Long Meg After the famous tall woman of Westminster, Long Meg became a sarcastic term for any female of height
Maccaroni A fop or dandy. Returning from the Grand Tour with a taste for all thing Italian – food, clothing and hair – maccaroni’s strutted around the city
Milk the pigeon To attempt the impossible
Monkey Using a long straw or tube to illicitly drink wine or other booze from a cask was said to be ‘sucking the monkey’
Mooncurser Link boys, who used to provide light to walk citizens home before the advent of street lighting, were said to be mooncursers, as the moon did them out of work
Nappy house A brothel
Neck verse A convict could escape execution by claiming Benefit of the Clergy, which meant in practice reading in Latin the first verse of Psalm 51
Nit squeezer A hairdresser
Noll Oliver Cromwell, Old Noll
Nutcrackers The pillory
Nypper Someone who cut purses, which used to be worn on a string from the clothing
Oliver’s skull A chamber pot
Paddington fair day A hanging day, Tyburn being in the parish of Paddington
Paviour’s workshop The street
Picture frame The sheriff’s picture frame – the gallows or the pillory
Piss pot hall A house in Clapton, Hackney, built by a maker of chamber pots
Polish the king’s iron To be imprisoned was said to be polishing the king’s iron, to be in fetters
Porridge island An area inhabited by cooks in the alleyway leading from St Martin’s churchyard
Queer plungers People who threw themselves in the Thames to be rescued by a friend and taken to the Humane Society, who paid for the rescue of the destitute
Riding St George Having sex with the lady on top, riding on the dragon as it were, said to be a good way of conceiving a bishop
Romeville London
Rushers A class of thieves who knocked on the doors of the wealthy, knowing them to be away, and when the door was opened, rushing in and taking the valuables
On St Geoffrey’s day Never, there is no St Geoffrey
Salesman’s dog Someone employed to bark out the wares of a shopkeeper
Schism shop A meeting house of dissenters
Scotch warming pan A fart, or a woman
Sharks The very highest rank of pickpockets
Sidepocket Wanting something unnecessary – ‘he needs it like a dog needs a sidepocket’
Silver laced Replete with lice
Smithfield bargain A marriage undertaken purely for the profit of one of the party, Smithfield was where women were reputedly sold like cattle
Tangerines Debtors at Newgate, so called because they were housed in a room called Tangier Thames
The impossible He’ll find no way to set the Thames on fire
Three penny upright A prostitute who charges three pence, and has sex while standing up
Tom turdman The man who collects night soil
Tom of bedlam A lunatic, Shakespeare’s Poor Tom from King Lear
Touch bone and whistle Anyone who has farted may be pinched and punched, until he has touched bone (the teeth) and whistled
Tower hill play A kick in the bum and a slap in the face
Vice admiral of the narrow seas A man who, when drunk, pisses under the table in his neighbour’s shoes
Vowel To vowel is to pay one’s gambling debts with an I.O.U.
Walking up against the wall To run up a tab in a boozer, where one’s tally was often chalked up on the wall
Wasp A prostitute with a venereal disease, so called because of the sting in her tail
Westminster wedding When a rogue marries a whore
Windward Passage Homosexual, one who navigates by the Windward Passage
Zed A crocked or deformed person, shaped like the letter
Steelyard
Cannon Street
DEMOLISHED IN 1865 TO MAKE WAY FOR Cannon Street Railway Station, the Steelyard was an autonomous enclave of German merchants who controlled much of London’s trade with the Hanseatic League, a group of German ports that banded together in mutual self-protection against Baltic Sea piracy.
First recorded in the city in 1157, the German traders were granted freedom from taxation under a charter of Richard I in 1197. They expanded their property over the next 200 years and in 1598 John Stow described their premises and trade in his Survey of London:
The hall is large, built of stone, with three arched gates towards the street, the middlemost whereof is far bigger than the others, and is seldom opened; the other two be secured up. The same is now called the old hall. The merchants of Almaine used to bring hither as well wheat, rye, and other grain, as cables, ropes, masts, pitch, tar, flax, hemp, linen cloth, wainscots, wax, steel, and other profitable merchandise.
The German merchants kept themselves to themselves, drinking their own Rhenish wine, enforcing a self-imposed curfew and forbidding their women to mix with the locals. But this independence and separation aroused suspicion and jealousy. Furthermore, their control of much of the lucrative English wool trade angered rival London merchants who petitioned the crown to take action.
In 1551 Edward VI attempted to restrict their trade, and they were banished by Elizabeth I in 1598 but returned under James I with much reduced privileges. The Steelyard was completely destroyed in 1666 by the Great Fire but was rebuilt afterwards, a German trading presence remaining in the city until the 1850s. The name Steelyard arose from one of two possible sources – either the measuring scales used to weigh goods coming into the port, or directly from the German word Stalhof.
Street Cries
BEFORE THE ADVENT OF GLASS-FRONTED SHOPS, much of the city’s trade was carried out by hawkers wandering the streets.
They sold anything and everything, and to attract attention they all had their own cries. Here is a selection taken from Charles Hindley’s 1884 work, A History of the Cries of London, Ancient and Modern:
• All that has to complain of corns! As fast as the shoe maker lames you I’ll cure you, you’ll not have to take the bus home when you’ve used my corn salve!
• Any hareskins cook? Hareskins!
• Buy my diddle dumplings hot hot diddle diddle diddle dumplings hot
• Catch ’em alive, only half a penny! (fly paper man)
• Chairs to mend, old chairs to mend if I had the money I could spend I would never cry old chairs to mend
• Cherries a ha’penny a stick come and pick come and pick! Cherries big as plums who come who comes?
• Chestnuts all ’ot, a penny a score!
• Dog’s meat! Cat’s meat! Nice tripe! Neat’s feet! Come and buy my trotters!
• Fresh wo-orter creases!
• Ha-a-aandsome cod! best in the markets! All alive alive o
• Had had had had had haddick! All fresh and good
• Here’s all hot pies! Toss and buy! Up and win’em!
• Hot spiced ginger bread! Buy my spiced ginger bread! Smo-o-oking hot!
• Hot spiced gingerbread nuts, nuts, nuts! If one’ll warm you, wha-at’ll a pound do? Wha-a-a-at’ll a pound do?
• Now or never! Whelk! Whelk! Whelk!
• ’old your horse sir?
• Round and sound, two pence a pound, cherries rare ripe cherries
• Three a penny Yarmouth bloaters
• Who will buy a new love song? Only a ha’penny!
• Who’ll buy a bonnet for fourpence?
• Wi-ild Hampshire rabbits, 2 a shilling
• Young lambs to sell, young lams to sell, molly and dolly Richard and nell, buy my youngd lambs and I’ll use you well
Street Traders
IN HIS EXHAUSTIVE WORK LONDON LABOUR and the London Poor, Henry Mayhew listed the various types of street traders he had discovered making a precarious living in the capital.
His list is huge, with some of the professions still active today, though thankfully some have long gone.
TYPES OF STREET SELLERS
Green Stuff
Pea soup and hot eels
Pickled whelks
Fried fish
Sheep’s trotters
Baked potatoes
Ham sandwiches
Bread
Hot green peas
Cat and dogs meat
Coffee stall keepers
Ginger beer, sherbert and lemonade
Milk
Curds and whey
Rice milk
Water carriers
Pastry and confectionary
Piemen
Boiled pudding
Plum duff
Cakes and tarts
Gingerbread nuts
Hot cross and Chelsea buns
Muffin and crumpets
Cough drops
Ice and ice creams
Corn salve
Crackers and detonating balls
Cigar lights and fuzees
Gutta percha heads
Fly paper and beetle wafers
Walking sticks and whips
Pipes, snuff and tobacco
Cigars
Sponge
Washleather
Spectacles and eyeglasses
Dolls
Poison for rats
Second-hand musical instruments
Second-hand weapons
Second-hand telescopes
Live animals
Dogs
Live birds
Birds’ nests
Gold and silver fish
Coals
Coke
Shells
STREET TRADES
Screeves – writers of begging letters and petitions
Dog finders
Pure finders
Cigar-end finders
Old wood gatherers
Dredgers and river finders
Sewer hunters
Mudlarks
Dustmen
Chimney sweeps
Rat catchers
Crossing sweepers
Bug destroyers
Garret masters
Doll’s eye makers
Coal heavers
Coal backers
Ballast getters
Ballast heavers
TYPES OF STREET ENTERTAINERS
Punch and Judy men
Strong men
Exhibitor of mechanical figures
Jugglers
Telescope exhibitor
Conjurors
Street clowns
Silly Billy
Ballet performers
Stilt vaulters
Street photographers
Penny profile cutters
Writer without hands
Chalker on flag stones
Exhibitor of birds and mice
Snake, sword and knife swallowers
Fantoccini man (puppet man)
Tabard Inn
Borough
IN THE CANTERBURY TALES, GEOFFREY CHAUCER immortalized this inn as the starting place of his journey:
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
The Tabard was not only the most famous inn of London, it was also the most famous in literature and hence maybe the most famous pub in history.
Southwark, outside of the jurisdiction of the city, was the jumping-off point for citizens travelling southwards from the capital and contained a large number of coaching houses where traders and pilgrims stayed before entering or leaving the city. The Tabard was first mentioned in 1304, the land having been purchased by the Abbot of Hyde to build himself a house and a hostelry ‘for the convenience of travelers’.
In London Chaunticeres (1659), the tapster of the inn charmingly described his morning work: ‘I have cut two dozen of toste, broacht a new barrel of ale, washt all the cups and flagons, made a fire i’ the’ George, drained all the beer out of th’ Half Moon the company left o’ th’ floore last night, wip’d the tables, and have swept every room.’ By then, the Tabard was a galleried coaching house with many separate rooms, hence ‘the George’ and ‘th’ Half Moon’. Other room names known to have existed at the inn include ‘Rose parlar’, ‘Clyff parlar’, ‘Crowne chamber’, ‘Keye chamber’ and the ‘Corne chamber’.
A tabard is a type of sleeveless coat but the name of the inn somehow changed – either through ignorance or design – to The Talbot (a breed of dog) sometime in the 17th century, after which time both names were commonly used to describe it. It burnt down in the great fire of Southwark that destroyed 500 properties in 1676 but was rebuilt on roughly the same plans and survived until 1875, when it was demolished.
Other famous coaching houses on Borough High Street included The White Hart (headquarters of Jack Cade’s rebellion in 1450), The King’s Head (formerly The Pope’s Head but changed during the Reformation), The Queen’s Head, The Bull, The Christopher and The Spurre. Fortunately, one side of The George remains to this day, providing a fine example of what London boozers must have once been like.
Thorney Island
Westminster
ORIGINALLY FORMED BY A LOOP OF THE THAMES and the division of the Tyburn River, this island may have been inhabited by the Romans.
King Offa (who died in 796) issued a charter describing it as a ‘loco terribili’ (or terrible place), its modern name deriving from the thorns that covered the area.
Perhaps keen to make use of existing Roman foundations, Sebert (540–616), an early Saxon convert to Christianity, chose the island as the site of his second church, the Minster in the West (hence Westminster). Early Christian legend has it that the night before the church was due to be consecrated it was visited by St Peter who:
...in an unknown garb, showed himself to a fisher on the Surrey side, and bade him carry him over, with promise of reward. The fisher complied, and saw his fare enter the new-built Church of Sebert, that suddenly seemed on fire, with a glow that enkindled the firmament. Meantime the heavenly host scattered sound and fragrance, the fisher of souls wrote upon the pavement the alphabet in Greek and Hebrew, in twelve places anointed the walls with the holy oil, lighted the tapers, sprinkled the water, and did all else needful for the dedication of a church.
The fishermen of the Thames were said to have been granted nets full of salmon as a reward, as long as they gave one-tenth to the new church.
This early building was subsequently destroyed by Vikings, but Edward the Confessor, England’s penultimate Saxon King, built not only Westminster Abbey here but also a home, Westminster Palace, now better known as the Houses of Parliament. By the 12th century, much of the surrounding land had been cultivated and had lost its inhospitable reputation. It thus quickly developed as a centre of government, remaining so to this day.
With the land drained and the river covered over, Thorney Island (or the Isle of Thorns) has long since disappeared, although the name lives on in Thorney Street, which runs parallel to Millbank off Horseferry Road.
Toshers
THE GREAT STINK OF 1858, WHEN THERE WAS so much human waste in the Thames that MPs attended Parliament wearing handkerchiefs over their faces to filter out the stench, led to a major re-think of the capital’s sewage system.
Over the next ten years, Sir Joseph Bazelgette oversaw a massive sewer-building scheme that lay down over 2000 miles of brick sewers and created embankments on both sides of the Thames.
An unforeseen opportunity arose for impoverished city-dwellers who were prepared to enter the sewers at the riverside during low tide in search of old metal, coins, rags and bone, to be sold later. The venerable Henry Mayhew recorded their bizarre and unpleasant work, having interviewed several of these men who called themselves toshers: ‘Stories are told of sewer hunters beset by myriads of enormous rats, and slaying thousands of them in their struggle for life, till at length the swarms of the savage things overpowered them, and in a few days afterwar
ds their skeletons were discovered picked to the very bones.’
The toshers always travelled in groups of three or four for protection, armed with a long rake which guarded against vermin but which could also be used for pulling themselves out when they became embedded in the ‘mud’. These subterranean travellers told stories of a mythical animal that ranged the darkest passages – not unlike the stories of crocodiles in New York’s sewers – and many toshers believed a family of ferocious wild hogs resided in the sewers of Hampstead.
The income for the most successful practitioners of this dirty business was not inconsiderable, with Mayhew estimating the trade brought in around £20,000 in total each year – or a loss from each London home of 1s 4d.
Tyburn
Marble Arch
TO CLOSE THE SCENE OF ALL HIS ACTIONS HE
Was brought from Newgate to the fatal tree;
And there his life resigned, his race is run,
And Tyburn ends what wickedness begun.
So went an old verse, for from 1300 until 1783 Tyburn was the foremost site of public execution in London. Named after the stream that ran nearby, most commentators place the site of the gallows at the junction of Edgware Road, Oxford Street and Bayswater Road. Today, a small stone plaque on the traffic island there commemorates the spot where approaching 50,000 criminals – from murderers to counterfeiters, thieves to traitors, rapists to religious offenders – met their ends, often in front of a large and rowdy crowd.
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