The end came rather suddenly and in a curious way. Towards the close of 1876 there was distributed in Chelsea a pamphlet in verse, entitled _The Trial of John Fox_, _or Fox John_, _or the Horrors of Cremorne_. It was signed ‘A. B. Chelsea,’ but the author was soon discovered to be a Mr. Alfred Brandon, a worthy and evidently courageous man, who had long been known as minister of the Chelsea Baptist Chapel. By trade Mr. Brandon was a tailor, and no doubt his coats were better than his poetry, which is, indeed, sad doggerel. This pamphlet was an indictment of Cremorne as the ‘nursery of every kind of vice,’ and of its callous money-grubbing manager John Fox. The jury decide _against_ John Fox: ‘Our verdict this: the Fox has had his day. Destroy his covert—let him run away.’ Mr. Baum is said to have been ‘stung by these cutting remarks’—‘remarks’ which, whether they stung or cut, constituted, from the legal point of view, a highly defamatory libel. He doubtless went unwillingly into court, but in May, 1877, the libel action of Baum _v._ Brandon was heard in the Queen’s Bench before Sir Henry Hawkins. Brandon pleaded, in the familiar way, first, that he had intended no allusion to Baum, and, secondly, that he _had_ alluded to Baum, but that what he said was true, and, moreover, not malicious. In court it was averred by Baum that Cremorne was most respectably conducted, and that the houses in the neighbourhood were most respectable. Brandon, to justify the libel, called various witnesses, among whom were a Cremorne waiter and a woman from a reformatory, who both traced their downfall to the gardens. The jury found for Baum, but awarded him a farthing damages, and each side had to pay its own costs. At this time Baum was greatly in debt, and for the next few months was too ill to superintend his gardens personally. None the less preparations were made for the licensing day in October. Petitions were prepared, and counsel on both sides were engaged. October 5, 1877, arrived, and the Cremorne case was called on. To the astonishment of London, Baum’s counsel quietly announced that the lessee had withdrawn his application, and the licence of Cremorne Gardens lapsed for ever. John Baum here vanishes from the scene, though we seem to catch a glimpse of him at the end of the eighties as a waiter at a North London tavern, discoursing freely to sympathetic customers on the great days when he owned Cremorne.