When the fair came to town, the land opposite the police station and behind the indoor market was packed with stalls and amusements. Each side of Bank Street featured stalls selling fruit, rock biscuits, ice cream, coconuts, and brandy snaps. At the bottom of Bankside Lane, toy sellers offered wooden trucks and trains. Union Street was home to a towering helter-skelter, where visitors entered at ground level, took a mat, and climbed to the top. Behind the helter-skelter were more dolly stalls and coconut shies, with the familiar cry of “Three balls a penny.”
Children’s roundabouts, Helms bicycles, and hooplas offered the chance to win a best watch. Numerous shows, including freak shows, lion shows, and boxing booths, were also part of the fair. Booths’ boxers nightly challenged locals to stay in the ring for two or three rounds, often likened to lambs to the slaughter. Sedgewick’s Lion Show was typically situated at the entrance to King Street or Irwell Street, inviting the public to enter the lion’s cage for a ten-shilling reward. Tom Lord, the licensee of the Waterloo Hotel, once accepted the challenge but withdrew at the last minute.
Roundabouts with steam pipe organs played popular tunes of the day, such as “The Merry Widow,” “Oh, Oh, Antonio,” or “Walking Out With Angeline,” and occasionally a stirring march. These gaily painted and gilded organs often featured a mechanical figure that waved its hands as though conducting the orchestra. The combined noise of the organs, steamboat hoots, firing ranges, stallholders’ shouts, and children’s shrieks created a bedlam-like atmosphere.
Piebald horses, decorated and ridden by both men and women and small Shetland ponies pranced behind huge, colourfully decorated cars announcing the circus’s arrival. Elephants, camels, and other creatures marched through town to Lanehead, near the cricket field. One story tells of two baby elephants participating in the circus around 1885. While the mother elephants were led along Lanehead Lane, the babies were held back. Children cheered as the baby elephants were released to run after their mothers along Lanehead
