Before the commencement of the last century, Bartholomew Fair had become an intolerable nuisance, and the lord mayor and aldermen, to abate its depravity, issued a prohibition on the 25th of June, 1700, against its lotteries and interludes. Subsequent feints of resistance were made to its shows, music, and other exhibitions, without further advantage than occasional cessation of gross violations against the public peace.
In sir Samuel Fludyer’s mayoralty, interludes were prohibited by a resolution of the court of aldermen. This resolution has been annually put forth, and annually broken by the court itself. When alderman Bull filled the civic chair, he determined to carry the resolution into effect, and so far accomplished his purpose as not to allow any booths to be erected; but want of firmness in his predecessors had inspirited the mob, and they broke the windows of the houses in Smithfield. Alderman Sawbridge in his mayoralty was equally determined against shows, and the mob was equally determined for them; he persisted, and they committed similar excesses. Yet we find that in the year 1743, the resolution had been complied with. The city would not permit booths to be erected, and “the Fair terminated in a more peaceable manner than it had done in the memory of man.”[294] This quiet, however, was only temporary, for on the 23rd of August, 1749, a gallery in Phillips’s booth broke down, and four persons were killed; a silversmith, a plasterer, a woman, and a child, and many others were dangerously bruised; one of the maimed had his leg cut off the next morning.[295] This accident seems to have aroused the citizens: on the 10th of July, 1750, a petition was presented to the lord mayor and court of aldermen, signed by above one hundred graziers, salesmen, and inhabitants in and near Smithfield, against erecting booths for exhibiting shows and entertainments there, during Bartholomew Fair, as not only annoying to them in their callings, but as giving the profligate and abandoned opportunity to debauch the innocent, defraud the unwary, and endanger the public peace.[296]
On the 17th of July, 1798, the court of common council referred it to the committee of city lands, to consider the necessity and expediency of abolishing Bartholomew Fair: in the course of the previous debate it was proposed to shorten the period to one day, but this was objected to on the ground that the immense crowd from all parts of the metropolis would endanger life.[297]
In September, 1825, Mr. Alderman Joshua Jonathan Smith, previous to entering on an examination of forty-five prisoners charged with felonies, misdemeanours, assaults, &c. committed in Smithfield during the Fair of that year, stated, that its ancient limits had been extended into several adjoining streets beyond Smithfield; he said he had particularly noticed this infringement in St. John-street, Clerkenwell on the north side, and nearly half-way down the Old Bailey, on the south; and he was determined, with the aid of his coadjutors, to take such further steps as would in future “lessen the criminal extension which had arisen, if not abolish the degrading scene altogether.”[298]
At other periods besides these, there were loud complaints against Bartholomew Fair; and as in 1825, the corporation of London appears seriously to have been engaged in considering the nuisance, its end may be contemplated as near at hand. It is to the credit of the civic authorities, that though shows and interludes were permitted, the Fair of that year was more orderly than any other within memory. Yet even these regulations are inefficient to the maintenance of the reputation the city ought to hold in the estimation of other corporations. The Fair was instituted for the sale of cloth, cattle, and other necessary commodities: as these have, for many years past, wholly disappeared from it, the use of the Fair has wholly ceased; its abuse alone remains, and that abuse can only be destroyed by the utter extinction of the Fair. To do this is not to “interfere with the amusements of the people,” for the people of the metropolis do not require such amusements; they are beyond the power of deriving recreation from them. The well-being of their apprentices and servants, and the young and the illiterate, require protection from the vicious contamination of an annual scene of debauchery, which contributes nothing to the city funds, and nothing to the city’s character but a shameful stain.
Bartholomew Fair must and will be put down. It is for this reason that so much has been said of its former and present state. No person of respectability now visits it, but as a curious spectator of an annual congregation of ignorance and depravity.