“Whereas we have seen a printed order of the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen the 25th June 1700, to prevent the great profaneness, vice, and debauchery, so frequently used and practised in Bartholomew Fair, by strictly charging and commanding all persons concerned in the said fair, and in the sheds and booths to be erected and built therein or places adjacent, that they do not let, sell, or hire, or use any booth, shed, stall, or other erection whatsoever to be used or employed for interludes, stage-plays, comedies, gaming-places, lotteries, or music meetings: and as we are informed the present Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen have passed another order to the same effect on the 3rd instant; we take this occasion to return our most hearty thanks for their religious care and great zeal in this matter; we esteeming a renewal of their former practices at the Fair a continuing one of the chiefest miseries of vice next to the Play-Houses; therefore earnestly desire that the said orders may be vigorously prosecuted, and that this honourable Court would endeavor that the said fair may be employed to those good ends and purposes it was at first designed.” In the “Postman,” of September, appeared the following advertisement: “The tiger in Bartholomew Fair, that yesterday gave such satisfaction to persons of all qualities by pulling the feathers so nicely from live fowls, will, at the request of several persons, do the same thing this day; price, 6_d._ each.” There was published this year for R. Hine near the Royal Exchange, “A Walk to Smithfield, or a True Description of the Humours of Bartholomew Fair, with the very comical Intrigues and Frolics that are acted in every particular Booth in the Fair, by persons of all ages and sexes, from the Court Gallant to the Country Clown. With the Old Droll-Players’ Lamentation for the loss of their Yearly Revenues: being very Pleasing and Diverting.” It seems that at this period the principal London theatres closed during the fair. This was so with Drury Lane in 1702; and also with several of the theatres during May Fair. See 1714. 1703. In the “Observator” of August 21 this year was the following: Does this market of lewdness tend to anything else but the ruin of the bodies, and souls and estates, of the young men and women of the City of London, who here meet with all the temptations to destruction? The Lotteries, to ruin their estates; the drolls, comedies, interludes, and farces to poison their minds, &c.; and in the cloisters what strange medley of lewdness has not that place long since afforded? Lords and ladies, aldermen and their wives, ’squires and fiddlers, citizens and rope-dancers, jack-puddings and lawyers, mistresses and maids, masters and ’prentices! This is not an ark, like Noah’s which received the clean and the unclean; only the unclean beasts enter this ark, and such as have the devil’s livery on their backs!