William Haggar

William Haggar (March 10 1851 - February 4 1925) was a British pioneer of the cinema industry.

Haggar was born in Dedham, Essex, and worked as a musician and later as a carpenter with travelling shows, eventually becoming the proprietor of his own portable theatre company. In 1871 he married Sarah Hemming, a member of the then well-known Walton family of professional actors and pantomimists. They had eleven children, of whom eight survived to adulthood. In 1898 he began to show films on the fairgrounds of South Wales, with a portable bioscope (cinema) show. In 1901, he began making his own films, several of which were rediscovered and restored during the 1980s and since then. The latest ("Revenge!") was rediscovered in the US Library of Congress in 2007.

Films

*"Desperate Poaching Affray" (1903)
*"Mirthful Mary - A Case for the Blacklist" (1903)
*"Revenge" (1904)
*"The Bathers' Revenge" (1904)
*"Mirthful Mary in the Dock" (1904)
*"Snowballing " (1904)
*"The Sign of the Cross" (1904)
*"The Salmon Poachers" (1905)
*"The Life of Charles Peace" (1905)
*"A Message from the Sea" (1905)
*"The Squire's Daughter" (1905)
*"Mary is Dry" (1905)
*"The Dumb Man of Manchester" (1908)
*"The Red Barn Crime, or Maria Marten" (1908)
*"The Sheepstealer" (1908)
*"The Women of Mumbles Head" (1912)
*"The Maid of Cefn Ydfa - The Love Story of Ann Thomas" (1914)

These films often starred members of Haggar's own family, and members of his eldest son's theatrical company. After the death of his wife Sarah in 1909, he settled permanently in Aberdare, South Wales, where he was elected to the Merthyr Board of Guardians of the Poor and to Aberdare Urban District Council, and opened a chain of cinemas in and around Aberdare and in Llanelly.

External Links

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