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Morecambe Church Lads Parade at Drill (1901)

Larking about during Church Lads' Brigade drill and parade in Morecambe.

Non-Fiction 1901 5 mins Silent

Overview

Moving pictures were already a popular entertainment in Morecambe by 1901, and this film was apparently a hit when shown alongside other local films, including Mitchell and Kenyon's Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front, at the Lancashire resort's Winter Gardens. "Needless to say these pictures are followed with intense interest," said a Morecambe Visitor reporter who was in the audience.

Like several other films in the Mitchell & Kenyon collection, this film was shot not by Mitchell & Kenyon themselves but by Thomas-Edison Pictures, the company run by flamboyant showman and regular M&K collaborator AD Thomas. The Church Lads' Brigade was formed in 1891, inspired by the Boys' Brigade (formed eight years earlier). Similar youth organisations, typically with a quasi-military ethos, were on the increase during the Edwardian period, which also saw the rise of the Girls' Brigade and the Scouts movements.