Arthur J. Jefferson(1860-1949)

Arthur ,who was known as A J, and would later become known as Stan Laurel's father, arrived in Bishop, Auckland, in 1889 with running a tent theatre. In Bishop, he revived the Eden Theatre and developed a chain of theatres while writing his own plays and touring with his own company. He did well enough to be able to move from rented rooms in High Tenters St to a double fronted house in Waldron St where his wife had a son, Arthur Stanley Jefferson. He would later come to be known world-wide as Stan Laurel. In July 1896, A J left Bishop and moved his family to North Shields to concentrate on his Northern theatres and converted the attic in the family home into a mini theatre for his son and his friends. During a mock fight,a paraffin lamp used for footlights was knocked over, causing a fire which A J managed to put out, That was the first and only production of the Stanley Jefferson Amateur Dramatic Society. In August 1901, A J took over the Glasgow Metropole Theatre and took his family North, but Stan was sent to King James 1 Grammar School in Bishop Auckland as a boarder. Stan recalled that a teacher named Bates, after the kids had gone to bed, would take him to his private quarters where some other masters were relaxing and have Stan entertain them, so earning numerous privileges and a blind eye to his lack of educational progress. This caused his father to have him moved to Gainford Academy near Darlington with no improvement, so at 13 it was back to Glasgow to study theatre management under his father. Stan made his professional debut aged 16 and before he was 20 had signed up with Fred Karno's company of comedians. Soon, he was in America as Charlie Chaplin's understudy. A J meanwhile had in 1923 become the manager of the Eden Theatre, having been asked by the owners to take it over after all previous managers had failed to make it work. A J, now remarried after the death of Stan's mother, claimed to be 60 but local opticians soon worked out that he was 67. Sadly, not enough people attended the Eden and it eventually closed in February 1925 with a debacle involving Mrs Patrick Campbell. 30 years earlier ,she had been the greatest West End actress of her day making her name in Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's play The Second Mrs Tanqueray. She was the first Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.