St Thomas Easter Fair in the 1850s:
Victorian respectability and the fair
By Dr. Jill A. Sullivan, Associate Research Fellow, University of Exeter
Whilst the fair continued to thrive in the middle years of the nineteenth century, press reports underwent a change in the attitudes they expressed. Whilst some reporters continued to dwell on the human activity and amusements of the fair, others began to voice concern regarding the respectability and suitability of the occasion for what was perceived as its largely working-class audience. This was not the distrust of some of the reports in the 1830s, but neither was it the unalloyed contentment with happy faces that featured in many of the reviews from the 1840s.
In the Post the official response to the 1851 fair was a brief comment that 'a number of persons attended and were much amused with the various exhibitions.'[1]
However, the Exeter magistrates were more vociferous when Charles Chenneur, Charles Salter and John Thomas appeared in front of them, convicted of stealing lead from a rooftop in Bartholomew Terrace. Their plan had been concocted after a visit to one of the theatres at the Easter Fair, a site described by the Deputy Recorder as an 'abominable scene of wickedness [...] which the inhabitants [of St. Thomas] had not the spirit to take the initiative and put a stop to.'[2] In general however, such declamations against the fair were unusual and judging from the level of response in the local press, the Easter Fair thrived. In 1852, the Post was able to report that 'the number of exhibitions [were] extraordinarily large' and the fair had been 'literally thronged by holiday folk from the city and neighbourhood.'[3] A much longer report in 1851 in the Western Times vividly described the fair by day and evening:
Easter fair has as usual, been a gay and festive scene, and booths of dazzling light have been crammed with holiday folk. From the railway bridge to the field in which the shows are situate, St. Thomas's was lined with those peculiar stalls - a kind of cross between a butcher's stall and a bed-stead, loaded with their various heaps of eatables, the mysteries of which are fully appreciated and felt by the juvenile part of the population. At about 8 o'clock candles and oil lamps illuminated the bed curtains of the mysterious stalls - giving a glare to the scene and an additional flavour to the gingerbread nuts. The numerous vendors of Tea and Coffee proved the increase of the Temperance Order, although we grieved to see that those beverages seemed to have given the parties selling the same a peculiarly husky voice, commonly known as a beery, or gin and fog voice - and the noses of the aforesaid parties were decidedly of the "ruby order."
In the neighbourhood of the shows, the crowd was excessive, all seemed fully alive to the fun [...] There were lots of swings, capable of holding any number at a pinch, and those circles of untiring steeds - on which the juvenile jockeys previous to starting, were venting their impatience by digging their heels into their horses' wooden ribs, and their toes into the heads of the passers by.
Then there were the usual variety of amusements for those of a speculative turn - shooting at targets for nuts, the chances of which are, if you are up to the mark you get your money's worth, and, if you are not a good shot - why you don't [...]
The shows were as a matter of course the great attraction, and all that could be done outside for nothing, was done; one van, was decorated with magnificent painting, a single stare at which was worth all the money charged for the whole entertainment. The painting itself was not faultless, but the moral sought to be conveyed, "vas varth tuppence and a glass of beer." Look to the right and you saw a Lion, the monarch of the forest, having a corn extracted, which painful operation he was bearing with a magnanimous grin, highly characteristic of his well known dignity. Look to the left and you had the death of Sir Robert Peel and a funeral group as an attraction for the distressed agriculturalists. The group might excite a sorrowful influence, but well knowing it has served for Queen Caroline lying in state, and has gone through all the various changes since that event, and will shortly be advertised as Mrs. Chesham, or one of the Frimley murderers immediately after execution, with group of mourning relatives - destroys half its stern reality, and sorrow waxes less.
At the show of the fair were assembled an audience of above 300, who were very orderly passing round the pipe of peace, and they paid great attention to a compound of the marvellous and horrible, in a piece called the "Hocean Child," [Ocean Child] by which all preconceived notions of the English language, and our naval affairs, were completely overset. The Hocean Child's father, by order of a sanguinary captain walks the plank. As he clings to the vessel, his hand is chopped off by the carpenter, and pocketed by the ship's surgeon, a gentleman in Turkish trowsers [sic], russet boots, and a white hat - which last mentioned article caused one of the audience to make an allusion to a "donkey." The Hocean Child's mother, a widow, filled with des-ho-lation on the departure of her husband, prays to the Helements, and a storm ensues. We then had a lapse of 18 years, the Hocean Child had grown a true British sailor hevery hinch, as his captain informed us. The Surgeon gives the Hocean Child the hand of his father, which he, the surgeon, has preserved in a strong pickle, which the Hocean Child carries to the sanguinary captain, who thereupon stabs himself, thus satisfying the ends of justice, the Hocean Child, and the audience. At the conclusion of which, with other sober citizens, we retired to our homes.[4]
The Western Times carried a similar report in the following year, 1852, commenting on the numbers of people, the lack of sleep suffered by local residents for the three nights and the 'discordant noises' of the fair, made up of a compound of the 'husky shouts of the showmen - the noisy emulation of the musicians - the firing at the nut-stands - the "cries" of the various vendors of sweetmeats, &c.'[5] The report was uncritical of the fair and its ancillary activities, but it did highlight the fact that 'street fights' and drunken rows were a usual feature, of 'drunken men, and even drunken women at midnight and at early morn, reeling into the city, and disturbing the slumbering citizens.'[6]
The 1853 fair was also attended by large numbers of visitors, drawn to the cries of the 'toy and toffy [sic] vendors and the noisy invitations of the showmen' although, according to the Western Times, there were fewer shows; 'only three of modest pretensions, in the "realm of art and magic" being in the fair'. Itinerant entertainers included broadside vendors: a noisy couple [who] were vending wretched trash about the Clayhidon murder, and singing doggerel verses thereon' as well as a young man 'of "artistic" appearance [who] was doing a good trade by cutting penny portraits in paper'. But the reporter decried the presence of '[s]windling tables' and the poor women with their children who seemed to be the more usual victims.[7] This comment heralded deeper concerns: the paper's report on the 1854 fair focused on the gambling, drinking and dancing in the public houses, making the closing comment that '[a]s the general taste is indicated in the popular amusements, we need not say that this fair does not indicate a very highly cultivated mental state in the working classes.'[8] It is unlikely that the Easter Fair was solely attended by the working-classes, but that inference dominated the newspaper reports. The Post went further: according to a reviewer writing in 1855, the holiday crowds that year included not only 'sightseers, citizens and rustics' but also 'of course, no small proportion of the "rag-tag and bobtail" of the district.' The reporter had to admit that in spite of the 'numbers daily assembled' no 'serious interference of the law' was required, but doubts about the respectability of the shows and amusements on offer began to permeate the newspaper reports of mid-century.[9] In 1856 the Post further noted that the fair had been 'more than usually attractive to those persons who have a taste for rough and in some respects questionable amusements' and voiced concerns over the number of illegal gambling tables. Specific disapproval of the shows once again centred on the 'cymbals, drums, cracked and discordant instruments' with which the various showmen attracted people to their booths, a complaint that was to recur until the end of the century.[10] In 1857, the Post reviewer once again dismissively referred to the Fair 'with its usual juvenile attractions and its rough amusements'.[11] And in 1859 the paper's reporter moved from tolerating the 'juvenile' appeal of the fairground to making a clear demarcation between the religious meaning of Easter and the now, clearly (to the reporter) immoral Fair, stating that:
Notwithstanding modern attempts to rationalize the recreations of the people, we find that the rougher kinds of amusement are much preferred by a large number of the lower classes. Every year the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, at the festival of Easter, is the scene of riotous amusement and sensual indulgences, which are not at all in keeping with this age of civilization and boasted intellectual progress. Crowded public houses, drunkenness, and obscenity are the rule, whilst the innocent amusements of the old fair-times are the exception. It is undoubtedly right that the poorer classes should have their amusements, but it is a pity that some efforts are not made to check the really increasing demoralization which seems to prevail at these Easter revels.[12]
Here, nostalgia for a perceived golden age of the Easter fair was linked to Victorian respectability to attack the fair in the columns of the Exeter Flying Post. Recollections of the 'amusements of the old fair-times' conveniently forgot the traditions of the public house dances in a zealous attempt to 'improve' the working classes.
Footnotes
[1] Post, 24 April 1851, p. 5.
[2] Post, 3 July 1851, p. 6.
[3] Post, 15 April 1852, p. 5.
[4] Western Times, 26 April 1851, p. 6.
[5] Western Times, 17 April 1852, p. 6.
[6] Western Times, 17 April 1852, p. 6.
[7] Western Times, 2 April 1853, p. 6.
[8] Western Times, 22 April 1854, p. 5.
[9] Post, 12 April 1855, p. 5.
[10] Post, 27 March 1856, p. 5.
[11] Post, 16 April 1857, p. 4
[12] Post, 28 April 1859, p. 5.