British lantern slide dealers who entered the cinema business in its first months

Bradford 'stuff' dealer Joseph Riley bought a magic lantern for his two eldest sons Herbert and William, and the three gave shows for charity before setting up in the lantern-slide business. By the turn of the century the Riley catalogue listed 1500 slide sets for sale or hire, and numerous lanterns. William, who ran the business - claimed to be 'The Largest Lantern Outfitters in the World' - was later joined by brothers Arnold and Bernard. In 1894 Herbert emigrated to New York where he managed the Riley brothers' US office. Family legend later related that William was invited to Paris to see the Lumière Cinématographe, and shortly afterwards the Rileys, enthused by living pictures, acquired the rights to Cecil Wray's 1896 Kineoptoscope projector. They manufactured the machine and advertised it in The Era as 'Steady as Lumière's. No breakdowns. Most portable and the most perfect known'. There were two basic versions, one designed to fit into the slide stage of a standard magic lantern, ('an advantage possessed by no other aparatus'); the other, with its own lens unit, designed to fit in front of the lantern.

In June 1897 the Rileys introduced their Kineoptoscope camera, again from the original designs of Cecil Wray, and basically an adapted projector mechanism. They also began to produce their own 75-foot films. The first may have been The Three Macs (May 1898) a comedy routine described as 'cigar business'. Four months later came a number of slapstick films including Wearie Willy in the Park; or, The Overfull Seat, The Nursemaid's Surprise, and later, others produced in conjunction with Bamforth of Holmfirth. On 24 October 1898 the Riley Bros gave a Royal Command cinema show at Balmoral Castle, Scotland, which included a number of their own productions; Highland Dances, March Past of the Black Watch, and others made for the occasion. That same year the Rileys were offering to sell or rent (a significant early example of this practice) films to purchasers of their projectors. In 1902 Joseph Riley's stuff business went bankrupt. The lantern slide business continued but was wound up soon after the start of the First World War. Bernard was killed on active service; Arnold carried on for a while as 'Riley Brothers (1914) Limited' but eventually left the trade. With the publication in 1912 of Windyridge, William Riley became a best-selling novelist, and survived another half a century.

Richard Brown / Denis Gifford / Stephen Herbert