The ‘perpetual fair': gender, disorder and urban amusement in eighteenth-century London

Abstract

The 'perpetual fair': gender, disorder and urban amusement in eighteenth-century London, by Anne Wohlcke, London, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2014, 256 pp., £70 (hardback) In this book, Anne Wohlcke challenges the image of eighteenth-century London as one of pale classical squares, all-smooth plinths, creamy volutes and precise abaci. Through her exploration of the urban fairs of London, she shifts the focus to the way in which the city was inhabited, used and consumed by its different citizens, including officers of the law, travelling rope-dancers, theatre proprietors and business people. While Wohlcke's emphasis is on the fairs themselves, her study reveals much about the constitution of the city and its development during this period. In particular, it engages with the articulation of the ideal, polite consumption of the city, and the extent to which the presence of the fairs continually challenged and subverted that ideal.The 'Perpetual Fair' begins by outlining the historiography of the fairs, and by positioning Wohlcke's approach. This is informed throughout by an attention to the performativity of gender within public spaces and particularly the spaces of the fair, to the dynamics of the consumption of urban spaces, and to the bodily experience of the fair-goer, which she explores through careful use of a wide range of sources. The subsequent chapters engage with the changing reality of the urban fairs in London from different perspectives.Wohlcke uses contemporary sources including newspaper reports, official documents and records, songs, lyrics and poems, and visual sources such as William Hogarth's well-known engraving of Southwark Fair from 1733 to provide an insight into the bodily experience of the fair, the crush of bodies, the opportunities for sensual experience, the smells of cooking food and distracting amusements. She quotes, for example, from popular songs such as 'Roger in Amaze: or the country-man's ramble through Bartholomew Fair', in which the central character (presumably the eponymous Roger) comments that 'Zuch thrusting and squeezing.[that] Was never known' (33). The continually shifting social position of the fair, in terms of the legitimacy of its presence within the city and the social meanings around involvement in the fair as spectator or performer are also explored through these descriptive sources. As Hogarth's engraving demonstrates, descriptions of the fair were bound up with moral judgement and social commentary that often extended beyond the fair itself -those condemning the fair (particularly due to the presence of prostitution) referred to the 'Beggarly, Sluttish Strumpets' (34), while others remarked on the 'various Objects' which 'ravish'd Senses/The Eyes, the Ears, the Nose, the Tast [sic], the Touch' (33).Wohlcke's book explores the experience of the fair from different positions, including that of the 'Heroick Informer' and spy, involved in programmes of moral reform, and those working within and around the fairs themselves, with an emphasis on men an...