A penny gaff was a popular entertainment for the lower classes in 19th-century England.

I can play the violin nearly well enough to earn money in the orchestra of a penny gaff, but not quite.

I said through my tears: I sounded like a stage husband in some penny gaff.

Clowning, dancing, singing and plays all featured in the penny gaffs.

The 'penny gaffs' is rather more in my style; the songs are out and out, and makes our gals laugh.

During the 1890s and 1900s, most film exhibition took place in temporary venues such as fairgrounds, music halls and hastily converted shops (so-called 'penny gaffs').

The book begins with the exhibition of Merrick in a London penny gaff shop and his meeting with surgeon Frederick Treves.

George Hitchcock contacted an acquaintance, showman Tom Norman, who ran penny gaff shops in London's East End exhibiting human curiosities.

After his unsuccessful venture in Berkshire, Noakes returned to his trade, and, one day, viewed the "novelties" at a penny gaff next to his place of employment in Islington.

While on display in a penny gaff shop in London, Merrick met a surgeon named Frederick Treves who invited Merrick to the London hospital to be examined.

After touring the East Midlands, Merrick travelled to London to be exhibited in a penny gaff shop on Whitechapel Road which was rented by showman Tom Norman.

Norman, initially shocked by Merrick's appearance and reluctant to display him, nonetheless exhibited him at his penny gaff shop at 123 Whitechapel Road, directly across the road from the London Hospital.

The established penny gaff theatres were feared as breeding grounds for criminals by the Victorian moral reformers, as, in the words of one city missionary: "no respectable person goes, so they have it all their own way, and corrupt the minds of youth without rebuke".

Along with the story of Jack Sheppard and other highwaymen, thieves and murderers, the Red Barn Murder was a popular subject for penny gaffs, cheap plays performed for the entertainment of the lower classes in the gin-soaked atmosphere of the back rooms of public houses.