Following is a short film on the recreation of the Mister Kite poster and the history of the Man behind the circus - I hope you enjoy:

A short film following the recreation of the Pablo Fanque circus poster that inspired John Lennon to write 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite' for the Beatles album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. Using the traditional methods of wood engraving and letterpress printing, Peter Dean and his team of experts bring to life Lennon's poster. See the finished poster here: www.kiteprint.com

https://youtu.be/JCkxzpBGj9U

 John bought the poster in an antiques shop and hung it in his music room. While writing for Sgt. Pepper one day, he and Paul McCartney drew inspiration from the quirky, old-fashioned language and set the words to music. Most of the song's lyrics came straight from this old circus poster!

On 31 January that year, John Lennon walked into a Sevenoaks antique shop where a poster advertising a February 1843 benefit for Mr Kite — "celebrated somerset thrower, wire dancers, vaulter, rider etc etc", pictured balancing on his head on a 12-foot-tall pole, playing a trumpet, of course — by Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal caught his eye.

Lennon bought the poster, took it home, put it above his piano and, a little over two weeks later, he'd written what he insisted was correctly called Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite.

"Everything in the song is from the poster," Lennon later said. "Except the horse wasn't called Henry, it was called Zanthus."

Before the start of the first take, Lennon sings the words "For the benefit of Mr. Kite!" in a joke accent, then Emerick announces, "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite! This is take 1." Lennon immediately responds, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", reinforcing his title preference from a phrase lifted intact from the original poster.

Paul McCartney owns a print from this edition

"Not too long ago we delivered one of these prints to Sir Paul McCartney's London office and it's fair to say that we were highly excited about the prospect of Paul – who wrote the song with fellow Beatle John Lennon – owning a copy of our print.

We weren't exactly expecting to hear back from him, but...

...a few weeks later, an email arrived from Sir Paul's PA to thank us for the delivery and to say that Paul loves the print! We're thrilled to have sent him a print and even happier that he likes it so much."

*This is Paul's Stage for the Song- Awesome!*

The Posters History

Mr. Kite is believed to be William Kite, who worked for Pablo Fanque from 1843 to 1845.

"Mr. J. Henderson" was John Henderson, a wire-walker, equestrian, trampoline artist, and clown. While the poster made no mention of "Hendersons" plural, as Lennon sings, John Henderson did perform with his wife Agnes, the daughter of circus owner Henry Hengler. The Hendersons performed throughout Europe and Russia during the 1840s and 1850s. A hogshead is a large wooden cask.

But who was  Pablo Fanque, the impresario of the Circus Royal who held the benefit, in which the entire night's takings would be gifted to his friend, the talented Mr K — which, at between tuppence and thruppence a ticket for crowds of up to 3,000, would be worth more than a hundred times the average weekly wage in those days?

"Pablo Fanque was a remarkable guy," says Mike Dash, a historian and writer for The Smithsonian Magazine who first wrote about the story about the poster behind the song in 2011 (I dare you to say the last bit of this sentence fast!)  , "although we know almost nothing about Fanque's childhood or parents, or even his date of birth — it could have been 1796, or 1810.

"He was born William Darby in Norwich, but we have no idea why he changed his name to Pablo Fanque, and there's evidence to suggest he and his children used both names interchangeably as a surname.

He was a beloved 'man of colour' in Britain doing all that he was doing LESS than 10years after slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire!  (Slavery was still legal in the United States at this time)

"his father was Indian-born and had been brought to the Port of Norwich (Which I dont know how this happened as Norwich is inland... Maybe it was Yarmouth) and trained as a house servant." Fanque was reportedly orphaned at a young age. Another account has Fanque born in a to a family with seven children.

"Although Lennon said Henry was just the name he gave the horse for musical reasons, Fanque was renowned for training his horses to actually waltz in time to the music, something few other horses in Britain could do, as the band usually had to keep an eye on the horse's hooves and keep changing the tempo to match its steps.

"Fanque's horses — of which he had up to 30 at any time — kept to the music's rhythm."

In addition to being a skilled juggler and adept acrobat, Fanque's other signature tricks including riding through towns with up to 12 horses "in hand" (all on a single rein) and jumping a carriage on horseback with horses still in the traces in time to music. WOW!!

In addition to regularly holding such testimonial benefit performances for circus workers down on their luck or struck down by injury, Fanque would also donate regularly to veterans', widows' and orphans' charities, and, as Dash says, "he was of the highest probity; he expected all his performers to attend church on Sunday!"

"For many, many years, his great popularity, consummate ability and great business perseverance kept him well in the front of the equestrian profession," remembered the chaplain of the British Showmen's Guild after Fanque's death.

"He was a genius, both in the training of humans and dumb beasts; many were the splendid equestrians he trained, and great was his power with horses and other animals."

Fanque's stomping — or waltzing — ground was the grim, industrial, Satanic-mill-filled north of England, touring factory towns from Manchester to Leeds and up as far as Oldham and Scotland, where he'd put up his tent for a couple of months at a time, and where often, the circus was not only the entertainment highlight of the year, it was the only entertainment.

As one old timer remembered: "In those days, Manchester Fair without Pablo's Circus was not conceivable."

Fanque made a highly successful debut in 1847. Describing Fanque and his performance, The Illustrated London News wrote:

Mr. Pablo Fanque is an artiste of colour, and his steed ... we have not only never seen surpassed, but never equalled ... Mr. Pablo Fanque was the hit of the evening. The steed in question was Beda, the black mare that Fanque had bought from Batty. That the horse attracted so much attention was testament to Fanque's extraordinary horse training skills.

Sadness for Mister Darby ...Pablo

Fanque married Susannah Marlaw, the daughter of a buttonmaker. They had two sons, one of whom was named Lionel. On 18 March 1848, his wife died in Leeds at an accident in the building where the circus was performing. Their son was performing a tightrope act before a large crowd at the Amphitheatre at King Charles Croft. The 600 people seated in the gallery fell with its collapse, but Susannah Darby was the only fatality. Heavy planks hit her on the back of the head. Reportedly, Fanque sought medical attention for his wife at the King Charles Hotel, but a surgeon pronounced her dead.

 The Leeds (or Leedes) Intelligencer wrote on the return of Darby years later a 4 March 1854 

"On that occasion he occupied a circus in King Charles's Croft and part of the building gave way during the time it was occupied by a crowded audience. Several persons were more or less injured by the fall of the timbers composing the part that proved too weak, and Mrs Darby, the wife of the proprietor, was killed. This event, which occurred on Saturday the 18th March 1848, excited much sympathy throughout the borough" 

More info:

Audio Episode (full time 28mins) about the Benefit of Mister Kite and all the background :

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2016/12/pcs_20161223.mp3

(http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/pocketdocs/being-for-the-benefit-mr-kite/8116502)