[5][6] The inn sign, dated 1716,[a] was an oblong red moulding in stone composition showing a dog with a duck in its mouth.

[5] David Garrick, in his prologue to the 1774 play The Maid of the Oaks, alluded to the decline – "St. George's Fields, with taste of fashion struck, Display Arcadia at the 'Dog and Duck'; And Drury misses here, in tawdry pride, Are there 'Pastoras' by the fountain side; To frowsy bowers they reel through midnight damps, With Fawns half drunk, and Dryads breaking lamps.

"[3] According to Edward Walford, the tavern gardens were used for popular concerts with an audience of "the riff-raff and scum of the town", which became a public nuisance.

[12] Francis Place reported that, as a boy, he had seen "two or three horses at the door of the Dog and Duck in St George's Fields on a summer evening, and people waiting to see the Highwaymen mount ... flashy women come out to take leave of the thieves at dusk and wish them success".

They decided "too many people assembled there of very loose character, and that it consequently became a receptacle for disorderly persons, and a place of assignation destructive of that morality which it was the duty of the law to see preserved".

This pleasantly situated stop has been improved at a very enormous expense by its present Proprietor, who has laid out the Gardens with peculiar neatness, and refreshed them by a large canal.

This is one measure they effected by shutting up his doors on a Sunday evening, and preventing him the liberty that every other victualler enjoyed of selling tea, wine, etc as if his house and Gardens were more offensive to morality than those of other people.

It certainly was true that the beauties of the place, the variety of the company, and the gaiety of the music, drew together a vast concourse of people, but there was neither a private room to commit fornication, nor late hours to induce inebriety.

The only complaint, in truth, was that the music invited, the company charmed, and that, as is ever the case in all places of public amusement, girls of the town crowded there.

Spas became fashionable in the early 18th century and the gardens of the Dog and Duck, under the name St George's Spaw, started selling Purging Waters at 6d a gallon.

[5] A 1732 advertisement claimed that the "great success which these waters have had in the Cure of Investigative Cancers have rendered them truly famous throughout the Kingdoms" with "many happy instances of the Truth of this daily to be seen".

In 1771, Dr Johnson corresponded with his friend Mrs Thrale about the waters, "You despise the Dog and Duck; things that are at hand are always slighted.