While the character of the theatrical entertainments presented at the London fairs declined from the middle of the eighteenth century, when Yates and Shuter ceased to appear in Smithfield “during the short time of Bartholomew Fair,” the various other shows underwent a gradual improvement. Menageries became larger and better arranged, while with the progress of zoological science, they were rendered better media for its diffusion. Panoramas and mechanical exhibitions began to appear, and, though it is impossible to estimate the degree in which such agencies were instrumental in educating the people, it is but fair to allow them some share in the intellectual progress of the latter half of the century.

The good or evil arising from the amusements of any class of the people can only be fairly judged by comparing the amusements with those of other classes at the same period; and those who will study the dramas and novels, and especially the newspapers of the last century, will not find more to commend in the manners and pursuits of the upper and middle classes than in those of the lower orders of society, as exemplified in the London fairs. The hand that painted Gin Lane for the contemplation of posterity left an instructive picture of the morals and manners of the upper strata of society in the ‘Rake’s Progress’ and the ‘Midnight Conversation.’

The amusements of the people partake of the mutability of all mundane matters, and the newspapers of the period show that the London fairs had begun, at the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, to be regarded by the educated portion of society much less favourably than they had been in earlier times. When St. James’s ceased to patronize them, Bloomsbury voted them low, and Cornhill declared them a nuisance. Journalists, having as yet no readers in the slums, and therefore writing exclusively for St. James’s, or Bloomsbury, or Cornhill, as the case might be, adapted their tone to the views current in those sections of London society. If we first place a paragraph of the ‘Times’ of the present day recording a cock-fight or a pugilistic contest, by the side of a report of a similar encounter in a journal of thirty years ago, we shall have no difficulty in understanding why Bartholomew Fair was described by the ‘Morning Chronicle’ in 1784 in language so different to that used by Pepys and Evelyn a century before.

After recounting the misdoings of “Lady Holland’s mob,” the paragraphist tells his readers that:—

“The elegant part of the entertainment was confined to a few booths. At the Lock and Key, near Cloth Fair, a select company performed the musical opera of the Poor Soldier, with Columbine’s escape from Smithfield. Mr. Flockton, whose name can never be struck off Bartholomew roll, had a variety of entertainments without and within. The King’s conjuror, who takes more money from out the pocket than he puts in, made the lank-haired gentry scratch their pates; the walking French puppet-show had hired an apartment, with additional performers; Punch and the Devil, in his little moving theatre, were performing without doors, to invite the company into the grand theatre. Men with wooden mummies in show-boxes were found straggling about the fair; tall women in cellars, dropping upon their knees to be kissed by short customers; dwarfs mounted on stools for the same civil purposes; and men without arms writing with their feet.”

The sneering tone, and the disposition to write down the fair, perceptible in this account, are more strongly exhibited in the ‘Public Advertiser’ of the 5th of September, in the following year:—

“Saturday being Bartholomew Fair day, it was, according to annual custom, ushered in by Lady Holland’s Mob, accompanied with a charming band of music, consisting of marrow-bones and cleavers, tin kettles, &c., &c., much to the gratification of the inhabitants about Smithfield; great preparations were then made for the reception of the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs, and other City officers, who, after regaling themselves with a cool tankard at Mr. Akerman’s, made their appearance in the fair about one o’clock, to authorise mimic fools to make real ones of the gaping spectators. The proclamation being read, and the Lord Mayor retiring, he was saluted by a flourish of trumpets, drums, rattles, salt-boxes, and other delightful musical instruments. The noted Flockton, and the notorious Jobson, with many new managers, exhibited their tragic and comic performers, as did Penley his drolls. There were wild beasts from all parts of the world roaring, puppets squeaking, sausages frying, Kings and Queens raving, pickpockets diving, round-abouts twirling, hackney coaches and poor horses driving, and all Smithfield alive-o! The Learned Horse paid his obedience to the company, as did about a score of monkeys, several beautiful young ladies of forty, Punches, Pantaloons, Harlequins, Columbines, three giants, a dwarf, and a giantess. These were not all who came to Smithfield to gratify the public; there were several sleight-of-hand men and fire-eaters; the last, however, were not quite so numerous as those who eat of the deliciously flavoured sausages and oysters with which the fair abounded. The company were remarkably genteel and crowded, and the different performances went off with loud and unbounded bursts of applause; they will be repeated this day and to-morrow for the last times this season.” Reports similar in tone to the foregoing continued to appear in the newspapers for many years.

That the fairs were visited at and from this time almost exclusively by the lower orders of society is tolerably obvious from the fact that, though the number and variety of the shows were greater, and advertising was more largely resorted to every year as a medium of publicity, the showmen had ceased to use the columns of the London press for this purpose. Bills were given away in the fair, or displayed on the outsides of the shows, but few of these have been preserved, though the few extant are the only memorials of the London fairs during several years.

The only bill of 1787 which I have succeeded in finding announces a dwarf with the remarkable name of Kelham Whiteland; he is said to have been born at Ipswich, but his height, strange to say, is not stated, a blank being left before the word inches. Probably he was growing, and his exhibitor deemed it advisable, as a matter of financial economy, to have a large number of bills printed at one time.

Flockton, who was the leading showman of this period, was the sole advertiser of 1789, when he put forth the following announcement:—

“Mr. Flockton’s Most Grand and Unparallelled Exhibition. Consisting, first, in the display of the Original and Universally admired Italian Fantoccini, exhibited in the same Skilful and Wonderful Manner, as well as Striking Imitations of Living Performers, as represented and exhibited before the Royal Family, and the most illustrious Characters in this Kingdom. Mr. Flockton will display his inimitable Dexterity of Hand, Different from all pretenders to the said Art. To which will be perform’d an ingenious and Spirited Opera called The Padlock. Principal vocal performers, Signor Giovanni Orsi and Signora Vidina. The whole to conclude with his grand and inimitable Musical Clock, at first view, a curious organ, exhibited three times before their Majesties.”

In this clock nine hundred figures were said to be shown at work at various trades.

In the following year, two wonderful rams were exhibited in Bartholomew Fair. One of them had a single horn, growing from the centre of the forehead, like the unicorn of the heralds; the other had six legs. One of the principal shows of this year was advertised as “the Original Theatre (Late the celebrated Yates and Shuter, of facetious Memory), Up the Greyhound Inn Yard, the only real and commodious place for Theatrical Performances. The Performers selected from the most distinguished Theatres in England, Scotland, &c. The Representation consists of an entirely New Piece, called, The Spaniard Well Drub’d, or the British Tar Victorious.” This clap-trap drama concluded with “a Grand Procession of the King, French Heroes, Guards, Municipal Troops, &c., to the Champ de Mars, to swear to the Revolution Laws, as established by the Magnificent National Assembly, on the 14th of July, 1790.” There was “hornpipe dancing by the renowned Jack Bowling,” and an “Olio of wit, whim, and fancy, in Song, Speech, and Grimace.”

Two years later, the London Fairs were visited by a couple of dwarfs, almost as famous in their day as Tom Thumb and his Lilliputian bride in our own. These were Thomas Allen, described in the bill of the show as “the most surprising small man ever before the public,” and who had previously been exhibited at the Lyceum, where he was visited by the Duke of York and the Duke of Clarence; and, again to quote the bill, which seems to have been based on the announcements of the Corsican Fairy, some of the passages being identical,—

“Miss Morgan, the Celebrated Windsor Fairy, known in London and Windsor by the Addition of LADY MORGAN, a Title which His Majesty was pleased to confer on her.

“This unparallelled Woman is in the 35th year of her age, and only 18 pounds weight. Her form affords a pleasing surprise, and her admirable symmetry engages attention. She was introduced to their Majesties at the Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, on Saturday the 4th of August, 1781, by the recommendation of the late Dr. Hunter; when they were pleased to pronounce her the finest Display of Human Nature in miniature they ever saw.—But we shall say no more of these great Wonders of Nature: let those who honour them with their visits, judge for themselves.

“Let others boast of stature, or of birth,
This glorious Truth shall fill our souls with mirth.
‘That we now are, and hope, for years, to sing,
The Smallest subject of the Greatest King!’

“? Admittance to Ladies and Gentlemen, 1s. Children, Half Price.

“? In this and many other parts of the Kingdom, it is too common to show deformed persons, with various arts and deceptions, under denominations of persons in miniature, to impose on the public.

“This little couple are, beyond contradiction, the most wonderful display of nature ever held out to the admiration of mankind.

“N.B. The above Lady’s mother is with her, and will attend at any Lady or Gentleman’s house, if required.”

Flockton died in 1794, at Peckham, where he had lived for several years in comfort and respectability, having realised what was then regarded as a considerable fortune. He had attended the London Fairs, and many of the chief provincial ones, for many years, retiring to his cottage at Peckham in the winter. His representation of Punch was not only superior in every way to that of the open air puppet shows, but famous for the introduction of a struggle between the mimic representative of the Prince of Darkness and a fine Newfoundland dog, in which the canine combatant seized the enemy by the nose, and finally carried him off the stage.

Flockton had no children, and probably no other relatives, for he bequeathed his show, with all the properties pertaining to it, to Gyngell, a clever performer of tricks of sleight of hand, and a widow named Flint, both of whom had travelled with it for several years; and between these two persons and other members of his company he divided the whole of his accumulated gains, amounting to five thousand pounds. His successors were announced next Bartholomew Fair as “the Widow Flint and Gyngell, at Flockton’s original Theatre, up the Greyhound Yard.” Gyngell exhibited his conjuring tricks, and performed on the musical glasses; and his wife sang between this part of the entertainment and the exhibition of the fantoccini and Flockton’s celebrated clock, which seems either to have been over-puffed by its original exhibitor, or to have fallen out of repair, for it was now said to contain five hundred figures, instead of the nine hundred originally claimed for it. Perhaps, however, the larger number was a misprint.

Widow Flint seems to have died soon after Flockton, or to have disposed of her share in the show to Gyngell; for the bill of 1795 is the only one I have found with her name as co-proprietor. Gyngell attended the London fairs, and the principal fairs for many miles round the metropolis, for thirty years after Flockton’s death, and is spoken of by persons old enough to remember him as a quiet, gentlemanly man.

Jobson, the puppet-showman, who had been in the field as long as Flockton, was prosecuted in 1797, with several other owners of similar shows, for making his puppets speak, which was held to be an infraction of the laws relating to theatrical licences. This circumstance proves Strutt to have been in error in describing Flockton as the last of the “motion-masters,” the latter having been dead three years when his contemporaries were prosecuted. I have not found Jobson’s name among the showmen at the London fairs in later years, however; and Gyngell’s puppets appear to have dropped out of existence with the musical clock, during the early years of his career as a showman.The suppression of Bartholomew Fair was strongly urged upon the Court of Common Council in 1798, and the expediency of the measure was referred by the Court to the City Lands Committee, but nothing came of the discussion at that time. It was proposed to limit the duration of the fair to one day, but this suggestion was rejected by the Court of Common Council on the ground that the limitation would cause the fair to be crowded to an extent that would be dangerous to life and limb. It is doubtful, however, whether the showmen would have found the profits of one day sufficient to induce them, had the experiment been tried, to incur the expense of putting up their booths.

The fair went on as before, therefore, and Rowlandson’s print sets before us the scene which it presented in 1799 as thoroughly and as vividly as Setchel’s engraving has done the Bartholomew Fair of the first quarter of the century. Gyngell’s “grand medley” (a name adopted from Jobson) was there; and the menageries of Miles and Polito, the Italian successor of Pidcock, and very famous in his day; and Abraham Saunders, whom we meet with for the first time, with the theatre which he appears to have sometimes substituted for the circus, perhaps when an execution had deprived him of his horses, or a bad season had obliged him to sell them; and Miss Biffin, who, having been born without arms, painted portraits with a brush affixed to her right shoulder, and exhibited herself and her productions at fairs as the best mode of obtaining patronage.

Down to the end of the last century there are no records of a circus having appeared at the London fairs. Astley is said to have taken his stud and company to Bartholomew Fair at one time, but I have not succeeded in finding any bill or advertisement of the great equestrian in connection with fairs. The amphitheatre which has always borne his name (except during the lesseeship of Mr. Boucicault, who chose to call it the Westminster Theatre, a title about as appropriate as the Marylebone would be in Shoreditch), was opened in 1780, and he had previously given open air performances on the same site, only the seats being roofed over. The enterprising character of Astley renders it not improbable that he may have tried his fortune at the fairs when the circus was closed, as it has usually been during the summer; and he may not have commenced his season at the amphitheatre until after Bartholomew Fair, or have given there a performance which he was accustomed to give in the afternoon at a large room in Piccadilly, where the tricks of a performing horse were varied with conjuring and Ombres Chinoises, a kind of shadow pantomime.

But though Astley’s was the first circus erected in England, equestrian performances in the open air had been given before his time by Price and Sampson. The site of Dobney’s Place, at the back of Penton Street, Islington, was, in the middle of the last century, a tea-garden and bowling-green, to which Johnson, who leased the premises in 1767, added the attraction of tumbling and rope-dancing performances, which had become so popular at Sadler’s Wells. Price commenced his equestrian performances at this place in 1770, and soon had a rival in Sampson, who performed similar feats in a field behind the Old Hats public-house. It was not until ten years later, according to the historians of Lambeth, that Philip Astley exhibited his feats of horsemanship in a field near the Halfpenny Hatch, forming his first ring with a rope and stakes, after the manner of the mountebanks of a later day, and going round with his hat after each performance to collect the largesses of the spectators, a part of the business which, in the slang of strolling acrobats and other entertainers of the public in bye-streets and market-places, and on village greens, is called “doing a nob.”

This remarkable man was born in 1742, at Newcastle-under-Lyme, where his father carried on the business of a cabinet maker. He received little or no education—no uncommon thing at that time,—and, having worked a few years with his father, enlisted in a cavalry regiment. His imposing appearance, being over six feet in height, with the proportions of a Hercules, and the voice of a Stentor, attracted attention to him; and his capture of a standard at the battle of Emsdorff, made him one of the celebrities of his regiment. While serving in the army, he learned many feats of horsemanship from an itinerant equestrian named Johnson, and often exhibited them for the amusement of his comrades. On his discharge from the army, being presented by General Elliot with a horse, he bought another in Smithfield, and with these two animals gave the open air performances in Lambeth, which have been mentioned.