Admission Moderate.
⁂ Open from Eleven in the Morning till Nine
in the Evening.”
Foremost among the attractions of this show were the performing pig and the show-woman, who drew forth the learning of the “swinish philosopher” admirably. He went through the alphabet, and spelt monosyllabic words with his nose; and did a sum of two figures in addition. Then, at her desire, he indicated those of the company who were in love, or addicted to excess in drink; and grunted his conviction that a stout gentleman, who might have sat to John Leech for the portrait of John Bull “loved good eating, and a pipe, and a jug of ale better than the sight of the Living Skeleton.” The “beautiful dolphin” was a fish-skin stuffed. The mermaid was the last manufactured imposture of that name, exhibited for half-a-crown in Piccadilly, about a year before. The “real head of Mahoura, the cannibal chief,” was a skull, with a dried skin over it, and a black wig; “but it looked sufficiently terrific,” says Hone, “when the show-woman put the candle in at the neck, and the flame illuminated the yellow integument over the holes where eyes, nose, and a tongue had been.”
Adjoining this was another penny show, with pictures large as life on the show-cloths outside of the living wonders within, and the following inscription:—“All Alive! No False Paintings! The Wild Indian, the Giant Boy, and the Dwarf Family! Never here before. To be seen alive!” Thomas Day, the reputed father of the dwarf family, was also proprietor of the show; he was thirty-five years of age, and only thirty-five inches high. There was a boy six years old, only twenty-seven inches high. The “wild Indian” was a mild-looking mulatto. The “giant boy,” William Wilkinson Whitehead, was fourteen years of age, stood five feet two inches high, measured five feet round the body, twenty-seven inches across the shoulders, twenty inches round the arm, twenty-four inches round the calf, and thirty-one inches round the thigh, and weighed twenty-two stones. His father and mother were “travelling merchants” of Manchester; he was born at Glasgow, during one of their journeys, and was a fine healthy youth, fair complexioned, intelligent looking, active in his movements, and sensible in speech. He was lightly dressed in plaid to show his limbs, with a bonnet of the same.
Holden’s glass-working and blowing was the last show on the east side of Smithfield, and was limited to a single caravan. The first on the south side, with its side towards Cloth Fair, and the back towards the corner of Duke Street, presented pictures of a giant, a giantess, and an Indian chief, with the inscription, “They’re all alive! Be assured they’re all alive! The Yorkshire Giantess—Waterloo Giant—Indian Chief. Only a penny!” An overgrown girl was the Yorkshire giantess. A tall man with his hair frizzed and powdered, aided by a military coat and a plaid roquelaire, made the Waterloo giant.
Next to this stood another show of the same kind and quality, the attractions of which were a giantess and two dwarfs. The giantess was a Somerset girl, who arose from the chair whereon she was seated to the height of six feet nine inches and three-quarters, with “Ladies and gentlemen, your most obedient.” She was good-looking and affable, and obliged the company by taking off her tight-fitting slipper, and handing it round for their examination. It was of such dimensions that the largest man present could have put his booted foot into it. She said that her name was Elizabeth Stock, and that she was only sixteen years of age. This completed the number of shows pitched in Smithfield in 1825.
There was a visible falling off in the following year, when the number of shows diminished to eight. The west side of Giltspur Street, along its whole length, was occupied by book-stalls; and grave-looking men in black suits, with white cravats, looking like waiters out of employment, walked solemnly through the fair, giving to all who would take them tracts headed with the startling question—“Are you prepared to die?” Richardson’s theatre was there, and Clarke’s circus; but Samwell, and Ball, and Chappell and Pike did not attend, and Wombwell’s was the only menagerie. “Brown’s grand company, from Paris,” presented a juggling and tight-rope performance, with the learned horse, and a clown who extracted musical sounds from a salt-box, with the aid of a rolling-pin; Holden, the glass-blower, in a glass wig, made tea-cups for threepence each, and tobacco-pipes for a penny; the learned pig displayed his acquirements in orthography and arithmetic; there was a twopenny exhibition of rattlesnakes and young crocodiles, hatched by steam from imported eggs; and a show in which a dwarf and a “silver-haired lady” were exhibited for a penny.
Among the unique of the living curiosities exhibited by the showmen of this period was the famous spotted boy, described in the bills issued by his original exhibitor as “one of those wonderful productions of Nature, which excite the curiosity, and gratify the beholder with the surprising works of the Creator; he is the progeny of Negroes, being beautifully covered over by a diversity of spots of transparent brown and white; his hair is interwoven, black and white alternately, in a most astonishing manner; his countenance is interesting, with limbs finely proportioned; his ideas are quick and penetrating, yet his infantine simplicity is truly captivating. He must be seen to convince; it is not in the power of language to convey an adequate idea of this Fanciful Child of Nature, formed in her most playful mood, and allowed by every lady and gentleman that has seen it, the greatest curiosity ever beheld. May be seen from Ten in the Morning till Ten in the Evening. Admittance for Ladies and Gentlemen 1s. Servants and Children half price. Ladies and Gentlemen wishing to see this Wonderful Child at their own houses, may be accommodated by giving a few hours’ notice. Copper plate Likenesses of the Boy may be had at the Place of Exhibition.”
Richardson introduced this boy several seasons, between the drama and the pantomime; and became so much attached to him that he directed, by his will, that he should be buried in the grave in which, a few years before, he had deposited the remains of the lively, docile, and affectionate African lad, in the church-yard of Great Marlow.
I have found no account of the number of shows which attended Bartholomew Fair in 1827, but in the following year they must have been nearly as numerous as in 1825, an enumeration of the principal ones reaching to sixteen. All the menageries attended, and, besides Richardson’s and Ball’s theatres, Keyes and Laine’s, Frazer’s, Pike’s, and a couple of clever Chinese jugglers. The receipts of these and the other principal shows were returned, in round numbers, as follows:—Wombwell’s menagerie, £1,700; Richardson’s theatre, £1,200; Atkins’s menagerie, £1,000; Morgan’s menagerie, £150; exhibition of “the pig-faced lady,” £150; ditto, fat boy and girl, £140; ditto, head of William Corder, who was hanged at Chelmsford for the murder of Maria Martin, a crime which had created a great sensation, owing to its discovery through a dream of the victim’s mother, £100; Ballard’s menagerie, £90; Ball’s theatre, £80; diorama of the battle of Navarino, £60; the Chinese jugglers, £50; Pike’s theatre, £40; a fire-eater, £30; Frazer’s theatre, £26; Keyes and Laine’s theatre, £20; exhibition of a Scotch giant, £20. Some curious lights are thrown by these figures on the comparative attractiveness of different entertainments and exhibitions.
Considerable excitement was created among the visitors to the fair in the following year by the announcement that Wombwell had on exhibition “that most wonderful animal, the bonassus, being the first of the kind which had ever been brought to Europe.” As no one had ever seen or heard of the animal before, or had the faintest conception of what it was, the curious flocked in crowds to see the beast, which proved to be a very fine bull bison, or American buffalo. Under the name given to it by Wombwell, it was introduced into the epilogue of the Westminster play as one of the wonders of the year. It was afterwards sold by Wombwell to the Zoological Society, and placed in their collection in the Regent’s Park; but it had been enfeebled by confinement and disease, and it died soon afterwards. The Hudson’s Bay Company subsequently supplied its place by presenting the Society with a young cow.