In spite of the changes of ownership the fair went on increasing with the increase of the city.  But the scene has changed.  In the time of James I the last elm tree had gone, and rows of houses, fair and comely buildings, had sprung up.  The old muddy plain had been drained and paved, and the traders and pleasure-seekers could no longer dread the wading through a sea of mud.  We should like to follow the fair through the centuries, and see the sights and shows.  The puppet shows were always attractive, and the wild beasts, the first animal ever exhibited being “a large and beautiful young camel from Grand Cairo in Egypt.  This creature is twenty-three years old, his head and neck like those of a deer.”  One Flockton during the last half of the eighteenth century was the prince of puppet showmen, and he called his puppets the Italian Fantocinni.  He made his figures work in a most lifelike style.  He was a conjurer too, and the inventor of a wonderful clock which showed nine hundred figures at work upon a variety of trades.  “Punch and Judy” always attracted crowds, and we notice the handbills of Mr. Robinson, conjurer to the Queen, and of Mr. Lane, who sings: 

        It will make you to laugh, it will drive away gloom,
        To see how the eggs will dance round the room;
        And from another egg a bird there will fly,
        Which makes all the company all for to cry, etc.

The booths for actors were a notable feature of the fair.  We read of Fielding’s booth at the George Inn, of the performance of the Beggar’s Opera in 1728, of Penkethman’s theatrical booth when Wat Taylor and Jack Straw was acted, of the new opera called The Generous Free Mason or the Constant Lady, of Jephthah’s Rash Vow, and countless other plays that saw the light at Bartholomew Fair.  The audience included not only the usual frequenters of fairs, but even royal visitors, noblemen, and great ladies flocked to the booths for amusement, and during its continuance the playhouses of London were closed.

I must not omit to mention the other attractions, the fireproof lady, Madam Giradelli, who put melted lead in her mouth, passed red-hot iron over her body, thrust her arm into fire, and washed her hands in boiling oil; Mr. Simon Paap, the Dutch dwarf, twenty-eight inches high; bear-dancing, the learned pig, the “beautiful spotted negro boy,” peep-shows, Wombell’s royal menagerie, the learned cats, and a female child with two perfect heads.

But it is time to ring down the curtain.  The last days of the fair were not edifying.  Scenes of riot and debauch, of violence and lawlessness disgraced the assembly.  Its usefulness as a gathering for trade purposes had passed away.  It became a nuisance and a disgrace to London.  In older days the Lord Mayor used to ride in his grand coach to our old gateway, and there proclaim it with a great flourish of trumpets.  In 1850 his worship walked quietly to the accustomed place, and found that there was no fair to proclaim, and five years later the formality was entirely dispensed with, and silence reigned over the historic ground over which century after century the hearts of our forefathers throbbed with the outspoken joys of life.  The old gateway, like many aged folk, has much on which to meditate in its advanced age.