Showman and Lecturer
From 1842 Barnet Burns and his wife Rosina continued their extensive lecture series. In 1842 alone, appearances by Barnet and Rosina Burns are recorded at the Mechanics' Institution in Hanley, the Burslem and Tunstall Literary and Scientific Institution, Kidderminster Athenæum, Lecture Hall, Wardwick, Derby, the National School at Beeston, the Lincoln Mechanics' Institution and at Dublin.
In late 1844 Barnet Burns appeared in London where he was engaged at the Royal Adelaide Gallery. One of New Zealand's early colonists, Jerningham Wakefield was unimpressed by one of Burns' lectures describing how the lecturer dressed with sandals and strings of beads on his legs and wrists, a leopard-skin petticoat, a necklace of pig's tusks, and a crown of blue feathers a foot long, - sings NZ ditties to a tune!, and talks gibberish, which he translates into romantic poetry. In December 1845 Barnet Burns lodged a complaint to the Police Magistrate at Worship-Street, London against Henry Sproules Edwards, who had disrupted one of Burns' lectures by publicly denouncing him as a fraud.
By 1847 Barnet Burns had a manager, Lionel Violet Gyngell who announced appearances by Barnet and Rosina Burns during a tour that included Hawkstone Hall, Shrewsbury, Welshpool, Oswestry and Ellesmere.
Editions of Burns' booklet continued to be published where he lectured on his travels through Britain. The 1848 Kendal edition includes a stylised picture of Barnet Burns carrying the head of a tattooed Māori chief. On their tour Pahe-a-Range and Madame Pahe-a-Range appeared at the Oldham Town Hall, the Beverley Mechanics' Hall, the parish school-house at Burton Agnes before Robert Isaac Wilberforce, York Mechanics' Institute, the parish at Gringley-on-the-Hill, the schoolroom at Lea near Gainsborough before Charles Henry John Anderson and in May 1849 he returned to the Mechanics' Institution at Lincoln. Barnet Burns was dressed in a buff skin dress, which was to represent his skin, various ornaments round his neck of bones, &c., a belt round him composed of human skin and the sceptre ... which had a head on it, the eyes of which were supposed to be the eyes of their deities. He encouraged his audience to consider New Zealand for immigration saying there was no clime better calculated to suit the Englishman and through the efforts of the missionaries New Zealand had become civilized.
In about 1850, Burns gave his lectures in Manchester and one of the people in the audience was the wife of William Leonard Williams who was to be sent like his father as a missionary to New Zealand. In 1853 W. L. Williams presented Burns' booklet and a picture of Burns to his son, Hori Waiti, in front of a crowd at Tokomaru Bay. Williams had already checked the veracity of the booklet and picture, but he asked publicly if Burns was recognised and it was confirmed and Hori Waiti learnt that Burns was his father. This picture of Barnet Burns is still in the family.
A tour through Cornwall in early 1853 included lectures at the Assembly Room in Truro, the Town Hall in Redruth and Union Hall in Penzance. By this time Barnet Burns' occupation was given as Lecturer and that of Rosina Burns was given as Professor of Music, her musical glasses producing a harmony which was indisputably the most exquisite.
In November 1856 Barnet Burns and his wife went to Leicester to deliver a course of lectures on New Zealand. Three lectures were advertised, but at the close of the second Burns became ill and was confined to his bed for nearly eight weeks. Rosina Burns sold every available article she possessed but soon they were destitute and an appeal was made for help. By January 1857 Barnet Burns had recovered sufficiently to be able to lecture accompanied, as usual, by Rosina on the musical glasses. Further funds were raised from an edition of Burns' booklet published at Leicester.
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