In 1828 one of the attractions by day and by candle-light was the waxworks booth of the Messrs. Ewing, ‘consisting of 129 public characters, large as life.’ In this collection, omitting minor celebrities, were to be seen George IV. in his chair of state; the lamented Princess Charlotte; Guy Fawkes, who attempted to blow up the Parliament House; the Archbishop of York; Wallace, the hero of Scotland; ‘the unfortunate John Bellingham’; and Daniel Dancer, ‘the miserable miser,’ with his sister and servant. There was, moreover, a likeness of the celebrated living skeleton, ‘procured at enormous expense and difficulty’ (presumably to the skeleton). ‘Those who delight,’ said the bills, ‘in the wonders of the Creator will no doubt be highly gratified, without enduring that unpleasantness which some have complained of when viewing the being himself [_i.e._, the skeleton].’ {82} The gardens were to the west of the present Walworth Road, a little to the south-west of Princes Street. The Montpelier tavern and Walworth Palace of Varieties (No. 18, Montpelier Street) is on part of the site. [Bills and newspaper notices; _Picture of London_, 1802–1830; W. W. Read’s _Annals of Cricket_.] THE SURREY ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS A VIEW here reproduced represents these once famous gardens as they appeared in the early thirties. They were in existence, somewhat transformed, as late as 1877, but it is now difficult to imagine that they were situated in a populous region between the Kennington and Walworth Roads. The ‘Zoo’ which found a home in a beautiful garden in the south of London was for some time no mean rival to the Zoo _par excellence_ in Regent’s Park, while, as a place of public entertainment, the Surrey Gardens had something of the popularity of Cremorne, with which they were, in fact, nearly coeval. But here the resemblance ends, for the Surrey Zoo had no dancing-platform, {83} no alcoholic drinks for more than thirteen years, and rarely furnished to the police-court reporter any copy worthy of his notice. The gardens were generally closed at 10 p.m., and the addition in 1846 of two new constables to the permanent staff was advertised as an effective terror to evil-doers. The gardens were by no means solely frequented by South Londoners, though they were far from the luxurious west, and on the wrong side of the Thames. Fireworks, promenade concerts and ballooning were a bait for the shillings of the sightseer, but for more than twenty years at least these attractions never quite sophisticated the simple recreation afforded by the Zoological Garden. [Picture: A South-East View in the Surrey Zoological Gardens. After a lithograph published by Havell, 1832]