The charge for admission at Vauxhall, Marylebone Gardens, and Cuper’s was generally not less than a shilling. Ranelagh charged half-a-crown, but this payment always included “the elegant regale” of tea, coffee, and bread and butter. The proprietors of the various Wells made a regular charge of threepence or more for drinking the water at the springs and pump rooms. At some of the smaller gardens a charge of sixpence or a shilling might be made for admission, but the visitor on entering was presented with a metal check which enabled him to recover the whole or part of his outlay in the form of refreshments. Vauxhall, Marylebone, Cuper’s, and Ranelagh often numbered among their frequenters people of rank and fashion, who subscribed for season-tickets, but (with the possible exception of Ranelagh) were by no means exclusive or select. The Tea-gardens, and, as a rule, the Wells, had an aristocracy of aldermen and merchants, young ensigns and templars, and were the chosen resorts of the prentice, the sempstress, and the small shop-keeper. The proprietors of gardens open in the evening found it necessary to provide (or to announce that they provided) for the safe convoy of their visitors after nightfall. Sadler’s Wells advertised “it will be moonlight,” and provided horse patrols to the West End and the City. The proprietor of Belsize House, Hampstead, professed to maintain a body of thirty stout fellows “to patrol timid females or other.” Vauxhall--in its early days usually approached by water--seems to have been regarded as safe, but Ranelagh and the Marylebone Gardens maintained regular escorts. In the principal gardens, watchmen and “vigilant officers” were always supposed to be in attendance to keep order and to exclude undesirable visitors. Unsparing denunciation of the morals of the chief gardens, such as is found in the lofty pages of Noorthouck, must, I am inclined to think, be regarded as rhetorical, and to a great extent unwarranted. On the other hand, one can hardly accept without a smile the statement of a Vauxhall guide-book of 1753, that “even Bishops have been seen in this Recess without injuring their character,” for it cannot be denied that the vigilant officers had enough to do. There were sometimes scenes and affrays in the gardens, and Vauxhall and Cuper’s were favourite hunting-grounds of the London pickpocket. At the opening Ridotto at Vauxhall (1732) a man stole fifty guineas from a masquerader, but here the watchman was equal to the occasion, and “the rogue was taken in the fact.” At Cuper’s on a firework night a pickpocket or two might be caught, but it was ten to one that they would be rescued on their way to justice by their confederates in St. George’s Fields.