?Diary 1741 - trip to Scarborough

Extract concerning Scarborough from a diary of travel written in 1741

"The diversions of the day at Scarborough are like those of all other places, day after day, just alike. From 7 o'clock in the morning they drink waters or wash in the sea; at eleven to a publick breakfast where you have pretty good musick and a breakfast for a shilling; and then to dancing till 2 o'clock; then to dinner; then to dressing, and between 5 and 6 to the ballroom where they dance and play at cards and roly poly between ten and eleven (Roly Poly was a game in which a ball rolled into a certain place won); then to bed; and the next morning they rise to act the same farce over again. The expenses of the place are a 5 shilling subscription to each ball room, 5 shillings to a bookseller, 7s 6d to the Spaw and 2s. 6d. to the coffee house. Besides the subscription to the ball-room, every time you dance you pay a shilling to the musick. They have now quite lost a good custom of the gentlemen and ladies dining at an ordinary together, and besides that, the ordinaries are so crowded with gamesters and other shabroons (a disreputable person) that gentlemen were obliged to form themselves into parties of 5 or 6 in number and bespeak dinner at the tavern at so much a head. The prices for everything are so extravagent as they are at London. A Yorkshire man frets and fumes all the while he is there; he dines upon Chickens at home for three pence a piece, and sups upon them there for a half crown".

Source Scarborough library, Diary extract of scarborough in 1741 from green bound pamplets