e ladies and all
started for home, quite happy. In getting nearer to London the crowd got
thicker and the fun and horse-play became more furious, many of them
halting at the taverns by the roadside, at all of which there was a large
number stopping outside and in the fields provided for that purpose.

Getting towards Mitcham the pea shooting and the flour throwing
commenced, and the men selling bags of flour there for sixpence, were
doing a roaring trade. The pelting led to a good many disturbances,
often ending in a fight. The occupants of the various carriages and
drags made themselves conspicuous by dressing up in paper coloured hats
and false beards, and using fans and kissing their hands and bowing to
the girls and women along the road; and most of the traps were decorated
with large branches of may and horse chestnut blooms that had been torn
from the hedges and the trees by the roadside.

It was now drawing towards seven, and I began to get a bit tired, dusty
and footsore, when I saw an opportunity of a ride, and by a little
manoeuvring I got behind a carriage without being seen by the occupants,
and sat myself down comfortably on the step and had a nice ride all
through Mitcham and Fig's Marsh, with only a flip with the whip now and
then from a passing driver. Getting into the Mitcham Road and the
Broadway I had to contest my possession of the seat with several boys who
wanted it, and at the corner of the Broadway just turning into the
Tooting Road, a biggish, rough-looking fellow who had been trying to get
possession of my seat, snatched off my cap and threw it down in the road.
I got off, collared and began to punch him, and had one or two rounds
just opposite the Castle tavern. A crowd quickly surrounded us, and we
were soon supplied with seconds, and were hustled by them through the
large stable yard of the Castle tavern into a meadow at the back,
attended by a large crowd of both men and women, and stripped for a
regular fight. I certainly was the younger and the lighter of the two,
but my knowledge of the use of my hands stood me in good stead of both
weight and age. We had a fair stand-up fight, the only one I ever had in
my life, and was well attended. I got terribly punished in the body, but
not a crack on the face. It lasted nearly twenty minutes, when a master
butcher that was well known in the neighbourhood, pushed through the
crowd and said that "The young 'un has had enough of it," and the