Lost London

by Richard Guard

  Peerless Pool

  Shoreditch

  THE PRECURSOR TO ALL LONDON’S LIDOS (OR open-air swimming pools) was the subject of a wonderful piece of rebranding. Located on Old Street, this was an ancient spring famed in the 17th century for its duck-hunting but with a reputation for accidents.

  The London historian, John Stow, once called it Perilous Pond due to the number of young men who had drowned in it. In 1752 it was converted at considerable expense into a gravel-bottomed swimming pool by the jeweller William Kemp, opening in its new guise as the Peerless Pool in 1752.

  It measured 170 x 108ft and was filled with water to a maximum depth of 5 feet. Kemp charged an entry fee of one shilling, making it the preserve of the wealthy, who had access to marble changing rooms. Shaded by fine trees, the pool soon became a popular city resort. For a hundred years people came to swim in the summer and skate in the winter but by 1850 it had been built over. The nearby Peerless Street and Bath Street are now the only indicators that it was ever here.

  Swimming, however, went on to take the capital by storm, and the 1930s saw an explosion in the growth of lidos, almost all of which have now been lost to redevelopment.

  Pillory

  IN THE PAST, dairymen ‘selling mingled butter’ were ‘sharply corrected’ upon the pillory.

  So also were ‘fraudulent corn, coal, and cattle dealers, cutters of purses, sellers of sham gold rings, keepers of infamous houses, forgers of letters, bonds, and deeds, counterfeits of papal bulls, users of unstamped measures, and forestallers of the markets’.

  The medieval punishment of standing in the pillory saw the culprit strapped into a wooden contraption that held the hands and head exposed as the good folk of the town hurled abuse, rotten fruit and often much, much worse at the offender. The principal locations of London’s pillories were Cheapside, Cornhill, Old Bailey, Palace Yard and Charing Cross. Other temporary pillories were regularly erected elsewhere, including Clerkenwell Green and St James’s.

  Should a magistrate have considered a particular crime worthy of extra punishment, additional grotesque forms of retribution could be added to the sentence. For instance, those found guilty of spreading rumours might have their ears nailed to the pillory. William Prynne, a lawyer and vociferous opponent of the established church, was pilloried three times in the 1630s. He had one ear cut off while pilloried at Palace Yard, and the second was removed at Cheapside. Imprisoned for life, he continued to write seditious tracts and was pilloried again, and the letters S and L (for ‘Seditious Libeler’) branded on his cheeks.

  Many lost their lives in the pillory, the reaction of the public being so vehement against them. Others fared better though, such as Daniel Defoe who claimed he was pelted with flowers when he was given a sentence for attacking unpopular practices in the church. The punishment was formally abolished in 1837, James Peter Bossy having the dubious honour of being the last man to endure it on 24 June 1830 at the Old Bailey.

  Plague Pits

  CONSIDERING THAT THEY SO FILL THE imagination, evidence of plague pits – large mass graves built outside the populated areas of the city to accommodate mass deaths – are very scant indeed.

  Mass graves were undoubtedly dug, but the vast majority of these were in traditional graveyards. The records of St Bride’s Church for the period of the last great outbreak of plague, in 1665, show that although a vast number of parishioners died – over 2000 – they were nearly all accommodated in one of the church’s three graveyards.

  Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Year records having seen new mass graves being dug in a variety of city churchyards, although how much veracity we can place on his information is debatable. His book, which is more novel than reportage, was written in 1722. Defoe was 4, or possibly 6 years old at the time of the plague, his date of birth being unsure.

  At various times large numbers of bones have been discovered when new Tube lines are dug, or when new buildings erected. The Broadgate construction around Liverpool Street Station uncovered a vast quantity – but these are thought to have been the dead from the original Bedlam Hospital which once occupied the area.

  Samuel Pepys makes no mention of plague pits in his diary for 1665 – and he lived and stayed in the city for much of the time. It is likely, though, that Bunhill Fields was first opened to bury the plague dead at the height of the infestation in August 1665.

  The most enduring myth is that Blackheath is so named as it was the burial site used during the Black Death (1348-1350), although this is untrue. Recorded in 1166, nearly 200 years beforehand as ‘Blachehedfeld’ – it is derived from the colour of the soil – black.

  Pure Collectors

  THE EXPANSION OF INDUSTRY IN THE CAPITAL demanded that raw materials be imported from all over the world.

  But the tanning businesses of Bermondsey – remembered in road names such as Leather Lane and Leathermarket Street – needed one particular resource that the capital’s working class could collect for themselves on the very streets where they walked: dog dung.

  Called ‘pure’ because of its cleansing property when curing leather, it was gathered by the bucketful. The white variety was the most valuable so collectors were often found to have adulterated their finds with mortar from walls. It is estimated that when the tanning industry was at its peak, 300 people made a living collecting pure. The irrepressible Henry Mayhew provided this description of the unfortunate workers:

  The pure-finder ... is often found in the open streets as dogs wander where they like. The pure-finders always carry a handle basket, generally with a cover, to hide the contents, and have their right hand covered with a black leather glove; many of them however dispense with the glove, as they say it is much easier to wash their hands than to keep the glove fit for use. Thus equipped, they may be seen pursuing their avocation in almost every street in and about London, excepting such streets as are now cleansed by the ‘street orderlies’ of whom the pure-finders grievously complain, as being an unwarrantable interference in the privileges of their class.

  Queen’s Hall

  Langham Place

  THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE ‘PROMS’, QUEEN’S Hall opened in 1893 but was not an initial success.

  Containing two auditoria – one with seating for 2500 and the other a smaller room for chamber orchestras and an audience of 500 – in particular, its décor did not immediately strike a chord with music lovers.

  The architect, T E Knightly, had insisted that the main ceiling should be painted the same colour as the belly of a London mouse, and is said to have hung a strip of the same in the painter’s workshop to facilitate an accurate match. However, if the interior design left a little to be desired, the acoustics were superb. The walls were covered in wood paneling that was separated from the stone work by batons, covered with stretched cloth and sealed, achieving its designer’s aim of resonating like a violin.

  When Henry Wood started his Promenade concerts in 1895, it proved a turning point for the hall, which over time was to become known as the ‘musical centre for the Empire’. Nonetheless, its cramped seating came in for much criticism well into the 20th century. In 1913, for instance, the Musical Times commented:

  In the placing of the seats, apparently no account whatever is taken even of the average length of lower limbs, and it appeared to be the understanding ... that legs were to be left in the cloak room. At two pence apiece this would be expensive, and there might be difficulties afterwards if the cloak room sorting arrangements were not perfect.

  Fortunately, the seating arrangements were significantly improved during a rejig shortly before the First World War and the hall went from strength to strength. In the 1930s it became the base for both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with many of the period’s greatest musicians playing here, including Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Edward Elgar and Claude Debussy. Indeed, competition between the rival orchestras did much to raise the standard of classical music playing in Great Britain.
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  The Proms, supported by the BBC which was based nearby, were by then a fixture at Queen’s Hall and the highlight of the classical music calendar. The outbreak of the Second World War put an end to that though, with the BBC withdrawing its staff to Bristol and the last Proms concert at Queen’s Hall going ahead in 1940. In April 1941, an incendiary device completely gutted the main auditorium and it was deemed too expensive to rebuild. The Proms subsequently moved to the Royal Albert Hall, while Queen’s Hall was demolished and the site redeveloped.

  Rainbow Coffee House

  Fleet Street

  THE RAINBOW HAD BEEN A TAVERN UNTIL ITS enterprising landlord, Mr Farr, started selling the new drink in the 1650s.

  Arousing much jealously from vintners who in 1657 accused him of causing ‘Disorders and Annoys’. In their indictment, they referred to ‘James Farr. A barber, for makinge and selling a drink called coffee, whereby in makinge the same, he annoyeth his neighbours by evil smells’. Nonetheless, Farr persisted in his enterprise, the Arabic drink becoming increasingly popular all the way through to today. The Rainbow, however, was demolished in 1859.

  Ranelagh Gardens

  Chelsea

  ‘AH! RANELAGH WAS A NOBLE PLACE! SUCH TASTE! Such elegance! And such beauty!’

  So said William Hone in his Table-Book in 1829. Located two miles outside of London in the grounds of Ranelagh House in what was then the village of Chelsea, it briefly eclipsed Vauxhall (another of the capital’s fashionable pleasure gardens) as the most exclusive haunt of the wealthy.

  Ranelagh Gardens opened to the public in 1742 and its chief attraction was a Rotunda that boasted a 185ft circumference and resembled the Pantheon in Rome. Its interior was elegantly decorated and when well-lit and full of company, it was thought unequalled in ‘Europe for beauty, elegance and grandeur’. It was heated by equipment hidden by its arches, porticoes, niches and paintings. The ceiling was decorated with celestial figures, festoons of flowers and arabesque, all lit by a circle of chandeliers.

  Masquerades were the order of the day at Ranelagh and were often attended by the entire royal family donning disguises. Horace Walpole’s description of the Jubilee Masquerade in 1749 captures the essence of the occasion:

  It was by far the best understood and prettiest spectacle I ever saw – nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it. One of the proprietors, who is a German, and belongs to court, had got my Lady Yarmouth to persuade the king to order it ... When you entered, you found the whole garden filled with marquees and spread with tents, which remained all night very commodely. In one quarter was a May-pole, dressed with garlands, and people dancing round it to a tabour and pipe, and rustic music, all masked, as were all the various bands of music that were disposed in different parts of the garden; some like huntsmen, with French horns; some like peasants; and a troop of harlequins and scaramouches in the little open temple on the mount. On the canal was a sort of gondola, adorned with flags and streamers, and filled with music, rowing about. All round the outside of the amphitheatre were shops, filled with Dresden china, japan, &c., and all the shopkeepers in masks; the amphitheatre was illuminated, and in the middle was a circular bower, composed of all kinds of firs, in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high; under them orange trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of auriculas in pots; and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree. Between the arches, too, were firs, and smaller ones in the balconies above. There were booths for tea and wine, gaming-tables and dancing, and about two thousand persons present. In short, it pleased me more than the finest thing I ever saw.

  Caneletto’s painting of the Rotunda’s interior in 1751 marked the beginning of the venue’s heyday, which peaked in the 1780s. But its wildly popular exotic masquerades were to prove its downfall, as they acquired a reputation for immorality and became less and less frequented by people of rank and fashion. By 1800 Ranelagh was struggling to make ends meet, as Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens across the river once again drew the fashionable crowd. The last masquerade was held in 1803 and the much-loved Rotunda was demolished in 1805.

  Sir Richard Phillips returned to the scene of the now abandoned Gardens in 1817 and wrote:

  No glittering lights! No brilliant happy company! no peals of laughter from thronged boxes! no chorus of a hundred instruments and voices! All was death-like stillness! Is such, I exclaimed, the end of human splendour? ... I was myself one of three thousand of the gayest mortals ever assembled in one of the gayest scenes which the art of man could devise—ay, on this very spot; yet the whole is now changed into the dismal scene of desolation before me!

  Today the old grounds are home to the Chelsea Hospital.

  Ratcliffe Highway

  Wapping

  RUNNING EAST FROM THE TOWER OF LONDON to Limehouse, the ill-fated Ratcliffe Highway became so notorious that its name was twice changed in an attempt to salvage its reputation.

  This ancient road was originally built by the Romans and connected the city to the village of Ratcliffe (or Red Cliff), which by 1600 had been swallowed up by urban and dockside development. The area around the road was famous for its maritime community and by the 17th century had an earthy reputation. The Gentleman’s Magazine once described its population as ‘dissolute sailors, blackmailing wharfmen, rowdy fishermen, audacious highwaymen, sneak thieves and professional cheats’.

  By 1850, the highway had become the ‘Regent Street of seamen’, according to Walter Thornbury. It had shops specializing in selling wild animals, it was not unusual to see tigers, lions and pelicans as you walked along its length. On one occasion, a tiger escaped and grabbed a small boy in its jaws before making-off down Commercial Road. A passerby took up a crowbar to free the poor infant from the animal’s jaws, but his blow only succeeded in killing the child.

  Yet it was another incident that sealed Ratcliffe Highway’s infamy. On Saturday, 7 December 1811, Margaret Jewell, a housemaid, returned to her employer’s shop after buying oysters for their supper. Unable to open the door of 29 Ratcliffe Highway and finding the house in darkness, she called for assistance. When the door was forced, the bodies of Timothy Marr, his wife and their baby, plus a shop assistant, were discovered. They had been brutally murdered, their throats cuts.

  Panic spread like wildfire and the government offered a reward of 500 guineas for the arrest of the perpetrator. Nonetheless, just twelve days later another killing spree took place at the King’s Arms public house on nearby Gravel Pit Lane, running from Ratcliffe Highway towards the river. The landlord – a man named Williamson – his wife and a barmaid had all had their throats cut too. An apprentice, John Turner, discovering the murderer at his work, only escaped by running away, locking himself in his room and climbing out of a window, using his bed sheets as a rope. Shortly afterwards, a man named Williams, a former shipmate of Marr’s, was arrested and imprisoned at Coldbath Fields.

  The effect of these grisly murders should not be underestimated. Not only did Ratcliffe Highway receive a new name (it was first renamed as St George’s Street and became The Highway in 1937) but public outrage was such that it led to significant pressure for a full-time police service.

  The murderer, Williams, committed suicide before he could be brought to justice but to satisfy the public, his body was dragged through the streets on an open cart to the site of both sets of murders, then on to the crossroads of New Road and Canon Street Road. There a hole was dug and his body cast in. Hundreds watched as a stake was driven through his heart before he was buried.

  Rillington Place

  Ladbroke Grove

  THIS HUMBLE SITE WAS NOT ONLY THE SCENE OF a number of grisly murders but earned a notable place in British judicial history.

  For No 10 Rillington Place was the home of John Reginald Christie and it was here that he murdered seven women, including his wife, and a baby.

  Christie’s bizarre sexual murders shocked the nation upon their discovery in 1953 by new tenants who moved in to the premises after Christ
ie had left. They found three bodies hidden in an alcove in the kitchen, covered over with wallpaper. Christie’s wife was later found under the floorboards of the front room, while the bodies of two other women were unearthed in the tiny garden.

  Adding to the horror of the situation was the knowledge that three years previously, Christie had given evidence at the murder trial of Timothy Evans, who was convicted of killing his daughter, Geraldine Evans. It was a murder of which it would become apparent that Christie himself was guilty. The Evans family had shared the house with the Christies, who lived in the downstairs flat.

  Claiming medical knowledge, Christie had offered to perform an abortion on Timothy’s wife, Beryl (abortions being illegal in the UK at the time). With her husband absent, Beryl was gassed, raped and strangled by Christie. He told Timothy that his wife had died when the operation went wrong and persuaded Evans to abscond. The Evans’ young daughter, Geraldine, would be looked after by a couple who lived nearby, Christie assured him. The troubled Evans soon surrendered himself to police in Wales and it was apparent that he had no knowledge yet that his daughter was also dead.

  A terrible miscarriage of justice was about to take place as police botched a search of Rillington Place. While they turned up the corpses of Evans’ wife and child, they failed, for instance, to uncover the bodies of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady buried in the garden, even though a thigh bone was propped up against the fence. Evans signed a ‘confession’ for the murders of Beryl and Geraldine that he later retracted and which was almost certainly concocted by police. Despite this and worries about Evans’ mental capacities, he was convicted at the Old Bailey of the murder of his baby daughter, the star witness for the prosecution being John Christie.