In the following year, Hussey’s booth again stood in George Yard, and presented Tamerlane the Great, with singing and “several curious equilibres on the slack rope by Mahomet Achmed Vizaro Mussulmo, a Turk just arrived from Constantinople, who not only balances without a pole, but also plays a variety of excellent airs on the violin when on the slack rope, which none can perform in England but himself.” Though said to have just arrived from Constantinople, this Turk was probably the same that had performed at Bartholomew Fair three years previously.
Warner disconnected himself from Fawkes this year, and joined Yeates and Mrs. Lee, whose booth stood in the same position as before, presenting the Siege of Troy, and an entertainment of singing and dancing. Adjoining it stood a new show, owned by Godwin and Reynolds, with “a curious collection of wax-work figures, being the richest and most beautiful in England;” and a panoramic view of the world, “particularly an accurate and beautiful prospect of Bergen-op-Zoom, together with its fortifications and adjacent forts, and an exact representation of the French besieging it, and the Dutch defending it from their batteries, etc.” The movements of this exhibition were effected by clock-work. Opposite the Greyhound was another new venture, Chettle’s, in which a pantomimic entertainment called Frolicsome Lasses was presented, with singing and dancing between the acts, and a display of fireworks at the end.
The only theatrical booth at Southwark Fair this year seems to have been Mrs. Lee’s, in which the entertainments were the same as at Bartholomew Fair. In Mermaid Lane was exhibited “the strange and wonderful monstrous production of Nature, a sea-elephant head, having forty-six teeth, some of them ten inches long, fluted, and turning up like a ram’s horn.”
The shows increased in number and variety, though the theatrical booths could no longer boast of the great names of former years. George Yard was occupied in 1748 by a new theatre, owned by Bridges, Cross, Barton, and Vaughan, from the theatres royal, who availed of the interest created by recent events to present a new historical drama called The Northern Heroes, followed by dancing and a farce called The Volunteers, founded on the ‘Adventures of Roderick Random.’ Smollett was now running Fielding hard in the race of fame, and the new managers were keen in turning his popularity to account for their own interests. This booth was the most important one in the fair, and the charge for admission ranged from sixpence to half-a-crown.
Hussey’s booth, at which the prices ranged from sixpence to two shillings, stood opposite the gate of the hospital. The entertainments consisted of the comedy of The Constant Quaker, singing and dancing, including “a new dance called Punch’s Maggot, or Foote’s Vagaries,” and a pantomime called Harlequin’s Frolics.
In Lee and Yeates’s booth, opposite the Greyhound, The Unnatural Parents was revived, “shewing the manner of her (the heroine) being forced to wander from home by the cruelty of her parents, and beg her bread; and being weary, fell into a slumber, in a grove, where a goddess appears to her, and directs her to a nobleman’s house; how she was there taken in as a servant, and at length, for her beauty and modest behaviour, married to a gentleman of great fortune, with her return to her parents, and their happy reconciliation. Also the comical humours and adventures of Trusty, her father’s man, and the three witches.” Then follow the dramatis personæ, which show a strong company. “With the original dance performed by three wild cats of the wood. With dancing between the acts by Mr. Adams and Mrs. Ogden. A good band of music is provided, consisting of kettle-drums, trumpets, French horns, hautboys, violins, etc. To begin each day at twelve o’clock. The scenes and clothes are entirely new, and the droll the same that was performed by Mrs. Lee fifteen years ago, with great applause.”
Near Cow Lane stood another new theatrical booth, that of Cousins and Reynolds, at which the charges for admission ranged from threepence to a shilling. Here the romantic drama of The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green was presented, with dancing between the acts, an exhibition of life-size wax figures, representing the Court of Maria Theresa, and the performance of the Italian sword-dancers, “who have had the honour of performing before the Prince of Wales, with great applause.”
Among the minor shows was one at “the first house on the pavement, from the end of Hosier Lane,” where the sights to be seen were a camel, a hyæna, a panther, “the wonderful and surprising satyr, call’d by Latin authors, Pan,” and a “young Oronutu savage.” On the pavement, at the end of Cow Lane, was a smaller show, the charge for admission to which was threepence, consisting of a large hog, said to weigh a hundred and twenty stones, and announced as “the greatest prodigy in Nature;” and an “amazing little dwarf, being the smallest man in the world.”
Bartholomew Fair was visited this year for the first time by the female dwarf who obtained such wide-spread celebrity as the Corsican Fairy. It will be seen from the following copy of the bill issued by her exhibitors that she was not shown in a booth, but in a room hired for the purpose:—
“To the Nobility and Gentry, and to all who are Admirers of the Extraordinary Productions of Nature.