This was called the Mile End Waste, and was utilised for all the ordinary purposes of a fair ground.

The merry-go-rounds, and shows of every description, which competed with the unfailing Punch and Judy, and wooden swings, kept up a continuous din, especially on Saturday nights and Sundays.
Amidst all this the vendors of the vilest songs and books, and of the most astounding medicines, raised their voices so as to attract their own little rings of interested listeners.

There, too, men spoke upon almost every imaginable evil theme, denouncing both God and Government in words which one would have thought no decent workman would care to hear.

But all who have seen a fair will have some idea of the scene, if they can only imagine all the deepest horrors of appearance and demeanour that drunkenness and poverty, illness and rags, can crowd together within a few hundred yards of space.
Once you can place all that fairly before your imagination you can form some conception of the mind that could look upon it all and hunger to find just there a battlefield for life, as well as of the faith that could reckon upon the victory of the Gospel in such a place.

We have all read accounts of missionaries approaching some far-away island shore and seeing the heathen dance round some cannibal feast.