Dan Leno, major Victorian music hall star made around a dozen short reels for The London Mutoscope Company.

In the early part of the 20th century, many locations would feature Mutoscopes, a machines into which you fed a coin, turn a handle and view a short moving image, a drum of single photographs that worked like a simple flick book. The reels lasted for only about 30 seconds. As projected formats gained popularity the Mutoscope machines found their way to seaside amusement arcades and onto piers around the country to be popularly know as What The Butler Saw machines.

Leno was thought to have made around a dozen Mutographs which were thought lost (apart from The Reluctant Cork, a short extract on a smaller format intended for home use) found in a local museum.

Then collector (and Mutoscope owner) John Henty was given a cardboard box containing over 800 cards intended to be viewed on a Mutoscope reel. But the cards did not fit his machine’s format.

Thomas had researched the Mutoscope while writing the one-act play Turning The Handle for the Glimpse collection and was later introduced to John Henty as a Mutoscope owner.

Thomas pointed out that the collection of cards could be copied and animated using a computer and so about 100 cards were taken to make a test.

A makeshift animation stand was constructed on a kitchen table using a small digital camera.

Up to this point it was believed that the cards, which featured a family in a garden, was a home movie from around the 1920s, but on seeing the women’s clothing Philippa placed the images much earlier, close to the turn of the century.

John Henty did some additional research and discovered that the reel was of Dan Leno and his family, one of the legendary lost reels, Breakfast At Dan Leno’s made in 1902, just two years before Leno’s death.

Cue the scanning of the reel in high definition by Thomas and Philippa and a painstaking digital restoration by Thomas.

The restored short film from these Mutoscope cards has featured in an exhibition at the British Library and the British Music Hall Society’s anniversary celebrations.

A small piece of English Victorian theatre, music hall, comedy and infant cinema history is saved.

And finally…

The cards had been given to John by the husband of Dan Leno’s granddaughter. The cards certainly originally owned by Dan Leno’s family, and possible by Dan Leno himself…