New Bartholomew Fair.—In 1843 the City authorities prohibited the assembling of “shows” of any and all kinds in Smithfield; but with this prohibition was the announcement that arrangements had been made for the standing of such shows as desired on a large piece of ground adjoining the New North Road, called Britannia Fields, near the site of the Britannia Theatre, in the parish of Hoxton.
In this step it may have been thought to preserve the income from tolls by a bodily transfer of the fair to another locality. I doubt if the original Charter would have supported such a course; but the influence of the City would have obtained the authority of Parliament for the change. But even Parliament cannot change the sentiments of the people in regard to their amusements, or divert the channels of commerce from the time-honoured channels in which they have been wont to flow; and the project for the new Bartholomew Fair fell dead very early in its inception; but for two or three years shows did congregate there.
1855. The end had come! The old ceremony of state proclamation had been discontinued in 1840. In 1850 the Lord Mayor (Musgrove) having walked quietly to the appointed gateway with the necessary attendants, found there was no fair to proclaim! After that year the Lord Mayor attended no more for the purpose. The last Bartholomew Fair was proclaimed this year (1855). The City indeed still pays to the Rector of Bartholomew the Great the annual fee of 3s. 6d. in respect of the proclamation no longer made. The live Cattle Market was discontinued the same year—removed to Islington. The Meat Market opened in 1868 has obliterated all traces of a state of things which had continued for seven centuries.
1859. Mr. Henry Morley published “Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair,” “inscribed with friendship to his friend John Forster.” In his preface he says “When I first resolved upon the writing these memoirs, I knew simply that Bartholomew fair was an unwritten portion of the story of the people. Bound once to the life of the nation by the three ties of Religion, Trade and Pleasure, first came a time when the tie of Religion was unloosened from it; then it was a place of Trade and Pleasure. A few more generations having lived and worked, Trade was no longer bound to it. The nation still grew, and at last broke from it even as a pleasure fair. It lived for seven centuries or more, and of its death we are the witnesses. Surely, methought, there is a story here; the memoirs of a Fair do not mean only a bundle of handbills or a catalogue of monsters. And then the volume was planned which is now offered to the reader, with a lively sense of its shortcomings.” Thus launched upon the world it was and is a book suited to the companionship of all lovers of objects of antiquity. I am glad to have been able to supplement its record with some details of interest.
CHAPTER XIX.
FAIRS OF FRANCE.
