[50] There were already pony races for silver cups in August, 1836, when 2,000 people on one day visited the gardens (Bell’s Life).
[51] Cf. Frost, Circus Life, p. 143.
[54] According to Pinks (Clerkenwell, p. 501), the land was originally acquired in 1826 for £15,000, and walled in.
[55a] Clinch, Marylebone, p. 183.
[55b] Geary was the designer of the absurd statue of George IV.—the ‘Griffin’ of its day—that formerly stood at King’s Cross. He also designed one of the first gin-palaces in London (his name still appears cut in conspicuous letters as the architect of the Bell public-house (built 1835), No. 259, Pentonville Road), but afterwards repented and was one of the enthusiastic teetotallers who welcomed J. B. Gough on his visit to England, and planned a bazaar for a temperance fête at the Surrey Gardens in 1851 (Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 69).
[56] When Lanza became bankrupt. He was the father of Rosalie Lanza, the operatic singer, and had some pupils who became well known. See Boase, Biog. Dict., s.v. Lanza.
[57a] Advertisement in the Morning Post, February 8, 1781; cf. Wroth, London Pleasure-Gardens, p. 86.
[57b] I find Rouse first mentioned as landlord of the Eagle in 1824, but the Eagle tavern was already in existence in November 1822, when a dinner took place there to welcome Henry Hunt, M.P., on his release from prison (Jackson’s Oxford Journal, November 16, 1822). A noisy crowd assembled in the neighbourhood and insisted on Hunt making a speech from the dining-room window.
[58a] A letter from Harris written the day before his ascent, and enclosing a ticket to his balloon-makers to witness his ascent, is in the writer’s collection.
[58b] He was the first proprietor (1837) of the Bower Saloon in Stangate Street, Westminster Bridge Road—a small theatre which nearly degenerated into a ‘penny gaff’ (Blanchard’s Life, p. 40, and bills of the Bower Saloon). There is a fairly common lithograph, ‘The Bower, Duke’s Arms, Stangate Street,’ showing a sort of garden entrance.