Bingham’s Hotel, Grimsby (proprietor George Padgett)3D token c1875.

Bingham’s Hotel was situated at the junction of Victoria Street North and Lower Spring Street, Grimsby, opposite Baltic Wharf. (Next to where Wilson’s Carpets is today. The vacant plot of land is still there.) Newspaper references to Edward Bingham’s Bingham Hotel can be found going back to July 1855 when his eating house and coffee shop premises were enlarged.

George Padgett was proprietor of the hotel in the 1870s. He offered good accommodation for captains, commercial gentlemen etc. It sounds like it was a lively place! In 1876, George Padgett was charged with permitting drunkenness and for harbouring prostitutes. He was fined £1 for the former and the latter case was dismissed. George denied the cases and said that he endeavoured to keep his house as respectable as possible.

Bingham’s Hotel became Bakewell’s Hotel after Thomas L. Bakewell took over c1890. Part of the premises was converted into a miniature variety theatre, ‘Bakewell’s Varieties’. The theatre was in the upper floor of that part of the building on the corner of Burgess Street and Lower Spring Street. Near where Konjaku Shin, National School of Karate is today?

In 1892, the hotel was renamed the Empire Hotel and the theatre the ‘Empire Theatre of Varieties’. The new proprietor was the actor-manager of repute, Henry S. Dacre. Variety artists were still being advertised in 1905.

Cleopas Roper was the proprietor of the Empire Hotel in 1921.

Research by Grimsby and Cleethorpes Museum.