Work and Wages (poster)

This melodrama by William Bourne, subtitled The Great Strike, was first performed in Hanley, Staffordshire, in 1890. It was subsequently seen at the Pavilion, Whitechapel. Hanley was one of the pottery five towns, and the play was one of many nineteenth century melodramas dealing with questions of labour, management, and factory conditions. A set that showed action in several rooms simultaneously was common by 1890.