Fawkes was worth at his death £10,000, which was considered an enormous sum in those days. Every penny of this he made performing at the fairs.
The earliest announcements of Fawkes’ performance in my collection are dated 1702 and include advertisements headed “Fawkes and Powel,” “Fawkes and Phillips,” and “Fawkes and Pinchbeck.” Powel was the famous puppet man, Phillips a famous posture master (known to-day as contortionist), and Pinchbeck was the greatest of mechanicians. Fawkes seems to have possessed a singular gift for picking out desirable partners.
From this mass of evidence I am producing various clippings. By a peculiar coincidence one of these I believe offers the most authentic and earliest record of “two a night” performances in England.
In my collection are a number of other clippings from the press of the same year, in April and May, 1728, but none of them says “twice a night,” therefore I judge that the custom of giving two performances in a night was tried previously to April, 1728, and then abandoned, or after the first of May.
In the London Post of February 7th, 1724, Fawkes announced an exhibition “in the Long Room over the piazza at the Opera House in the Haymarket.” At this time he also advertised the fact that he was about to retire and was exposing all his tricks. The clipping of that date from my collection has the following foot-note: “Likewise he designs to follow this business no longer than this season; so he promises to learn any lady or gentleman his fancies in dexterity of hand for their own diversion.”
When Fawkes was not in partnership with some puppet showman, he always advertised his own puppets as “A court of the richest and largest figures ever shown in England, being as big as men and women!” His admission charges varied, but 12 pence seemed his favorite figure. About six years before his death he had his own theatre in James Street, near the Haymarket, in which he exhibited for months at a time before and after fairs.