The new company was soon in difficulties, and in August of 1857 the directors were behindhand with their rates. At a meeting of the shareholders Jullien complained bitterly that, though a profit of £1,000 had been made, he was given no money to pay his band. He had lost—as he put it—£2,000 by his unpaid salary, and £2,000 by his worthless shares. In 1859 there was a more modest orchestra of sixty, and the Surrey Gardens Choir performed madrigals; but in the background there were proceedings in Chancery, and in April the gardens—now described as of ten acres—were advertised for sale. In June, 1861, the music-hall was burnt out, and though in the following year a picture of the Bay of Naples was offered to the public, the life of the gardens was wellnigh extinct. It happened that at this time (1862) the authorities of St. Thomas’s Hospital had to leave their old home in Southwark, and needed a temporary resting-place. They had the music-hall rebuilt, and used it for the reception of patients until 1871. Then the new hospital was opened on the Albert Embankment. The gardens nearly outlasted the seventies. In May 1872, an enterprising lessee, Frederick Strange, who had been manager and proprietor of the Alhambra, opened the gardens for concerts, operettas, and ballets. {90} The grounds had become a wilderness, and had to be considerably ‘improved.’ The theatre was the old music-hall remodelled. At the opening concert Mme. Marimon and other members of Mapleson’s opera company appeared, and Sims Reeves and Mme. Patey sang at one of the ballad concerts. But in 1873 the entertainments were fashioned on those of Cremorne. There were Derby and Oaks ‘Festivals’ in May, and that unfortunate nobleman, ‘Sir Roger Tichborne,’ was announced to appear in the theatre. In September there was a gala with ‘50,000’ lamps for the benefit of Robert Duffell, who had for half a century illumined Vauxhall, Cremorne, and smaller public gardens. In 1875 the lessees were Messrs. Poole and Stacey, who produced comic opera and ballet. Captain Boyton this year exhibited the life-saving apparatus with which he had crossed the Channel. In 1877 a new manager or lessee, John Reeves, offered for a sixpenny admission an open-air dancing-platform, a variety entertainment, and the sight of a Canadian ox of 400 stone. The last regular entertainment took place in the theatre on August 14, 1877. In March, 1878, the theatre was hired for a single performance, a boxing match between Rooke and Harrington. A rough company of 800 people were got together, and the prize, a splendid silver vase valued at £100, was ostentatiously displayed to the audience. An old ‘Surrey’ waiter who was present is said to have recognized in this noble trophy a capacious _leaden_ vessel which had stood on one of the refreshment counters in the water-drinking days of the Zoological Gardens. {91}