Astley’s Circus combined many different traditions – juggling, rope-walking and clowning to name just a few. But the late 18th Century also saw the development of what became mind-reading acts, linked to performances of magic and conjuring. Astley may have been no conjurer, but that didn’t stop him trying his hand at legerdemain, and he even published a book of magic tricks. Mind you, none of the tricks were original and the book was a straight lift of a French volume from a few years previously…
It rather looks as though Astley felt compelled to be a magician in order to compete with arch-rival Hughes. Hughes had opened premises just down the road from Astley’s Amphitheatre by Westminster Bridge, and employed the brilliant Philip Breslaw. The latter was a far, far better illusionist and conjurer than Astley, and they both felt a healthy professional disdain for each other.
Astley also used his brilliance as a trainer of animals to get them to perform all manner of tricks. Billy, a.k.a. The Little Learned Military Horse, would appear to fire a pistol, or lie down and play dead, or lift a kettle and pour a pot of tea. Billy was trained to respond to the subtle sound of soft finger clicks to scrape one or other front hoof on the ground, and Astley used this to enable him to appear to be able to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to questions raised by the audience.
And then there was The Scientific Pig. He was not Astley’s pig, but he appeared regularly in his early shows. The pig was trained to give the appearance of telling the time by looking at a watch produced by a member of the audience; he could read minds; he could spell – and if Gillray’s cartoon shown in my previous post is correct, he would even allow a monkey to ride him round the circus ring. The public rather liked the idea of a performing pig, and I can imagine that Astley had rather a lot of fun getting his porcine friend to react with members of the audience.
This is Rowlandson’s sketch of one such performing porker, drawn in 1785:
More details appear in my book “Astley’s Circus – the story of an English Hussar” where I have a separate section describing some of the acts used in the early performances of what became known as the Circus. 
Generally speaking, wild animals didn’t get a look-in. O.K., I can find reference to a zebra and an occasional ostrich, but these were the exceptions rather than the rule. Astley would have been horrified to learn how the circus entertainment was later to be “sullied” by the introduction of herds of elephants, lions and tigers. These were ‘Americanisms’ brought in a century later by the likes of Barnum and Bailey. The shows put on by Astley were about horsemanship. And the odd monkey. And the occasional pig….
One of the fascinating “characters” I came across in my research for my book on Philip Astley was the performing monkey who graced the amphitheatres of London and Paris as one of Astley’s acts for upwards of forty years. He was variously known as ‘Jacko’ or ‘General Jackoo’ and became a firm favourite of the French Court – especially Marie Antoinette – with his ability to ride a horse, sliding down its withers and crawling under its belly to come up the other side.
I have finally drawn a line under my book on Philip Astley – it was one of those things which might otherwise have grown and grown, into a history of the whole circus movement. I wanted to keep it as a story of one man’s life. So now it is in print at last – as “Astley’s Circus, the Story of an English Hussar”.
In this picture we have two elderly gentlemen who, for some reason which the artist does not explain, find themselves sans culottes. Maybe it has rained heavily and they found it necessary to lower their sodden trousers. Or maybe, being absent-minded, they had simply forgotten to pull them all the way up that morning. Whatever the reason, nothing can justify the behaviour of the wanton woman who assaults them both simultaneously. Rowlandson has done a wonderful job of catching their shock and horror at having their manhood seized by the well-endowed strumpet who seems intent on having her wicked way with them both. Well, what was a man to do?
There was no safety in numbers – your friends are waiting outside the door wanting you to come and help them with that morning’s crossword puzzle and you find yourself accosted by a voracious vixen. Such bad form to cavort like that under the beady eye of your fore-father, looking down in a disapproving manner from the wall above! Our hero strives to put a good face on things, but you can be sure that he is an unwilling participant in the sordid scene….
It wasn’t just above stairs that these unwelcome attentions occurred. Pity the poor manservant in this print. Clearly he has gone to the dairy to fetch a cup of milk, or perhaps to find a quiet spot to contemplate the latest score in the Federation League between Trinidad and Jamaica, and this young lady forces herself upon him. Somehow I think Rowlandson has failed to capture the anguish, the utter despair, on the young man’s face. Perhaps Rowlandson wasn’t too familiar with the Caribbean countenance, but the title (The Dairy Maid’s delight) makes it clear that the pleasure is all hers.
The diaries are delightfully open about the whole episode, and how Boswell had to seek treatment – probably involving being injected into his errant member with a mercury concoction delivered by a clyster like this one shown courtesy of the Wellcome Institute site.
Apparently it started to be used to describe an American after LBJ, then President of the USA, referred to his fellow countrymen in his Texas drawl as what sounded like “merkin people.” It caught on, especially now on the internet.
The second meaning is clearly derived from the third one – the fishing lure vaguely resembles a patch of alluring (?) hair. Which leads us on to the original meaning of the word, one which the Oxford English Dictionary dates back to 1614. Nowadays, in a world of “landing strips” and “Brazilians” it may seem odd that anyone uses a merkin, but au contraire, I am assured that there is a market for these hair pieces – either with showgirls wanting to cover their modesty, or with film actresses wanting to evade the censor when it comes to “no full nudity.” 
Indeed I came across a curious advertisement for 
(Shown courtesy of