Five Towns. In that week the Wakes took possession of the town, which
yielded itself with savage abandonment to all the frenzies of license.
The public-houses remained continuously open night and day, and the
barmen and barmaids never went to bed; every inn engaged special
'talent' in order to attract custom, and for a hundred hours the whole
thronged town drank, drank, until the supply of coin of George IV.,
converging gradually into the coffers of a few persons, ceased to
circulate. Towards the end of the Wakes, by way of a last ecstasy, the
cockfighters would carry their birds, which had already fought and been
called off, perhaps, half a dozen times, to the town-field (where the
discreet 40 per cent. brewery now stands), and there match them to a
finish. It was a spacious age.

On this Monday afternoon in June the less fervid activities of the
Wakes were proceeding as usual in the market-place, overshadowed by the
Town Hall--not the present stone structure with its gold angel, but a
brick edifice built on an ashlar basement. Hobby-horses and revolving
swing-boats, propelled, with admirable economy to the proprietors, by
privileged boys who took their pay in an occasional ride, competed
successfully with the skeleton man, the fat or bearded woman, and Aunt
Sally. The long toy-tents, artfully roofed with a tinted cloth which
permitted only a soft, mellow light to illuminate the wares displayed,
were crowded with jostling youth and full of the sound of whistles,
'squarkers,' and various pipes; and multitudes surrounded the
gingerbread, nut, and savoury stalls which lined both sides of the
roadway as far as Duck Bank. In front of the numerous boxing-booths
experts of the 'fancy,' obviously out of condition, offered to fight all
comers, and were not seldom well thrashed by impetuous champions of
local fame. There were no photographic studios and no cocoanut-shies,
for these things had not been thought of; and to us moderns the fair,