Mr. Hutton, in his small pamphlet descriptive of Blackpool in 1788, says:—“The tables here are well supplied; if I say too well for the price I may please the innkeepers, but not their guests. Shrimps are plentiful; five or six people make it their business to catch them at low water, and produce several gallons a day, which satisfy all but the catchers. They excel in cooking, nor is it surprising, for forty pounds and her maintenance is given to a cook for the season only. Though salt water is brought in plenty to their very doors, yet this is not the case with fresh. The place yields only one spring for family use; and the water is carried by some half a mile, but is well worth carrying, for I thought it the most pleasant I ever tasted.” The prices at the inns and boarding-houses had risen as the accommodation they offered had improved in quality and increased in extent, so that it was no longer possible to subsist on the daily expenditure of a few pence as in former times. In hotels of the first class 3s. 4d. per day, exclusive of liquors, was the charge for board and lodging; dinner and supper being charged 1s. each to the casual visitor, and tea or breakfast 8d. In those of the second-class and some of the lodging-houses, 2s. 6d. per day covered everything with the exception of tea, coffee, sugar, and liquors; whilst the smaller lodging-houses, generally crowded with visitors who were either willing or compelled to content themselves with the more frugal fare provided, charged only 1s. 6d. per day for each guest. A promenade, six yards wide, carpeted with grass and separated from the road by white wooden railings, ran along the verge of the sea bank for a distance of two hundred yards, and was ornamented at one end with an alcove, whilst the other terminated abruptly at a rough clayey excavation, afterwards used as a brick croft. “Here,” says the topographer already quoted, “is a full display of beauty and of fashion. Here the eye faithful to its trust, conveys intelligence from the heart of one sex to that of the other; gentle tumults rise in the breast; intercourse opens in tender language; the softer passions are called into action; Hymen approaches, kindles his torch, and cements that union which continues for life. Here may be seen folly flushed with money, shoe-strings, and a phæton and four. Keen envy sparkles in the eye at the display of a new bonnet. The heiress of eighteen trimmed in black, and a hundred thousand pounds, plentifully squanders her looks of disdain, or the stale _Belle_, who has outstood her market, offers her fading charms upon easy terms.”