London's Strangest Tales

by Tom Quinn

  Stow refers to Cross Bones and ‘these single women who were forbidden the rites of the church, so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial, if they were not reconciled before their death. And therefore there was a plot of ground called the Single Woman’s Churchyard, appointed for them far from the parish church.’

  The brothels, drinking houses, bear-pits and cock-pits of Southwark survived until the death of Charles I on the scaffold in 1649 and the arrival of Oliver Cromwell and a Puritan-dominated government, but when the prostitutes – or most of them – departed, the poor arrived in their droves and by the middle of the nineteenth century this was one of the foulest and most overcrowded parts of London. It was also dangerous – so dangerous in fact that even the police were reluctant to stray too far into its warren of filthy, rat-infested streets and alleys. Cross Bones Graveyard continued to be used until 1853 when the bodies were being buried so close to the surface that decaying hands and feet were often seen sticking through the soil. The government insisted it be closed.

  But if proof were needed that the patch of ground that remains really was a burial ground for the Southwark geese, an excavation in 1990 discovered almost 150 skeletons, mostly women and one with the clear marks of syphilis.

  With typical greed the authorities have tried again and again to build on the remaining plot of land but fierce local opposition has ensured that, at least for the time being, the old graveyard of Southwark’s geese remains as a monument to a long-vanished part of London’s medieval history.

  SQUABBLING CHURCHMEN

  1176

  Even the earliest gospels were written almost a century after the death of Jesus, so it is no wonder that they are full of inconsistencies – some make no mention of Christ’s supposed divinity, some make no mention of his brothers and sisters (the Catholic Church couldn’t bear the idea that Mary had children other than Jesus) so it is perhaps not surprising that as the centuries passed the Christian religion had far more to do with the church and the authority of its members than with Christ himself. Endless squabbles about what Christ really meant and what he might have approved or disapproved led eventually to schism and the passionate desire of Christians of every persuasion to burn each other to death.

  One of the most hilarious of these ancient squabbles took place in Westminster Abbey in the second half of the twelfth century. Until this time priests had been perfectly entitled to marry and it was an entirely arbitrary decision to forbid something that had been acceptable for more than a thousand years. Other disputes centred on the differences between the ancient rites of the church inherited through the Irish tradition and the growing authority of Rome, whose traditions were very different in many particulars.

  The Archbishop of York (Irish tradition) was convinced that he was the senior English cleric, but this infuriated the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rome) who refused to accept that anyone should even think of taking precedence over him. Things came to a head when a papal legate visited England in 1176. The legate decided to sort out the question once and for all by convening a synod at Westminster Abbey.

  It took the Archbishop of York much longer to get to London for the synod than his co-religionist from Canterbury. When he arrived and entered Westminster Abbey he found the Archbishop of Canterbury already seated in the position of precedence on the right of the papal legate. He was so furious that he marched up to the papal legate and sat on his lap, to the astonishment of the other bishops!

  According to contemporary reports a fight ensued with ecclesiastical supporters of Canterbury attacking supporters of York – even the papal legate could do nothing to quell the riot. But the legate was a clever man who quickly saw a way through the problem – following debate at the synod (after everyone had calmed down) he determined that the Archbishop of York should be Primate of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury should be Primate of All England. This masterpiece of fudging has lasted down to the present day.

  HUMAN LAVATORY

  1190

  As successive British governments have closed Britain’s once great wealth of public lavatories – London’s loos, until the 1950s, were famous the world over – so has the public been forced to dash in and out of restaurants and pubs where they have no intention either of eating or drinking.

  The reason London’s magnificent Victorian public loos were built in the first place was simply that governments of the time saw them as essential to the wellbeing of Londoners. Parliamentarians who knew their history far better than today’s legislators no doubt remembered that right through the Middle Ages and well into the seventeenth century one of London’s biggest problems was the lack of public loos.

  In their houses people simply used a bucket or pot and then threw the contents into the gutter or the Thames. There is much evidence to suggest that many householders – this was certainly true in aristocratic households – simply relieved themselves in the corner of any room they happened to be in.

  Out in the streets people relieved themselves wherever they liked, but the more delicate-minded and, of course, women found this unacceptable – the solution was provided by human loos.

  These were men and women who wore voluminous black capes and carried a bucket. When you needed the loo you looked for the nearest man or woman with a cape and bucket and gave them a farthing. You then sat on the bucket while they stood above you still wearing the cape but also surrounding you with it.

  The name of only one human lavatory has come down to us – the court rolls reveal that in 1190 one Thomas Butcher of Cheapside was fined ‘and admonished’ for overcharging his clients.

  THE RIGHT TO BE HANGED BY SILK

  1237

  The first freedom of the city of London was given in 1237. In late medieval England being granted the freedom of the city was not a courtesy title nor a simple invitation to wander the city at will. Instead it had enormous practical importance. Once granted it meant the recipient was freed from his duty to his feudal lord – he was a free agent and under the terms of the granting of freedom it meant he could own land and earn money in his own right. He was also protected from feudal duties – the duty of military service for example – because he had rights under the charter of the city. These rights were so important that they could occasionally conflict with the rights of the monarch.

  The city authorities were careful, however, to ensure that so far as possible the monarch was central to the granting of freedom. The freedom of the city is still granted today and those accepting it have to swear the following oath:

  I do solemnly swear that I will be good and true to our Sovereign; that I will be obedient to the Mayor of this City; that I will maintain the Franchises and Customs thereof, and will keep this City harmless, in that which is in me; that I will also keep the Queen’s Peace in my own person; that I will know no Gatherings nor Conspiracies made against the Queen’s Peace, but I will warn the Mayor thereof, or hinder it to my power; and that all these points and articles I will well and truly keep, according to the Laws and Customs of this City, to my power.

  Once he agreed to this the freeman was given a parchment and a wooden casket in which to keep it – in medieval times it is believed that many freemen refused to leave their houses without taking with them – rather like a modern passport – the parchment that confirmed their status as freemen.

  Some of the rights granted to freemen are bizarre by any standards – even today a freeman is entitled to herd sheep over London Bridge, he may walk about the city with a drawn sword, can insist on being married in St Paul’s Cathedral, is permitted to be drunk and disorderly without fear of arrest and best of all if he is sentenced to hang the execution can only be carried out using a silken rope!

  HOW BEDLAM GOT ITS NAME

  1250

  The grand building that now houses the Imperial War Museum south of the River Thames in Lambeth was once Bethlehem Hospital – the hospital from which we derive the word Bedlam, meaning a state of complete
chaos.

  The first Bethlehem hospital was built just outside the old city walls near Bishopsgate in 1250. It was then the priory of St Mary of Bethlehem and like all religious houses in Catholic England it had a duty to help the poor and needy.

  By the middle of the fourteenth century the records reveal that the priory had been greatly expanded: the new parts of the abbey were specifically designed to house the ‘weak of mind’, many of whom would have been thrown out of their homes and left destitute.

  Early attitudes to the mentally ill were, by modern standards, appalling – if they weren’t killed for being possessed by the devil, they were often shackled or kept permanently chained to a wall; they were never washed and often fed, if they were fed at all, like animals; therapy consisted of ducking in freezing water or whipping.

  After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, in 1534–41 the whole of the priory buildings of St Mary of Bethlehem became a hospital specifically required to take those who had ‘entirely lost their wits and God’s great gift of reasoning, the whiche only distinguisheth us from the beast’.

  In the late seventeenth century the hospital moved again – this time to open fields just outside Moorgate to the north of the city.

  Designed by Robert Hooke (1635–1703), the beautiful new classical building concealed a dreadful regime, with patients packed into insufficient space and no attempt of any kind at hygiene.

  By this time a curious shift had taken place in social attitudes and the entertainment-hungry populace of London began to see Bethlehem Royal Hospital as a sort of circus or amusement park. We don’t know exactly when it began but by the mid-eighteenth century every weekend hundreds arrived to be shown around the madhouse; it was a visit ‘guaranteed to amuse and lift the spirits’, said one commentator.

  Sadly there is evidence that the warders deliberately worked the patients up before these visits in order to make them behave even more wildly than they would otherwise. The governors were probably pleased as they had no thought that their patients could ever recover and the visitors paid good money to see them.

  By now the hospital was known as Bedlam and the word quickly became synonymous with any scene of chaos. Most of the hospital’s income came from paying visitors so it was important to put on a good show. It took another century and more – until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in fact – before more enlightened hospital governors decided to stop all visits of this kind. It’s a sad commentary on earlier attitudes to social class and mental illness that the mentally ill ceased to be whipped daily only when George III (1738–1820) became mad and his plight aroused widespread sympathy.

  By the early 1810s it was time for the hospital to move once again. Plans had been drawn up for a new hospital on marshland south of the river. The land was cheap and it was even thought that the air, being cleaner, might do the patients some good.

  The domed classical building we see today was designed by James Lewis (1750–1820) and finished in 1815. Patients were brought across London from Moorfields in a long sad line of Hackney cabs and under careful guard. And here the patients stayed until 1930 when a new hospital was built at Addington in Surrey. In 1936, having dithered about the fate of the old buildings, it was decided that rather than demolish them they should be used to provide an excellent home for the Imperial War Museum.

  A PIECE OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE IN LONDON

  1290

  The rationalisation of London’s boundaries and the counties that border the capital destroyed some wonderfully comic anomalies. Middlesex, for example, was once split in two – Epping Forest which is now in Essex was once in the eastern portion of Middlesex while Uxbridge far away to the west was in the western portion. Between the two parts of Middlesex was a substantial stretch of Hertfordshire!

  Most but not all of these anomalies have vanished. One of the most interesting and unusual that remains is centred on Ely Place just off High Holborn and a little above the course of the now covered River Fleet.

  It is one of the few places that still embodies the ancient rivalry between the Lord Mayor and the monarch, for within the city boundaries the mayor is in charge and successive monarchs have had to accept this. They, in turn, have made sure that the mayor’s jurisdiction is kept rigidly within the bounds of the old city limits. Traditionally the monarch has to ask permission to enter the city, which used to happen every year at a special ceremony at Temple Bar in the Strand.

  Ely Place is within the city boundary but is owned by the Crown. Because of this, it is exempt from the authority of the Lord Mayor and is still – even today – a private road with its own gates and a beadle. Even the police may enter this street only with the permission of the beadle.

  Ely Place has a long and unusual history. Successive Bishops of Ely had their London palace here from 1290 until 1772 when, neglected and almost ruinous, it was demolished. The church of St Ethelreda, which is still here, was completed in about 1291 and is the oldest Roman Catholic pre-Reformation church in London – although church is a rather grand term for what was and is a small private chapel.

  The Palace had many famous residents over the years – John of Gaunt lived here from 1381 until his death in 1391 and Henry VIII was an occasional visitor, as was his daughter Elizabeth I.

  There is a delightful story of Elizabeth insisting that the Bishop of Ely should rent some part of the palace to her courtier Sir Christopher Hatton, whose name is commemorated in the diamond merchant district of nearby Hatton Garden. The bishop was told he could charge Hatton ‘ten pounds a year, ten loads of hay and a rose picked at midsummer’.

  Until about 1920 a policeman had to be dispatched from Ely 100 miles away in Cambridgeshire to police the street because officially this is part of Cambridgeshire!

  The houses which now surround St Ethelreda’s were built at the end of the eighteenth century and until recently Britain’s only diamond cleaver carried on his business in one of them.

  In his play, Richard III, Shakespeare mentions the wonderful strawberries that once grew here in the gardens of the old Palace.

  BOARS’ HEADS AND FRANKINCENSE

  1300

  Despite the evils of modernisation which have destroyed much of the ancient physical fabric of London a host of wonderful traditions survive – a number are still with us simply because ancient statutes tie the modern incumbents of various offices into certain duties. These duties can include odd little ceremonies and, rather enchantingly, it is very difficult to abolish ancient ceremonies – if you agree to be elected to certain offices you have to carry the old ceremonies however keen you might be on doing away with them.

  The ceremony of the keys at the Tower of London in which the yeoman warder locks the gates and then presents the keys each night to the governor is well known, as is the distribution of Maundy money by the sovereign each year. In this ceremony the monarch is supposed to wash the feet of the poor in memory of Jesus at the Last Supper, but what was good enough for Jesus was eventually not good enough for the British monarch and Elizabeth I, having grown tired of washing feet each year (she always made sure they had been washed before she got near them) started to give money to the poor instead, which is the form in which the custom survives today. The last monarch to actually kiss the feet of the poor was William III. The present Queen merely hands out the specially minted coins to a group of the elderly.

  But if these ceremonies are fairly straightforward, there are others that can still amaze anyone coming across them for the first time. One such is the Presentation of the Worshipful Company of Butchers. This involves members of the old Guild of Butchers giving the Lord Mayor a boar’s head as payment for land that was once used for ‘cleansing the entrails of slaughtered beasts’.

  But the oddest of all London ceremonies is perhaps the Royal Epiphany Gifts Service at the Chapel Royal next to St James’s Palace. This ceremony has been held every year on 6 January for seven centuries – in other words since 1300 if not earlier. Members of the Royal House
hold carry gold, frankincense and myrrh into the chapel on behalf of the sovereign.

  After the ceremony the myrrh is taken to Nashdom Abbey, the frankincense goes to a nearby church and the gold – temporarily borrowed from the Bank of England – is quickly returned to the vaults under heavy guard. An equivalent monetary sum is then given to various charities. Curiously, no sovereign has attended the ceremony in person since George I.

  HOW THE WOMEN BEAT THE LAWYERS

  1314

  Lawyers have always been hated. Even when we need them most we think of them as arrogant parasites whose trade union – the Law Society – regulates their affairs in such a way as to ensure their fees are always exorbitant. In surveys lawyers are always voted among the worst professionals, only a little behind journalists.

  Perhaps one reason for this is the curious history of the legal profession in Britain. The lawyers’ history is intimately tied up with their presence in the Inns of Court.

  Lawyers arrived on the site they still occupy between Fleet Street and the river in the early fourteenth century when they took a lease on land formerly owned by the Knights Templar, whose order had been proscribed by the Pope in 1314.

  The lawyers took the lease on the site because Henry III, who had established a law school at Oxford, did not want a rival lawyers’ college in the City of London. The lawyers didn’t like this so they retaliated by establishing their Inns (the first buildings were designed as a hotel for lawyers – hence the name ‘inn’) outside the City boundaries. In other words, in typical lawyer fashion they avoided legislation they didn’t like by exploiting a loophole! But there was a price to pay for what turned into a centuries long battle between the lawyers and the City authorities.