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Updated: June 27, 2025
The amusements of the lower classes could hardly be expected to be more humane than those of the wealthy and better educated. The gentleman, who has kindly furnished me with some of the particulars I have given, remembers the bull-baitings at Rochdale, not thirty years ago. The bull was fastened by a chain or rope to a post in the river.
However that might be, it was commonly said this Sir Edward loved Quaker-baiting, as it was called, beyond all other of the cruel, inhuman sports, the bull-baitings and bear-baitings, in which too many men of condition now take pleasure; and it was not long before we found a powerful enemy was raised up against our harmless friends.
The Thames had no bridges, and hundreds of boats plied between London side and Southwark, where were most of the theatres, the bull-baitings, the bear-fighting, the public gardens, the residences of the hussies, and other amusements that Bankside, the resort of all classes bent on pleasure, furnished high or low.
Of the sea-savouring greatly were the friends and acquaintances of my youth. Scarcely a town by the margin of the ocean could be more salt in its people than the men of Liverpool of the last century: so barbarous were they in their amusements, bull-baitings and cock and dog-fightings, and pugilistic encounters.
The poor of the world, again, frequently spend their time in public houses. They fight and quarrel with one another. They run after horse-racings, bull-baitings, cock-fightings, and the still more unnatural battles between man and man.
One should see the Roman Theatre, the solitary Aliscamps, by moonlight, the busy market in the early day, the Cathedral at a Mass, and a fête at any time, for "When the fête-days come, farewell the swath and labour, And welcome revels underneath the trees, And orgies in the vaulted hostelries, Bull-baitings, never-ending dances, and sweet pleasures."
We had bull-baitings, and badger-drawings, and hustings, and prize-fights, and cock-fights; we went to see men hanged; the pillory and the stocks were no empty 'terrors unto evil-doers, for there was commonly a malefactor occupying each of these institutions. With all this we had a broad blown comic sense.
Billings was twenty-one years of age, poor Beinkleider would have to act, not as his master, but his journeyman. Tom was a very precocious youth; was supplied by a doting mother with plenty of pocket-money, and spent it with a number of lively companions of both sexes, at plays, bull-baitings, fairs, jolly parties on the river, and such-like innocent amusements.
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