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Ranelagh [ Sports & Leisure ]

… – suitably dressed people could attend – while retaining a flattering feeling of exclusiveness. It could gather the public for entertainments or for national occasions such as the conclusion of a peace treaty. The setting and ornaments … balls in the townhouses of the nobility or city festivities for the merchant classes. The pleasure gardens offered new public spaces corresponding to Enlightenment forms of urban culture and sociability: places of ‘politeness’ – the new … died in 1712. The pleasure garden opened in 1742. It charged higher admission prices (usually 2 shillings on ordinary days, and up to 2 guineas – 42 shillings – for masquerades) than the Vauxhall pleasure garden on the opposite south bank …

Charles Macklin [ Art and Literature ]

… debating and charitable societies. Moreover, he was eager to acquire a lasting though sometimes controversial public role with, inter alia, the creation of the debating institution ‘The British Inquisition’ in 1753. He was a … taken on again by Fleetwood except Macklin who blamed Garrick for his exclusion. Macklin returned to Drury Lane thirteen days after the riot. But this event worsened Macklin’s public image in social circles and in newspaper reports. His public image was tainted by the past he had fought to erase, …

Menageries [ Sports & Leisure / Politics & Society / Social interaction ]

… predecessors to the more formal zoological societies of the Victorian era. As the British Empire expanded, private and public menageries were populated by exotic animals seen as objects of fascination and wonder and whose aim was to … and New Daily Advertiser ;  Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty,   Jackson’s Oxford Journal  and many others). The public opinion was soon outraged at the three-penny admission fee illegally required by the Queen’s Guard who refused to … were replaced by florally fragranced perfumes. As Henri Lefevbre aptly summarises, ‘the sense of smell had its glory days when animality still predominated over “culture”, rationality and education’. 12 Another malodorous exotic good was …

Horseracing [ Games & Sports ]

… into wider sociability and cultural life. The annual race week created an important urban social space, involving both public and private sociability, attracting racehorse owners and gamblers; men and women; the country and towns-folk; and … love of the sport. Over the 1700s horse racing became by far the best-organized, best-supported, most high-status, best-publicized and increasingly commercial sporting activity across England and parts of Scotland and Wales. In many towns … had stables in the country nearby. By the following year the town had six race meetings: a total of thirty-nine days racing. 9 Elsewhere, when race numbers revived slowly in the 1750s, most English races were for older horses, in …

John Keats [ Art and Literature ]

… at the age of 25, he may have been penniless, but he was certainly not friendless. Although his work received little public recognition during his lifetime, his close circle of friends in England strove to defend his genius and preserve … who cherished his memory and yet who could not help squabbling over how best to make his genius known to posterity. The publication, in 1848, of Richard Monckton Milnes’s Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats , which brought … experience – of a translation of Homer, which Keats had discovered with Charles Cowden Clarke, a friend from his schooldays – into a dazzling vision of individual as well as collective wonder. Other poems, such as ‘I stoop tip-toe upon a …

Vestries [ Religious Belief ]

… (‘select vestries’ of ‘chief’ parishioners). Meetings occurred at least annually in a range of venues, including public houses. As financial burdens rose, vestry powers and perceived abuses attracted much critical scrutiny. From the … the locally set levies naturally monitored communal finances very closely, making each parish a kind of ‘ratepayers’ republic’ where issues like participation, integrity and accountability were often hotly debated. (Eastwood 43) 2 . An … had brewed large supplies of fermented beverages for general sale on customary occasions such as summer feasts or saints days. Specially appointed wardens often paid for minstrels and other entertainments with a view to maximizing the …