Abstract
In an effort to memorialize Bartholomew Fair as it teetered on the brink of abolition, George Alexander Stevens, the author and actor most famous for his Lecture on Heads, composed a song in 1763. For the benefit 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 food stalls and the 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, and frenchify’d frumpery’.2 To visit 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 pattens’. Venturing into the fair left you at risk of being assailed mentally, as well as crushed physically.
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