In 1746 Rosoman was proprietor, and introduced the system of admitting the pit and gallery free, on the purchase of a pint of wine. A charge of half-a-crown was made for the boxes. The audience smoked and toasted one another. The man-servant by day became a beau at night; and with the lady’s-maid, decked out in colours filched from her mistress, gazed open-mouthed at the wonderful sights. Winifred Jenkins describes her experiences, in _Humphry Clinker_ (1771):--“I was afterwards of a party at Sadler’s Well, where I saw such tumbling and dancing on ropes and wires that I was frightened and ready to go into a fit. I tho’t it was all enchantment, and believing myself bewitched, began for to cry. You knows as how the witches in Wales fly on broom-sticks; but here was flying without any broomstick or thing in the varsal world, and firing of pistols in the air and blowing of trumpets and singing, and rolling of wheelbarrows on a wire (God bliss us!) no thicker than a sewing thread; that to be sure they must deal with the Devil. A fine gentleman with a pig’s tail and a golden sord by his side, came to comfit me and offered for to treat me with a pint of wind; but I would not stay; and so in going through the dark passage he began to show his cloven futt and went for to be rude; my fellow sarvant Umphry Klinker bid him be sivil, and he gave the young man a dous in the chops; but i’ fackins Mr. Klinker warn’t long in his debt; with a good oaken sapling he dusted his doublet, for all his golden cheese-toaster; and fipping me under his arm carried me huom, I nose not how, being I was in such a flustration.” Between 1752 and 1757 Michael Maddox exhibited his wire-dancing and his tricks with a long straw, which he manipulated while keeping his balance on the wire. In 1755 (and for many years afterwards) Miss Wilkinson, the graceful wire-dancer and player of the musical glasses, was a principal performer. Giuseppe Grimaldi (“Iron Legs”) the father of the famous clown, was the ballet-master and chief dancer in 1763 and 1764; and remained at the Wells till 1767. Harlequinades and similar entertainments were from this time added to the ordinary amusements of tumbling and rope-dancing. [Illustration: SADLER’S WELLS IN 1792, AND AS IT WAS BEFORE 1765.] In 1765 Rosoman pulled down the old wooden house and erected in its place a new theatre which in part survives in the building of the present day. The seats now had backs with ledges, as in our music-halls, to hold the bottles and glasses of the audience. About this time, or a few years later, the charge for a box was three shillings including a pint of wine (port, Mountain, Lisbon or punch), and eighteen pence and one shilling for the pit and gallery; an extra sixpence entitling the ticket-holder to a pint of the wine allowed to the box-holders. Angelo, at a later time, refers in his _Reminiscences_ to the Cream of Tartar Punch and the wine of the Sloe Vintage usually drunk at Sadler’s Wells.