Mersey Beat - The David Lewis Club

The David Lewis Centre

 

The David Lewis Theatre was part of the enormous David Lewis Centre, which was built in 1906 and included with the theatre was a hotel and sports facilities. Lewis was a businessman who founded his first shop in Liverpool in 1856, followed by a large department store in Manchester in 1880. He left his considerable fortune to be used to benefit working class people of the two cities. It was a fine building in its day, situated near the Anglican Cathedral in Great George Place, but looked at this point in time as though it had seen better days. The theatre was intended primarily as a music hall for men using the David Lewis Hostel and Club. It was first licensed (as a music hall) from January 1907, but, as it was a large and quite elaborate structure, it was felt it would be bad economy to limit its use to just a music hall, so arrangements were made with local amateur dramatic societies to stage their productions there.

The 17th of October 1961 was 'The Beatles' only appearance at the David Lewis Club for an event put on by the newly formed fan club for the group. The hiring of the room above the David Lewis Theatre was financed by these Cavern girls collecting £5 each for this free event. Freda Kelly was a teenage fan of the band, seeing many of their early shows at The Cavern and as the band got more popular, Brian Epstein offered the 17-year-old Freda Kelly a job in his office running the fan club.

Pete Best has recalled that occassion; "We were scheduled to give a performance for no fee, which might have hurt a little but not all that much, seeing that we were the objects of so much devotion. Sadly, it was not much of a night to remember. We had expected to find a huge crowd gathered there, but only some sixty people turned up. We had no PA system with us, a couple of amps had fused and we spent most of the time sitting on the edge of the stage chatting to the girls under the watchful eye of Paul's father. Generally it was a dismal night of complete failure, having suffered from lack of publicity."

Freda Kelly with Paul

 

In 1960 the floor of the club was levelled and seats were installed. The venue closed in November 1977 and was demolished in October 1980 to make way for road widening and redevelopment of the area close to the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2017/06/mersey-beat-jive-hive.html