Agents & agencies

Ambrose Maynard

William MacQueen-Pope devotes some pages to this early agent in his book 'The Melody Lingers On'.

Ambrose Maynard was a comic singer who saw an opportunity to become a facilitator between the artist and management. He started a register. For the small fee of one shilling he would record details of where artists were performing and when they were available. This he would submit to managers in the hopes of finding work for them.

The artists paid and signed up but the managers were not interested. Maynard had faith and bided his time until one day a desperate manager contacted him and was recommended an unknown singer, a Miss Julia Weston. She was a great success and Maynard's name was made.

In 1858 he took offices at 20 Waterloo Road, then to much bigger ones at 6 York Road as business expanded. He was the first and a very successful agent, until he died in 1889, at the age of sixty-six. Generally he was a good agent, looking after the interests of his clients both artistic and managerial.

Certainly he made mistakes: he gave Jenny Hill a note to take to Loibl at the London Pavilion, which said that Loibl did not have to see her that it was just to get her out of his offices where she had become a nuisance to him. Loibl used her and it was the beginning of her success. It is doubtful if Maynard remained her agent. Loibl let her read the note!

Two of Maynard's clerks, Edward Colley and Fred Gilbert, became successful agents on their own account. 

FARMING: To Maynard belongs the credit or otherwise for inventing the "farming" system. In this scheme an artist is put under a personal contract to Maynard for a given time and paid an amount each week, whether he worked or not. Maynard would then have the artist booked at a higher salary and pocket the difference, which could be quite considerable.

The system may be considered reprehensible if this was what he did all the time but it was not. Also the agent took a risk that his judgement might be wrong. In looking at this arrangement one must accept that it is only really workable for the beginners or second rate artists who may be struggling to find work otherwise. For such people it is of great benefit, it gets them known by the public and the managers.

Maynard went beyond the Farming of individuals by contracting with proprietors of various halls to provide the complete bill each week, for a fixed price. He would then put in a company at a figure which showed him a handsome profit. In this way he saved the proprietors a great deal of trouble and the artists could break away at the end of their contract.

They were worth a lot more than he paid them. Probably afterwards some were recognised and paid the full rate but this system provided them with regular work, the ambition of every 'pro'.

He died leaving £15,000 which MacQueen-Pope says was a large sum in those day particularly bearing in mind that he only charged five per cent of the artists' small salaries of those times. He conveniently forgets about the much larger profits of FARMING.