Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/376

 306 NOTES. AND QUERIES. ri2s.x. .^1.22,1922. Scotland and the North) ; and a habit o; gross debauchery and lawlessness was set up These fairs and their accompaniments, the Justices complained, " tended to the ruining of apprentices, servants, labourers, anc others," leading to disturbances of the peace gaming, " and all sorts of lewd and dis- orderly practices." In Bow Fair, as in others in the western parts of London, prize- fighting (not an imposture as it came to be) was a particular attraction, especially when women took part in the bouts. The patent for Mile End Fair was apparently for one day only, like that of most of the gatherings. But uiider the powerful interest of the liquor trade, all freely extended their privileges to a week and even more. To the Justices the multitude of ginshops was a gross evil (as it was to all the religious sects without exception). For, as their Worships say, spirituous liquors " inflame the blood and prompt to greater- violence " on the part of the gentry who walked the streets " with cutlasses, hangers, bludgeons, and other dangerous weapons." It was in consequence of this propensity, partly, that compulsory lighting was instituted, each householder, it being enacted, having to set out candles or lights in lanthorns on the outside of his house to the satisfaction of the petty con- stables and beadles, under penalty of two shillings fine for default. As a fact, this order was generally ignored or defied where it was most wanted. In one of the news- sheets an account is given of a regular raid of ruffians returning from Mile End Fair, who attacked and robbed a lady just outside her mansion on Stepney Green, when she was returning in her sedan chair, attended by flambeaux-men, from a City ball. For this three men and a woman were eventually transported to the American Plantations a minor hell in those days, from which very few were able, as in the hulks, to release themselves. In 1823, M^hen, like other excesses of the kind, Bow's Green Goose Fair was slowly fading into a mere public nuisance, a sentimentalist with strong recollections of Gray wrote an elegy which included the following tender lines : The Bow Bell tolls the knell of Bow Fair fun, And Richardson winds slowly out of town, Poor old " Young Saunders " sees his setting sun, And Gwyngell pulls his red torn tawdry down. Now three cart-horses draw the caravan O'er smooth macadam to provincial fairs ; And pining showmen with companions wan, Make dreary humour while the hawbuck stares I No more shall cockneys -don their Sunday coats, Stepney, Brook Green, or brighter Bow to fill : No folk shall row to Greenwich Hill in boats, And roll in couples down the One Tree Hill ! Take warning then ye fair, from this Fair's fall ! One Act (the Vagrant Act) hath been its ruin ! List, list, oh list, to Law's most serious call, For fun and pleasure lead but to undoing. Under date of 1735 there is the official declaration following : , The Grand Jury for the County of Middlesex, at the General Sessions of the Peace, on Thursday, the 25th Instant, at Hicks Hall, in St. John Street, presented as a Publick Nuisance, a Market or Fair call'd Michaelmas or Mile End Fair, kept and held in the Fields near the High Road at Mile End on the 29th of September Yearly ; but of late Years, and since the Revival thereof, the said Market or Fair, at such time and place aforesaid, hath been kept five, six, or seven Days successively beyond and contrary to the original Grant, which occasions many riotous and tumultuous Assem- blies of disorderly Persons there, to the great dis- turbance of His Majesty's Subjects ; And they also presented all Publick Playhouses, Booths or Sheds where Plays, Drolls and Interludes are played, acted, or shewn, as Great Nuisances and intolerable Prejudices to the Publick, by tempting, alluring, and drawing many, especially the Youth, from their duty to God [this is an allusion to the fact that the Fair was open all day and much of the night on Sunday], their Parents and Masters ; Upon which Presentment the Court of Sessions desir'd and recommended to His Majesty's Justices of the Peace residing in that Division to put the Laws in Execution against so great and growing an Evil, and to punish all Offenders who shall presume to act in any of the Premises above- mentioned. The attempt to " put the Laws in Execu- tion " was renewed accordingly, but with so little result that the Mile End Fair (and the Stepney Fair withal) continued, in a way, for another century and a quarter ; and many elderly East Londoners live to confess that they attende d the functions and saw play in the booths the companies of local theatres, whose managers were glad of this chance to employ their troupes in what was the professional " silly season." And sometimes they saw " Richardson's " Show, or " Womb- well's," or some really excellent circus riding and jesting by travelling companies for ever on the high roads, seeking a decent oitch. Me. NEW LIGHT ON WILLIAM PENN. Lord Macaulay has not been the only person to be critical of the connexion of William Penn,
 * ounder of Pennsylvania, with the Courts

of Charles II. and James II., so that
 * he appearance in print for the first time