COVE

"We passed the same group, accidentally, in the evening. We never saw a​ ​ "green" so drunk, a lord so quarrelsome (no: not even in the house of peers after dinner), a pair of clowns so melancholy, a lady so muddy, or a party so miserable.

How has May-day decayed!"      ​— "Scenes," Chapter 20, "The First of May," p. 130.

Charles Dickons, working as a reporter, saw a May Day procession in 1827 and in his report on the event was found to lament the loss of the many of the British traditions from May Day.

Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/cruikshank/boz18.html