Panto Day Parade and Night

The University of Liverpool Panto Day and Night, 1957

Panto Day itself was generally filled with departmental floats and costumes processing throughout town before finally making it to the theatre for the pantomime. Each department would be judged on its designs and how much money it had raised for charity before one would be chosen as winner. The weather often put a dampener on the day, as described by student Irene Desmet (nee Irving) in her diary entry for Saturday 10th May 1947:

"Panto Day. Had quite a hectic morning decorating [the float]... then Mary and I went collecting in town. The procession was ruined by the weather - it poured... got soaked to the skin & then some. Fed up."

"...We were determined to enjoy our last Panto Day. Teaching practice left us little time for artistic effort to prepare an elaborate float and so we loaded a lorry with much of the department's furniture to represent a schoolroom. A few 'masters' wore academic dress - the rest of us found our old school uniforms. An essential item of school boy equipment, of course, is a water pistol which was a good excuse for firing on the crowd. In the event the buckets (even bins) full of water that were loaded onto the float as ammunition were unnecessary as the crowds (and students) were thoroughly soaked by one of the wettest Panto Days ever known."

Recollections of S. Alasdair Munro, 1957-1961 (Ref: D716/1/16)

Initially, the University would pile into the Shakespeare Theatre on Fraser Street to watch the annual Panto. However, when the Liverpool Empire Theatre opened, the Panto Committee started renting out the entire theatre for the night, where the students would put on their own spoof panto alongside the theatre’s annual pantomime.

Attending the pantomime fell out of favour in the 1930s, perhaps for good reason, as E.C. Lowe recalls:

"The pantomime tradition came to an end when George Robey was shouted off the stage and the stalls were deluged in flour bombs. The Guild had to pay the cost of the damage, of course".

Instead, a pre-panto ball and post-panto ball would take place from then on.