When Worcester's streets played host to dancing bears and quack doctors

The chap called himself Sequah and didn’t resemble your average NHS GP at all, for he dressed like an American Indian chief and was accompanied by his entourage of “braves” and, rather bizarrely, a brass band.

All that to cover up the fact his real name was William Henry Hartley and he came from Yorkshire. Probably hence the band.

Sequah (aka William Henry Hartley) in prairie dress as he latched on to the growing romance around America’s Wild Westin the late 1800s

Sequah was one of the oddballs who were familiar sights in the Victorian hey-day of town fairs, when the streets were packed with people eager to see the fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, performing animals and snake oil salesmen who claimed they could rid you of any ailment under the sun.

Sequah was considered the prince among quack doctors and held the crowds spellbound with his tales of miracle cures. At Kidderminster a well-known local grocer stepped on to his stage on crutches and walked off without them.

An advert for Sequah’s Prairie Flower potion

One of his best sellers was a potion called “Prairie Flower”, which would cure anything from rheumatism to ‘flu. 

However, his piece de resistance was drawing teeth. He once extracted 74 molars in 57 minutes with no hint of anaesthetic.

Sequah’s professional  technique was to give the bandmaster a nod as  soon as he began pulling and the crescendo of noise from the musicians drowned out the screams of the patient. Job done. 

The staff of Scott’s Fun Fair prepare for another busy day at the office

Long after Sequah’s demise, a sadly un-named Worcester local was bemoaning the loss of the strange characters who brought the streets alive in his youth.

He spoke of “the dancing bears, usually in the charge of Frenchmen or Spaniards, the German bands and the Italians with their queer bagpipes and concertinas.

A few health and safety issues with this fairground ride on Worcester’s Pitchcroft in the early 1900s

“The Punch and Judy men, the necromancer, who swallowed fire and swords, the Samson who broke chains or The Hardyman, who lay in the street so his accomplice could smash down a sledgehammer to crack apart huge sandstones placed on his chest”.

Long before Del Shannon’s Runaway became the soundtrack of funfairs everywhere, these Gallopers were whizzing round at Stricklands fair on Pitchcroft in 1922

Among the itinerant traders were Italians who carried on their heads boards loaded with plaster statuettes, which they peddled from door to door, the cheap-jacks with the amusing patter who would try to sell you anything (“I’m not asking five pounds, not five shillings, it’s yours today for five pence”) and the Breton sailors with strings of onions on their pushbikes.

All gone now into the mists of time.