Smithfield itself began as a simple trading area, for cloth in one place and cattle in another, but its history has always been one of turbulence and spectacle. Great jousts and tournaments were held there in the fourteenth century; it was the ritual place for duels and ordeal by battle; it was the home of the gallows and the stake. That festive nature was also evident in less forbidding ways. Football matches and wrestling contests were commonly staged and the appropriately named Cock Lane, just beyond the open ground, was the haunt of prostitutes. Miracle plays were also part of its entertainment.
The trading market for cloth had become outmoded by the middle of the sixteenth century but “the privileges of the fair” were still retained by the city corporation. So, instead of a three-day market, it was transformed into a fourteen-day festival which resounds through the plays and novels of succeeding centuries with the cry of “What do you lack? What is it you buy?” From the beginning of its fame there were puppet-shows and street performers, human freaks and games of dice and thimble, canvas tents for dancing or for drinking, eating-houses which specialised in roast pork.
This was the fair which Jonson celebrated in his play of the same name. He notes the sound of rattles, drums and fiddles. Here on the wooden stalls were laid out mousetraps and gingerbread, purses and pouches. There were booths and toyshops. Displayed “at the sign of the Shoe and Slap” was “THE WONDER OF NATURE, a girl about sixteen years of age, born in Cheshire, and not above eighteen inches long … Reads very well, whistles, and all very pleasant to hear.” Close by was exhibited “a Man with one Head and two distinct Bodies,” as well as a “Giant Man” and “Little Fairy Woman” performing among the other freak shows and theatrical booths. There were puppies, whistling birds and horses for sale; there were ballads cried out, with bottled ale and tobacco being constantly consumed. Cunning men cast nativities, and prostitutes plied their trade. Jonson himself noted small details, too, and watched as the cores of apples were gathered up for the bears. As one of his characters puts it, “Bless me! deliver me, help, hold me! the Fair!”
It continued, curiously enough, during the Puritan Commonwealth, no doubt with the primary motive of venting the steam of the more unruly citizens, but flourished after the Restoration of 1660 when liberty and licence came back into fashion. One versifier of the period notes masquerades dramatising “The Woman of Babylon, The Devil and The Pope,” as well as shows of dancing bears and acrobats. Some acts came year after year: there was the “Tall Dutchwoman” who made annual appearances for at least seventeen years, together with the “Horse and no Horse, whose tail stands where his head should do.” And there were always rope-walkers, among them the famous Scaramouch “dancing on the rope, with a wheelbarrow before him with two children and a dog in it, and with a duck on his head,” and the notable rope-dancer Jacob Hall “that can jump it, jump it.” Perhaps the most celebrated of all the acts, however, was that of Joseph Clark, “the English Posture Master” or “Posture Clark” as he was known. It seems that he could “put out of joynt almost any Bone or Vertebra of his Body, and to replace it again”; he could so contort himself that he became unrecognisable even to his closest friends.
And so the fair went on, as all fairs do. There was even a Ferris wheel, known then as a “Whirligig” (later an “Up and Down”) where, according to Ned Ward in The London Spy (1709), “Children lock’d up in Flying Coaches who insensibly climb’d upwards … being once Elevated to a certain height come down again according to the Circular Motion of the Sphere they move in.”
The general noise and clamour, together with the inevitable crowd of pickpockets, finally proved too much for the city authorities. In 1708 the fortnight of the fair was reduced to three days at the end of August. But if it became less riotous, it was no less festive. Contemporary accounts dwell upon the drollery of “merry Andrews,” otherwise known as Jack Puddings or Pickled Herrings; they wore a costume with donkey’s ears, and accompanied other performers with their fiddles. One of the more famous fools was a seller of gingerbread nuts in Covent Garden; since he was paid one guinea a day for his work at Bartholomew Fair, “he was at pains never to cheapen himself by laughing, or by noticing a joke, during the other 362 days of the year.”
Alongside the merry Andrews leapt the mountebanks who sold miracle cures and patent medicines to those credulous enough to purchase them. In an illustration by Marcellus Laroon one such is dressed as a harlequin from commedia dell’arte with a monkey tied to a rope beside him. His voice, too, might be heard among the general noise and tumult-“a rare cordial to strengthen and cheer the Heart under any Misfortune … a most rare dentifrice … good to fortifie the stomach against all Infections, Unwholesome damps, malignant effluvias.” And so the fair rolled on. It is perhaps appropriate, amid the noise and excitement, that in 1688 John Bunyan collapsed and died at the corner of Snow Hill and Cock Lane.
If there was one central character, however, it was that of Punch, the uncrowned monarch of “puppet-plays, hobby-horses, tabors, crowds, and bagpipes.” He had emerged upon the little stage by the end of the seventeenth century, announced by a jester and accompanied by fiddle, trumpet or drum. He is not a uniquely London phenomenon, but he became a permanent entertainer at the fairs and streets of the city; with his violence, his vulgarity and his sexual innuendo he was a recognisable urban character. “Often turning towards a tightly packed bend of girls, he sits himself down near to them: My beautiful ones, he says, winking roguishly, here’s a girl friend come to join you!” With his great belly, big nose and long stick he is the very essence of a gross sexual joke which, unfortunately, in later centuries became smaller, squeakier, and somehow transformed into entertainment for children. There is a watercolour by Rowlandson, dated 1785, which shows a puppet-play with Punch in action. George III and Queen Charlotte are driving to Deptford, but the attention of the citizens is drawn more towards the wooden booth where Punch is beating the bare buttocks of his wife. He was often conceived as a “hen-pecked” husband but, here, the worm has turned. Rowlandson’s work is of course partly conceived as a satire against the royal family, but it is filled with a greater and all-encompassing urban energy.
Within Bartholomew Fair itself there was a complete erasure of ordinary social distinctions. One of the complaints against it lay in the fact that apprentice and lord might be enjoying the same entertainments, or betting at the same gaming tables. This is entirely characteristic of London itself, heterogeneous and instinctively egalitarian. It is no coincidence, for example, that at the time of the Fair an annual supper was held in Smithfield for young chimney-sweeps. Charles Lamb has immortalised the occasion in one of his essays, “The Praise of Chimney Sweepers,” where he reports that “hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night with their brightness” while in the background could be heard the “agreeable hubbub” of the Fair itself. It might be argued that there is no true egalitarianism in the gesture, and that such solemn festivities merely accustom the little “’weeps” to their dismal fate. This might then be considered one of the paradoxes of London, which consoles those whom it is about to consume.
Punch is also advertised in Hogarth’s print of Southwark Fair. Known as “the Lady Fair,” it was held in the streets around the Borough in the month after Bartholomew Fair. But since Hogarth announced his engraving as “The Fair” and “the Humours of a Fair” we may safely assume that he is portraying a characteristic and familiar London entertainment. Here Punch is mounted upon a stage horse which picks the pocket of a clown; above him, there is a poster announcing “Punches Opera” which depicts the large-nosed figure wheeling his wife in a barrow towards the open mouth of a dragon.