THE MENE PEUPLE ANDTHE POLITE

SPECTATOR: THE INDIVIDUAL INTHE

CROWDATEIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
LONDONFAIRS
*
Inan effort to memorialize BartholomewFair as it teetered onthe
brink of abolition, George Alexander Stevens, the author and
actor most famous for his Lecture on Heads, composed a song in
1763. For the benet of posterity he portrayed the fairground as
crowds against other crowds driving in a cacophony of noise
from shows and rides, amongst a barrage of smells from the
foodstalls andthe fair-goers.
1
Full of attractions, the fair tempted
people By sound and by show, by trash and by trumpery, / The
fal-lals of fashion, andfrenchifydfrumpery.
2
Tovisit a fair was to
be distracted by gaudy garments on sale in the fairground booths
and worn on the bodies of gentlefolk who strut in their silver and
satins alongside poor folks . . . tramping in straw hats and pat-
tens. Venturing into the fair left you at risk of being assailed men-
tally, as well as crushed physically.
The disorder of a London fair is vividly described, yet the poet
allows the observer to derive order from the chaos. Stevens sep-
arates fair-goers into two groups: the gentle and the poor. The
gentle seem to be above the crowds, able to strut when those
around them are left tramping and driving against each other.
Their silver and satins stand out when placed next to the straw
hats andpattens of working Londoners. The fairgroundcrowdas
revealed by Stevens is heterogeneous in its appearance and man-
ners, though drawn by the same novelties. Yet many of his gentle-
folk would not have presented themselves in this way. While they
would have been pleased that their dress and gait set them apart,
they would have contested the assumption that they could be
* I would like to thank Joanna Innes for her comments and suggestions on an earlier
draft of this article.
1
The Beauties of All the Magazines Selected, ed. George Alexander Stevens (London,
[1762]4), 336 (Stevenss song).
2
OED denes a fal-lal as a piece of nery or frippery, a showy adornment in
dress.
Past and Present, no. 208 (August 2010) The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2010
doi:10.1093/pastj/gtq006 Advance Access published on 11 May 2010

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distracted by bright clothes, trash, trumpery, fal-lals and frump-
ery, as the poor folk were.
Just how people who considered themselves to be gentle
would have presented themselves in relation to the fairground
crowdremains unclear. Historians have neglectedanunavoidable
part of urbandaily life inthe eighteenthcentury: howpeople dealt
with the challenge of interacting with others in crowded streets
and entertainment venues.
3
Fairground crowds were among the
most heterogeneous in eighteenth-century London, and they
provide an excellent opportunity for examining how people
reacted to the different sorts around them. This has particularly
important implications for our understanding of the eighteenth-
century concept of politeness, which in some contexts was a tool
for facilitating social interaction between unequal people. As a set
of skills that could be adopted or adapted by a wide variety of
people, politeness might be employed in a variety of settings by
the elite or the middling sorts to demonstrate their social creden-
tials.
4
Historians have not worked out the ways in which polite-
ness facilitated sociability in everyday contexts, nor have they
thought about how it could function in the poorly regulated
space of the street. Many fairground attractions would not have
tted in with the learned and improving activities generally con-
sidered polite in the Georgian period. Therefore fair-goers had
to develop strategies for presenting their use of the fair as a polite
activity.
This article explores how accounts left by fair-goers diverge
from Stevenss description of the experience of attending a fair.
These rst-hand descriptions demonstrate that some people
embraced fairs as places of distraction, but that other fair-goers
attempted to set themselves apart from the crowd by describing
their destinations as pre-selected. Thus different sorts of people
sought to position themselves differently with reference to the
crowd. Social identity was asserted by carefully representing
ones activities in ways that corresponded with (or ignored)
polite ideals.
3
Arecent exceptionto this dearth is SusanE. Whyman, Sharing Public Spaces, in
Clare Brant and Susan E. Whyman (eds.), Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century
London: John Gays Trivia (1716) (Oxford, 2007).
4
Lawrence E. Klein, Politeness for Plebes: Consumption and Social Identity in
Early Eighteenth-Century England, inAnnBerminghamandJohnBrewer (eds.), The
Consumptionof Culture, 16001800: Image, Object, Text (LondonandNewYork, 1995).
132 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208

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I
For all sorts of people, life in eighteenth-century London was
marked by frequent interaction with crowds. The busy streets
of the metropolis had to be carefully navigated, and the year
was punctuated with public events that drew large bodies of
people. An individual came into close contact with others dur-
ing the course of evenings in taverns, coffee-houses and pleasure
gardens, or in the audiences at elections, executions, plays, or
civic events such as the Lord Mayors Day procession.
5
This often
involved much social mixing: even if wearers of stars and garters
did not exactly rub shoulders with hoi polloi, they still occupied
adjacent spaces and observed the same performances. However,
everyone did not come with the same objectives in mind. The
variety of activities available at a theatre or coffee-house was not
unlimited, but it included more than simply watching the showor
drinking coffee while reading the news. By examining the ac-
counts of rst-person experience that survive for a particular
kind of venue the annual fairs held around the metropolis
it is possible to understandthe ways inwhich individuals at public
gatherings described their own presence within crowded spaces.
Historians have generally had political crowds in mind when
they developed tools for understanding the experience of crowds.
Following on fromthe work of George Rude, scholars of political
crowds have attempted to nd meaning in the demographic
make-up and in the forms and symbols used by people gathered
together for celebration or protest.
6
This historiography has
5
Penelope J. Coreld, Walking the City Streets: The Urban Odyssey in
Eighteenth-Century England, Jl Urban Hist., xvi (1990); Susan E. Whyman,
Introduction, in Brant and Whyman (eds.), Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-
Century London.
6
George Rude, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and
England, 17301848, new edn (London, 1995); E. P. Thompson, The Moral
Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century, Past and Present, no. 50 (Feb.
1971); Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns, 1790
1835 (Cambridge, 1988), 314, 2330; Paul Grifths, Politics Made Visible: Order,
Residence and Uniformity in Cheapside, 160045, in Paul Grifths and Mark S. R.
Jenner (eds.), Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern
London (Manchester and New York, 2000); Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture and
Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford, 1998); Nicholas Rogers, Crowds and Political
Festival in Georgian England, inTimHarris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500
1850 (Basingstoke and New York, 2001); Tim Harris, Perceptions of the Crowd in
Later Stuart London, in J. F. Merritt (ed.), Imagining Early Modern London:
Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 15981720 (Cambridge,
2001).
THE MENE PEUPLE AND THE POLITE SPECTATOR 133

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argued for a unity of purpose among political crowds that has not
been assumed for crowds at fairs, theatres or other public spaces
of diversion. Emma Grifn has argued that social status played a
signicant role inshaping recreational interests andexperiences.
7
Grifnquestions the chronological arguments of Peter Burke and
others that the socially elite only gradually withdrew from dem-
otic culture betweenthe seventeenthandnineteenthcenturies, by
suggesting that, if a shared culture hadever existed, it was gone by
1700.
8
But even if a shared culture never did exist as Burke pre-
sents it, people fromdifferent backgrounds still sharedspaces and
attended the same events. A completely separate culture for the
elite is no more plausible than a culture that attracted everyone.
9
Gatherings in recreational settings have been less carefully
studied and are not so easily characterized as political crowds.
This article examines how people saw themselves in relation to
those around them: in some cases it was as part of a crowd with
similar goals and interests; while in others, it was as mentally and
socially separated from the mass of the crowd, though physically
part of it. The latter perspective is reminiscent of the work by
Walter Benjamin on nineteenth- and twentieth-century city
streets:
10
for Benjamin the street was made up of individuals
moving about with different objectives in mind. Consequently,
therefore, we need new analytical tools for evaluating experience
that can account for the existence of contrasting understand-
ings of the relationship between the individual and the group.
In many recreational contexts, extant sources suggest that the
crowds contained a wide variety of sorts of people.
11
Studies of
7
Emma Grifn, Englands Revelry: A History of Popular Sports and Pastimes, 1660
1830 (Oxford, 2005), 801; Emma Grifn, Sports and Celebrations in English
Market Towns, 16601750, Hist. Research, lxxv (2002), 2057.
8
Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 1988), 27081;
J. M. Golby andA. W. Purdue, The Civilisation of the Crowd: Popular Culture in England,
17501900 (Stroud, 1999), 39.
9
A recent sociological study of twenty-rst-century England has argued that,
while there are people who engage only with popular culture, no one is exclusively
highbrow in their tastes: Tak Wing Chan and John H. Goldthorpe, Social Strati-
cation and Cultural Consumption: Music in England, European Sociol. Rev., xxiii
(2007).
10
Walter Benjamin et al., The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin
McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 5245.
11
This also seems to have been true for political crowds: see, for instance, Harris,
Perceptions of the Crowd in Later Stuart London, 2589. Robert Shoemaker also
discusses the mixingof different types inLondons streets andpublic spaces: Robert B.
Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England
134 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208
(cont. on p. 135)

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the crowds at theatres stress the variety of Londoners in the
audiences. In part, this is due to the emphasis placed in literary
and visual representations on the impressive variety of socio-
economic groups found at theatres, pleasure gardens or other
social spaces. Early works on the theatrical audience supported
this view, though in recent decades scholars have doubted the
extent of social mixing.
12
Patrons of the middling and lower
sorts formed a substantial portion of the crowd, but they were
outnumbered by their social superiors and often watched from
different areas. In contrast, at pleasure gardens or fairs different
sorts of people circulated more freely and were drawn by less
clearly dened attractions.
Politeness was an attribute of the genteel that has been used to
analyse virtually every aspect of the lives of local and national
elites of the middle and upper classes in eighteenth-century
England. Historians use of politeness as ananalytical tool reects
its ubiquity in contemporary print and manuscript documents.
As a term it appears in discussions of form, sociability, improve-
ment, worldliness and gentility.
13
The sociable and improving
aspects of fairs provide evidence of how people of middling and
socially elite backgrounds presented their participation in crowds
at public events.
Adhering to expectations of polite conduct on the fairground
required the ability to act with ease around different sorts of
(n. 11 cont.)
(London, 2004), 34. Jonathan Conlin has reviewed the evidence that Vauxhall was a
socially mixed space and seems to support the literary representations of pleasure
gardens as spaces where the respectable rubbed shoulders with the disreputable: see
Jonathan Conlin, Vauxhall Revisited: The Afterlife of a London Pleasure Garden,
17701859, Jl Brit. Studies, xlv (2006), 7234.
12
Leo Hughes, The Dramas Patrons: A Study of the Eighteenth-Century London
Audience (Austin, 1971), 15564. Recently Mark Dawson has qualied this view of
the mixedtheatrical crowdfor the late Stuart periodandRobert Hume has questioned
the ability of people of modest means to pay the entry fees. While Dawson demon-
strates that the theatre did cater to all sorts of Londoners, he also shows that people of
higher social standing had a stronger claim to space in the theatre, at the expense of
the lower sorts. Jane Moody has also argued that social mixing in theatres was not
sustained in practice in the early nineteenth century. Mark S. Dawson, Gentility and
the Comic Theatre of Late Stuart London (Cambridge, 2005); Robert D. Hume, The
Economics of Culture in London, 16601740, Huntington Lib. Quart., lxix (2006),
4907; Jane Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 17701840 (Cambridge, 2000),
174.
13
Lawrence E. Klein, Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth
Century, Hist. Jl, xlv (2002), 877.
THE MENE PEUPLE AND THE POLITE SPECTATOR 135

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people at the same time as displaying an awareness of rened
taste. Politeness sought to facilitate easy and natural sociability
between people of different sorts, but it remains unclear howthis
might have operated in spaces where informal social mixing
occurred.
14
Even if people were able to navigate the socializing
that occurred at the fair, how should they have approached the
activities that sat uneasily alongside polite ideals? The disorderly
crowds, the loud and vulgar performances, the heavy drinking
and the presence of prostitutes should all have discouraged
polite attendance. Yet these dangers existed alongside booths
offering shows and displays that could be interpreted as rened
or improving, and therefore polite. We nd a variety of people
who presented themselves as polite navigating the fairground.
The idea of polite society was well known in the eighteenth
century, but pinpointing just who was polite is difcult. Widely
distributed literature describing polite ideals provided both the
socially elite and the middling sort with a set of behaviours to
exhibit and vocabulary to use when describing their activities.
15
These tools could be called on selectively to facilitate interaction
or demonstrate social status. But, just as people could call select-
ively on the tools of politeness, so they could also be selective
about the activities they called upon at the fair. Thus, in descrip-
tions of fairground behaviour and activities we see individuals
presenting themselves in ways that did not violate polite ideals
and that supported claims to social status and propriety. Actual
behaviour did not always live up to peoples accounts of them-
selves, but we can nonetheless gain a better understanding of how
polite ideals were used to describe activities that potentially vio-
lated polite codes. The remainder of this article examines the
rhetorical strategies used by those wishing to present themselves
as respectable as they navigated crowds and witnessed the follies
of the fair, and shows that such polite people attempted to sep-
arate themselves mentally from the crowd around them in a
situation where they could not create physical separation.
14
Ibid., 87980. See, for instance, Elizabeth Shackletons interactions with trades-
people: Amanda Vickery, The Gentlemans Daughter: Womens Lives in Georgian
England (New Haven and London, 1998), 279.
15
Klein, Politeness for Plebes. This conceptualization of politeness borrows
heavily from Chartiers work on cultural appropriation: Roger Chartier, Culture as
Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France, in Steven L. Kaplan
(ed.), Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth
Century (Berlin and New York, 1984).
136 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208

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II
Fairgrounds may have been the public space that brought to-
gether the largest cross section of Londons population, par-
ticularly in the early Hanoverian period when the royal family
ventured to Bartholomew Fair almost every year. Fairs owed
part of their attraction to their timing in August and September
when the theatres were closed for the summer. BartholomewFair
was the most important in London; it was held in Smitheld on
the northern edge of the City. Centred on St Bartholomews Day,
24 August (moved to 3 September when the calendar was re-
formed in 1752), it lasted for up to two weeks early in the cen-
tury.
16
Attempts to regulate the fair focused on shortening its
duration, generally to the three days set out in its charter, and
banning plays and shows; by the early nineteenth century it
seems to have stabilized at a length of four days. There was also
Southwark Fair, held in early and mid September in the neigh-
bourhoods just south of London Bridge, which drew substantial
crowds until its abolition in 1763. Lesser fairs in the metropolitan
area included Tottenham Court Fair, held in mid August in the
area where TottenhamCourt Road and Oxford Street nowmeet,
Islington Fair, also in August, and fairs at Tothill Fields and
Greenwich in April, and at Westminster in May, in the area that
would become known as Mayfair.
The fairs offereda varietyof attractions heldwithinhundreds of
booths. Bartholomew Fair was located both in the open space in
front of the entrance to St Bartholomews Hospital and along the
lanes to the east and west of the open space of West Smitheld.
The ground would have been lled partly with wooden stalls for
selling food, drink and goods, and partly with show booths and
rides. A substantial amount of open space would have remained,
occupied by people standing and by carriages circulating around
the attractions. During the fair West Smitheld would have been
considerably more crowded with people than usual (normally the
square was occupied with a meat market that dealt with herds
of cattle and sheep). This was a better place for a fair than
Southwark, where the booths lined the road at the southern end
of London Bridge, creating a trafc nightmare. Because of the
16
The most substantial account of this fair can be found in Henry Morley, Memoirs
of Bartholomew Fair (London, 1973).
THE MENE PEUPLE AND THE POLITE SPECTATOR 137

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way that streets radiated out fromSmitheld, avoiding Bartholo-
mew Fair would have involved weaving through the narrow and
winding alleys that made up most of the thoroughfares inthis part
of town. Fairs held on the periphery of the metropolis in Spa
Fields or at Tottenham Court were held on open ground and
were more easily avoided than the fairs at Southwark and
Smitheld.
Reconstructing the fairground and fair-goers involves the care-
ful gathering of an eclectic mix of sources. The evidence con-
sidered in this article is primarily drawn from newspapers,
court cases, and diaries. All three sources must be read with a
critical eye and are generally unveriable. Court cases could pro-
vide evidence from multiple sources to verify the accounts, but
often the testimony was one-sided. Stories found in newspapers
were frequently based onhearsay andwere sometimes fabricated;
and though the regularity of reports of the royal family visiting
fairs indicates that those reports are true, descriptions of fair-
ground crowds (particularly when they may be puffs planted by
entrepreneurs to advertise an attraction) have to be used with
caution. As for diaries, they cannot be considered reliable de-
scriptions of behaviour or activities either; they were often read
by people other than the author, and diarists certainly attempted
to present themselves in particular (though not always genteel)
ways. Yet, while none of these sources gives consistently reliable
insight into what people really got up to at fairs or how they felt
about their behaviour, they do showus howpeople wanted others
tosee their fairgroundactivities. We donot needtoverify the truth
of the accounts so much as consider why actions were presented
in the ways they were.
The shows staged within the fairs have received most atten-
tion from scholars because of the strong documentary evidence
provided by surviving handbills and newspaper advertisements.
Showmen offered farces, boiled-down plays, biblical tales, pup-
pet and harlequin shows, human and animal oddities, contor-
tionists and acrobats.
17
The shows were only a minority of the
attractions, however. Food stalls offering pork, sausages and con-
fections appear to have been abundant, as were booths offering
17
Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Mass., 1978); Sybil
Rosenfeld, The Theatre of the London Fairs in the 18th Century (Cambridge, 1960);
Susan Chandler Haedicke, From Booths, to Theatre, to Court: The Theatrical
Signicance of the LondonFairs, 16601724 (Univ. of MichiganPh.D. thesis, 1984).
138 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208

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drinks and space for dancing. And while London fairs were no
longer signicant marts for the wholesale distribution of cloth,
they continued to draw retailers selling haberdashery and toys.
18
Handkerchiefs, lace and ribbons, as well as small metal goods,
featured prominently. There were also rides, in particular the
up-and-down, an early form of a big wheel or Ferris wheel.
As in the case of other public spaces in eighteenth-century
London, a comprehensive answer to who made up the fairground
crowds is impossible. Social mixing was one of the salient features
of literary representations of fairs, and authors and poets stressed
both the variety of people and their proximity to each other. One
author described a fairground crowd divided by profession and
social type thus: Turnkeys . . . and Hackney Scribes, garterd
Knights and shoe-boys, as well as sparks, beaux, apprentices,
damsels and whores.
19
Unsurprisingly, many descriptions did
not suggest that the proximity of different sorts was admirable.
As one particularly splenetic poet, Richard Barton, scribbled:
The populace that croud the Fair,
Where Wapping and St. [Jamess] unite,
Pleasd with coarse objects of delight:
The chambermaid and Countess sit
Alike admirers of the wit:
The Earl and footman tete-a-tete
Sit down contented on one Seat.
20
Barton here described a union of the court and the labouring
population at the fairground. In his depiction, not only do diverse
elements come into contact, but they share seats and appreciate
the attractions in the same manner. But, in reality, while vulgar
entertainments might be acceptable for chambermaids and foot-
men, a countess or earl ought not to enjoy them in the same way
18
The commercial role of fairs has been recently re-examined by Ian Mitchell: see
his The Changing Role of Fairs in the Long Eighteenth Century: Evidence from the
North Midlands, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., lx (2007). Fairs were not international
marts like Continental fairs, nor should they be consideredas markets which provided
unprepared food and dry goods. For markets, see Colin Smith, The Wholesale and
Retail Markets of London, 16601840, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., lv (2002). For
examples of spending at Bartholomew Fair, see the account book of John Angell:
Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. Misc. D233, pp. 357, 78, 1223.
19
AWalk to Smith-Field: or, ATrue Discription of the Humours of Bartholomew-Fair,
with the Many Comical Intrigues and Frolicks that Are Acted in Every Booth in the Fair, by
Persons of All Ages and Sexes, fromthe Court Gallant to the Countrey Clown . . . ([London],
1701), 1; Bartholomew-Fair: or, A Ramble to Smitheld. A Poem in Imitation of Milton
(London, 1729), 34.
20
RichardBarton, Farrago: or, Miscellanies inVerse and Prose (London, 1739), 4958.
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as, and side by side with, their servants hence Bartons satirical
spleen.
21
Such anxiety about the declining standards of cultural
leaders echoes Alexander Popes complaints fromthe early part of
the eighteenth century about Bartholomew Fairs negative inu-
ence on the court.
22
While evidence of just who did go to fairs is fragmentary and
sparse, it does appear that all Londons classes were represented
from the royal family all the way down to street urchins and
the desperately poor. Fairground entertainments could cater to
the wealthy and rened, but those without money could enjoy the
fair as well. Members of the royal family and nobility visited
Bartholomew and Southwark fairs every year from 1714 until
the early 1740s, and newspapers kept readers informed of their
fair-going proclivities.
23
Frederick, prince of Wales, was a par-
ticularly keen theatre-goer and he extended his patronage to the
fairground booths as well. Between 1732 and 1736 he could be
found on the fairground each year, and newspapers and booth
owners gleefully reported the shows he had seen with his wife or
sisters.
24
Frederick was also said to have attended Southwark and
Bartholomew fairs incognito, allegedly even taking his new bride
in one instance, though the veracity of the reports is suspect.
25
Fredericks brother, William, duke of Cumberland, alsoappeared
regularly at the fairs, just as nobles such as the duchess of Bolton
and the duke of Montague had done: they were spotted at drolls
by Dudley Ryder and his friends in the 1710s.
26
21
Evenmore unifying is the message of a song fromThe Honest Yorkshireman, which
complains that, besides Prentice Boys, / Andpretty Maids, The Country, the Court
were also adversely affected by social miscegenation: see Henry Carey, The Honest
Yorkshireman: A Ballad Farce (London, 1777), 17.
22
For more on Popes comments, see Haedicke, From Booths, to Theatre, to
Court ; Pat Rogers, Literature and Popular Culture in Eighteenth Century England
(Brighton, 1985), ch. 3.
23
For an account of each member of the royal family in the context of their theatre-
going habits, see Harry WilliamPedicord, By Their Majesties Command: The House of
Hanover at the London Theatres, 17141800 (London, 1991).
24
Grub Street Jl, 31 Aug. 1732; 21 Sept. 1732.
25
Grub Street Jl, 20 Sept. 1733; 4 Sept. 1735; 2 Sept. 1736.
26
The Diary of Dudley Ryder, 17151716, ed. William Matthews (London, 1939),
86, 101; Gertrude Savile, Secret Comment: The Diaries of Gertrude Savile, 17211757,
ed. Alan Saville (Thoroton Soc., Record ser., xli, Nottingham, 1997), 55, 132.
Notices of the nobility at fairs have not come to light for the remainder of the eight-
eenth century, but one does appear in the early nineteenth century: see Morning
Chron., 12 Sept. 1806.
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Early in the century the gentry could be found at the fairs, as
demonstrated by visits recorded in the diaries of William Byrd,
a Virginia landowner, and of Dudley Ryder, the future judge.
27
The presence of merchants and residents of the city can also be
conrmed by court cases and diary evidence. The American ex-
patriate Samuel Curwen reported visiting Bartholomew Fair
twice in his diary in the 1780s.
28
Two diarists named Stephen
Monteage, father and son clerks at the Excise Ofce, repeatedly
went to or passed through fairs between the 1730s and the
1760s.
29
John Grano, a trumpet player who was patronized by
members of the nobility, ventured into Southwark Fair while
being held in Marshalsea Prison for debt in 1728.
30
Joseph
Underwood, a victim of an attack by the Black Boy Alley gang,
served as keeper of Ludgate and was referred to as a gentleman
out of respect for his post.
31
Evidence of other people of respected
and potentially polite status at fairs survives in records of trials
related to their servants who accompanied them. In a 1726 rape
trial, for instance, the victimhad attended TottenhamCourt Fair
with her mistress and the mistresss children, but became separ-
ated fromthemby the crowd.
32
The family lived at the north end
of SwallowStreet (later entirely destroyedtomake way for Regent
Street), near Oxford Street and Hanover Square; while a home in
27
William Byrd, The London Diary, 17171721, and Other Writings, ed. Louis B.
Wright and Marion Tinling (New York, 1958), 315.
28
The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist, ed. Andrew Oliver, 2 vols. (Cambridge,
Mass., 1972), ii, 663, 783.
29
Guildhall Library, London, MS 205/2, 2425 Aug. 1738. There is some confu-
sion about the authors of these diaries. According to the National Register of Archives
andthe Guildhall Library the diaries are all by the same person, bornin1681(ref. GB/
NNAF/P155072). Other volumes of Stephens diary are in the Althorp Collection in
the British Library (Add. MSS 7550110). The nding aid for this collection demon-
strates that the volumes from 1757 and later were actually by the son, also called
Stephen, baptized in St Jamess, Westminster, in 1710.
30
John Grano, Handels Trumpeter: The Diary of John Grano, ed. John Ginger
(Stuyvesant, NY, 1999), 924; Bodleian Lib., Rawlinson MS D34, pp. 95, 1089,
500, 508.
31
Old Bailey Proceedings online (hereafter OBP), 5http://www.oldbaileyonline
.org4, Dec. 1744, trial of William Brister, James Page, Theophilus Watson, James
Roberts, John Potbury, otherwise Jack the Sailor, WilliamBillingsly, otherwise Gugg,
Henry Gadd, otherwise Scampey (t17441205-34); JohnEarle, The World Displayd: or,
Mankind Painted in their Proper Colours (London, 1742), 197. He was also an ensign in
the YellowRegiment of the London militia in 1738. Being called a gentleman was no
longer limited to people of gentle status.
32
Select Trials at the Sessions-House in the Old-Bailey, 4 vols. (Dublin, 17423), iii,
49. The servant encountered a pair of young men, had some sort of sexual liaison with
one of them and accused him of rape.
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this location did not guarantee gentility, it suggests that the family
was fairly well off.
As we have just seen, there were servants at the fairs too, and we
nd them alongside apprentices and tradesmen. Luxury trades-
men were present, as were less prestigious workers. John Parker, a
jeweller and goldsmith, was robbed while walking up to a show,
and there is evidence indicating widespread attendance at fairs by
people of more modest means.
33
As Sarah Smith responded
during the trial of her husbands apprentice William Milner,
when asked why she had allowed Milner to attend Bartholomew
Fair: It is customary for boys to go.
34
Enjoying an evening at a
local fair was a standard activity for unmarried people of the mid-
dling and lower sorts. As the examples in the remainder of this
article show, the fair was a place for men and women, for drovers,
apprentices, sailors and dock workers, servants, cork cutters and
calenderers. Though the examples are mainly male, females at-
tended as well, both as entrepreneurs (including prostitutes) and
as fair-goers.
35
The fairground was a mixed and busy space, but entrepreneurs
supplied elite entertainments intended to provide opportunities
to avoid the crowd. Theatrical booths adopted the stratied seat-
ing present in theatres, advertising up to four separate sections
differentiated by price. Advertisements fromthe 1740s rst indi-
cated that separate seating was available for a higher price, and
continued broadcasting the amenity until the late 1770s. At
Husseys Great Theatrical Booth inGeorge Inn Yardat Bartholo-
mew Fair in 1747, for example, Tamerlane the Great was being
shown with four levels of seating available: boxes for 2s. 6d., pit
seats for 1s. 6d., rst-gallery tickets for 1s., and second-gallery
tickets for 6d.
36
Similarly, advertisements informed potential
visitors that the booths owners had devised ways of entering
33
OBP, Oct. 1786, trial of William Thompson (t17861025-2).
34
OBP, Sept. 1768, trial of William Milner (t17680907-71).
35
Anne Wohlcke, Wives, Windows, and Singlewomen: Working Women at
Londons Eighteenth-Century Fairs, Essays in Economic and Business History, xxiv
(2006); Savile, Secret Comment, ed. Saville, 55, 132.
36
General Advertiser, 22 Aug. 1747. The ticket prices for watching a performance at
Husseys booth were similar to those advertised in newspapers by other showmen. Jon
Stobart has recently argued that socially elite customers were often mentioned in
provincial advertisements not because entrepreneurs were trying to lure in the
gentry, but to demonstrate the fashionability of their goods to middling customers.
Jon Stobart, Selling (through) Politeness: Advertising Provincial Shops in
Eighteenth-Century England, Cultural and Social Hist., v (2008).
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the shows without being molested by the crowds. Husseys ad-
vertisement announced that Gentlemens COACHES may drive
up the Yard and others created passages that could be entered
from outside the fairground. Coaches could also be hired to
escape the crowds. Ned Ward jumped in a coach to escape the
Dirt and the uneasiness of a Crowd as he departed Bartholomew
Fair.
37
Set above the pedestrians, a passenger in a coach was thus
out of the fray, safe from danger and secure in his or her superior
physical position.
38
Entrepreneurs clearly believed that offering
patrons the opportunity to demonstrate their separation fromthe
crowd would attract the quality into their audience.
III
It is not surprising to nd the political and social elites setting
themselves apart from the mob when describing their activities
at fairs. From tradesmen who created luxury goods up to the
gentry and nobility, people with pretensions to elite social status
emphasized their rened choices of amusements and in this way
distinguished themselves fromthe people around them. People of
middling, gentry and noble status presented themselves as polite
in order to justify their presence and behaviour.
The shows of choice for people with claims to politeness were
theatrical and scientic. These had the potential to instruct and
improve their audiences and provided access to the elite attrac-
tions normally on display at the patent theatres. Throughout the
rst three-quarters of the century fairground booths and the
patent theatres shared many thespians, particularly comic
actors. With Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres closed
during the summer, it made nancial sense for the performers
to seek work elsewhere, and many found employment in fairs,
both in London and further aeld. Fairs also provided oppor-
tunities for up-and-coming actors and actresses to establish
themselves as worthy of the more polite settings of Drury Lane
and Covent Garden. Mrs Pritchards breakout performance in
Fielding and Hippisleys booth at Bartholomew Fair in 1733
37
[Edward Ward], The London-Spy Compleat, in Eighteen Parts, 4th edn, 2 vols.
(London, 1709), i, 236.
38
For more on the role of the coach as a protected space, see Susan E. Whyman,
Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys, 1660
1720 (Oxford, 1999), 102.
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created a stir among people writing for periodicals read by
the respectable as well as by their socially aspiring inferiors.
39
Pritchards particularly popular recital of Sweet, if you love me,
smiling turn in ACure for Covetousness attracted so much notice
that poems dedicated to her appeared in the Gentlemans
Magazine.
40
A contributor to that magazine celebrated her per-
formance and hoped to see her on some nobler stage in the
future. It was thus possible to nd performances more suited to
the audiences at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in lowly
settings.
Some diarists tried to leave little doubt that the theatrical
booths were their primary interest. In 1757, diarist Stephen
Monteage, a single man in his late forties, went to Bartholomew
Fair with two friends; he went to Yates & Shuters Booth from
thence to the Star in Aldersgate Street.
41
Monteage records that
he did his drinking in his usual haunt, not (as many others did) at
one of the numerous tents for drinking in the fairground. The
attraction of the fairground for Monteage was clearly the show
booths, something further emphasized by his visit to Southwark
Fair six years later. In that year, he passed through Southwark
Fair, but tells his readers that he did not stay.
42
Rather, he sug-
gested that the partly abolished fair was no fair at all. Monteage
went and saw what is calld Southwark Fair, a very poor one, no
shews. Without shows, a fair was not worth seeing; it was just an
impersonation of a fair. He presents himself as attending fairs for
a specic, anticipated activity, though in 1763 he had obviously
not checked on the availability of his preferred formof entertain-
ment before visiting. Fairground drinking and gambling held no
appeal for Monteage: he had other urban spaces, including tav-
erns, pubs and coffee-houses, in which to drink.
43
In his account
he contrasts himself with many other visitors to Southwark Fair
who were content to eat, drink and play games of chance.
Monteage continued on his walk.
39
Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 17271783 (Oxford and
New York, 1989), 65, 91.
40
Gentlemans Mag. (Mar. 1733), 490.
41
Guildhall Lib., MS 205/8, 3 Sept. 1757.
42
Guildhall Lib., MS 205/9, 19 Sept. 1763.
43
Interestingly, Monteage was a keen walker and always stopped in rural and semi-
rural taverns along the way. In 1758, however, one of his walks did include a stop for
drinking at the fair in Peckham, then a rural hamlet popular as a commuting town for
City merchants.
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Such attention to theatrical booths is found in other diaries.
John Grano went to Southwark Fair a couple of times in both
1728 and 1729. He walked around the fair, but also visited spe-
cic booths. On 17 September 1728 he went with a Mr Adamto
go to ye Fair and see the Beggars and Quakers Opera. Together
they walkedall about ye Fair Stopt [in] Fieldings Booth. . . took a
Tour about ye Mint . . . then went back to Fieldings Booth where
we saw the conclusion of ye last Act, then went to Lees Booth
where we saw about Half ye Quakers Opera.
44
Like Monteage,
Grano was specic about the theatrical attractions he viewed and
left out details about the rest of his visit.
Scientic curiosities were also regardedas respectable spaces in
the fairground where improving knowledge could be obtained
from unusual specimens brought to the capital by entrepre-
neurs.
45
For example, an expensive and highbrow volume
of images and descriptions of plants and animals, George
Edwardss Gleanings of Natural History, discusses the interactions
of various animal species as revealed at fairground shows. By
introducing a male maimon to a female on display at Bartholo-
mew Fair, Edward was able to examine ape sociability.
46
Virtuosi were not the only people to suggest that they directed
their steps specically towards scientic curiosities in the fair-
ground. The goldsmith and jeweller from St Pauls Churchyard,
John Parker, described his actions and motivations on an after-
noon in September 1786 thus: I went into Smitheld during the
time of the fair to see a heifer with two heads, with two ladies.
47
By Parkers account, there is no mistaking what he was up to
when his pocket was picked that day. He was going directly to a
show a show that could be regarded as a polite space where it
was not inappropriate to take ladies. Curiosity a word which
in this period had semi-scientic associations was Parkers
motivation: he had entered the fair with a purpose and a specic
destination.
44
Grano, Handels Trumpeter, ed. Ginger, 934; BodleianLib., RawlinsonMSD34,
p. 108. Gertrude Savile wrote similar accounts of going to BartholomewFair in 1727
and 1728: see her Secret Comment, ed. Saville, 55, 132.
45
Brian Cowan has pointed out how the exotic displays at fairgrounds and coffee-
houses operated in similar ways to draw virtuosi: see his The Social Life of Coffee: The
Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven and London, 2005), 1269.
46
A maimon is closely related to the mandrill.
47
OBP, Oct. 1786, trial of William Thompson (t17861025-2).
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The spectacle of the crowd and the Lord Mayors procession
provided another possible justication for polite people to visit
the fair, though it was essential to avoid becoming part of the
crowd. Each year the Lord Mayor processed from the Mansion
House, under Newgate where he enjoyed a cool tankard with the
keeper, andaroundthe fairground, before reading the regulations
governing the fair, proclaiming the fair open, and returning to the
Mansion House for a ceremonial feast.
48
Samuel Curwen twice
attempted to watch the event, but failed both times. In the rst
instance he arrived too late to hear the proclamation, and was
dismissive of the scene before him: the fair was a mere rabble
rout . . . relishable only by mene peuple [sic], and Curwen
suggests that he quickly departed.
49
Undeterred, he tried again
the following year, 1781. On this occasion, he arrived in time to
hear the proclamation, but the noise and confusion of the crowd
in the tight space sent the American dashing away without seeing
the Lord Mayor.
50
The anxiety of being overwhelmed by the
driving crowds, Curwen pleads, forced him to give up his task.
The fairground was no place for a respectable man. Yet he re-
turned to Smitheld later in the afternoon to act as an escort and
guide for Mrs Snelson, the wife of a friend.
51
Curwen brought
Mrs Snelson to show her the Fair so that she too could see the
overall spectacle. He does not mention going to drink or dance or
even see the shows; the fair itself was the show, a curiosity that he,
a constant tourist, wanted to see and show off.
Going through the fair was another way of justifying presence
within the fairground without suggesting improper behaviour.
Several witnesses and victims of fairground crimes reinforced
their credibility by claiming that the fair was not their destination
at all, rather it was simply locatedalong their route. George Hunt,
whoaidedWalter Simmons, a victimof theft, at TottenhamCourt
Fair, declared that On the 18th of August, between 9 and 10 at
Night, I was coming through the Fair with two of my Friends, and
I saw Simmons have hold of the Prisoner, on the Outside of the
48
See also the mayoral diaries of Richard Clarke and Marshe Dickinson: Guildhall
Lib., MSS 3385 and 100, respectively.
49
Journal of Samuel Curwen, ed. Oliver, ii, 663.
50
The fairground noise must have been tremendous. John Grano was unable to
evaluate the quality of a German ute in his roomin a building adjacent to Southwark
Fair: Grano, Handels Trumpeter, ed. Ginger, 92; Bodleian Lib., Rawlinson MS D34,
p. 95.
51
Journal of Samuel Curwen, ed. Oliver, ii, 783.
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Booth.
52
Hunt presents himself as an uninvolved passer-by,
merely on his way from one side of the fair to the other. Simi-
larly, victims of assault, battery and robbery described them-
selves as victims of unlucky chance rather than as risk takers by
declaring that they were passing through the fairground. John
Barnes, for instance, stated to the court that he was going thro
Bartholomew-fair last Monday the 5th of [September], about
four in the afternoon when he was robbed.
53
Such testimony
may well have been true, but the fact that witnesses and victims
made it so explicit suggests that they believed that it would help
their case. Walking through the fairground was not considerably
different from what many plebeian people did when they went to
the fair, as we shall see shortly.
The highly selective accounts of fairground amusements given
by those hoping to be respectable echo the newspaper reports of
royal visits to theatre booths. Frederick, prince of Wales, received
close attention and the reportage suggested that his visits took
him to particular theatre booths, not just into the throng to be
attracted by whatever took his fancy. In 1736, Frederick and his
brother the duke of Cumberland went to see Mr. Fawkess inim-
itable Performances at BartholomewFair, with which their Royal
Highnesses seemd highly delighted.
54
The prose suggests that
Fawkess show was the destination and that its location just hap-
pened to be at Bartholomew Fair. The reports were probably
puffs for the booths whose owners paid the newspapers to adver-
tise for them. But not all reports of royals in the fairground were
puffs, and it seems likely that many of the reports were genuine,
even though certain aspects of the visits were emphasized to serve
52
Great Britain, Sessions (City of London and County of Middlesex), The
Proceedings at the Sessions of Peace, Oyer and Terminer, for the City of London, and
County of Middlesex ([London], 173940), 2401. See also the testimony of Joseph
Stokes, in Great Britain, Sessions (City of London and County of Middlesex), The
Whole Proceedings on the Kings Commission of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol
Delivery for the City of London (London, 1799), 72.
53
OBP, Sept. 1768, trial of William Milner (t17680907-71).
54
Daily Post, 26 Aug. 1736. See also London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 26
Aug. 1740. The reasons why the royal family stopped attending fairs are obscure. The
children of George II may have made their last appearance in this year because they
were reaching adulthood and had less time for fairs once they were married or took on
other responsibilities. By the time George III was having children in the 1760s the
fairground may have been seen as an inappropriate or immoral place for the royal
household.
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more effectively as advertisements. Nor were the royals limited to
theatricals, but the evidence suggests that they did not go any
lower than scientic displays. The Duke and Princess Amelia
went to BartholomewFair in 1736 and sawthe tall woman, one
of the human oddities available that year.
55
Newspapers ascribed
a clear sense of direction to members of the royal family.
Accounts by people presenting themselves as quality might lead
us to believe that the fairground contained only a handful of the-
atre booths, a couple of freak shows and the odd sleight-of-hand
exhibition. Yet, as the Pie Powder Court rolls and a surviving
account book of payments received from booth tenants reveal,
Bartholomew Fair contained more then a hundred stalls.
56
The
large, advertised amusements existed alongside dozens of puppet
shows, merry-andrews, stalls selling haberdashery and other dur-
able goods, gambling booths, and drinking and dancing tents.
This panoply of entertainment options distracted fair-goers
and it is that willingness to be distracted which separates the
descriptions written or related by artisans, apprentices and the
labouring poor from the accounts we have already examined.
For the majority of fair-goers, it was not a single type of attrac-
tion or a particular booth that caught their attention. The labour-
ing poor went for a variety of reasons, and neither low life nor a
particular activity adequately captures their motivations. Fairs
were destinations in themselves, where a variety of activities
could occur and blend into each other. As a result, people did
not describe themselves as going to particular venues, but rather
as being at the fair or in the fair.
57
It is not that people who
claimed politeness were not easily distracted: we can imagine
Dudley Ryder wandering through Cheapside browsing in expen-
sive shops. Rather, it is the willingness of plebeian fair-goers to be
a part of the crowd and be easily distracted at the same time that
sets them apart. Plebeian fair-goers rarely mentioned high-end
fairgroundshows like those that appear indiary accounts or news-
paper advertisements. Drunkenness may help explain the lack of
55
Daily Advertiser, quoted in Grub Street Jl, 2 Sept. 1736.
56
Piepowder Court Rolls: Highclere Castle, Newbury, Berkshire, National
Register of Archives (ref. GB/NNAF/C67687); Bartholomew Fair Account Book:
Corporation of London Record Ofce, COL/SP/05/009.
57
OBP, Oct. 1786, trial of Joseph Perry (t17861025-103); OBP, Sept. 1789, trial of
Edward Steel (t17890909-136); OBP, Feb. 1761, trial of Willy Sutton (t17610225-
18).
148 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208

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specicity about activities found in plebeian accounts. Working-
class memories seem to have retained information only about
general sorts of fairground activities: for example, drinking in
a music booth or watching a merry-andrew. Whether this is a
difference between high and low fair-goers in actual practice
rather than in presentation of practice we shall never know, but
evidence of plebeian activities suggests such a difference.
Plebeian fair-goers, of course, did not forget all they did
or where they did it. The descriptions of fairground activities
can be assembled on a continuum based on their levels of
clarity. Descriptions like those recorded by Monteage or Parker
contrast with the narratives offered by Mary Iverson, Thomas
Nevil and Michael Brown.
58
These three testied to going to
Bartholomew-fair on the night of Saturday 6 September. When
they were there, they decided to see the little man at the top of
Hosier Lane, and while standing among the mob Marys coat
was stolen. Signicantly, unlike Parker, they did not go to the
fair to see the little man, as Parker did for the heifer with two
heads; Iverson and Nevil mention in their rst sentences that
they were going tothe fair, andonly later didthe groups intention
to visit the little man come out. Using the nature of an attraction
to stand in for the name of the impresario is a feature of other
testimony as well. On 7 September 1789, WilliamMumford took
his son to Bartholomew Fair.
59
There, he later told the court at
the Old Bailey, at a quarter after four; I took my little boy on my
shoulders, near the wild beasts. Mumford did not identify which
of the nationally famous collections of live animals he visited at
the fair.
60
Others were certainly attracted to the drinking booths, some-
times with negative consequences. Walter Simmons and a
Fellow-Workman . . . went to Tottenham-Court-Fair in August
1739.
61
Simmonss companion met with Company and as a
result Simmons left him, and walked by a Booth, which was
kept by one Cummins. The Prisoner Stuart was in the Booth,
and asked me to come in and drink; telling me there was as
58
OBP, Oct. 1766, trial of John More (t17661022-17).
59
OBP, Sept. 1789, trial of Edward Steel (t17890909-136).
60
In both the 1760s and the 1800s several collections of animals were displayed:
Corporation of London Record Ofce, COL/CC/CLC/01/045, fo. 53.
61
Sessions (City of London and County of Middlesex), Proceedings at the Sessions of
Peace, Oyer and Terminer, 2401.
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good Liquor, as any in the Fair. As he wandered, Simmons was
called into a booth by another customer promising good-quality
alcohol. Simmons had no anxiety about his aimless wandering,
nor did he express any compunction about seeking out alcohol
when describing his behaviour in the context of a criminal trial.
Without a specic destination, Simmons would go into whatever
booth happened to draw him, in this case a booth with a patron
who sang the praises of its alcohol.
While merchants and people with polite pretensions set them-
selves apart from the people around them and expressed anxiety
at being a part of the mob, fair-goers with different objectives for
their testimony did not record experiencing any discomfort in
crowded situations. William Cork, a drover from Sevenoaks in
Kent, was at the corner of Newgate Street with his brother and
another man on 9 September 1798.
62
Waiting there to see the
Lord Mayors coach come by, to proclaimBartholomewFair, as
the Lord-Mayors coach came up, there was a great throng of
people close by [them] which parted the brothers. The crowd
surrounded William Cork and pressed him against the side of a
carriage where he was robbed by John Taylor and Richard
Coleman. Not only did Cork have no objection to being in the
throng, but he alsoallowedhimself tobe squashedagainst the side
of the carriage, which meant that he was temporarily helpless and
vulnerable. In stark contrast with Samuel Curwen, who wrote
that he was so perturbed by the crowd that he ed the scene to
avoid being mobbed, Cork and his companions had accepted the
people around them and had moved around in order to become
more comfortable, but not to escape.
A pair of picaresque memoirs take the aimlessness of plebeian
wandering in the fairground to a new level. The memoirs of the
sailor Peter Drake, which draw attention to his bravado and
lawlessness, emphasize his place as part of the crowd at the fair:
about the latter End of August . . . I took a Turn to Bartholomew
Fair among the Croud[sic]. Here he foundmenplaying at hazard
in the street and he befriended one of them, an Irishman, who
turned out to be a soldier and tried to recruit himinto the army.
63
62
Sessions (City of London and County of Middlesex), Whole Proceedings on the
Kings Commission of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol Delivery, 543.
63
The Memoirs of Capt. Peter Drake: Containing, an Account of Many Strange and
Surprising Events . . . and Several Material Anecdotes, Regarding King Williamand Queen
Annes Wars with Lewis XIV. of France (Dublin, 1755), 414. See also Peter Drake,
150 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208
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Not only does Drake walk in the crowd without claiming to be
mentally separated from it, but he nds people there to attach
himself to. Like Walter Simmons, Drake found company in the
fairground after wandering without any clear idea about where
to go.
In the other memoirs, Mark Moore described himself arriving
in Bartholomew Fair after wandering aimlessly (and broke)
through London.
64
As he put it, he was awakened from [his]
reverie, by the noise of carts, carriages, mountebanks, &c. To
divert himself from his poverty he decided to seek a momentary
refuge by going to see some of the amusements, and chance
directed [him] to where the stone-eater was displaying his
ostrich-like appetite, to the astonishment of grinning spectators.
Moore convinced the stone-eater to join him in attempting to
win patronage from the court at Windsor. Unlike the carefully
directed aristocrats, gentry and merchants discussed above, the
labouring poor described themselves as simply being at the fair,
without any specic destination. They joined strangers whom
they encountered and involved themselves in activities that
could have happened in many settings around London, diver-
sions that were not necessarily organized or advertised and that
often had no polite, improving credentials.
By employing modes of self-presentation thought to denote
familiarity with the values of the socially elite for descriptions of
fairground activities, fair-goers leave the modern reader with the
impression of two fairs occurring simultaneously. One, attended
by the polite and the respectable, was navigated for specic en-
tertainments, often advertised in newspapers and consisting of
theatrical booths, contortionists, pseudo-scientic displays of ab-
normal humans and exotic animals specialized entertainments
available in at most a handful of locations. The other was entered
without any specic destination and consisted of recreation with
unknown companions at anonymous entertainments entered
on the strength of the showmens or other fair-goers touting.
Plebeian crowds almost certainly entered the famous booths
and saw the freak shows, but they probably spent most of their
(n. 63 cont.)
Amiable Renegade: The Memoirs of Capt. Peter Drake, 16711753, [ed. Sidney Burrell]
(Stanford, 1960).
64
The Memoirs and Adventures of Mark Moore, Late an Ofcer in the British Navy
(London, 1795), 1901.
THE MENE PEUPLE AND THE POLITE SPECTATOR 151

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time drinking, dancing and shopping for fripperies. The polite
spectator may well have done the same, but sawreasons tosuggest
otherwise. For the respectable, the crowd was a source of amuse-
ment only by observation; whereas for their inferiors it was pos-
sible to have fun as part of the undirected crowd and by
interacting with those around them.
IV
Almost no rst-person accounts of fair-going from the seven-
teenth century have survived. Samuel Pepys provides the only
evidence that canbe examinedinthe same way as the later diaries,
newspapers and court cases I analysed above. His diary suggests
that concern about the propriety of attending a fair only became
pronounced during the Georgian period. It must be acknow-
ledgedthat Pepyss diary was secret ina way that court documents
or the diaries of Samuel Curwen and other eighteenth-century
fair-goers were not, and therefore he may have felt more comfort-
able admitting to inappropriate behaviour. Pepys, of course, was
writing before the emergence of the polite ideals that shaped later
fair-goers accounts. Nevertheless, the accounts in Pepyss diary
suggest that people described their activities at fairs in ways that
differed from those of fair-goers fty years later and, signi-
cantly, his entries record scenes similar to those in Ben Jonsons
play Bartholomew Fair, which depicts a gathering of men and
women of different statuses who nd social distinctions impos-
sible to maintain as the lowly rob and play tricks on the middling
and elite. Pepyss venture to Bartholomew Fair on 31 August
1661 with David Llewellyn, a colleague and friend, for instance,
involved his stepping into a tavern at the fairground and being
fondled by a prostitute there.
65
Pepys allowed the low life at the
fair to act upon him to an extent that later writers would have
found distressing: his visit is not carefully directed, nor does he
avoid close contact with lowgures. Although reports of cases of
theft show that eighteenth-century fairs continued to be fre-
quented by prostitutes, respectable visitors to fairs did not
record being pursued by them. Pepys visited numerous fairs in
andaroundLondon, sometimes withfriends andother times with
65
The Diary of Samuel Pepys: ANewand Complete Transcription, ed. Robert Latham
and William Matthews, 11 vols. (London, 197083), ii, 166.
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his wife. His patterns of fair-going are drastically different from
the accounts that appear after the turnof the century. As decorum
became more a cause for concern and ideas of polite behaviour
spread, descriptions of fairground activities became more care-
fully regulated and fair-goers distanced themselves from those
around them.
Conversely, towards the end of the period covered by this art-
icle, the late eighteenth century, we nd little evidence of visits to
fairs by middling and propertied society. The disappearance of
people invoking polite ideals fromfairs suggests that fair-going by
this group had nally ended, completing a separation that had
occurred earlier inthe century inmodes of self-presentation if not
in actual behaviour.
66
Until late in the century groups of widely
differing social standing used the fairground and sat in the same
theatres to watch the same shows. Evidence of changes in atti-
tudes to uninhibited social mingling can be found in descriptions
of crowds and in normative and prescriptive texts from the early
eighteenth century, but they are not reected in patterns of at-
tendance. Changes in behaviour may have been occurring by the
last decade of the century. Onlyone newspaper mentions a visit by
a member of the nobility inthe nal seventy years of Bartholomew
Fairs existence, and even merchant and middling diarists made
no mention of Bartholomew Fair after the turn of the nineteenth
century. James Boswells only reference to a London fair is sug-
gestive of the change.
67
On 3 September 1785 he referred to
seeing the Lord Mayors ceremonial opening of the fair with
just one word: Parade. The fair is no longer even worthy of
mention, and Boswell obscures potential engagement with a
crowd. Ever jealous of his reputation, Boswell was careful not to
allow himself to be in a position where social inferiors might act
upon himin a disreputable space. He may have found himself like
Curwen, unable to govern the situation when social inferiors
pressed him on all sides. Furthermore, later representations do
66
Miles Ogborn has argued for the creation of mental cells to separate the indivi-
dual from the crowd, and the emergence of the crowd made up of individuals as
important elements of modernity visible in the eighteenth century: see Miles
Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: Londons Geographies, 16801780 (New York and
London, 1998), 68, 11015.
67
James Boswell, Boswell: The Applause of the Jury, 17821785, ed. Irma S. Lustig
and Frederick A. Pottle (London, 1982), 339.
THE MENE PEUPLE AND THE POLITE SPECTATOR 153

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not mention social mixing at the fairground; fair-goers no longer
had to demonstrate mental separation once physical separation
was established. It is not clear that polite people had withdrawn
completely, but the almost total lack of evidence of middling and
gentry audiences attending urban fairs seems to indicate that sep-
aration had occurred.
68
The division is most apparent at the fairs, but other spaces such
as tea and pleasure gardens saw their clienteles become less het-
erogeneous during the period as well; in other contexts, particu-
larly the theatres, mixed audiences remained through the rst
quarter of the nineteenth century.
69
It is not possible to create a
single chronology for the separation of high and low culture in
London; rather, segregation based on social and economic sta-
tus occurred at different times in different locations across the
metropolis and was also subject to local, particular reversals. The
reasons for the timings are unclear: the appeal of some spaces for
polite society declined before others and it will take more detailed
work on the individual spaces, what they offered and what people
said about them, to clarify the reasons why one space remained
popular with the social elite while another had ceased to attract
the bon ton.
By carefully describing their behaviour in ways that revealed
restraint, direction and an interest in improvement, fair-goers
could present themselves as politely using a space where many
of the ideals of polite behaviour seemed to be contravened.
70
Not
all polite goals were easily achieved, however. Diarists and people
testifying at trials ignore the goal of easy sociability by pretending
that they were entirely removed from social interaction while
in the fairground. The mental approaches to crowds offered by
politeness made moving among the people easier when it did
occur even if it did not allowthe middling sort, gentry or nobility
to interact comfortably with social inferiors on the street. Easy
68
Fairs in villages near London remained popular among propertied society until
the rst half of the nineteenth century.
69
Conlin, Vauxhall Revisited; Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in
Eighteenth-Century London (London, 2006), ch. 18; Jennifer Hall-Witt, Fashionable
Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 17801880 (Lebanon, NH, 2007), 18, 1025,
118.
70
This contrasts with the impolite use of polite spaces examined by Helen Berry:
see her Rethinking Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England: Moll Kings Coffee
House andthe Signicance of Flash Talk , Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 6thser., xi (2001).
154 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208

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sociability could only be engendered by politeness in controlled
contexts.
The exibility of the attributes of politeness is reinforced by the
variety of socio-economic backgrounds of people describing their
behaviour in ways that aligned themwith polite ideals. We can see
everyone from merchants and a clerk in the excise ofce to shop-
keepers and jewellers attempting to separate themselves fromthe
rest of the crowd. By demonstrating awareness of cultural values
fair-goers had the opportunity to defend their status against sug-
gestions of impropriety.
71
Inthe context of a luxury trade this may
have been about reassuring clients that an elite artisans senses of
taste and propriety were sufciently rened. The facets of fairs
invoked varied from individual to individual, but broadly they
involved investigating the world, both the natural world as dis-
played in fairground freak shows and the cultural world of the
metropolis as displayed by fairground play booths, disorderly
crowds and civic ceremonies. So, when John Parker described
his itinerary as consisting of only the heifer with two heads, he
was dissociating himself from the other fairground activity. Only
the semi-polite activity of examining scientic curiosities made it
acceptable for him to be seen at the fair. Justifying fair-going in
this way seems to have been preferable to staying away from the
fairs entirely. We can speculate that there was something more
attractive about the fairground than improving curiosities.
Politeness does not offer much insight into the reasons why the
bulk of the crowd presented themselves in the ways that they did.
Tim Hitchcocks work on begging suggests that the poor may
have depended on the support of people they did not know on
the streets.
72
The willingness of plebeian fair-goers to act on the
advice of strangers and to trust the people who pressed up against
themreveals signicant differences frompeople with pretensions
to gentility. Plebeian fair-goers could be part of a heterogeneous
crowd and easily distracted by unrened fairground attractions.
Those claiming polite credentials felt more like isolated people in
the street, unable or unwilling to assume that those around them
had similar goals or their best interest in mind.
71
Klein, Politeness for Plebes, 377.
72
TimHitchcock, Begging on the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London, Jl Brit.
Studies, xliv (2005), 4823.
THE MENE PEUPLE AND THE POLITE SPECTATOR 155

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Polite ideas encouraged people to describe themselves as
separate from crowds and may have had a psychological im-
pact that outlasted the vogue for politeness. We can see hints of
the nineteenth-century aneur in some accounts of fair-going.
Dudley Ryder suggested the difference between interacting with
low life and simply watching it when he recorded the story of
his friend Mr Wadsworth seeing nobles at Bartholomew Fair:
the duchess of Bolton and several other nobility, [had] come
there to entertain themselves with low life.
73
For the polite
fair-goer of the rst three-quarters of the eighteenth century (at
least), the pleasure of the fair was supposed to come fromwatch-
ing the rough masses; amusement should not come from being
part of the mob. The selective engagement with the fairground
that we have seen between 1720 and 1790 may have provided
the mental world out of which the aneur developed in the nine-
teenth century. Like the eighteenth-century polite fair-goer, the
Victorian aneur was at home in the city, but he retained an iden-
tity that was autonomous.
74
Like the American Samuel Curwen,
the aneur set himself apart from the people he watched. As
Ryders anecdote about the duchess of Bolton and Curwens ac-
count of his trip to the fair with Mrs Snelson reveal, however,
women too could feel comfortable looking upon the crowd in
the eighteenth century.
Whether the records of fairgroundactivities reect the way fairs
were ever actually experienced is more difcult to say. It seems
unlikely that activities of different socio-economic groups would
vary as much as the recorded experiences suggest they do, and
yet from the 1710s the accounts are remarkably consistent.
Fair-goers who sought respectability presented themselves as
apart from the crowd, while people in the fair who had no such
anxieties made the crowd something of which everyone was a
part. Politeness offers us a tool for analysing some descriptions
of space and activities, but it was only a weak force for allowing
people to interact with others who they did not believe were
73
Diary of Dudley Ryder, ed. Matthews, 86.
74
Simon Gunn, The Public Sphere, Modernity and Consumption: New
Perspectives on the History of the English Middle Class, in Alan Kidd and David
Nicholls (eds.), Gender, Civic Culture, and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in
Britain, 18001940 (Manchester, 1999), 18; Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful
Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), 16.
156 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 208

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embracing polite ideals. The values that shaped the behaviour
and accounts of most people in the crowd require different ana-
lytical tools.
Worcester College, Oxford Benjamin Heller
THE MENE PEUPLE AND THE POLITE SPECTATOR 157

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