England's Unusual Boardwalk Fun
Down in Portsmouth, vintage arcade games are even weirder than Coney Island's
The Penny Arcade at the Portsmouth boat yard.
Apologies in the delay in writing my regular London from London. To be honest, since coming home from Morocco since Christmas, I have been insanely busy, trying to start a foundation for Iraq, traveling to Iraq in mid-February and writing about my travels. You can read one particular article, my most recent for AirMail about skiing in Iraq.
But nothing keeps me from a fun side adventure to little English towns, such as Portsmouth, where the British Navy keeps two-thirds of the Royal Navy's surface ships, including the flagship aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince Of Wales, the HMS Victor and the WWII submarine, HMS Alliance. Friends had just seen Das Boot, the WWII submarine movie and acquired a slight obsession with underwater warfare. But in our tour of the town, we came across a attraction we never expected: the English Penny Arcade.
The American Execution diorama was produced by Canova Novelty Co. in 1920. Canova Novelty Co. released three different machines starting in 1910, including Limehouse Nights, Raid on an Opium Den, and Necromancer.
Vintage penny arcades in England are something to behold. When I say “penny arcade,” I am sure it evokes boardwalks with skeeball, pinball and fortune teller machines, like the famous Zoltar. In fact, the first recorded individual known as to produce coin-operated machines was a Leeds mechanic named John Dennison. In May 1875, Dennison displayed his first working models, demonstrations of a drilling machine and a hand lathe, at the Yorkshire Exhibition. He soon began building both mechanical fortune teller machines and working model dioramas for installation at exhibitions, fairs, and bazaars.
In the 1920s English toymaker Charles Ahrens decided that, since executions were once a public display of fun, then would make a delightful penny arcade game. A machine of this type can fetch at least $18,000 on Ebay.
Dennison could build and animate the coin machines, but he was not much of an entrepreneur. He never mass produced his working models or sold them to manufacturers — every piece was custom built and operated by him. Dennison's three daughters, Evelyn, Florence and Alice continued his coin operated automata in Blackpool, England’s biggest seaside resort, but in 1945, Dennison’s family sold the machines to Blackpool tower. They remained on display until the late 1960s.
Another English inventor named Percival Everitt would ultimately bring con-operated devices fully into the mainstream. By 1874, the Treaty of Bern established the General Postal Union, and the picture postcard soon became a staple as a convenient way to send a message home from abroad or to keep as a memento. In 1883, Everitt and a partner, John Sandeman, introduced a cast-iron machine in London that vended a postcard for a penny. They ultimately established the Post Card and Stamped Envelope Supply Company, which placed over one hundred post card vending machines around London.
An early 1930s Chester Pollard penny arcade football game in the Portsmouth shipyard.
Soon, Everitt was using the vending machines for other businesses: the Sweetmeat Automatic Delivery Company (SADC); the Weighing Machine Company; and the grip, punch, and lung testers that bar patrons could use to settle arguments about who was stronger. By the first decade of the twentieth century, however, the basic parameters of the arcade business revolved around novel experiences rather than games, however, acting as a sort of mechanical counterpart to the Vaudeville show.
Coin-operated scales and mechanical fortune tellers would typically be placed in front of the arcade to attract business along with the latest phonograph recordings and Mutoscope shows. Inside would be additional phonographs and Mutoscopes, card dispensers featuring celebrity pictures, jokes and horoscopes, machines that vended small items such as scented handkerchiefs and perfume and a player piano for background music.
An early crane machine at the pier in Portsmounth. Starting from a base of 1,500 machines around London, the Sweetmeat Automatic Delivery Company (SADC) supplied its machines with commodities such as quinine, chocolate, chewing gum, cigarettes, matches, and perfume. By 1901, the company had placed at least one machine in nearly all of Britain’s more than 7,000 railway stations, as well as public houses, hotels and shops.
While cranes, gun games, and card vendors had increasing popularity in the mid 1920s, the venues for these games remained relatively limited. Arcades were still associated primarily with peep shows and weird novelties. A new paradigm in arcade entertainment was rovided by the Chester-Pollard Amusement Company. In 1926, a British manufacturer named Freddy Bolland called on Chester-Pollard in New York to see if the brothers wanted to make a manikin football game for which he owned the patents. In this game, housed in a large wooden cabinet, two players would control the sides of a football match by pressing a lever to cause all the players to kick their legs at once. For a nickel, the players would get a single ball and would have to time their kicks to score a goal on their opponent.
In 1929, a similiar horse racing game called Play the Derby debuted, in which two players turned cranks to drive horses around a track, and became yet another hit. Chester-Pollard games were soon appearing in thousands of hotels, clubs, and railroad depots. With their competitive sports games doing so well, the Chester Brothers expanded into sports tables that did not incorporate coin control, such as baseball, table tennis, hockey, football and bagatelle tables. A new arcade concept based around table games and exercise machines with and without coin control debuted: the Sportland.
Many novelties, attractions, and games graced the Sportland over the course of 140 years, but only one has endured from the industry’s earliest days to the present day: the game of pinball. While the modern form of this classic game bears no resemblance to the earliest ones, the idea of guiding a ball around a playfield full of obstacles to score points has resonated with the arcade-going public like nothing else introduced by penny arcade inventors and moguls,
Sadly, the arcade at Portsmouth did not have one of those, but have a look at all the other strange and wonderful games that one can find in the port towns of England or, for the serious gamers, the Bones Lane Antiques Centre in Battlesbridge, South Essex. That could be the next stop for the Letter from London.
A buddha fortune teller provides patrons with a printed fortune for a mere 20p in Portsmouth, Fortune tellers were often placed in front of venues to entice people into coming in to play or watch other arcade machines.
The Burglar, a favourite of collectors, was built around 1920. Put in 20p and the victim leaps out of bed and wiggles his enormous feet. The burglar opens the safe to reveal wads of cash, the wardrobe opens to reveal a huge pair of handcuffs, and finally a policeman appears at the door.
This English penny arcade working model features a ghost reading scary stories titled "Ghost Tales" in his study. Manufactured by Bollands Amusement Machine Supply Co. around 1950.
Another execution game, this one in the form of a hanging. After feeding a coin into the machine, the interior lights up and the doors open. Three figures assemble around the condemned man. A few tolls of the bell and the bottom drops out beneath the convict, letting him drop to his supposed death. Depending on the venue, this basic game was called different names.
Charles Ahrens, Ahrens Ltd. on Torrens St. in Islington, London, was a major manufacturer of a range of solidly built, predominantly floor-standing arcade games. Iin addition to the Jolly Fireman Racer in 1927 Ahrens released 15 different machines including Steer a Boat, Belfry, Grand Marathon Cycle Race, Mysterious Hand and Great Occultos.
A demonstration of the Jolly Fireman racer in Portsmouth, UK.
The inside of the Haunted Churchyard game — produced by Bollands Amusement Machine Supply in 1952 — features a small graveyard with church steeple in the background. Inserting a coin brings moves the caskets and headstones along with other scary actions.
A collection of fortune tellers and other vaudeville games in the penny arcade at Portsmouth Harbour.
The Miser’s Dream by John Dennison (circa 1930) features a man who has nightmares, which include a ghost coming in the door and a devil appearing over his bed because of his pecunious ways .Entirely mechanical, the coin fell on a lever which released the clockwork motor (it had to be rewound often when the arcade was busy).
Once nearly every London and seaside penny arcade had a Night Watchman — automata made by the Bolland company around 1935. This type of amusement machine became very popular in the second word war when sweets and small gifts were hard to obtain, in fact some prize giving machines were converted into working models for this reason. One recently sold at auction for £4,800.