May Meetings in the Metropolis — the Interior of Exeter Hall. Click on images to enlarge them.
In our journal of last week, we chronicled out of the most important of these important and intresting gatherings" for benevolent purposes.
Exeter Hall, in the Strand, is, however, the general place of meeting; and herein art held several anniversaries during the month of May. Our engraving represents one of these impressive meetings, and it if impossible to regard to so vast an assemblage gathered for a truly ennobling purpose, without acknowledging the magnitude of such proceedings in the grand scheme of human improvement.
The Great Hall is 90 feet broad, 138 in length, and 48 high, and is lighted hy 18 Large windows. It will hold 3000 persons with comfort, and 4000 crowded. The platform, at the east end, shown in our engraving, will accommodate 500 persons, and is fenced from the rest of the hall by a railing, within which is seated the chairman, surrounded by persons influential in convening the meeting, officers of the Society, &c. On very attractive occasions, the hall as crowded long before the proceedings commence, and ladies are to be seen at the doors early in the morning, waiting till the hour of opening.
From April to the end of May in each year, it it calculated that there are about thirty different societies which hold their formal meetings in Exeter Hall, including, under that term, both the large hall and a smaller one beneath it.
During the present month, there have been held in this noble hall, the Anniversary Meetings of the British and Foreign Bible, the Colonial Church Society, the London City Mission, Prayer Book and Homily Society, Sunday School Union, the Jews’s Society, Religious Tract Society, Church Pastoral Aid Society, Protestant Association, London Missionary Society. Female Servants’ Home, Church of Scotland Mission, Home Missionary Society, Anti-Slavery Society, and Foreign Aid Society.
Related material
- Exterior view of Exeter Hall from the 1843 Illustrated London News
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon at Exeter Hall, London
- Punch attacks Exeter Hall’s role in the Eyre Affair
You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the The Hathi Digital Library Trust and the University of Michigan and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. — George P. Landow
Bibliography
“May Meetings in Exeter Hall.” Illustrated London News. (18 May 1844): 317. Hathi Trust Digital Library version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 24 December 2015.
Last modified 13 June 2021