Empire Cinema
Old Brow and Abney Road,
Mossley,
OL5 0AD
Old Brow and Abney Road,
Mossley,
OL5 0AD
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This was the Downs family’s first site where they tried bingo, opening under the Cosmo Bingo name. The club was later transferred to the New Princes Cinema, Stalybridge under the same club name.
There was a brutal murder at this cinema. The details are below.
Terence O’Brien’s marriage was unhappy right from the start, and his 20-year-old wife left him on July 2nd, 1939, to live with her mother at Mossley, near Oldham.
Fifteen days later, on JULY 17th, O’Brien had just taken his seat in a local cinema when his wife passed him and sat in the row in front of him. He promptly moved to join her, intimating that he wanted to speak to her. Because he was deaf, they left the cinema to talk in an adjacent alley.
Shortly afterwards the cinema’s cashier saw a woman lying in the alley, with O’Brien kneeling beside her. The cashier fetched the manager, who arrived to meet O’Brien coming out of the alley. “Will you call the police?” O’Brien asked him. “I have killed my wife.”
She had been strangled, and at his trial for her murder O’Brien, a 28-year-old former soldier, was said to have a good record both as a serviceman and as a civilian employee. The court heard that his meeting with his wife had been by chance, and there was little evidence of premeditation as their encounter had lasted only two minutes. Because of this, Terence O’Brien’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released eight years later.
The Empire cinema opened circa 1912/13. Charles and Ada Wilkinson were the owners, Charles had made his fortune as a musical hall act: “Zellini” the Human Chimney - he did tricks with cigarette smoke. He was still performing as “Zellini” at the Empire in the 1920’s. Charles and Ada’s daughter Edith Wilkinson, was born in 1910, and she married Benjamin Downs in 1931, at St Chads, Uppermill. In the 1939 Register, Charles, Ada, and Benjamin are all Cinema Proprietors, and Edith is a Cinema Cashier, of the Royal Pavilion and the Empire cinema’s both of which were in Mossley. In 1939 all four were living together on Abney Road in Mossley. This is on the same street as the cinema and about a minute walk to Mossley Town Hall which was handy for Benjamin Downs who went on to become the Mayor of Mossley.
After it was closed it was used as a bingo hall and a practice space for the local amateur dramatic society.