East End Bean Feast

[Craig H]

I’m reading a memoirs from the 1890’s that refers to an “East End Bean Feast”

I’ve not heard that before.

does anyone know anything on this ?

it sounds like something from a rural town not inner city

craig

[Ginger]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean-feast

[Craig H]

Thanks Ginger, I googled "bean fest" by mistake.

So I wonder if East End Bean Feast was an event around Whitechapel in the late 1880's or whether it just referred to a celebration ?

Craig

[Ginger]

Thanks Ginger, I googled "bean fest" by mistake.

So I wonder if East End Bean Feast was an event around Whitechapel in the late 1880's or whether it just referred to a celebration ?

Craig

Whose memoirs? If it were a public event, then there'll probably be newspaper advertisements for it. If a private one, then you may find something in trade journals, and sometimes newspapers will cover those in the society columns (usually after the fact, telling who won which award, who gave the address, etc), especially if it's something middle-class.

[Craig H]

It seems the "Bean Feast" was an annual event every July. Detail below :

“In the 1720’s Daniel Day of Wapping would ride out to the small estate he owned in Fairlop on the first Friday of July to collect his rents. According to G Woodgate in a letter to the editor of East London Observer in 1867 he “invited many of his friends to a bean feast and bacon, which he doled out to them from the hollow of the tree. Much bacon and several sacks were consumed this way. In the course of a few years other parties came, these increasing, booths were erected, and various articles brought to sale.”

The Fair became a great East End institution with gaming tables, drinking booths, boxing matches, roundabouts, travelling theatres, and fortune tellers. Daniel Day had a boat built complete with masts and rigging but constructed to run on wheels and be drawn by a pair of greys in which he rode to the Fair from Wapping via Mile End, Bow, Stratford and Ilford. Imitators also constructed boats, bigger and more ornate than the original and drawn by teams of up to six horses. The return of the boats to Wapping from Hainault on the Friday night became a carnivalesque occasion with the crowds lining the streets back into London to watch the boats illuminated by coloured fires and accompanied by a brass band.”

Thanks for getting me on the right track
Craig