514 proceedings op section h. 



Saturday, September 1. 

 Dr. J. Ashhurt07i Thomioson, M.D. Brtix., dx., in the Chair. 



The following papers were read : — 



1 .—THEATRE-HYGIENE. 



By Walter E. Roth, B.A., Oxon. 



" Theatre-Hygiene " may he desci-ibed shortly as an investigation 

 into the sanitary and psychical conditions of stage-life generally. 

 It comprises a study of the best structural and decoratiA'e arange- 

 ments to be adopted in the construction and fitting of theatres, 

 music-halls, and kindred establishments, together with a considera- 

 tion of the legislative enactments bearing on the same. The 

 object of such an investigation is the health, comfort, and safety, 

 not oidy of the theatre-going public, but of all the players and 

 other people employed. 



The earliest literature at all worthy of record, and that illus- 

 trative of only a special branch of the subject, comprises the 

 researches of Tripier on the Ventilation, Lighting, and Warming 

 of Theatres, published at Paris in 1859. Since that time several 

 other monographs have appeared by various authors in the several 

 special departments, such as the writings of Geary on Theatre- 

 Law, Folsch and Shaw on Fire Prevention, Fitzgerald on Scenic 

 Illusion, etc. It was not u]itil two years ago, however, that 

 Theatre-Hygiene began to be treated as a separate study in itself, 

 and an attempt made to popularise it by the publication of a series 

 of articles written anonymously in the Stage newspaper. The 

 first wor"k dealing systematically with the subject as a whole was 

 published by Roth in London early in the present year. 



The ignorance of the Sydney public concerning the dangerous 

 state of the theatres they frequent is apparently shared in some 

 cases even by the managers themselves. It was only on the first 

 of this month that Mr. Rignold, of Her Majesty's, wrote to one 

 of the morning papers to vindicate the character of that edifice, 

 the most modern in Australia, which he claimed in effect,' to 

 possess all the reforms which the law either suggested or demanded. 

 According to the Report of the Royal Commission appointed in 

 June, 1886, and Parliamentary Paper, however — the latter drawn up 

 by the Colonial Architect and published as late as last November — 

 this particular theatre would seem to bear the odium of faulty 

 construction equally with that of the other Sydney play-houses. 



