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Walsall Worthies

Pat Collins - The Bloxwich Showman

Pat Collins, born in Chester on 12 May 1859, son of a travelling showman, was destined to become the most successful showman of his generation both on and away from the fairground.

Educated at St. Wedburgh's School, by the age of 10 he had left to join his father travelling the fairs of North Staffordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire with simple rides. He used his fists to protect their rides from troublemakers in those early days, hard training for his chosen trade.

By the age of 21, Pat owned his own hand-turned roundabout and a horse, having bought the ride from his father in a bid for independence. He married his first wife, seventeen year old Flora Ross of Wrexham, in 1880.

In 1882, Pat and Flora moved to Walsall, settling in Birchills at Shaw's Leasowe, known colloquially as 'Shaw's Leisure', and living at 69 Stafford Street. He established his rides on wasteland off Bradford Street, where the Arcade now stands, and at Bloxwich Wakes, but life was not easy, as fairgrounds were often terrorised by local gangs such as 'The Peaky Blinders'. Pat was the first to seriously challenge them, and by organising the showmen collectively, arming them with knuckle-dusters and other weapons, he was able to defeat them eventually.

Pat became involved with setting up the 'Van Dweller's and Showmen's Protection Society', formed in 1889, which later became the Showmen's Guild, still in operation today. He and the Guild became instrumental in protecting showmen's rights and freedom of movement, which were constantly under attack from local and national regulations. He became its longest serving President, elected in 1909 and retiring aged 70 in 1929.

Pat understood the amusements people craved after long hours at work, and was eager to take advantage of new technology as it developed. A fan of Walsall people, whom he saw as 'good punters', he gathered exotic animals from around the world to amaze the locals, and used traction and gas engines to power his rides.

The new world of cinematography became a major feature of Pat's work; one Harry Scard is said to have shown his films at Bloxwich Wakes in 1895 at the same time as the Lumiere Brothers displayed this new invention in France. Animated pictures, known as the 'bioscope', spread around the country's fairs over the next four years. Pat Collins first presented moving pictures in 1899-1900 when he took over the ex-Wall and Hammersley's ghost show. According to Ned Williams, in his biography of Collins, this show was first included in the advertisement for the Bloxwich Wakes Fair in 1900.

Pat's fairs became ever more spectacular, and his famous Wonderland Organ used 5,000 lights and 14 arc lamps. Powered by traction engine generators, such extravaganzas made Pat's fairs popular and successful nationwide, as well as at Bloxwich Wakes, and even on a permanent site in Sutton Park from 1917.

These huge quantities of equipment required maintenance and storage, and Pat established the Gondola Works at Shaw's Leasowe for this purpose, but when the land was later sold off, the fair's offices and repair works transferred to the amusement depot in Bloxwich in 1933.

As well as running his own fairs and leasing space on fairgrounds to others, Pat Collins went on to build up a chain of over thirteen cinemas, including the Grosvenor in Bloxwich High Street. Its predecessor on the same site was The Electric Palace or Electric Theatre, basically a timber shed clad in corrugated iron, with a decorative facade. At the end of the Great War, The Electric Palace was bought by Collins, who had made Bloxwich his adopted home around 1915, and the Bloxwich Wakes were held nearby, next to his residence, Lime Tree House, on what is now the ASDA Car Park. In the 1920's Pat decided to replace the Electric Palace with a fine new cinema, The Grosvenor. While it was built, he showed films at The Central, the former 1830's Bloxwich Methodist Chapel in Park Road, which he later used for storing and repairing rides.

Collins also became a prominent local Liberal politician, representing Birchills Ward on Walsall Council from 1918 to 1930, when he was made Alderman. He was elected Member of Parliament for Walsall from 1922 to 1924. Becoming Mayor of Walsall in 1938, Pat was made a Freeman of the Borough of Walsall in 1939.

Pat's wife Flora died in 1932, and in 1935, aged 76, he married Clara Mullett, a show business colleague. The same year, he sold the Grosvenor to Oscar Deutsch and it became an Odeon. It eventually closed in May 1959, ironically just before local celebrations were organised to celebrate the centenary of Collins' birth. The building has survived, being revived in the early 1980's as the 'Flix' disco night-club, and is now in the hands of the T. P. Riley Community Association as a youth centre.

Pat was known as the King of Showmen by his contemporaries and the news of his death, at his Bloxwich home on 8 December 1943, was reported in the World's Fair magazine with the headline 'Showland loses its G.O.M', with the whole of the front page dominated by tributes and reports.

Today, Pat's name is legend amongst the people of Bloxwich in particular, and while it is still seen travelling the country on the vehicles and rides of the ever-popular Pat Collins' Fun Fair, it will never be forgotten.