...was London Ontario's first fall fair. Wilberforce was only 15 miles away. And elsewhere, in the States, P.T. Barnum was just getting started...
...with Joice Heth, a 161 year old woman who claimed to have been a nurse to little George Washington. Later, when she died, it was revealed that she was about half the age she claimed for herself. Which is, you know, still pretty old for those days. But the act fell apart anyway. For a bit.
But that was the Big Top. Or, the precurser to the Big Top. What did they have in fall fairs in those days? Besides horse-drawn merry-go-rounds? And was it possible to throw up a stage and create an act that hadn't been planned by the presenters? Like, say, a couple of intepid Ethiopian Delineators? Or did they have to get ready to run if they were caught? How well organized was a fall fair in 1830's London Ontario?
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