Southend's lifelike seafront wax works in the Golden Hind

Decades ago, in 1932, Mr Mosby was employed to be a ‘human waxwork’ and his job was to stand at the end of Southend pier and conceal himself amongst an exhibition of dozens of wax figures.

Every day he’d stand as still and quiet as humanly possible in order to fool or scare visitors to the pierhead waxworks, which had been sculpted and installed by Louis Tussaud - the great grandson of the famous Marie ‘Madame’ Tussaud.

Mr Mosby was so wax-like and so gifted at posing motionless that visitors would rustle through their accompanying booklet to find out the name of this incredibly human-looking exhibit. “It wasn’t easy to remain motionless at first,” Mr Mosby admitted “Especially when so many people were looking at me, but I can now remain quite still for long periods.”

There was a downside to the job however: “To decide whether I am a real waxwork visitors have, at various times, stuck pins in me, pinched me, prodded me and tickled me. In fact, they have done everything but kiss me.”

For many years Southend, like many coastal resorts, had a permanent exhibition of waxworks. At times they got quite gruesome. One waxwork in particular, known as ‘the Blade’ proved a bit too scary for young visitors.

Of course Southend’s once swashbuckling attraction, the replica of the Golden Hind also boasted a plethora of waxwork figures.

Dazzling attraction - the Golden Hind on Southend seafront was illuminated at night during the 1950s and 1960s (Image: Newsquest)

The life-size replica of Sir Francis Drake’s galleon opened in June 1949 on the seafront. At first visitors were eager to get on board and explore Southend’s latest seaside attraction.

It was built in the hope it would give the town a much needed tourism boost in the economically gloomy post-war years.

The ship was permanently docked on the seafront in the boating pool adjoining Southend Pier.

It took Southend men - mostly former seamen - less than two years to build. Some “3,000 fathoms” of rigging was used to build it and onboard was the waxwork exhibition showing how men lived and worked in the confined space of the real warship and how the guns were used in action.

There was also a popular waxwork of the knighting of Sir Francis Drake by Queen Elizabeth I.

In the week before the attraction was officially opened to the public hundreds of Southend schoolchildren were invited to explore the vessel and to have the run of the ship for free.

Southend’s Golden Hind gave countless tourists pleasure over the years until its dwindling visitor numbers saw it sink in popularity.

It even became a target for vandals. In 1954, on St Patrick’s Day, the replica ship was wrecked by “marauders” who broke into the attraction and ran amok.

Yobs forced their way into the ship and smashed the face of the waxwork model of Queen Elizabeth II. Not content with that they turned their attention to the models of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth I – in an act of undignified mischief they robbed both waxworks of their wigs.

The assistant manager of the Golden Hind discovered the damage when he turned up for work early the next morning.

Mutiny! the damage to the waxworks of surveyed after the 1954 vandal attack (Image: Newsquest)

As time and tide took its toll on the wooden structure and fashions for what constituted a fun family day out began to change, ever increasing maintenance costs led to the closure of the Golden Hind in 1997, though for at least five years previously it had become a shadow of its former self.

Waxworks, the more frightening the better, had been a staple of Southend’s tourist industry as early as Victorian times.

One of the town’s most famous waxworks was of the notorious murderer James Canham Read.

Read was known across the globe as the “Southend Murderer” after he killed his young mistress, Florence Dennis in 1894, after she became pregnant and he didn’t want the baby. Read brutally shot her in the head.

He would be hanged for the crime but his dark deeds saw him become so famous, he became a waxwork spectacle.

While the trial and all the attention it garnered was raging on, a wax figure attraction of Read and Florence Dennis was being exhibited at a penny show in Southend High Street.

The show saw droves of spectators turning out to see the bloodthirsty exhibit which showed Read holding a revolver in his right hand about to fire it at Florence.

What made the unsavoury spectacle even more chilling was that visitors were told the weapon in the exhibit contained an exact match of the cartridge extracted from the head of the murdered girl.

Madame Tussauds soon began exhibiting a waxwork likeness of Read, which was displayed in the famous Chamber of Horrors in the Baker Street, London venue.

Read’s waxwork was eventually melted down in 1949.