‘Fiddles, raffles and vociferation’: Looking back at Bristol’s St James’s Fair

By Madge Dresser and Steve Poole

Issue 15, Summer, 2006 pp. 32-35.

St James’s fair in Bristol was a wonderful microcosm of Georgian life. The Georgians were globally aware, acquisitive and had a hearty appetite for entertainment and vice. Madge Dresser and Steve Poole explore different aspects of this social occasion; from trade and entertainment, both local and exotic, to thievery and debauchery. The fair caught the attention of moral reformers who viewed it as an arena symbolic of the cheating and corruption which they so fervently opposed. 


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