The British Guiana One Cent Magenta: so who, then, was E.D.W.?

Update: This blog post was originally posted back in June 2014, after the last Sotheby's auction. This year, in June 2021, after a heated auction the stamp was won by Stanley Gibbons. It is now in the UK and will be on public display at a future date. The Stanley Gibbons website has more about the stamp's history, here. In the meantime, this is what I wrote back then.
 

Back in 1856, my great-great-grandfather, a postal clerk named Edmund Dalziel Wight, signed his initials to a cheap little postage stamp in British Guiana, South America, a measure taken to ensure its authenticity. Last Tuesday, over 150 years later, that tiny scrap of paper with the innocuous “EDW” squiggle went under the hammer at Sotheby’s, raising £5.6 million for its previous owner.

 

 Which, unfortunately, is not me. E.D.Wight turned out to have a Midas touch, albeit unwittingly and posthumously. That postage stamp, known as the British Guiana One Cent Black on Magenta (BoM), went on to become the Holy Grail of postage stamps, to become not only the most expensive stamp in the world but also, by weight, the most expensive object ever made.     

But for philatelists the value of the British Guiana One Cent Magenta is of a spiritual nature: it really is one-of-a-kind, a freak, unlike any other stamp in any other collection. And it’s quite literally the human touch, those initials, that creates this uniqueness and breathes life into it. The story of E.D.Wight’s role in the creation of the British Guiana One Cent Black on Magenta is a family legend. it fueled my imagination and inspired me to write a novel around the most exclusive stamp in the world.

So who, then, was the man whose innocent initials, over a century later, upgraded the little stamp now worth a small fortune?

Mary Elizabeth Wight with her son Carl

Unfortunately, even we, his descendants, know very little about him, and no photo survives. According to the research of one of my far-flung cousins, Philip Wight, he was white, of Scottish ancestry; he married twice, and with and his second wife, Gertrude, had ten children. One of these was Edward Mar Wight, who married Mary Elizabeth, who was half Amerindian; we do have a photo of her.

Edward and Mary Elizabeth had ten children: nine sons and one daughter,  Miriam, known as Mirri. Mirri was my grandmother, the mother of my mother, Eileen Cox, who became a legend in her own right in Guyana, more famous even than the great-grandfather known to the world as E.D.W., the signatory of the BG BoM.

Edward's other descendants spread out over the world; they live in Australia and Scotland, England, Germany and the USA, and one or two even remain in Guyana. For all of us, the story of the BG BoM lifts E.D.W. out of the anonymity of shadowy ancestry. He's our family legend. Even more far-flung are the descendants of Edmund, the originator of the Black on Magenta. Remember, Edward was just one of ten children! And just maybe this little scrap of paper worth so very much will bring some of us together.

Very often as a child my mother told me the story of her great-grandfather signing the stamp that was to become the most famous in the world. He was Chief Clerk at the Georgetown Post Office, and, apparently, later ran our local branch at the corner of Lamaha and

Lamaha and Carmichael St Post Office

Carmichael Streets—we lived just a block away in Lamaha St, and Mum would point out the building. Was it here that the stamp was signed? We don't know, and she can't remember.

The story of the innocent signing of a stamp that would go on to earn a fortune has always fueled my imagination. What if another one of those stamps survived within the family, I asked myself; what if great-grandad Edmund had kept one as a souvenir, and it turned up in one of those drawers packed with old junk I used to burrow through as a child? Hardly likely. The following extract from Sotheby's website paints a picture of a man heartily indifferent to the stamp he made famous:

Wight had little tolerance for the philatelic celebrity achieved by British Guiana’s early stamps. In 1889, Edward Denny Bacon, one of the first philatelists to write about the stamps of the colony, reported that E. C. Luard had told him that “Mr. Wight is still alive and living in the colony but he is in his dotage and either cannot or will not remember anything about these old stamps except that he initialed them. He has been so pestered on the subject that the mention of old stamps to him is like a red rag to a bull.

The Georgetown Main Post Office in EDW's day

This makes him sound like my sort sort of man; down-to-earth and modest and not given to the kind of publicity-seeking attention-hunger we see so much of today. He saw no need to be famous just for the mundane act of signing an ordinary postage-stamp, and he wasn't interested in five minutes of fame, or, as history would have it, centuries of the same. He did not try to capitalise on the kerfuffle being made of that "old stamp"; in fact, it annoyed him. He probably wasn't impressed with the huge amounts on money spent on a little scrap of paper (think of the starving children those millions could feed!) 

And very likely he wasn't "in his dotage" at all; after all, he had married his second wife Gertrude just five years previously, so it was probably more a case of "will not" remember rather than "cannot remember".

Postman in British Guiana

But the “what if” never left me. There's a wonderful story in there somewhere. And so, after the publication of two of my first three novels, it became the inspiration for a story in which just such a stamp turns up: a family heirloom worth millions. What if someone's cantankerous grandmother was in possession of such a stamp? What if...? So many what ifs followed. Greed, possessiveness, sentimentality: the stuff of human interaction. The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q was the result. 

When I first wrote it in 2008 it did not find a  publisher, but early this year I pulled it out, dusted it off, repaired and polished it, and prepared it for late summer publication with my present publisher, Bookouture. It seems my timing was perfect; the original stamp is now hot news, my novel timely.

I hope that E.D.W. would approve; he might not have saved us a stamp, but he has given me a story.

Recent Articles on the Sotheby's Auction:

Red-letter day for most expensive stamp  Telegraph
The ‘Mona Lisa’ of Stamps to Be Auctioned at Sotheby’s New York Times
Sotheby's to auction rare stamp British Guiana One-Cent  BBC
'Holy Grail' of stamps, British Guiana 1c Magenta, to fetch Daily Mail
British Guiana stamp could fetch $20m, says Sotheby's Economic Times/India Times
Rare stamp from murderer's estate may set record at auction ... Chicago Tribune
Remarkable story of the £12m stamp owned by a millionaire murderer that is about to become one of the most expensive objects ever sold... The Independent

Lamaha and Carmichael Street Post Office photo: © Amanda Richards
Old photos of Main Post Office and Postman with thanks to Dmitri Allicock.

Eileen Cox: a Feisty Fifties Feminist

 

Eileen Cox – A Feisty Fifties Feminist

 

By Sharon Maas

 It’s quite  a responsibility, being the daughter of Eileen Cox. She remains an icon of Guyana,  always held up to me as a model; someone whose footsteps I should follow, even as she grew old and frail. This was never so clear to me as that day at the Republic Bank; she needed me, or rather, my arm. I helped her out of the taxi and, at a snail’s pace, she hobbled up to the bank entrance on Water Street, hooked onto my elbow with one hand, her walking stick in the other.

The year was 2012. She was 94, a fragile, bent old woman, physically a shadow of what she once was, but mentally still as sharp as a razor. By this time, Mum rarely left her home in Subryanville; indeed, she rarely ever left her bedroom, but sat there all day, near the bedside phone, because, then as ever, she was still President of the Guyana Consumers Association, and people still turned to her for advice. I lived far away, in Germany, and visited when I could, usually once a year to check on things. But that day, she had business at the bank.

  As is usual in the morning, the Republic Bank lobby was crowded. People milled about, having pulled a number, and waited to be seated, while those seated waited to be called to the counter.  But then a whisper went up: It’s Eileen Cox! And the crowd before us parted like the Red Sea, and we made our slow way forward, down a corridor of smiling faces, past calls of “Good morning Miss Cox!” and “Hello Miss Cox!”; past autograph books held out for her to sign --- oh wait, I got carried away there; that didn’t happen. But it really did feel like arriving with some celebrity at the Oscars, walking up the red carpet with my shuffling mother on my arm. Mum was served first, and nobody minded.

And Mum was, in her own way, a celebrity in Guyana. I’m afraid that in my younger years I never really appreciated her; I took her for granted, as young daughters often do. But whenever I returned to Guyana and people realized she was my mother, they never failed to tell me how much she meant to them. How much she helped them. How they listened out for her on the radio, or read her Consumer Advocate columns in the Stabroek News. How they loved her. “She was a phenomenon!”  “An icon!” Taxi drivers who dropped me off at her home would say, “Wait, you’re Eileen Cox’s daughter? I drove her once!” 

So yes, I am the daughter of a Guyanese celebrity: the real kind, the deserving kind, the kind who really DID something to deserve her fame and wasn’t just famous for fame's sake. Mum was internationally respected for her consumer activity, invited to Consumer seminars and conferences around the world, from Chile to India to Canada.

She lived a public life, and her accomplishments are well known: starting with her activities as women's rights activist as a young married women, advocating for the rights of women i Public Service to keep their jobs after marriage. After her divorce when I was three, she must have been one of the very first single working mothers in the colony. Later, she was active in the Public Service Union and in the Credit Union, but it was in founding the Consumers Association that she found her final calling. She remained  the GCA's President of right up to her resignation aged 93.

As a public figure she was outspoken and very direct; but she had another side to her, a private side, that others did not see. It would be true to say that though she was not a Christian in name, she very much embodied true Christian values and ideals. She has always lived a most simple life, never expecting special favours, never living beyond her means. She loved flowers, nature, the fresh air of the sea wall. Up to her very last day, when she could no longer walk, her carer Sego would carry her downstairs so that she could enjoy the evening Atlantic breeze.

Photo below: Mum with Guyana President Dr Cheddi Jagan

She never wanted more than what she had. She cared about people regardless of race, religion, political affiliation, sex. As Hansard Editor at Guyana’s Parliament she worked hard all her life, supporting not only me but other members of her extended family – the breadwinner of the family. She was without wile and without guile; a divorcee by choice, she was married to her mission, the well-being of every single person in Guyana. At times, when I was a child, I was even jealous because I thought she spent more time helping others than being with me. But in the end it was all good, because it gave me a sense of independence and adventure, of daring to seek the unconventional. I learned that selflessness, not selfishness, is the true secret to a fulfilled life.

 Which doesn't mean being a doormat.  She taught me that there is strength and dignity in humility, in putting the needs of others before your own, in caring, in serving. These are the values she truly lived  all her life. Though she was not typical for women of her generation, these are all typically female strengths, subtle strengths that tend to go unnoticed and undervalued, crushed by the typically male "strengths" of domination and aggression, which are not strengths at all as they accomplish nothing.

Yet water wears away stone, and women have at all times and all places been the very backbone of society, precisely through those quieter strengths and values. For Mum, these strengths brought results. Men adored, respected, and bowed before her.

Yes: Mum was Guyanese royalty, for it is the heart that really rules. She died in her sleep in November 2014. She lives on in the hearts of many.

 

Sharon Maas is the author of  The Far Away Girl, The Sugar Planter’s Daughter and several other novels set in Guyana, India, France, Germany and England.

 See also:  Eileen Cox: a Tribute to my Mother

Dr. Peter Pritchard: "You don't have to be a dinosaur."

Note: This post was first written back in 2012, on another of my blogs . In view of my soon to be published novel set in Guyana, in which Peter and his wife Sibille make a cameo appearance, I'm reposting it so that it is new on this blog.

Sadly, Peter passed away in early 2020.

There’s no way I can call Dr Peter Pritchard an unsung hero. He’s already been named a Hero of the Planet by no less than TIME Magazine, and he’s already famous in animal conservation circles as the leading expert in marine turtles. 

 Yet he’s a prime example of those people I mentioned in my last post—people who go about their work quietly and diligently, doing what they know is right; if they ever do call attention, it’s to the objects of their ardour, not to themselves, and that’s Peter all over: a big, unassuming man beating the drum for a humble animal he’s determined to save from a ruthless world.

 I was little more than a giggling teenager when I first met Peter, working at my very first job as a staff journalist at the Guyana Graphic. My own personal hero at the time was one of my editors, Sibille, a few years older than me and already a household name in the country due to her bylines. A tiny woman with a huge personality, Sibille was everything I wasn’t: confident, outspoken, spunky and funny, and I looked up to her no end. She was also a great writer, and I wanted to be a great writer; I couldn’t believe it when she took me under her personal wing, and in time we even became friends, close friends, in fact. She drew me out of my shell and helped me find my feet as a journalist.

My other friend, Pratima, and I would tease her mercilessly about her “Turtle-man”—the gentle giant who every now and then would swoop in from Florida to take her, and sometimes us as well, out to dinner, or off on expeditions in Guyana’s swamps, forests and beaches. One day, Sibille flew off to Florida, and didn't come back.

Reader, she married him.
That was over 45 years ago.

More about Peter and Sibille, "one of Central Florida's most exotic, and unlikely, power couples".

A few days ago I called their home in Florida—where in 2004 I was their guest for three weeks--just to let them know I was going to Guyana.
“I’ll be there myself in March”, Peter told me, and so yet another case of serendipitous scheduling slotted into place.

Of course, knowing that Peter will be in Shell Beach working on that project means that, once again, my plans have changed.
Karanambu. Jonestown. Shell Beach. I just hope I will have time for the real reason for my visit: my mother.
She’s my third Earth Hero, to be introduced. Coming up tomorrow.

About Peter Pritchard:

From Wikipedia:

Dr. Peter Pritchard (born 1943) is a leading turtle zoologist. Educated at Oxford University and the University of Florida, where he earned his Ph.D. in Zoology, he is most commonly known for his campaign of almost 40 years for the conservation of turtles. Appropriately, his privately funded Chelonian Research Institute, for the study and preservation of turtles, is located in Oviedo, Florida, United States, just a half hour's drive from Disney World. Frank Sulloway had noted that Pritchard 'has amassed nearly 12,000 tortoise and turtle skeletons - the third largest collections in the world.'

 

From Time Magazine:

Pritchard has done his most innovative work along the Atlantic coast in Guyana, a haven for sea turtles. By the 1960s, overhunting by local Arawak Indians--themselves an endangered group--had ravaged the turtle population. But Pritchard helped save both turtles and tribe: he has lobbied Guyana and private sources for grants that have weaned the Arawaks off turtle meat and into chicken farming. And he hires Arawaks to tag turtles for research and defend nesting grounds. The killing has largely stopped, he says, because turtle protection is now "a family discipline thing" among Arawaks, "rather than an outsider laying down the law."

There's a wonderful video interview with Peter on this site: Oceanology. Watch it, below this post; it's about far more than turtles. There's real wisdom here:

Narrator: Turtles are slow and not very smart, but they've been around since the day of the dinosaur.

Peter: I think the moral of the story is: don't try to be dominant. Try to have your place, but you don't have to be the big dinosaur. That lasts for a while, and, you know, it comes to an end.

Only These Grandmothers: a poem by Maggie Harris

 

Only these Grandmothers

 

Only these grandmothers can see down the long road travelled

where all the love and pain converge like cars in a traffic

jams. Only these grandmothers carry the scent of kitchens

infused by cooking pans and garlic pulled out of the wild woods

to layer the earthenware pots where rabbits simmer.

 

Only these grandmothers smell of milks suckled at the breasts

of Amazons and lowly countrywomen whose babies

make do with Cow & Gate, make room

for others who will inherit the world.

 

There are grandmothers who left those kitchens long ago

for factories and offices where the typing pool

and the cleaning women all walk on rollercoaster

ledges, keeping their determined stares ahead

not looking back the way they came where sheer edges

mark the abyss of failing

to be  mother  father  provider   teacher.

 

Generations on, the mother’s sleep is haunted

by dreams of a succubus inhabiting her body

and soul, when every fever of your child ushers

in the terror of gravestones

fists beating where the heart should be

pounding into midnight

the long hours of midnight

cloaking the bedroom floor with a terror

unnamed.

 

Blessed are those who remember the burial place

of the navel string

Blessed are those whose faces still glow faintly in daguerreotypes

whose gold bangles circa 1903 swing from the wrists of a favourite child

Blessed are those whose memories string like fairy lights

between balconies and high-rise flats

villages of lamplight

country lanes and cane fields

blackberry bushes and mango trees.

 

Only these grandmothers can raise their rifles over the gates

and shoot into the trees where the limbs of young men

flail into the foliage.

Only these grandmothers can halt the slingshots aimed at birds

in the knitted palms of their hands.

Only the grandmothers can look down the long roads travelled

into the histories of yesterday

and back to the future where the children test the waters

with their toes

and languages ricochet like gunshots.

 

Only these grandmothers can stand between yesterday

and tomorrow

and tremble, at the knowledge they have gleaned.

 

MAGGIE HARRIS

Maggie Harris is a Guyanese writer living in Kent. Twice winner of the Guyana Prize, she was the Caribbean Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and has travelled to the Caribbean, Europe and India. As well as poetry she has written short stories and a memoir, Kiskadee Girl. She has taught Creative Writing and was International Teaching Fellow at Southampton University. Guyana continues to inspire her and her latest poetry collection is ‘On Watching a Lemon Sail the Sea.’

Down Memory Lane: Georgetown Cinemas of Yesteryear

So, the Astor Cinema is up for sale (* see update at end of blog post).
It’s now a derelict hulk, just one more eyesore in a city that was once deemed the most beautiful in the Caribbean. The tiny For Sale sign hangs on its façade like a timid afterthought, a hopeless plea to some rich saviour to swoop in and rescue this one-time Castle of Dreams; save it from crumbling to the ground. 

The Astor -- Palace of Dreams?

 With a pang, I stopped to take a snap. And I made a wish. Someone, please, do it! Someone save this monument to Georgetown’s Golden Age! Such wonderful stories have played out here; so many people escaped their humdrum lives within these crumbling walls. This was once the home of romance and glamour and joy. Bring it back! Cinemas took us Georgetowners to far-off lands and transported us into the exotic lives of others; they showed us the world beyond our shores, and took us on adventures and exploits beyond our wildest dreams; they sowed the seeds of  ambition within our souls and lit the fuse of our most daring aspirations. They did it in a way the now ubiquitous DVD—sold now in pirated copies at every street corner—cannot; and that Multiplex Cinema I heard is planned for Georgetown? Phooey! It can’t compare. 

  Going to the cinema was a big event. You dressed up, and you were on your best behaviour. I went on my very first date to the Astor: I was 14, and it was My Fair Lady, and I was petrified. It was always a double-feature, back then, and in the pause between films you could buy soft-drinks and popcorn. 

Before the film started they'd play God Save the Queen and show a short film with the young Queen Elizabeth II in Royal military scarlet uniform. She'd be sitting side-saddle on a horse, at the trooping of the colours. Everyone would stand up in respect, except those in the Pit, who continued laughing, talking, shouting, cursing. We ignored them. This was before Independence in 1966, of course. 

After the Queen they'd show British New Reel, Pathé and British Council films, which showed new developments all over the British Empire, where the sun never set. This would be followed by Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse cartoons, and trailers for coming films.

I remember well the owner and manager of the Astor. He was a young man named Gregory G., and he liked to hang around outside the cinema with other young men of his ilk, ogling us teenage girls in ways that, in retrospect, were decidedly creepy.

In this article another writer, Godfrey Chin is nostalgic for the good old cinema days:

In 1940 the Correia family built the magnificent Astor on Waterloo Street, and in spite of WWII the film fare of Hollywood’s best, delighted the locals. The classic Gone with the Wind which opened in Atlanta, in December 1939, debuted at the Metropole in March 1941, and all the great classic movies such as Gunga Din, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Robin Hood and Singing in the Rain, kept the locals up to date with the fashions, styles, norms, etc, of the outside world. Cinemas were our windows to the outer world. Even the British Council utilised 16mm shows to educate us about our then British ‘overlords.’

The Astor was, the story goes, the scene of an embarrassing éclat between my aunts and my Uncle Denis. Everyone in Georgetown had heard of or knew Uncle Denis, a rather eccentric bachelor. The eldest of eight brothers, he rode around town on a rusty old bicycle wearing khaki short pants, long socks, and a hat. If he saw one of his many nieces and nephews he would immediately jump off his bike and call us to him, whereupon he’d tell us a joke, guffaw loudly, and ride off again. So very embarrassing! 

Uncle Denis was quite brilliant, though his formal education was limited. He had taught himself German and was well known for tutoring pupils who weren’t doing well at school, especially in mathematics; and never taking any money for his efforts. Uncle Denis was a Christian and believed in Christian charity. Which also meant he had not a selfish or mean or snobbish bone in his body. And also that he was quite poor all his life.

Which was why, when he went to the cinema, he would always sit in Pit. In the classist, racist Georgetown of those days, the cinema was the one place that told you where you stood in the hierarchy. If you were black and poor, you paid a pittance and sat in the Pit, at the front of the cinema. Here there were only wooden benches; it was a noisy, raucous place and those who considered themselves better off would never set foot down there. Behind the Pit was the House, where the general populace sat. Above the House ranged the quiet comfort of Balcony, floating above House in velvet exclusivity. And at the front of the Balcony, if you could afford it, was the serene luxury of the Box.

Uncle Denis was fair-skinned, but he always sat in Pit. And there he was spotted by my aunts one day at a cinema outing. “Look; there’s Denis down there in the Pit!” said Aunt Edith* with a shudder, pointing down. “I hope he doesn’t see us!” said Aunt Doreen* as they all moved along to take their seats. And just at that moment, Uncle Denis looked up and spotted them in the Box.

Uncle Denis immediately rose to his feet; he turned around and waved, his face a big joyful grin. “Doreen, Edith, Marjorie*! Hold on, I’m coming!” he yelled for all the world to hear, and proceeded to step over all the benches in Pit, climb over the barrier to House, and up the staircase to Balcony and Box. I don’t know if my aunts were required to pay extra for Uncle Denis; but he certainly watched that film in comfort that day. And I don't know how true the story is, but knowing Uncle Denis -- well, let's just say it's credible.

The Pit, apparently, was quite a ribald place, to put it politely. Another writer describes it thus: 

To venture into the Pit toilet (urinal), which was usually at the end of a long, dark tunnel, was to enter a stinking, crowded, noisy hell hole that only the brave, reckless and desperate could deal with! I usually held my waste in, almost giving me "nara" pains by the time I got out of the Pit.

During a show, a Pit patron may let off a stink bomb, or a firecracker squib, which would create a stir, or an argument and a fist-fight may break out among the brethren. I say brethren because few women, with the exception of ladies of the evening, would venture into the Pit.

These ladies were often welcomed with open arms and pants, sometimes going to the back of Pit, where House overhung Pit, and setting up business there. In the middle of the show, it was not unusual to hear groaning and rustling from that section, providing a distraction from the main event on the screen, and causing some patrons to complain loudly. I wonder if this perhaps gave rise to the term "Passion Pit"?

          (from Moving pictures: a nostalgic look at Guyana's cinemas) 

Opposite the Astor on Waterloo St was the Globe. Today, where the Globe used to stand is just an empty lot gathering the usual Georgetown garbage. But the Globe too has memories for me, and evokes for me one particular event.

Where the Globe once stood

 I was a junior journalist at the time, working for the Chronicle. Apart from the obvious advantage of laying the foundation of my life as a writer (though I didn't know it then), the job came with certain perks, the chief one being getting to meet interesting people—especially foreigners to our shores—and attend interesting events. 

One of the latter was a concert by Mahalia Jackson at the Globe Cinema; it must have been around 1969, a few years before her death in 1971. We of the Press got to sit in a Box, while all the other invitees—for the most part, members of Society  sat nearby in Balcony and Box rustling their programmes and clapping staidly at the end of each of Mahalia’s songs, or maybe rattling their jewellery. The Pit, of course, was closed. This was a celebrity concert—they couldn’t have the hoi-polloi lowering the tone.  

Mahalia Jackson

However, one door, right next to the stage, stood open—only a chain closed it off from the street, and that’s where the banished hoi-polloi gathered, pushing and jostling to get the chance to see their idol. A guard stood there with a baton, pushing them back and trying to keep them from getting too rowdy.

Mahalia Jackson noticed the little rumpus down there in the corner, and assessed the situation in a moment. “Remove that chain!” she called. Next thing the chain was down and the city’s poor black population was pouring into the Pit. They filled the benches; they sat on the floor and stood on the sides and simply crammed themselves into every last inch of space.

Mahalia began to sing again, and this time, what a difference! The crowd in the Pit went wild. They clapped along, they sang along, they cheered, they rejoiced. Whether it was a slow and intimate Take my Hand, Precious Lord or a jubilant He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands—the Pit crowd was with her, heart and soul. Life came into that staid cinema hall, and joy and celebration. It was magnificent! Up in the Balcony and Boxes the Upper Echelons of Society sat stiff and silent, clearly out-privileged. And I would have loved to make the reverse journey to Uncle Denis: down from the Box and into the Pit, into the midst of the rejoicing. For most of those people down there it would have been an evening they would never forget—just as I have never forgotten it.

The Strand de Luxe -- Now the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

Other cinemas in Georgetown were the Metropole, the Plaza, the Empire, the Hollywood and the Strand de Luxe. The Strand was called de Luxe as it was a new build, the first air-conditioned cinema in town and quite special. Now it is another derelict hull; perhaps a church hall of some kind, judging by the sign across the building.

The Strand -- back in the day.

The Plaza was in Camp Street, just around the corner from my home in Lamaha Street. The Plaza showed all those Beach Party movies with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. I saw them all with great delight; I was in my early teens, and American teenagerdom seemed to me the height of all that was good and worth striving for in the world. I watched every one of them.

The Hollywood in Alexander Road showed classic Hollywood movies from the 50's to the 80's. The Rio/Rialto in Vlissingen road showed almost exclusively Hindi or Urdu movies, so I never went there. And I have no memories whatsoever of the Empire. There remains the Metropole, and with it a memory of little Charlie. 

Jerry Lewis

When I was ten years old I broke a bone in my hand and was in the Georgetown Hospital for a few days. I remember a huge ward full of screaming children; I hated it, but luckily my Dad came to visit each day. Mum was working in Trinidad at the time. In the bed next to mine lay a little Amerindian boy. Possibly, he had polio; I remember both his legs were in callipers. 

Dad made some enquiries and discovered he was an orphan, and in and out of hospital. Charlie must have tugged at Dad’s heart-strings, because after I was released from hospital Dad took me to the cinema at the Metropole to see a Jerry Lewis film, and he stopped at the hospital to pick up Charlie. It was a Jerry Lewis film, and it was the first time Charlie had ever been to the cinema. So it’s thanks to little  Charlie that the Metropole gets a place in my Memory Gallery of Georgetown cinemas.

But there’s one more.

Which Georgetown teenager of the 60’s and 70’s can forget the Starlite Drive-In? Of course, for most of those years, my generation was too young to own a car or even have a driving license, but if we were lucky we knew someone who knew someone and could wangle an invite. The big deal was Tuesday night: Carload Night! We’d load up the car with as many teenagers as possible and drive up the East Coast Demerara towards Ogle—that’s where the big screen of the glorious Starlite was to be found. We never went for the film. It was for the event, the experience, the company that we went. It was a party, and we were young; those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end.

I'll end this eulogy with another quote from Godfrey Chin:

Christmas 2008 the Astor, the last cinema standing, was showing a powerful action double, Casino Royale and Quantum Leap. As I sat in their balcony reminiscing, there were about 12 patrons in the entire cinema. I was impressed that the upkeep and maintenance in the balcony and house area was pretty good. The leather upholstered box seats are still there.

As I thanked Desmond Woon, the Manager, for his cinema tour, I quipped that his last stand reminded me of Errol Flynn in They Died with their Boots On, which opened at the Metropole around 1943. I should really name this Nostalgia, ‘The Astor’s Last Stand.’

So, any offers for the Astor? Or if not, why not post your own memories of Georgetown Cinemas in the comments?

* The For Sale sign is gone; but I don't think it was sold. Will find out.

* New update: 2019: the building has been pulled down. It's an empty site. Something mew will go up there one day.
*Aunts' names changed to save them further embarrassment.