The poorest convicts could expect to be housed in the Stone Hold, which one inmate of the 1720s described as; ‘a terrible stinking dark and dismal place situated underground into which no daylight can come. It was paved with stone, the prisoners had no beds and lay on the pavement.’ Prisoners were expected to provide and cook their own food, even having to pay for the privilege of sitting closer to the fire. For those who could afford it, drink was freely available but it is difficult to imagine the squalid misery that made up most inmates’ lives.
The majority of London’s most famous (and infamous) criminals passed through Newgate’s doors, either to be released, transported or executed. Among them were Titus Oates (who fabricated evidence of a popish plot against the crown), Jonathan Wild (the Thief-Taker General) and the writer Daniel Defoe. Stories of daring escapes are plentiful and success usually relied on either bribery or daring-do. None was more extraordinary than that of Jack Sheppard, a house-breaker and former carpenter whose escape from the Castle (a room high in one of the towers) made him a working-class hero.
Sheppard was kept chained to the floor, manacled and handcuffed, but on Saturday, 10 October 1724, he managed to break his bonds, climb up the inside of a chimney, break through seven doors (one of which hadn’t been opened for fourteen years) and scramble on to the roof. He was about to jump down to freedom when he lost his nerve as he considered the great height. With unbelievable and brazen audacity, the prisoner returned to his cell to fetch a blanket, made his way back to the roof and used the blanket to lower himself to a nearby house, from where he made good his escape. When he was eventually recaptured and returned to captivity, he was visited by the great and good of the day, many of whom appealed (unsuccessfully) for clemency on his behalf. Sheppard met his death at Tyburn on Monday, 16 November 1724, in front of a vast crowd of 200,000 people and went on to be immortalized in ballads, plays and even a famous novel.
A new prison was built from 1770 to 1778 on the designs of George Dance the Younger, a reincarnation described as ‘very large, beautiful and strong’ but destined not to last long. On the night of 5 June 1780, riots inspired by the anti-Catholic rabble-rousing of Lord George Gordon led to the prison being stormed, its inmates being released and its buildings burnt down. The new Newgate, completed in 1783, admitted Lord Gordon himself, who died there in 1793 of jail fever. When Tyburn was no longer used for public hangings, the spectacle continued outside Newgate until 1868, after which time hangings were conducted inside the prison. The jail was finally demolished in 1902.
New River Head
Clerkenwell
THE PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH HOW BEST to supply fresh water to the capital had been a matter of concern from as early as the 13th century.
Then a scheme began bringing water from Tyburn in 3000 yards of lead piping to a conduit at Cheapside. However, by the late Elizabethan period the situation had reached crisis point and it was suggested that a stream from Hertfordshire, or thereabouts, should be diverted.
Two Acts of Parliament were passed to allow the project to go ahead but it wasn’t until King James I’s jeweller, Hugh Myddleton, took charge of affairs that work started in earnest. Digging of a channel from Amwell and Chadwell in Hertforshire was finished in 1613 and the 38-mile cutting was officially opened on 29 September that year. The project had only been possible thanks to a secret cash injection from James I, who remained a sleeping partner.
The path of the New River became a popular destination for holidaying Londoners over the next 200 years and proved a delight for anglers and lovers alike. The water’s slow flow meant that it was prone to the ‘development of lower forms of animal and vegetable life’, so filtration beds were opened in Stoke Newington in 1852. However, the watercourse gradually became covered over and built upon so that by 1900 it had all but disappeared from view above ground. Direct flow to New River Head ended in 1946 and today the river ends in Stoke Newington.
New River House, the former headquarters of the Metropolitan Water Board, now marks the spot where fresh water once flowed. The surrounding streets bear testimony to its history; River Street, Amwell Street and Myddleton Square. The pub on Amwell Street was named The Fountain, though in recent years it has sadly been rebranded.
Nine Elms Railway Station
ONE OF THE MANY LOST STATIONS OF LONDON, Nine Elms was the original – though short-lived – terminus for the London and South Western Railway, which opened on 21 May 1838.
Its greatest moment came nine days after it opened, when newspapers advertised special trains to the Epsom Derby and 5000 passengers turned up to catch them.
However, the station was inconveniently situated away from other central transport hubs and struggled for popularity. It was closed to passengers in 1848 when Waterloo Bridge Station (the ‘Bridge’ was subsequently dropped) opened. Nine Elms, meanwhile, was converted to a shunting and goods yard. It was bombed in 1941 and demolished in the 1960s, with the flower section of New Covent Garden Market now standing where it used to be.
Nonsuch House
London Bridge
THIS WAS POSSIBLY THE WORLD’S FIRST prefabricated building, having been designed and manufactured in Holland.
The four-storey wooden structure was shipped to London and erected on London Bridge, quickly becoming one of the best-known sights in the city. The name Nonsuch is a clear allusion to its unique status – no such other being known of – and may also have been a reference to Henry VIII’s palace built on the outskirts of London in 1538.
Completed in 1578, Nonsuch House stood over the edifice’s seventh and eighth arches from the Southwark side, completely straddling the bridge. No nails were used in its construction but wooden pegs held the structure together instead. With elaborate Dutch stepped gables that overhung both sides of the bridge, the building was covered in ornate carved decorations and had square towers at each corner sporting onion domes, making it visible from all over the city. A sundial on the house’s south side bore the legend: ‘Time and tide stay for no man.’
Old Clothes Exchange
Houndsditch
FOR MANY YEARS THE RAG FAIR, AT WHICH SECOND-hand clothing was bought and sold, was held in the environs of Petticoat Lane. So frantic could trading become that the market gained a reputation for rowdiness, with brawls a commonplace sight.
In London Labour and the London Poor, Henry Mayhew demonstrates typical prejudices of the time by blaming the Irish, who made up a large proportion of the buyers, and the Jews, who he said controlled the trade. He wrote: ‘The passion of the Irish often drove them to resort to cuffs, kicks and blows, which the Jews, although with a better command over their tempers, were not slack in returning.’ Often upwards of 200 police constables were needed to keep the peace.
The trade was eventually regularized by the opening of the Old Clothes Exchange in Phil’s Building, Houndsditch, in 1843. Most of the garments were sold by weight to traders from Dublin, although there were dealers from as far afield as Scotland, Holland and Belgium, as well as other English cities. A small charge was levied on anyone who entered the Exchange and was collected by former prize fighters who acted as bouncers. The brisk trade generated a turnover of some £1500 a week.
Old Slaughter’s Coffee House
Covent Garden
ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS GEORGIAN COFFEE houses, Old Slaughter’s, opened at Nos 74–75 St Martin’s Lane in 1692. It was named after its original proprietor, Thomas Slaughter, who died in 1740.
Like other coffee houses of the era, it attracted a particular clientele, which in this case was an artistic crowd who wished to talk and discuss business without the distractions of the tavern. The exclusion of women meant that, unlike the pubs of the day, gentlemen could chat without being bothered by prostitutes, or, as suited the more misogynistic visitor, women in general. Earnest discussion was the order of the day, with the Irish writer, Oliver Goldsmith, noting: ‘If a man be passionate he may vent his rage among the old orators at Slaughter’s Chop house
and damn the nation because it keeps him from starving.’
Many artists and artisans who lived and worked in Covent Garden used the premises as an office, often receiving mail here, some of which correspondence makes it possible to draw up an impressive list of some of Old Slaughter’s many talented visitors. William Hogarth and Thomas Gainsborough were both regulars, as were the painters William Kent, Thomas Hudson and Francis Hayman, the engraver Hubert Gravelot, the sculptor Francois Roubilliac, medalist Richard Yeo, and the architects James Payne, Robert Adam and Isaac Ware.
Slaughter’s also hosted the first ever meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824 but the building was demolished in 1843 to make way for the construction of Cranbourn Street.
Pantheon
Oxford Street
OPENING TO GREAT FANFARE IN 1772, THE Pantheon was one of the largest rooms in England.
Designed by James Wyatt, it was intended that its entertainments should attract some of the crowd from Ranelagh Gardens, the pleasure gardens located in Chelsea, come the winter season. A city guide of the time described how its ‘interior, in point of extent, design, convenience of arrangement, and beauty of execution united’ was ‘unequalled by anything of the kind in London, or even in Europe’. The building was topped with a domed roof roughly based on Santa Sophia in Istanbul.
Here the great and good were invited to masquerades, fetes and concerts, with the opportunity to visit card rooms, drink tea or have supper in between the entertainments. Horace Walpole gave the Pantheon a most enthuasiastic review:
It amazed me myself. Imagine Balbec in all its glory! The pillars are of artificial giallo antico. The ceilings, even of the passages, are of the most beautiful stuccos in the best taste of grotesque. The ceilings of the ball-rooms and the panels are painted like Raphael’s loggias in the Vatican. A dome like the Pantheon, glazed.
Nonetheless, its popularity soon declined and in 1791 it was converted into a theatre. A disastrous fire in January 1792 completely gutted the building but, following a rebuild by Chrispus Clagett, it re-opened in 1795. It was not a success, though, and Clagett soon disappeared, leaving huge debts. The massive cost of upkeep continually hampered new ventures. Neither the efforts of the National Institute for Improving Manufacturing nor the expansion of Henry Greville’s Argyll Rooms were able to make it profitable, and in 1813 it once again reverted to serving as a theatre.
Alas, the promoter Nicholas Cundy attempted to stage plays here despite being unlicensed to do so, so the Pantheon was closed by order of the Lord Chamberlain. Meanwhile, its interior was stripped of its fixtures and fittings. It was subsequently converted into a bazaar and then, in 1867, a wine warehouse. The premises were sold to Marks & Spencer in 1937, who demolished what remained of the original building and erected the store that sits on Oxford Street today.
Paris Gardens
Bankside
THIS WAS THE SITE OF LONDON’S FIRST PLEASURE gardens, although from our modern perspective ‘pleasure’ might seem a dubious label.
Here originally stood the manor house of Robert De Paris and later the home of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife. Its gardens had opened to the public and were being marked on maps as early as 1574. The site extended from the current Southwark Bridge to the western side of Blackfriars Bridge, its approximate area still measurable by the streets that continue to bear the names of Bear Gardens and Paris Gardens. Southwark had long been a favourite haunt of pleasure-seeking city-dwellers, lying as it did outside the jurisdiction of the city elders.
Bear-baiting was a popular spectacle here, along with dog- and cock-fights, as well as prize fighting. But visitors could pursue almost any leisure activity (illicit or not) that they might choose, from theatrical performances (both the Globe and the Rose theatres were built in Paris Gardens) to rendezvous with local prostitutes (or Winchester Geese as they were known, so called because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester).
The Gardens’ bear pits were built in the style of amphitheatres, with banked wooden seating that on several occasions collapsed, resulting in the deaths of several spectators. One such notable incident occurred one Sunday in 1582, which Puritan elders celebrated as being ‘heaven-directed’. Yet even these tragedies did not seem to dampen Londoners’ ardour for the sport, and for many years the Gardens were under royal patronage. Elizabeth I, for instance, was said to be a keen fan of bear-baiting and visited several times.
The theatre impresario Edward Alleyn (1566–1626) was for some time the ‘keeper of the king’s beasts or ‘master of the royal bear gardens’ and derived an annual income of £500 from the position, which goes some way to illustrating the popularity of animal contests during this time. Alleyn went on to found Dulwich College and many other philanthropic enterprises, all of which have something to thank animal-baiting for.
Although bear-baiting was suppressed during the period of the Commonwealth (1653-1659), the Gardens re-emerged with the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Diarist Samuel Pepys recorded a visit to watch a prize fight here on 28 May 1667:
Abroad, and stopped at Bear-garden Stairs, there to see a prize fought. But the house so full there was no getting in there, so forced to go through an ale-house into the pit, where the bears are baited; and upon a stool did see them fight, which they did very furiously, a butcher and a waterman. The former had the better all along, till by-and-by the latter dropped his sword out of his hand, and the butcher, whether or not seeing his sword dropped I know not, but did give him a cut over the wrist, so as he was disabled to fight any longer. But Lord! to see in a minute how the whole stage was full of watermen to revenge the foul play, and the butchers to defend their fellow, though most blamed him: and there they all fell to it, knocking and cutting down many on each side. It was pleasant to see; but that I stood in the pit and feared that in the tumult I might get some hurt. At last the battle broke up, and so I away.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paris Gardens won for itself a shady reputation. Being unlit at night, it was reputedly a hangout for conspirators, with one 17th-century commentator noting: ‘This may better bee termed a foule dene than a faire garden ... here come few that either regard their credit or losse of time: the swaggering Roarer, the cunning Cheater, the rotten Bawd and the bloudy Butcher all have their rendezvous here.’
Much of the Gardens was developed during the 17th century, while the popularity of bear-baiting went into decline until it was eventually banned in 1835. The last recorded incidence of animal-baiting at Paris Gardens recorded on 2 April 1682.
Patterers, or Death Hunters
LONDON’S UNDERCLASS ALWAYS STRUGGLED TO earn a living and forever sought inventive ways to make a penny or two.
The 1800s saw the emergence of patterers – men who gathered intelligence on the streets to reproduce in newspapers, pamphlets and tracts which they sold on the public highway. They typically lured potential customers by describing recent murders or reporting the last words of the condemned to passers-by, hence their alternative name, ‘Death Hunters’.
Titles such as The Life of Calcraft, the Hangman and The Diabolical Practises of Dr, ---- on his patients when in a state of mesmorism were their stock in trade. They also did good business in ‘secret packages’, which would either contain pornographic material or, as some of the unwary found to their cost, nothing at all.
In making his exhaustive study of the capital’s underclass, Henry Mayhew discovered that patterers were exclusively male and had a cant, or slang, all of their own that was in some ways a forerunner of Cockney rhyming slang:
Penny Gaffs
WHILE THE 19TH-CENTURY UPPER AND MIDDLE CLASSES could frequent London’s multitude of regularized theatres, the poor were excluded from them by the entrance fee alone.
They weren’t, however, without theatres that played to their tastes. Shop-front theatres, called Penny Gaffs, sprang up in the poorer parts of town, hosting up to six shows an evening. A penny was charged for admission an
d shows typically consisted of a musical performance, lewd dancing and a ‘vulgar’ comic. A Victorian visitor reported his trip to one of the least offensive shows he could find ‘in the environs of Smithfield’: ‘The visitors were all boys and girls. They stood laughing and joking with the lads, in an unconcerned, impudent manner that was most appalling.’ The shop in question had had its first floor removed to make a larger space, and an audience of about 200 people was present. ‘One woman carrying a sickly child with a bulging forehead, was reeling drunk with saliva running down her mouth as she stared about her with a heavy fixed eye,’ reported the appalled guest.
An 8ft stage contained not only the performers but also a piano and space for a violinist. The one-hour performance consisted mainly of singing and dancing, including a comic singer who was greeted with rapturous applause and who sang a song: the whole point of which consisted of the utterance of some filthy words at the end of each stanza ... In this, not a single chance had been missed: ingenuity had been exerted to its utmost lest an obscene thought should be passed by, and it was absolutely awful to behold the relish with which the young ones jumped to the meaning of the verses.
That was not the end of the night’s entertainment, either. There followed a ballet dance between a man and a woman that shocked our audience member to his very boots:
If there had been any feat of agility, any grimacing, or, in fact, anything with which the laughter of the uneducated classes is usually associated, the applause might be accounted for: but here were two ruffians degrading themselves each time they stirred a limb, and forcing the brains of the childish audience before them to thoughts that embitter a lifetime.
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