Edward Moss
Sir Horace Edward Commitment Moss (1852–1912) was a British theatre impresario and the founder chairman of the Moss Empires Ltd theatre combine which he created in the 1890s after first joining forces with Richard Thornton of Newcastle and later with Oswald Stoll then operating in Wales. From its start and during the 20th century Moss Empires remained the largest group of variety theatres in Britain, with over 50 venues at its height, and was regarded as the largest in the world. It was he who, in 1904, introduced a "four shows a day" system at some of his theatres; he was also the first to allow advance booking of seats in a music hall.
H.E. Moss started as the manager of his father's Lorne Music Hall in Greenock, Scotland, moving on to Edinburgh where he took over its Gaiety Music Hall in 1877 and renamed it Moss Theatre of Varieties. He bought a new site and opened his first Empire Theatre in 1892, designed by Frank Matcham. He was knighted in 1906 for his services to entertainment, the first variety impresario to be honoured this way. King George V commanded a public Royal Variety Performance to be held in the Edinburgh Empire in July 1911 as part of the Coronation celebrations that year. This would be the first such production in Britain, confirming the new respectability of Music Hall. However the theatre burned down a few months before the Performance, and a Royal Variety Performance was arranged for the following year, being held in the London Palace Theatre under Alfred Butt.
He married twice: first to Ellen Bramwell, and later to Florence Craig née Crawford, daughter of Robert Crawford one of the founders of Howard & Wyndham Ltd. He and Florence had one daughter. He died on 25 November 1912 at his home in Gorebridge, near Edinburgh.
