John Dungworth Hudson (1803-1875) was a cutler and an ardent playgoer and his son, John Hudson (1836-1911), was a warehouseman. The elder Hudson's enthusiasm for the theatre was carried on by his son, who as a youth, unable to afford to visit performances, collected playbills from his father and other relatives. The collection stops short in 1858 because, it is said, from that point John Hudson could himself afford to attend the theatre, and he continued to visit performances in Sheffield and London during the next 40 years. His interest in the Arts included Grand Opera, and he also visited art galleries in the provinces, in London, where he went almost every year to see the Royal Academy's annual exhibition, in Paris and in Brussels.

Most of the playbills are for performances at The Theatre, Sheffield, which, from the evidence of the playbills themselves, appears in the course of 1845 to have adopted the title Theatre Royal. A few (undated) are for the Adelphi Theatre, with odd ones for the Music Hall and the Surrey Theatre & Music Hall. The Theatre (Royal) stood in Tudor Street, at the heart of Sheffield's present-day theatreland, standing until its demise opposite the (now refurbished) 19th century Lyceum Theatre and close to the site of the modern Crucible Theatre.

The playbills exhibit evidence of a wide range of dramatic performances. The first, on the 6th of February 1832, was "The Dogs of the Plantation, or, The Slave's Revenge", set in Jamaica, being on a subject of great public interest at the time. There were numerous performances of Shakespeare plays, interspersed with topical dramas such as "Capt. Ross!, or, A Voyage to the North", melodramas such as "Black-Eyed Susan" and farces such as "Wife's Whim, or, Husbands in Jeopardy". On December 14th 1836 a performance of an 'Eastern Fairy Tale of Enchantment' took place entitled "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp". A feature of theatrical programmes in this era was that they usually included two or even more separate dramatic performances: on November 1st 1838 Shakespeare's "Henry V" was followed by 'the Grand Eastern Drama' "Zembuca", featuring a comic song, with the main points of the action being outlined on the playbill, which as usual made use of many different styles and size of typography in order to attract the public's attention.

Doug Hindmarch of the Sheffield Local Studies Library has provided the following information on Sheffield theatres of the time:

"The Theatre originally opened in 1763 as part of a development with the Assembly Rooms which fronted onto Norfolk Street. It was then demolished and rebuilt, the foundation stone laid on 6 August 1777 and the theatre reopening in 1778. From this time there seems to be some confusion about the name, both Theatre and Theatre Royal being used in various sources. There were major alterations on several occasions, particularly in 1855 when the interior was entirely rebuilt and in 1901 when Frank Matcham was in charge of redecoration and improvements. It was destroyed in a fire on 30/31 December 1935.

The Adelphi began life as The Circus or the Adelphi Circus in 1837 and incorporated a ring for equestrian acts. In 1865 it was bought by Thomas Youdan and converted into the Alexandra Music Hall. The stage area was enlarged and it reopened as the Alexandra Theatre and Opera House on 12 October 1865. The last performance was on 28 March 1914 and the building was demolished."

[Notes based on the documents, information from Sheffield Local Studies Library, and The Lost Theatres of Sheffield by Bryen D. Hillerby (1999)]