Threat or Nuisance? Foreign Street Entertainers in the Swedish Press, 1800–1880

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the changing public opinion towards street entertainers, as expressed in nineteenth-century Swedish press, identifying a shift towards a discourse of securitization 1850. Until then, entertainers were seldom mentioned and occasionally seen as a positive element of urban social life; their services were often appreciated, and this in a country which otherwise had developed strong legal institutions for controlling and rejecting itinerant and marginalized individuals. From 1850, entertainers became more present in the press, the tone being almost completely negative, portraying them as threats to public morals and economy. Criticism focused on three issues. Firstly, entertainers were claimed to be beggars in disguise, parasites on the social body. Secondly, they made noise, making everyday life a nuisance to the urban population. Lastly, their use of children was used to emphasize their inhumane greed. Behind the shift was an increase in the numbers of entertainers following processes of proletarization in Europe, but also the growth of a middle-class striving to take control of city spaces. Between the lines, it becomes clear that entertainers still were popular among working classes. The discourse of securitization seems to have lacked the necessary audience, and the outcries against entertainers mostly without effect.

This chapter discusses attitudes in the Swedish press 1800–1880 towards foreign market and street entertainers in Sweden. I argue that there was a major shift in these attitudes around 1850, when street entertainers generally came to be seen as a threat to society. While hospitality per se—providing actual entertainers with food and shelter—had never been an issue in the press, newspapers in fact tolerated and, to some extent, even appreciated entertainers during the first half of the century. By mid-century, a discourse suddenly arose that resembled contemporary efforts to securitize migration issues, focusing on the need to reject foreign entertainers.¹ Germans came to be regarded in a particularly negative way, an attitude grounded in a traditional Swedish conception of Germans as greedy and willing to do anything for money. I show that entertainers came under attack mainly through three rhetorical themes: as idlers and beggars disguised as musicians; as acoustic polluters; and as people who maltreated innocent children. Taken together, these behaviors corrupted the morals of honorable albeit somewhat easily misled Swedes. The rhetoric was harsh, and it reminds us of some of the arguments used in recent debates on migrants in Sweden in the twenty-first century.

The chapter is based on an inventory of the recently digitized Swedish daily press. Until a few years ago, this material was inaccessible and difficult to work with, but is now especially fruitful for mapping out the contours of various research questions, both in terms of the frequency of phenomena, such as foreign entertainers in Sweden, and of attitudes towards them. However, during the period of investigation, the press consisted mostly if not completely of the opinions of the educated middle-class and bourgeoisie. Hence, I argue that the rhetoric was inefficient as it failed to mobilize any substantial audience to support the critics. The entertainers were in fact popular among the less well-off members of the population, many of whom considered the entertainers as purveyors of a cheap and appreciated product. The criticism about sound pollution was a particularly weak link in the rhetorical chain. To some extent, this type of criticism undermined the very security discourse it was part of, and which focused on entertainers as a societal threat. The emphasis on the entertainers’ production of noise entailed the rhetorical construction of an inconvenience for the urban privileged middle-class, rather than of an acute moral and economic threat. This was not a viable method for mobilizing any broader support to reject entertainers. I conclude the chapter with an extreme example of the possible consequences that such attitudes could have for individual entertainers, namely the murder of art-rider Louis Bono; by looking at this example, I link the shift in attitudes around mid-century to contemporary theories of securitization as well as to recent Swedish attempts to construct an image of Romani beggars as a threat to society.

The First Half of the 1800s: Entertainers as a Non-Issue

Foreign entertainers have traveled around the Baltic Sea area since at least the seventeenth century, and probably long before that. During the early eighteenth century, they were comprised mainly of Italians who carried peepshow-boxes, showing small animals, and who performed dances and acrobatics, often called Savoyards, regardless of whether the performers actually came from the Savoy. An ordinance from 1741 prohibited foreign entertainers and other itinerant groups, especially singling out Savoyards.² The Italians and others who came to Sweden were usually migrants intending to return to their native countries. They came from poor areas but were not necessarily driven by poverty; they operated within marginal economic systems that were based on itinerant trades and transhumance.³ Common all over Europe, their number grew during the late eighteenth century, with some of them arriving in Sweden. While this migration has been studied in other regions of Europe, there is no research for the case of Sweden.⁴

Frank Bovenkerk and Loes Ruland have studied labor migration in the context of some Italian lines of trade, such as mosaic makers and chimney sweepers who entered the Netherlands during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They have shown that these professions met a demand in the receiving country, which meant that the migrants could preserve a distinctiveness while being received within the prevalent social and economic order.⁵ At least according to national and local authorities and elites, the entertainers discussed in this chapter did not satisfy any societal demand. This placed them more in the margins of society. They were not only foreigners conceived of as not fulfilling any actual need in society, but they were also itinerant within a society that for centuries had demonstrated a deep mistrust towards spatially mobile and unsettled people. This may lead the historian to conclude that the authorities acted with a great deal of suspicion towards entertainers, especially since legislation as well as local ordinances made possible their immediate rejection.⁶ However, as will be shown, the situation on the ground was not that simple.

The entertainers arriving in Sweden via Denmark or from across the Baltic Sea in the early nineteenth century were not a homogenous group. They can, roughly speaking, be divided into two groups, each with a different status and each of which was depicted in the press in different ways. On the one hand, there were the entertainers who represented a more professionalized and specialized entertainment, and who often claimed to better satisfy the entertainment demands of the urban population through various means, such as exhibitions of wax cabinets, menageries, mechanics, and advanced gymnastics. Most such entertainers were Italian, though itinerant mechanics were frequently German, and artistic riders and acrobats came from several European countries. None—or almost none—of these figures was Swedish. These entertainers not only advertised in the press, but usually also performed in spaces related to the urban bourgeois world: at the town hall, in higher-end restaurants, or in private homes of the urban middle-class. They were not regarded as particularly problematic.

On the other hand, there were the entertainers who worked the streets, market squares and roads: men with peepshow-boxes and organ grinders, walking from town to town. Exhibitors of cameræ obscuræ and laternæ magicæ had walked the town streets since at least the early eighteenth century, while the organ grinders came roughly a century later. These individuals are strikingly elusive in the historical sources. A painting by Alexander Lauréus from 1809 shows an exhibitor of a peepshow in the street Storkyrkobrinken in Stockholm.⁷ A comic description of Stockholm from 1823 described both men with peepshows and organ grinders as common features at the recreational island of Djurgården, where the more well-off from the population promenaded during the weekends.⁸ This group did not advertise and remained more or less invisible in the press during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Everything points to an increase in the number of itinerant entertainers from the 1820s and onwards, a development which intensified during the 1840s. We see this in the increasing number of advertisements for entertainers, as well as in the growing number of comments in the press mentioning the large number of itinerant entertainers of both high and low status. This phenomenon was not limited to the larger towns. While there is no research looking specifically at the smaller Swedish towns, Monica Miscali has shown that Italian entertainers visited even the smallest Norwegian towns and villages.⁹ The fact that such figures received increased attention in the small-town press indicates—as will be shown below—that the same is true for Sweden as well. By the mid-nineteenth century, many newcomers to Sweden were Germans (or, in many cases, conceived by local audiences to be Germans regardless of origin). During the 1840s, the press also started to mention street and market entertainment more frequently, using words such as “foreign artists” to describe the performers, making it hard to identify the geographic origins of entertainers. While explicit references to Italians in the press faded somewhat, there is no reason to believe that Italians stopped coming to Sweden to make money by entertaining.

From the 1840s, German itinerant musicians toured the Baltic areas, as well as many other parts of the world. For instance, at this time, many musicians from Pfalz went all over the world to make a living as street musicians, as shown by Samantha Owens in an article on German street musicians in New Zealand.¹⁰ Their compatriots who traveled to Sweden were often said to have come from Hannover, rather than Pfalz, if they were not simply described as coming from “Germany.” According to Owens, the kingdom of Hannover had a strong reputation when it came to military music, which made many German-speaking musicians claim that they were from Hannover. In Sweden, the same could be said about Austria, which enjoyed an equally good reputation.¹¹

A caveat is needed when it comes to German entertainers in Sweden. Even if authorities saw the passports and other documents of such figures, the press and the public did not. They often had to guess, identifying as “Germans” those who spoke German or who had a name sounding German. However, Swedish is a small language and very few foreign entertainers spoke it. German, on the other hand, was quite functional in Sweden, and many entertainers knew German. We can assume that several entertainers who performed in Sweden spoke German, and thus were taken to be German. One example was the guitarist Giuseppe Zella from Naples, who, when in trouble with the police in 1845 and despite of his name and origin, was described as “a German musician.”¹²

This has some importance because “Germans” were viewed in particularly negative terms after 1850. It is reasonable to assume that apart from ethnic Germans, several other individuals, such as Zella, were also included in this group. We may further assume that some of them were Jews, as the number of itinerant Jewish individuals grew in Sweden during the nineteenth century. In the Swedish press, however, there were few mentions of Jewish entertainers, and the degree of antisemitism was low in this regard, despite being an ever-present force in Swedish society and the Swedish press during the whole of the nineteenth century.

Judging from the press, the degree to which society tolerated and accepted foreign entertainers during the first half of the century is striking. Their itinerant existence stood in direct conflict with two basic principles of the Swedish state since at least the seventeenth century, if not earlier. The first was the principle of settlement: society was based on and depended on households that were fixed to a specific place from which to earn their subsistence. This principle created a deep mistrust towards mobile people within society, as well as an accompanying legal framework to fight and control them. The second was the principle of righteous sustenance: the demand placed on every individual to support oneself through useful and purposeful work. This principle guided Swedish social politics for centuries, leading to hard and sometimes brutal policies against begging and every line of trade that was deemed less useful, especially when performed by able-bodied individuals. It is well-established within Swedish research that authorities and representatives of the press intensified the struggle against both itinerant individuals and perceptions of idleness during the first half of the nineteenth century, and the targets of this struggle were figures such as peddlers, farmers involved in interregional trade and everyone who might be conceived of as lösdrivare, i.e., drifters lacking employment.¹³

In this light, it was not only the press that showed benevolence towards entertainers specifically, but so too did the authorities. The ability to travel in Sweden as an entertainer, required local permits and a passport (until 1862)—and it seems that entertainers did not encounter serious problems in obtaining the proper documentation. This allowed them to wander through the realm without being accused of being drifters or vagrants, i.e., without being subject to arrest and deportation. The authorities seem to have admitted a need for entertainment in society, and they seem also to have accepted that it had to be itinerant, no doubt because of the strikingly small size of Swedish towns, making it impossible to have any settled entertainers. The ordinance of 1741, renewed in 1748, remained valid during the early nineteenth century, formally prohibiting most street entertainment and especially the ones performed by foreigners. But this prohibition existed only on paper, as authorities in general provided the necessary permits to entertainers, including tightrope dancers and other sorts of act that were specifically mentioned in the ordinances. The press published advertisements without any comments, and even provided reviews of some of the more established entertainers.

The simpler entertainers were ignored, but were neither condemned nor criticized. Reports from markets might mention the presence of entertainers without commenting on them in any negative way; other such reports might even express regret at the fact that there were too few of them. For instance, in the autumn 1829, Weckoblad från Gefle lamented that no itinerant entertainers had visited the town for a while, nor was one likely to turn up in the near future.¹⁴ The only criticism against entertainment expressed in the press before the 1840s was a mercantilist one directed at the more established entertainers. Some writers in the press deemed it shameful that Swedes paid foreigners money for a product of such low value as entertainment. An anonymous writer in Calmarbladet 1829 (anonymity was standard in Swedish nineteenth-century newspapers) thus intimated that most entertainers were foreign speculators trying to claim the assets of Swedes.¹⁵

A Foreign Mass of Beggars: The Rhetoric Hardens

However, this general good will towards entertainers—at least the street and market entertainers—would come to an end. In a “Consideration of the life in Stockholm,” printed in Stockholms Dagblad 1844, attitudes towards even the simpler entertainers were still factual and rather unbiased. According to the writer, there had always existed “an artistic department” within the poorer segments of the population—individuals trying to make a living from music, such as organ grinders. “They play a kind of miserere mei,” regarding themselves to be “somewhat indispensable to the comfort of others.” At the least, the musicians themselves claimed to deliver a valuable service, and the writer did not disagree with them.¹⁶

From the 1850s, attitudes changed. The number of complaints increased; the language became harsher. During the early 1850s, many voices of the press started to construct an image of entertainers as a threat towards the order of society. In 1852, at the autumn fair in Växjö, thirteen organ grinders along with several other entertainers were reportedly present. According to the press, they all should have been locked up and thrown out of town, so it could rid itself of this “impertinent, idle, and mostly foreign horde of beggars.”¹⁷ In 1853, Christinehamnsbladet highlighted the danger of entertainers, noting what the paper perceived as large waves of migration. Emigration to America was increasing, whereby an already poor country lost able-bodied workers. And what did Sweden get in return? “To us migrates a large horde of acrobats, tightrope dancers, organ grinders, marktschreiers, Jews and proselytes,” all intending to suck the good out of the nation. When migrants went back home, “they laugh at the stupidity of Swedes, clearly not forgetting to inform their friends at home about it.”¹⁸ The arguments ring a bell for anyone who follows the contemporary debate on migration: the nation is flooded by foreigners who do not have to be here, but who are cunning in their efforts to exploit the naïve residents. The antisemitic Stockholm newspaper Folkets Röst argued in 1853—also in a way that resembles contemporary debates—that while poor Swedes were arrested and prosecuted for begging due to the laws against vagrancy, “a whole pack of Jews and Italians, with their organs and monkeys, could roam the streets of the town and beg,” without the intervention of the authorities.¹⁹

From this point on, the rhetoric was considerably harsh. The fair in Sölvesborg in 1856 was apparently invaded by “a legion of German beggars of both sexes.” The Örebro paper Nerikes Allehanda complained in 1864 that the town was weak on entertainers, and called them “vagrant scum” and “a scorn of the realm.” Köpings Tidning called them foreign idlers and usurers exploiting simple-minded Swedes, and Folkets röst compared them to insects.²⁰ The vocabulary used well-known fears in attempts to mobilize an image of the entertainers as a threat: legion, scum, pack of beggars, idlers, bloodsuckers, scorn of the land, usurers, vagrants. The Gothenburg paper Säsongen in 1879 advised every reader to never give any money to the entertainers—in that way the “foreign grasshoppers” would have to leave the country.²¹

Folkets Röst claimed that entertainers got special treatment. Writers found the authorities to be soft on them: foreigners committed their begging under disguise and got away with it, while ordinary Swedes fell under the well-developed and often harshly applied vagrancy laws. However, entertainers were also considered to pose a sort of moral contagion. In 1873, the Uppsala paper Korrespondenten was shocked to see fully able-bodied individuals not only engaged in playing music, but also demonstrating a “hatred towards useful occupations,” clearly taking to music only to disguise their begging. Their presence was dangerous and provided an education for the young in the vagrant lifestyle.²² Being popular among the lower orders of the population, entertainers not only exercised a bad influence on people, but they also created crowds, which in turn led to theft and unruliness.²³

What may have been the causes behind this new rhetoric? The most immediate answer is growing European poverty and proletarization. Antony Kitts has shown how the number of vagrants, beggars, and itinerant individuals increased rapidly in France around 1850, which accordingly led to hardening attitudes towards these groups. Several scholars have pointed to the growing number of foreign entertainers in London at this time. In 1849, Henry Mayhew started to write the chronicles that eventually led to his famous work on poverty in London, London Labour and the London Poor, in which street entertainers played a special role.²⁴ John E. Zucchi’s study of Italian children working in entertainment in London, Paris, and New York also pinpoints the mid-century as a period of demographic significance, when the number of children increased. Along with other scholars, Zucchi has shown how Italian migration increased during the first half of the nineteenth century due to structural problems facing agriculture in less fertile regions, which was combined with difficult conditions for land ownership and major demographic growth. Tobias Widmaier argues that while German itinerant musicians were not outcast proletarians, their way of supporting themselves was a consequence of the proletarization and of the increased difficulties in supporting a family from agriculture during this same period.²⁵

Swedish towns were small. In fact, in 1850, there were 2.6 million inhabitants in London, while there were only 350,000 in all Swedish towns taken together. Stockholm was the largest city with only 90,000 inhabitants in 1850; the second largest, Gothenburg, had only 26,000. Despite this, developments in Sweden were similar to those of the larger cities. The number of entertainers in Sweden clearly grew, both those who performed in town halls and theater houses and those who performed on the streets. Entertainers also tended to gather en masse at the fairs. The example of Växjö in 1852 and its thirteen organ grinders provides one indication of this development; another comes from the five organ grinders and an animal exhibitor (with two camels) who were present at the 1863 fair in Pajala, 80 kilometers north of the arctic circle. Is this surprising? No, for as one source put it: “All the way up there, has this detrimental life of scoundrels spread its destructive net.”²⁶ Yet another sign of this European poverty was that a number of Swedish organ grinders showed up in the press, usually under headlines where honest people should not appear, i.e., in sections reporting on “court and police matters” (Swe: “Rättegångs- och polissaker”).²⁷ This was certainly an effect of the ongoing proletarization of the agricultural sector, in Sweden as well as on the continent, which created large numbers of unpropertied people seeking to escape the harsh conditions of their local communities.²⁸

However, the figures who stand out most prominently in the press material are the Germans. The arrival of a great many Germans seems to have amplified the negative rhetoric towards itinerant entertainers. Research looking at London has shown how a deeply rooted racism towards Italians played an important role in driving the negative reactions towards organ grinders and other entertainers. The Italians were described as hot-headed, impulsive, and prone to violence and coarseness. For instance, Punch campaigned against Italian street entertainers in strongly racist terms for more than a decade until a law was approved in 1864 that regulated their right to the streets.²⁹ In Sweden, these stereotypical characterizations of Italians were expressed in ethnographic descriptions and in fictional texts, such as the many serial novels published in newspapers. However, they were never activated regarding the actual Italian entertainers, neither during the early nineteenth century nor later when entertainers were heavily criticized. Few made use of a racist or xenophobe image of the Italian as some radically different and dangerous “other.” Instead, many aimed at the Germans.

When, during the 1840s, the press started mentioning the appearance of German musicians, it did so in mostly uncritical terms. Gefleborgs Läns Tidning noticed in 1844 that a group of German male musicians passed through town, amused children and the less educated during the days, and entertained the urban population in the evenings. They were accompanied by three female harpists, described as three German Graces, a reference to one of the most popular motifs in contemporary art, the Three Graces (by Canova, Thorvaldsen, etc.).³⁰ This unbiased—or even positive tone—turned into a negative one after 1850: now, no graces were to be seen, only legions of German beggars of both sexes. Nya Wermlands-tidningen reported in 1857 that the fair in Karlstad had been peaceful despite the vagrant Germans. Fäderneslandet stated in 1862 that only those musicians who were regarded as the worst of all in “das große Vaterland” came to Sweden, where they acted with “unlimited impertinence” and as if they were the greatest artists.³¹

This contempt for Germans was firmly anchored in Swedish tradition. The writer in Fäderneslandet started with the claim that Germans were always themselves, no matter where you found them. How? This was explained in several other articles. It was not primarily their impertinence, their arrogance, or their lack of musical skills—many Germans in Sweden were obviously quite good musicians. No, the genuinely German characteristic was their will and their ability to make money out of whatever: “etwas zu verdienen” was the German’s motto. “What does the German not do for money?”, a writer asked in Upsala in 1871, in answer to the question of why German itinerant musicians played La Marseillaise during the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1871). The Ystad paper Skånska Telegrafen noticed the same behavior, adding: “But what does the German not do for money, as the proverb says?” The expression was indeed an old Swedish proverb, used long before the entertainers were considered a problem.³² In keeping with this, the German entertainers were also accused of illegal or immoral trade, such as selling cheap rubbish on the side to the less astute members of the population.³³

While this stereotype remained a good springboard for an explicit hatred towards Germans, the hostility directed their way was probably further underpinned by other factors. The first Schleswig war of 1848–1849 engendered a general hostility towards Germany during this epoch of Scandinavianism, not least since there was also a company of Swedish volunteers fighting on the Danish side. The sympathies for the Danes had not lessened by the second Schleswig war of 1864, and the Swedish media mostly signed up for the French during the Franco-Prussian war. In its mention of the presence of German musicians, a report from 1864 coming from the market in Malmköping suggested that German musicians were less welcome in Sweden because “their business in Denmark had created a hatred towards Germans in the heart of every honest Swede.”³⁴ These aggressions made the German not only an impertinent bloodsucker, but also a potential “enemy among us.” While a certain amount of antisemitism probably enhanced the animosity—some of the Germans were actually Jews—this was not something that was revealed in the press. One example of antisemitism was mentioned above, and other papers might describe itinerant fair traders, if not entertainers, as “German peddle-Jews” (Swe: “tyska schacker-judar”). The Swedish contempt of Germans did indeed resemble classic stereotypes of the Jews, but it nevertheless was really directed towards the Germans.

Noise—A Middle-Class Nuisance

The European proletarization encouraged people in countless barren areas to take to the roads to find provision, and some of these roads led to Sweden. As their numbers grew, another aspect of the migrants’ activities came to the fore: noise. While making noise in the streets was a crime in Sweden, punishable by a fine since the seventeenth century, this legislation did not cover performing music in public. The musicians’ and other entertainers’ musical performances—most entertainers used music as either a marketing tool or as part of their exhibitions—could not be defined as noise, albeit many seemed to have grown tired of it by the 1850s. The organ grinders in particular were heavily criticized. They were either performers in themselves, walking the streets, or part of larger exhibitions, such as panoramas or menageries. Since the barrel organ required no musical skills whatsoever, it was an easy instrument for any entertainer to use.

When the volume of entertainers of all kinds grew, the volume of music in towns increased as well. Already in 1842, a letter to Stockholms Dagblad asked if there really was no way of getting rid of the organ grinders: “Of course one has to suffer a lot for one’s sins, but to be stalked for a lifetime by these abysmal representatives of music is somewhat too much.”³⁵ Another reader responded to the letter, stating that the organ grinders were appreciated by the lower orders of the town population, while at the time noting that there were worse sources of noise, such as the outcries twenty-four/seven by the fire guards.³⁶ By the 1850s, no one defended the barrel organs. They were said to make a constant noise well into the late evening, especially on market days. This was true also of small rural towns, such as Kristinehamn, Vänersborg, and Åmål.³⁷ In Åmål, a town with 1300 inhabitants, the local newspaper Åmåls Weckoblad complained in 1857 about the large number of foreign organ grinders roaming the streets, seemingly without the law being able to act against them. Although they were forbidden in other countries, in Sweden, they could freely produce their horrible music, and “make the eardrums of people getting in their way explode.”³⁸ With the barrel organs came a host of other musical activities, such as drums and trumpets serving as highlights for exhibitions, fiddlers, and German brass bands “performing the most ear-tearing” music. One writer reported on four musicians with oboes and a bagpipe, producing “the German Katzenjammer, capable of torturing people to death.”³⁹

Even though the letter to Stockholms Dagblad of 1842 had a comic tone, it ended on a serious note, claiming that the musicians had breached the so-called “hemfrid” or “house-peace,” that is, the right that every Swede was supposed to enjoy of not having strangers intrude in one’s own home.⁴⁰ This became an issue during the 1850s and 1860s when demands were made on the authorities to take action against entertainers. A discussion in a town council meeting of Kalmar in 1863, printed in the local press, illustrates this. Complaints about “foreigners exhibiting panoramas, performing with barrel organs, animal exhibitions and so forth” had increased to the extent that there was a strong general will to prohibit them locally. However, this was not an easy task. While it was unproblematic to issue a prohibition against performing in the streets and at fairs and squares (and just such a prohibition was issued in 1864), Kalmar, like most Swedish towns, was constructed in such a way that the houses’ facades looked directly towards the street, and they had courtyards at the rear. These yards were beyond the limits of the town’s jurisdiction, remaining under the control of the property owners. The entertainers entered the yards, playing music—or causing noise—and if the property owner was absent, there was nothing that could be done. These intrusions, or, as one writer stated it, “musical murder attempts,” generated much frustration in the press.⁴¹

As shown by John M. Picker for London, it is too easy to assume that an increased number of street entertainers explains the growing number of complaints. Although it is hard to prove for the case of Sweden, it is reasonable to believe that the growing number of complaints was a consequence of another process of social change taking place. Alongside proletarization, the urban middle-class was growing, and within it were many professionals who lacked workplaces or offices, such as writers, artists, civil servants, scientists, jurists, and, not least, journalists. The Swedish middle-class had, since the creation of an urbane culture at the end of the eighteenth century, cultivated the ideals of decency and respectability as markers of their class and distinction in relation to the lesser population. Belonging to urbane culture was defined by a refined lifestyle, combined with the avoidance of bodily labor. This middle-class life was disrupted by the noises of the organ grinders and the Katzenjammer of street entertainers.⁴² Picker refers to Jacques Attali’s early study on the relation between power and sound, where the middle-class struggle against noise may be seen as an establishment of power over town spaces and over the behaviors of the lower classes.⁴³

An example in the Stockholm journal Figaro from 1880 may illustrate this point. The writer complained that it was almost impossible to promenade on Djurgården island because of all the noise made by organ grinders, panorama exhibitors, etc. However, promenading at Djurgården had been one of the most important activities for Stockholm’s urbane culture since the late eighteenth century; it was the foremost place for displaying respectability and success, where decent conversations were held, businesses and marriages arranged, and polite greetings distributed. This manifestation of both lifestyle and power was destroyed by working-class music—by noise.⁴⁴

The middle-class criticism of street music sheds some light on the construction of the image of foreign entertainers as a threat. In fact, it seems as if they were not so much a threat to society as a nuisance to the middle-class, busy constructing and confirming its own identity and its control over public spaces. An obvious problem with the musicians, which the critics did not bring to the fore, was that they were popular and appreciated. As mentioned above, entertainers drew big crowds. While the writer in Åmåls Weckoblad complained about how their music destroyed eardrums, he also revealed that they attracted substantial crowds.⁴⁵ This was a problem for the writers in the press in their attempts to depict the entertainers as a national threat. Writers perhaps gained sympathy from their own class, but it seems unlikely that they gained the necessary attention—let alone support—of the working class, rural or urban. Less urbane people seemed to have liked the street entertainers.

The sources leave us with very few traces of the appreciation and joy felt towards street entertainment and music, apart from the recurring statements that such activities did in fact draw crowds. There are instances when even the middle-class seemed to appreciate itinerant musicians, something that is especially apparent in a few notices from balls held by and for the well-off urban population, where local entrepreneurs managed to hire itinerant musicians to perform the dance music, which would otherwise be hard to accomplish in small Swedish towns.⁴⁶ The examples are too few to allow for any conclusions, but it is tempting to regard this in relation to music as opposed to noise: the producers of “noise” were also the providers of music.

In London, a well-known law, Act for the Better Regulation of Street Music in the Metropolis, was introduced in 1864 with the purpose of regulating the problem of foreign street musicians.⁴⁷ At the same time, Swedish authorities, both on a national level and in local communities, made efforts to rid themselves of the same problem. In Stockholm, a prohibition was introduced against street musicians—though it was considered tame—allowing them to play in some public spaces; and the courtyards of houses were still beyond the reach of legislation.⁴⁸ It may have had some effect, as it led to complaints from smaller towns that they were flooded by street entertainers from Stockholm.⁴⁹ On the national level, the ordinance for extraordinary taxes (Swe. bevillningsförordningen) of 1862 introduced a clause in which all foreign entertainers were charged a fee for every performance—however, the act did not capture the street wanderers, but only the better-organized entertainers, such as those with menageries or wax cabinets. In 1864, there was a small wave of local prohibitions, often hailed in the press as absolutely necessary: examples can be found for Kalmar, Västerås, Örebro, Borås, Kristianstad, and other towns.⁵⁰ These local regulations in small Swedish towns seem to have had one thing in common with the law made for the great metropolis of London: they were inefficient, nor did they lower the number of complaints in any substantial way. If observed at all, they mostly just pushed the entertainers on to the next town.

Child Labor: Compassion or Contempt?

The press left no room for hospitality towards entertainers. Even when performers were generally accepted during the first half of the century, nobody expressed any interest in how they lived or where they were when not performing, and nobody asked after their wellbeing. When the rhetoric grew tough on them, concerns over their wellbeing probably became even less relevant. From the 1850s, the press only expressed a limited and specific compassion from time to time, but the aim in so doing was to elicit an emotional response that played a part in constructing the negative image of the entertainers. This compassion concerned the children.

In his book The Little Slaves of the Harp, Zucchi has shown how the exploitation of Italian children by entertainers in London, Paris, and New York became a major social issue from the 1850s, reaching a crescendo in the 1870s. Children who begged through the guise of playing music or displaying a trained monkey were discussed in press articles as an acute social issue—even if those articles considerably exaggerated the number of children. The New York Times claimed that as many as 7000 Italian children roamed the streets, while the limited data we have points to the actual number being around 350. The children were portrayed in two ways: on the one hand, as a serious nuisance in city life, and on the other, as innocent victims exploited by adult countrymen of ill-intent.⁵¹ Indeed, it is a known fact that many Italian children were severely exploited and mistreated within the so-called padrone system, one in which children and young adults were leased to itinerant countrymen by parents or relatives in order to make a living on far-away streets. It may be of some interest to see if this problem was present in the Swedish press at all, and if feelings of compassion for such children might have affected wider attitudes towards the entertainers.

Child labor was an integral part of entertainment in Sweden. As soon as there were newspapers in which to advertise, in the 1760s, children’s performances were marketed to the reading public.⁵² Many entertainers traveled as loose family groups, and the young members also needed to contribute. For a long time, the papers expressed no opinions about this; such practices were probably seen as natural, and the performances of children were often among the most appreciated in reviews. Of course, there were differences between the family businesses of established entertainers and young Savoyard boys walking the streets with a peepshow box, but neither the former nor the latter were discussed in the press. In some cases, the activities were dangerous, such as tightrope dancing on elevated ropes and art riding on full-grown horses. Child labor was taken for granted; a notice in Malmö Tidning in 1835 pointed out that an adult woman and a boy walked the town exhibiting a peepshow with biblical motifs, arguing that such activities should be prohibited—but only because of the low quality of the images. The performer per se and his or her personal condition was not an issue.⁵³

These children sometimes elicited in a roundabout way, such as when an accident occurred at the fair in Skara 1842. An impoverished boy without a passport or other documentation had joined an itinerant menagerie, and, by accident, he upset the company bear, receiving a hard blow on the leg which forced him to use a crutch. When the menagerie left town, it left the boy behind without no regard for his future wellbeing. The local paper found this behavior heartless and felt compassion for the boy. How the local community was supposed to help the boy was not mentioned, however. Since he was a Swede, he was probably just given a passport, and forced to return to his home parish in accordance with vagrant laws.⁵⁴

Although the padrone system is nearby invisible in the Swedish press, some traces of it nevertheless survive. One such example is an official notification of two missing persons made in 1845 by the Italian organ grinder Dominique Taddei, searching for two escaped young organ grinders aged seventeen and eighteen.⁵⁵ During the 1860s and 1870s, we find examples of criticism against the entertainers’ use of children. Claes Rosenqvist, in his book on theater and entertainment in the north of Sweden, demonstrates how child performances could be regarded as both charming and despicable, referring specifically to a group of acrobats performing in Piteå in 1864. A reviewer in the local paper could not understand how anyone could find joy in watching “small, emaciated and mistreated children’s unnatural body movements.”⁵⁶ In 1878, a writer in Dagens Nyheter attacked a specific act as disgusting because it involved “the smallest gymnasts in the world,” two Italian siblings by the name of Martinelli of which the youngest was only three years old. While small children like these had been used by entertainers for more than a century, the writer now claimed that it was “a barbaric way to treat a little child,” “a disgusting event” and an example of “how far people are willing to go in terms of inhumanity just to make money.”⁵⁷ This criticism of child labor was probably in line with new philanthropic attitudes among the Swedish middle-class. However, tropes and complaints about child labor may also have been a tool for the critics in the press, helping them construct the image of foreign entertainers as a source of immorality and as a threat to society.

Concluding Remarks: The Death of Louis Bono and the Construction of Threats

The press and lawmakers obviously grew tired of entertainers. The general public, probably not so much: there were very few cases of violent crime or serious harassment of entertainers. One exception was the murder of Louis Bono, an acrobat and art-rider, who was killed at the market of Hammar outside of the northern town of Härnösand in June 1871. The murder was reported mainly in the local newspaper, Härnösandsposten, but was also mentioned in the Stockholm press. Bono had come to Hammar to entertain the market visitors, but was beaten to death in front of them. Härnösandsposten stated that it was a shame that “a stranger” was brutally murdered without anyone intervening. The newspaper drew reports from the police interrogations of witnesses. The perpetrators, the worker Per Lindström and farmer Erik Sjögren, both local inhabitants, were supposed to have screamed: “Kill the damn German!” (Swe. “Slå ihjäl den f-e [förbannade] tysken”). Two of the four market guards, who were supposed to uphold public order at the market, witnessed the killing but had not done anything to stop it. One of them described the murder with the words: “The Germans had come there and got a bottle in the head” (Swe. “De tuske gett sig dit å fått en butelja te skallen”).⁵⁸

The case of Bono highlights a main problem in processes of securitization and of the constructions of threats: the need of an audience. Within the scholarship of securitization, the mobilization of an audience is key. An audience can hardly be created out of nothing; rhetoric needs fertile soil in which to grow.⁵⁹ The Swedish press represented and was written for the educated middle-class, which hardly required mobilization against street entertainers; by mid-century, it was probably standard behavior for anyone who made claims to belong to the middle-class to distance himself (and even more so, herself) from street activities, from the popular markets, and from working-class pleasures. The members of society who needed mobilizing were the working classes, rural and urban. But this was not possible because they in fact appreciated the entertainers. Thus, a class perspective is necessary to understand the criticism against entertainers: the middle-class was in the process of constructing itself as the dominant social group, and it thus needed to oppress—or at least despise—simpler forms of entertainment. The middle-class could not produce any real effective rhetoric against entertainers in terms of mobilization.

However, the tragic fate of Louis Bono indicates that maybe one of the components of that rhetoric did have the potential to mobilize a larger audience: the hatred towards Germans. As it seems, Bono was killed because of this hatred, perhaps intensified at that particular time by the Franco-Prussian war. Bono was not German. The name points to Italy, and he was also referred to by the police as “the art rider Louis Bono from Italy.”⁶⁰ In fact, Bono was part of a network of families, the Bono-Gautiers, who had worked in Sweden for generations as itinerant entertainers. Contempt for Germans was a well-established feature across broad layers of the Swedish population. The rhetoric against Germans enjoyed a fertile soil in which to grow. To define music as noise was unable to mobilize any large audience; to define a specific group as greedy parasites feasting on an otherwise healthy social body could.

However, Louis Bono and the Bono-Gautiers perhaps point to another important factor in changing attitudes towards foreign entertainers. Georg Simmel once wrote that the stranger was not “the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather the man who comes today and stays tomorrow.”⁶¹ This fits the Bono-Gautiers perfectly. They were “strangers among us,” and perhaps the changing rhetoric of the 1850s was the result of a growing perception that most street entertainers came and stayed, rather than stayed and left, as they had before. This development saw two main issues emerge, which were seen as being particularly serious. The first was the entertainers’ line of trade: even though these figures were ostensibly performing, the performances themselves were viewed as disguised forms of begging. While there was already a substantial and oppressive legislation against vagrancy and begging, the entertainers seemed to be able to bypass its prescriptions. The second issue concerned the noise. Did they provide music or create noise? This particular criticism represents a defense of the middle-class lifestyle: it is clear that the sounds of the entertainers did not fit with the ideal image of the city landscape of the better-offs, based on order, decency, respectability, and comfort. Again, there was a legislation against making noise in towns, but music—no matter if it was badly performed or constantly played—evaded it. A third issue was the entertainers’ apparent treatment of children. While this was never a prominent part of the criticism against entertainers, as it was in the major European and American cities during the 1860s and 1870s, it was nevertheless used to strengthen the image of the foreign entertainer as an immoral stranger to Swedish society.

The press’ attitude towards entertainers is interesting in relation to securitization, especially the process of the discursive construction of a phenomenon as a threat at a particular time and place. It is obvious that the rhetoric both became harsher and much more frequent at a time when Sweden, as well as large parts of Europe and America, experienced a drastic increase in the number of migrating entertainers, especially musicians. This change of tone happened quickly. From being a non-issue for decades, or even a much-desired attraction for pleasure-starved small-town populations, entertainers suddenly became foreign scum, posing serious harm to both eardrums and society. Here, a fruitful distinction can be made between sudden threats and more institutionalized ones, threats that are conceived as latent within societies: at the time of the boom of foreign entertainers, complex legislation dealing with the centuries-old threats of vagrancy, mendicancy, spatial mobility, supposedly deviant groups such as Romani and Travelers, and noise was already in existence. Thus, on paper, there existed a strong apparatus to deal with this new threat. Still, both press rhetoric and national and local regulations were deemed toothless. Once the image of itinerant entertainers as unwelcome took hold, the problem remained.

There is a clear parallel between the discourse on entertainers in the mid-nineteenth century and the discourse on Romani beggars from central Europe in Sweden during the 2010s. The contemporary debate, in a country where begging was rare until the arrival of Romani beggars following the extension of the European Union eastwards in 2007, clearly showed a cognitive mix-up between threat and nuisance. When beggars were soon found outside every food-store, they were presented as a threat to society, despite the fact that they are harmless, just a nuisance, a phenomenon that people feel uncomfortable with—they are undesirable, to use a fruitful concept from modern migration research.⁶² The Swedes are a rich people with plenty of space; a few people sitting outside food-stores asking for money cannot hurt them, yet a strong societal discourse of security and threat has nevertheless influenced attitudes towards such individuals. Using Didier Bigo’s word, an attempt was made to create unease, equating harmless nuisances with established ideas of threats.⁶³ The sharpened rhetoric in the 1850s against migrant entertainers in a similar way equated nuisance (noise) with well-established threats towards society (vagrancy, mendicancy, etc.) to produce the image of the entertainer as an imminent danger.

Notes

• 1. On contemporary securitization narratives of migration, see, for instance, Kovář (2020: 565–567) with references.

• 2. “Förordning, angående löst och onyttigt Folk, som från utrikes orter inkomma, samt om Tiggeriers hämmande,” Jan. 10, 1741, in Utdrag 1742–1829: 1752–1753.

• 3. Pizzorusso (2001), see also Bovenkerk and Ruland (1992: 934).

• 4. The only work touching the subject is Catomeris (1988), which focuses on a later period and is not a scientific study.

• 5. Bovenkerk and Ruland (1992: 936).

• 6. The legal framework in regard to entertainment is discussed in Nordmark (1990).

• 7. The painting, entitled “Gubben med skåpet. Motiv från Storkyrkobrinken” (“Old man with cabinet. View from Storkyrkogården,”) can be viewed at https://stockholmskallan.stockholm.se/post/4249 (Stockholms Stadsmuseum 2151 0).

• 8. af Wetterstedt (1823).

• 9. Miscali (2017: 34).

• 10. Owens (2018), Widmaier (2007: 156–157), shows that while many musicians came from Pfalz, many regions in German-speaking Europe produced itinerant musicians.

• 11. Owens (2018: 39–40). In “Musik på Gustafsberg,” Bohusläns Tidning, July 17, 1880: 2, some German musicians were said to “play falsely” by claiming to be Austrians.

• 12. “Rättegångs- och Polis-ärenden,” Medborgaren, Dec. 16, 1845: 3–4.

• 13. Johnsson (2016: 99–109, 195f.), Lundqvist (2008: chapter 2), Runefelt (2014: 47–68).

• 14. “Gefle den 16:de October,” Weckoblad från Gefle, Oct. 17, 1829: 1; see also, for instance, “Götheborg,” Götheborgsposten, Aug. 10, 1827: 1; “Inrikes Underrättelser,” Sjömannen och Handtverkaren, Aug. 19, 1836: 3; “Inrikes,” Östgötha Correspondenten, Mar. 17, 1841: 1; “Inrikes,” Calmar Läns och Ölands Tidning, July 3, 1841.

• 15. “Inrikes Nyheter,” Calmarbladet, Sept. 30, 1829; see also “Helsningar från Norr,” Gefleborgs Läns Tidning, Mar. 13, 1841: 1.

• 16. “Betraktelser öfwer Stockholmslifwet. VIII,” Stockholms Dagblad, Apr. 13, 1844: 1.

• 17. “Wexjö,” Skara Tidning, Nov. 13, 1852: 3.

• 18. “Inrikes,” Christinehamnsbladet, Jan. 22, 1853: 1–2.

• 19. Untitled article, Folkets Röst, Jan. 22, 1853: 3.

• 20. “Inrikes Nyheter,” Correspondenten från Landskrona, Feb. 16, 1856: 1; “Örebro,” Nerikes Allehanda, July 16, 1864: 1–2; “Köping,” Köpings Tidning, Sept. 16, 1870: 2; “En fiffig musiker,” Folkets Röst, May 26, 1858: 3.

• 21. “Krönika,” Säsongen, May 17, 1879: 2.

• 22. “Str. Alleh [Strängnäs Allehanda],” Correspondenten, Aug. 12, 1873: 1.

• 23. “(Införes på begäran),” Christinehamns Allehanda, Mar. 26, 1856: 1; “Upsala,” Upsala, Feb. 7, 1868: 2.

• 24. Kitts (2011), McAllister (2013), Prasch (2013).

• 25. Zucchi (1992, esp. chapter 1), Angelini (1992), Widmaier (2007: 158–160, 167).

• 26. “Korrespondens. Haparanda den 28 Nov. 1863,” Norrbottensposten, Dec. 5, 1863.

• 27. “Rättegångs- och Polissaker,” Folkets röst, Nov. 12, 1851: 3; “Rättegångs- och Polissaker,” Norrlandsposten, Dec. 8, 1853: 3; “Rättegångs- och Polissaker,” Fäderneslandet, July 31, 1861: 3; “Rättegångs- och Polissaker,” Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, Apr. 19, 1862: 3.

• 28. Cf. Winberg (1975: 17).

• 29. McAllister (2013), Picker (1999: 432–433).

• 30. “Gefle den 10 Sept.,” Gefleborgs Läns Tidning, Sept. 11, 1844: 1.

• 31. “Carlstad,” Nya Wermlandstidningen, July 11, 1857: 1; “Bref till syster Ulla,” Fäderneslandet, Sept. 20, 1862: 1.

• 32. The proverb was known since the early nineteenth century, and was used actively by writers before the arrival of the German musicians, Holm (1964: 337), cf. Nicander (1831: 65), Almqvist (1996 [1838]: 295).

• 33. “Norrbotten. Luleå den 4 Augusti,” Norrbottenskuriren, Aug. 4, 1864: 1; “Oroligheterna vid Edefors marknad,” Nya Dagligt Allehanda, Aug. 1, 1865: 2.

• 34. “Malmköping den 30 Sept 1856 [sic!],” Fäderneslandet, Oct. 5, 1864: 2.

• 35. “Ges det då ingen möjlighet att bli af med ‘dessa positivspelare’,” Stockholms Dagblad, Aug. 12, 1842: 1.

• 36. “Insändt,” Aftonbladet, Aug. 13, 1842: 3.

• 37. “Införes på begäran,” Christinehamns Allehanda, Mar. 26, 1856: 1; “Öppet sändebref till Onkel Jakob. IV,” Tidning för Wenersborgs Stad och Land, Sept. 24, 1856: 3.

• 38. “Åmål,” Åmåls Weckoblad, Jan. 27, 1857: 1.

• 39. “Bref från Lysekil,” Göteborgsposten, July 10, 1877: 1; “Wenersborg d. 30 juli,” Tidning för Wenersborgs Stad och Land, July 30, 1877: 2.

• 40. “Ges det då ingen möjlighet att bli af med ‘dessa positivspelare’,” Stockholms Dagblad, Aug. 12, 1842: 1.

• 41. “Kalmar,” Barometern, Oct. 17, 1863; “Insändt,” Barometern, Oct. 21, 1863: 1; “Musikaliska mordförsök”: “Landsorten,” Smålandsposten, Aug. 11, 1877: 2. See also, for instance, “Bref till syster Ulla,” Fäderneslandet, Mar. 3, 1860: 1.

• 42. Picker (1999), see also Zucchi (1992: 35), Owens (2018: 44–45), Cockayne (2002) shows how this collision between respectability and “noise” occurred much earlier in England than in Sweden.

• 43. Picker (1999: 430), Attali (1985: 8).

• 44. “På utkiken,” Figaro, May 30, 1880: 1.

• 45. “Åmål,” Åmåls Weckoblad, Jan. 27, 1857: 1. See also “Bref till lilla kusin,” Post- och Inrikes Tidningar, Aug. 31, 1861: 4.

• 46. “(Insändt),” Arboga-Bladet, Dec. 22, 1848: 3; “Upsala,” Upsala, July 11, 1878: 2.

• 47. McAllister (2013: 106–109).

• 48. “Kommunalcynism,” Aftonbladet, May 22, 1861: 3.

• 49. “Eskilstuna den 21 September,” Eskilstuna Allehanda, Sept. 21, 1861: 3.

• 50. Kalmar: “Kungörelse,” Barometern, Feb. 2, 1864: 1; see several articles from the previous autumn, such as “Kalmar,” Oct. 17, 1863; “Insändt,” Oct. 21, 1863; “Staden,” Westmanlands Läns Tidning, Mar. 15, 1864: 3; “Från Landsorten,” Nya Wexjöbladet, Mar. 26, 1864: 3; “Örebro,” Nerikes Allehanda, July 16, 1864: 2; see also, “Örebro,” July 27, 1864: 2; “Kungörelse,” Borås Tidning, Dec. 17, 1864: 1; “Bort med positiv-virtuoserne!,” Kristianstadsbladet, Dec. 28, 1864: 1.

• 51. Zucchi (1992: 39); On portrayals of Savoyard children in Paris, see Ferraris-Besso (2018: 258–271).

• 52. One of the earliest Swedish advertisements is for a group of Dutch acrobats with a 3 ½-year old performer, Norrköpings Tidningar, Apr. 4, 1761: 2.

• 53. “Inrikes,” Malmö Tidning, May 2, 1835: 2.

• 54. “Skara,” Skara Tidning, July 14, 1842: 3.

• 55. “Kungörelser,” Stockholms Dagblad, Jan. 16, 1845: 1.

• 56. “Norrbotten. Luleå den 2 Juni,” Norrbottenskuriren, June 2, 1864: 2.

• 57. “Barnplågeri,” Dagens Nyheter, Aug. 10, 1874: 2.

• 58. “Från Ådalen skrifwes om Hammars marknad,” Härnösandsposten, June 21, 1871: 2.

• 59. Balzacq (2005: 182–184), McDonald (2008).

• 60. “Dråp,” Härnösandsposten, June 21, 1871: 2.

• 61. Simmel (1971: 143).

• 62. Randeria and Karagiannis (2020: 220–221).

• 63. Bigo (2002, esp. n. 8).