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. The place gained a reputation for vice, being described as "a house in which gangs of both whores and rogues were constantly associated". Highwaymen would carouse there before setting out on their depredations. 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".
