and music. The first show, "Diorama of the Overland Route to India", opened in March 1850 and was a success with critics and public. A reviewer wrote: The Morning Chronicle reported in October that the show "continues to attract overflowing audiences to the Gallery of Illustration in Regent-street. Its extensive popularity, however, is no matter for wonder, as the subject treated is perhaps the finest that can be conceived for the purposes of scenic illustration". Grieve and Telbin followed this with "Diorama of Our Native Land" (1851), "Campaigns of the Duke of Wellington" (1852), "Diorama of the Arctic Regions" (1853), and "The Seat of War" (1854). The prefix "Royal" was added to the title of the establishment by late 1852, but it is not clear on what authority, if any. 1856–1873 Early in 1856 the singer and actress Priscilla Horton began to perform at the venue. Her entertainments given at St Martin's Hall had been popular, and with her husband, German Reed, at the piano and "the pictorial aid of Messrs Grieve and Telbin", she started giving what The Morning Chronicle called "her very clever impersonations" at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. The Reeds continued to perform at the gallery for seventeen years, in what were first billed as "Miss P. Horton's Illustrative Gatherings" and then "Mr and Mrs German Reed's Entertainments". They quickly became public favourites: in 1859 The Daily News observed: In 1860 the Reeds were joined by John Parry, a former concert singer and subsequently an entertainer known for his impressions of popular performers. The historian Jane W. Stedman writes that the Reeds' playbills "settled into a format, which continued even after Parry retired in 1869: a musical monologue to piano accompaniment by Parry ... preceded and/or followed by a musical piece, later two, often farcical, often a pocket operetta". In the 1850s and 1860s theatres were regarded by a substantial part of society as not respectable. The historian Andrew Crowther writes, "Many who would gladly attend a concert, a lecture or an exhibition at a gallery would not think of setting foot in a theatre". The Reeds did not to refer to the Gallery of Illustration as a theatre, and they called their productions "illustrations" or "entertainments", acts were "parts", and roles were "assumptions", avoiding conventional theatrical terms. Stedman comments that the accompaniment of piano, harmonium, and at times a harp "also emphasized the presumably untheatrical