Bear-Garden

The Bear-Garden is the name given to it by the legal profession, so I am quite in order in using the title.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-25 Various 1898

Rochester, and being of a ferocious disposition, had killed several of his brethren; for which misdeed he was sold to the Earl of Dorchester; in whose service, committing several similar offenses, he was transferred to the worse than savages who kept the Bear-Garden.

Shakespearean Playhouses A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration Joseph Quincy Adams 1913

Bear-Garden_ at the Hope on the Bankside, for the amusement of the Morocco ambassador, many of the nobility who knew the horse, and any others who would pay the price of admission.

Shakespearean Playhouses A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration Joseph Quincy Adams 1913

On the way to the Bear-Garden you pass the King's Remembrancer's This is the man who reminds HIS MAJESTY about people's birthdays; and in a large family like that he must be kept busy.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-25 Various 1898

Masters in Chambers are barristers who have not got proper legal faces, and have had to give up being ordinary barristers on that account; in the obscurity and excitement of the Bear-Garden nobody notices that their faces are all wrong.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-25 Various 1898

The proper title would be something like "the place where Masters in Chambers function at half-past one;" but, if you go into the Law Courts and ask one of the attendants where that is, he will say, rather pityingly, "Do you mean the _Bear-Garden_?" and you will know at once that you have lost caste.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-25 Various 1898

Caste is a thing you should be very careful of in these days, so the best thing is to ask for the Bear-Garden straightaway.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-25 Various 1898

"Bear-Garden," which is the place where the preliminary skirmishes of litigation are carried out.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-25 Various 1898

Lawyers, as I have had occasion to observe before, are the most long-suffering profession in the country, and the things they do in the Bear-Garden they have to do in the luncheon-hour, or rather in the luncheon half-hour, between half-past one and two.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-25 Various 1898

Species but Risibility, to seek their Diversion at the Bear-Garden, or some other Privileg'd Place, where Reason and Good-manners have no Right to disturb them.

Spectator, August 11, 1711 1711