticized in the Blackburn Mercury for attending performances of Fanque's circus, a reader responded:
| “ | Ministers of religion, of all denominations, in other towns, have attended Mr. Pablo Fanque's circus. Such is character for probity and respectability, that wherever he has been once he can go again; aye and receive the countenance and support of the wise and virtuous of all classes of society. I am sure that the friends of temperance and morality are deeply indebted to him for the perfectly innocent recreation which he has afforded to our population, by which I am sure hundreds have been prevented from spending their money in revelling and drunkenness. | ” |
An 1846 Bolton newspaper story epitomized the public's high regard for Fanque in the communities he visited on account of his beneficence:
| “ | Several of the members of the "Widows and Orphans Fund" presented to Mr. Pablo Fanque a written testimonial, mounted in an elegant gilt frame...Mr. Pablo on entering the room was received with due respect. Mr. Fletcher presented an address...which concluded:...'and when the hoary hand of age should cease to wave over your head, at a good old age, may you sink into the grave regretted, and your name and acts of benevolence be remembered by future generations.' | ” |
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“We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists—believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.”
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