FAIRLOP FRIDAY.
Amongst those customs "more honoured in the breach than the observance"
which are rapidly being stamped out by the advancing steps of
civilization, are the institutions which we can yet remember as so
popular in the days of our childhood, called pleasure fairs. Like that
social dodo in a higher section of society, the "three-bottle man," with
the stupid Bacchanalian usages of which he was the embodiment, these
fairs are slowly but surely disappearing as education spreads among the
masses of the people. In the country a fair is a simple and a necessary
thing enough. At certain seasons of the year, according to the staple
commodities for the sale of which the assemblage was originally
instituted, our bucolic friends gather at early morning with the
products of their farms; a good deal of noisy buying, selling, and
barter takes place. Later in the day the ladies invest their profits in
a little mild finery, or in simple pleasures; and, later still, when the
public-houses have done their work, comes a greater or lesser amount of
riot, rude debauchery, and vice; and then, voilà tout--the fair is over
for a year. One can easily imagine the result of the transition when,
from the quiet country, the fair removes to the city or suburb. In such
places every utilitarian element is wanting, and the gilt ginger-bread
and gewgaws are only a speciously innocent attraction towards the
drinking and dancing booth where the mischief is done. Well-wishers to
society are unromantic enough not to regret the decidedly waning glories
of these gatherings, from the great Bartholomew Fair itself down to that
which, on the Friday of which I write, converted many miles of
thoroughfare at the East End of London, as well as one of the prettiest
forest scenes still surrounding the metropolis, into a vast al fresco
tavern, where the "worship of Bacchus" was as freely indulged as in any
heathen temple of ancient times.
Fairlop Fair--which has not yet died out, though beginning to show
satisfactory signs of decay--commenced its existence, innocently enough,
about a century ago. At that time Mr. Day, a shipbuilder, wishing to
have a day's outing in the forest with his friends and employés, fitted
up a vessel on wheels, fully rigged, in which he conveyed his picnic
party to Hainault Forest, on the outskirts of which, some distance from
Ilford, stood the famous Fairlop Oak. The holiday became an annual
custom, and gradually changed its character from the simple gathering of
a master and his men into regular saturnalia; during which, each year,
from the first Friday in July, over the ensuing Saturday and Sunday,
riot and debauchery reigned supreme in the glades of the forest and the
eastern districts of London. The example set by Mr. Day was followed by
other ship, boat, and barge builders, but of late years, more
particularly by the mast and block makers, riggers, shipwrights, and
shipyard labourers; and more recently still by the licensed victuallers.
Finding the custom good for trade, the publicans formed a society for
building or hiring these boats on wheels, which, covered with flags, and
provided each with a band of music and filled with revellers, annually
make their progress into Hainault Forest. They go no longer, alas! to
Fairlop Oak--for that is numbered with the things of the past--but now
to Barking side, where, at the Maypole Inn, the festivities of Fairlop
Fair are still kept up.
These ship and boat cars attract immense multitudes along the Mile End,
Bow, and Whitechapel Roads, down as far as Aldgate; the crowd assemble
in the morning to see the holiday people start on their expedition. The
most remarkable sight, however, is at night, when the "boats" return
lighted with coloured lanterns, red and green fires, &c.; and at every
public-house along the road similar fires are burnt, and brass bands
stationed to strike up as the cars pass, and stop at certain favoured
establishments "for the good of the house." Anxious to witness the
fading glories of Fairlop Friday myself, before the advancing tide of
civilization shall have done their inevitable work upon them, I sallied
forth to the East End, and walking along one of the finest approaches to
London, from Aldgate, by Whitechapel, to Bow and Stratford Churches,
succeeded in realizing more completely than ever before two facts:
first, how gigantic is the population of the East End of London; and,
secondly, how little is required to amuse and attract it. There were
only two of the "boats" sent to the Forest that year. Their return could
gratify the sight of these people but for a single instant; yet there,
from early dusk almost to succeeding daylight, those working men,
literally "in their thousands"--and not in the Trafalgar Square
diminutive of that expression--gathered to gratify themselves with the
sight of the pageant. In comparison, the "Boeuf Gras," which annually
sends the gamins of Paris insane, is really a tasteful and refined
exhibition. Yet there they were, women, men, and children--infants in
arms, too, to a notable extent--swarming along that vast thoroughfare,
boozing outside the public-houses, investing their pence in
"scratch-backs" and paper noses, feathers and decorations, as do their
betters on the course at Epsom, under the feeble excuse of "waiting for
the boats." The first arrived en retour at Stratford Church about ten
o'clock; and certainly the appearance of the lumbering affair as it
moved along, with its rigging brought out by means of coloured fires,
lanterns, and lamps, was odd enough. As soon as it passed me at
Stratford, I jumped outside one of the Bow and Stratford omnibuses, and
so had an opportunity of following, or rather joining in, the procession
as far as Whitechapel, where the "boat" turned off into Commercial Road.
For the whole of that space the footway was filled with one seething
mass of humanity, and the publicans were driving a rattling trade
outside and inside their establishments. As the glare of the coloured
fires lighted up the pale faces of the crowd with a ghastly hue, and I
heard the silly and too often obscene remarks bandied between the
bystanders and the returning revellers, I could not help agitating the
question, whether it would not be possible to devise some innocent
recreation, with a certain amount of refinement in it, to take the place
of these--to say the best--foolish revelries. In point of fact, they are
worse than foolish. Not only was it evident that the whole affair from
beginning to end, as far as adults were concerned, was an apotheosis of
drink; but amongst another section of the populace, the boys and girls,
or what used to be boys and girls--for, as the Parisians say, "Il n'y a
plus de garçons"--one must have been blind indeed not to see the
mischief that was being done on those East End pavements; done more
thoroughly perhaps, certainly on a vastly larger scale, than in the
purlieus of the forest. It is an uninviting subject to dwell upon; but
one could understand all about baby farms, and Lock Hospitals, and
Contagious Diseases Acts, out there that July night, in the crowded
streets of East London.
It would be unfair to dilate upon these evils, and not to mention an
organization which, for the last ten years, has been seeking to remedy
the mischief. Some hundreds of working men of a more serious stamp,
aided by a few gentlemen and ministers of various denominations, form
themselves into small bands of street preachers, and sallying forth in a
body, hold services and preach sermons at the most populous points of
the Fairlop route. Being curious to see the effect of their bold
labours--for it requires immense "pluck" to face a Whitechapel mob--I
joined one of these detachments, where the Rev. Newman Hall was the
preacher. Before starting, this gentleman gave it as the result of his
long experience with the British workman that there is no use in waiting
for him to come to church. If the church is to do anything with him, it
must go out and meet him in the streets and fields, as it originally
did. Mr. Hall gave some amusing illustrations of his experience at
Hastings, where, for several weeks, he had been preaching on the beach
to large congregations. He was idling there, he said, for health's sake,
and one evening, seeing a number of men loafing about, he proposed to
one of them that he should give them an address. This gentleman declined
the address, but added, characteristically enough, "If ye'll gie me
some beer I'll drink it." Two others, being asked if they would listen,
"didn't know as they would." Under these unpromising auspices Mr. Hall
began, and, attracting a crowd, was "moved on" by a policeman. A
gentleman who recognised him proposed an adjournment to the beach, and
there a sermon was preached, and has been repeated by Mr. Hall on
several occasions, with a congregation of thousands. He has a peculiar
knack of speaking in a tongue "understanded of the people," and his
address to the Fairlop crowd on that Friday night "told" considerably.
At its conclusion he quietly put on his hat, dropped into the crowd, and
went his way; but the tone of criticism amongst his hearers was very
favourable, and I quite agree with the critics that it's a pity we
haven't "more parsons like that." It is not, however, simply by
religious zeal such a want as that to which I allude is to be supplied,
but by the substitution of some sensible recreation for the low
attractions of the beershop and gin-palace. It is a problem worthy of
our deepest thinkers: "What shall we offer our huge populations in
exchange for the silly pageant even now being enacted in the outskirts
of the metropolis--which may well be taken to embody the pastime of the
lower orders--Fairlop Fair?"