London Urban Legends

by Scott Wood

  A recurring theme with these legends is that celebrity increasingly replaces royalty as the subject of the story. When the eccentric and much-loved New Cross pub, the Montague Arms, closed in early 2012, the local blog ‘Transpontine’ asked for readers’ reminiscences of nights and events there. The pub was famous for the blind keyboard player who played cover versions to bemused locals, and coach parties on their way in or out of London. Pete, the keyboard player, would invite members of the audience (including this author) up on stage to sing. One response to Transpontine’s request began at this point and was told to one contributor by the pub’s former barman, Stan: ‘This funny fellah wearing white gloves took to the key board and played the most amazing tunes – ’twas like magic running through his fingertips…’

  Who was it? None other than Mr Michael Jackson!

  Criminal Tourism

  Michael Jackson and Ronnie and Reggie Kray may not have too many things in common, but all three were said to have visited the Montague Arms. The visit, like the description of a similar visit by the gangsters to Peter Cook’s club The Establishment, treats their appearance as almost a celebrity endorsement rather than a demand for money.

  London’s most famous criminals, from Dick Turpin to the Kray twins, have taken on a legendary status different to the rest of the stories in this book. They are folk heroes who are celebrated for their rough individuality and rule-breaking, and are even thought to be protectors of the common man. One warm Friday night in July 2012, I passed the bus stop opposite Shoreditch Town Hall and a woman, appalled by the hipsters and trendies swaggering past her along this East End street, shouted: ‘If only the Krays were still here. They’d sort this out!’ Murdering, bully gangsters are now the protectors of the common people who would keep the fey and pretentious out of east London, a vigilante fashion and lifestyle police. I think the attraction to organised criminals like the Krays, the Richardsons and Dick Turpin is that they live successfully by their own rules and not according to the limitations of bureaucracy, government or corporate values. It is imagined that they then become an informal sheriff of their area, not tolerating any crime other than their own.

  Whilst not as popular as nearby Jack the Ripper tours, Kray tours have been written so visitors can see the sights of their crime spree. The Blind Beggar pub in Bethnal Green is where Ronnie Kray murdered rival gangster George Cornell. Tourists regularly arrive, looking for the bullet holes from the murder. They should be directed to the Magdela pub on South Hill Park near Hampstead Heath station. Here, a drunk Ruth Ellis shot her boyfriend David Blakely on 10 April 1955 as he left the pub, famously making herself the last woman to be executed in Britain. The four or five bullet holes have been visible since and are regularly referred to in many pub guides. Pubs are, of course, commercial enterprises and keen to use any means to bring people to the site. This could be a ghost, an historical artefact or a story with the evidence for all to see, like a bullet hole, a modern version of the indelible bloodstain that testifies to an ancient murder.

  The holes from Ellis’ gun are said to be visible in the white wall of the pub and a plaque was hung by them, explaining what the pock-marks on the building are. The plaque has since been stolen or removed; it got the year of the murder wrong, saying that Blakely was shot in 1954. It has been suggested that these marks were enhanced by a previous landlady and may not be linked to the murder at all.

  Crime tourism is not new in London. Dick Turpin is one character who seemed to drink and take shelter in pretty much every pub across London except the ones Claude Duval, the Dandy Highwayman, drank in. The London pub most closely associated with Dick Turpin is the Spaniards Inn, which once boasted knives and forks used by him, as well as a small window where the highwayman could be aided and abetted by pub staff who would pass him food, money and drink while he was still in his saddle. Old and New London describes the Coach and Horses pub in Hockley in the Hole, now Ray Street, where a valise marked ‘R. Turpin’ was found in the cellars along with blank keys used for lock-breaking. Also at the Coach and Horses, still on Ray Street and a backstreet, was said to be a passage from the pub cellar that lead out to the banks of the Fleet river which was used by highwaymen or, as the book calls them, ‘minions of the moon’. Turpin also left another unholy relic, a pistol engraved with ‘Dick’s Friend’ in the rafters of the Anchor Inn in Shepperton and another within the walls of Ye Old King’s Head in Chigwell.

  Tunnel Visions

  There are countless pubs that claim a link to Dick Turpin, but the Dick they are referring to is the romantic, fictional figure and not the actual Richard Turpin, a thuggish burglar and thief. Like the Ellis shooting, the Old Red Lion pub on Whitechapel High Street has a plaque stating ‘This is the Old Red Lion where Dick Turpin shot Tom King’ after the murder committed here on 1 May 1737. Inside the pub was another plaque with the following inscription: ‘It was in the yard of this house that Dick Turpin shot Tom King. Turpin had been traced by the horse to this inn, together with Matthew and Robert King, birds of like feather, by the Bow Street Runners.’

  Antony Clayton in Folklore of London says of this plague: ‘Apart from the fact that it was Matthew King who was shot, that Matthew’s brother’s name was John and not Robert and that the Bow Street Runners were founded in 1750, after Turpin’s death, this sign was accurate.’

  Other London pubs claiming a link to Turpin include the Spotted Dog on Upton Lane, and the Black Lion on Plaistow High Street, with tunnels extending ‘over half a mile to emerge very close to Upton Park football ground’, which Turpin would scuttle down after stabling Black Bess. Chigwell’s Old King’s Head has a tunnel that Turpin used to escape from the cellars, presumably after stashing his guns in the wall (Turpin did foolishly risk incriminating himself by signing his equipment). Turpin hid in the Globe Tavern on Bow Street for three days, and the temptation of this legend couldn’t resist having him being pursued again by the non-existent Bow Street Runners.

  Tunnels for Turpin’s escape and stables for Black Bess’s rest multiply as often as someone thinks of Turpin or visits an old pub for a drink. There were many more criminals and gangsters in London than the Krays, Richardsons and Dick Turpin, but the further the past gets, and the more romanticised these criminals become, it will be the most famous names that will live on in legend. By 2113 there will pubs called ‘The Reggie Kray’ or ‘The Jack the Ripper’ in the East End that will show places these folk heroes killed, or hid, or escaped down a secret tunnel.

  Highwaymen are not the only historical celebrities to use secret tunnels, however. Royalty and aristocracy had the means to construct tunnels to cover their clandestine indulgences.

  Legends of tunnels and the famous are insistent things that cannot help but insinuate themselves into a discovery. The Argyll Arms on Argyll Street is named after the Duke of Argyll. ‘Rumour has it’, the pub’s website says, ‘that a secret tunnel once connected the pub to the duke’s mansion.’ When staff at Wimbledon Park Golf Club discovered a tunnel in February 2012 the newspaper headline was ‘Mysterious tunnels could link golf course with Henry VIII’s Wimbledon home’, though I think Henry was more a hunting, archery and wrestling man. His daughter, Elizabeth I, shimmied out of the Tower of London during her incarceration in 1554 to take wine in the nearby, but now long-gone, Tiger Tavern. She is also said to have stopped at the Tiger for a drink before heading to Tilbury to speak with the troops before they met the Spanish Armada, and to have used a secret passage that runs from the Old Queen’s Head pub in Islington to Canonbury Tower to meet in secret with the Earl of Essex; not that Essex ever lived in Canonbury Tower.

  Pubs are public places, a neutral ground with alcohol and comfy chairs and so are ideal places to meet old friends and new people. If urban legend is to be believed, then the great and good of London history were just as keen on a liaison in the pub as highwaymen and gangsters. The Nell of Old Drury has a secret passage running under the road which Charles II used to visit Nell Gwynne. The pub wasn�
��t named after her then, being known at the time as The Lamb. The Red Lion at No. 23 Crown Passage has a tunnel, according to legend, running to No. 79 Pall Mall which Nell used to meet Charles in the pub. When Antony Clayton, an expert on underground London, inquired with the landlady in 2007, he was told of two doors in the cellar facing south in the direction of Pall Mall. (Are they ‘his’ and ‘hers’?) When the Pindar of Wakefield on Gray’s Inn Road – now Water Rats – was rebuilt in 1878, an underground tunnel was found heading in the direction of Bagnigge Wells, a pleasure garden where Nell and Charles met up. I’ve heard speculation that nearly every pub in London with the name Nelson in it was either a place Nelson and Emma Hamilton met, or was started by a wounded sailor pensioned out of the Napoleonic Wars with enough money to start a pub. Attentions in the pub are not always welcome: there is a story of Shakespeare being a regular at the George Inn on Borough High Street and catching the attention of a barmaid. One day Will was in the pub with the keys to the Globe on his person, when the barmaid grabbed the keys and placed them in her cleavage along with the key to her own room, asking the bard which set he desired.

  When not meeting for a date in an inn or tavern, the famous did enjoy a drink. Charles Dickens had a reputation for being a furious drinker and countless pubs claim him as a regular, as they do Dr Johnson. Several pubs claim that Christopher Wren ordered them built in order to water the workers building St Paul’s Cathedral: amongst those claiming this association are The Salutation on Newgate Street, now gone, and the Old Bell on Fleet Street. Ye Old Watling on Watling Street also claims to have been built for St Paul’s workers as well as having an upstairs room in which Wren worked during the project.

  Another result of a royal visit is an ordinary place being given a special licence. In the rural areas this could be a passing king with a thirst changing a blacksmiths into a pub so he could get a drink. In London the most famous version is the Castle on Cowcross Street becoming a pawnbroker after George IV found himself at a cock fight at nearby Hockley-in-the-Hole without any cash. The Castle was the nearest pub, so he went in to borrow money from the landlord, using a watch as a deposit. The landlord did not recognise the royal but agreed nonetheless and George won the next bet, redeemed his watch and granted a Royal Warrant to the pub to also trade as a pawnbroker. Three brass balls still hang in the pub as a memorial and a large painting commemorates the event inside. There is another London story of a monarch granting a drinking establishment a special licence after a favour. When Edward III had run out of money, he borrowed some from several City Vintners. Instead of repaying them, he granted them the right to sell wine without a licence. This is why the Boot and Flogger wine bar, tucked down Redcross Way in Borough, can sell wine without a licence: it is owned by the Freemen of the Vintners Company.

  It goes without saying that all of these stories should be taken with a fair amount of salt, the most artery hardening one being the story I stumbled upon, saying that the Blind Beggar pub in Bethnal Green, of Kray infamy, was named after the Edinburgh bodysnatcher William Hare who, after getting William Burke executed, found himself in Limehouse where he was thrown into the lime pits. Blinded, he migrated to Bethnal Green to become the famous beggar. The generally agreed story of the Blind Beggar is that he was Henry de Montfort, son of Simon de Montfort, who had been defeated by the son of Henry III, Prince Edward, at the battle of Evesham. Wounded and blind from the battle, Henry lived in disguise as the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green to escape the attention of Edward, who was now King Edward I. According to this legend the Blind Beggar is another aristocrat incognito amongst ordinary Londoners.

  These stories have plenty of meaning; they remind us of the biblical teaching of entertaining strangers as they may be angels or royalty in disguise, and that the lives of the rich, famous and infamous are like ours. They still drink and have sex, and yet are different; they need to build secret tunnels to go and do it. They, like saints and ghosts, bring a mysterious aura to a location, be it a cosy old pub or an unremarkable boozer with a claim to fame. In a city that has always enjoyed the money of tourists and travellers, such a claim or artefact can draw people to a location and feed urban legends for centuries afterwards.

  4

  THE GENITALS OF LONDON

  * * *

  To Pee or Not to Pee: An Overview of Electricity Related Deaths,

  and Examination of the Question of Whether Peeing on the

  Third Rail Can Kill

  PowerPoint presentation, medical examiner’s

  office in Cook County, Illinois

  * * *

  THERE ARE FEW things less socially acceptable than a stray penis. The penis is chiefly for having sex and urinating, two things that are unacceptable in public. For this reason, no doubt, it is the penis that protrudes into a number of London urban legends, demonstrating the ongoing fascination and awkwardness people feel about it.

  So pity the man in the following legend collected by Rodney Dale and written up for his book The Tumour in the Whale. A man rushes into the saloon bar of a City of London pub, puts his hat and briefcase on a table, orders a whisky and tells the barman that he is ‘bursting for a pee’. The landlord tells him to go through a doorway and turn left, which the desperate man does, undoing himself on the way. Thinking he is arriving at the toilet the man pulls out his ‘apparatus’, as it is referred to in the story, but finds himself standing on a platform in the public bar with his private parts on display. The barman sees him, is enraged, and throws the man out onto the street. Our hero returns to the saloon bar to retrieve his hat and briefcase, just as the barman is telling the landlord about what happened. After a shout of ‘that’s him!’, the frustrated man, still not having had his pee, is thrown out onto the street again. Years later the man walks into a pub in Ipswich and sees the former City of London pub landlord behind the bar. ‘Don’t I know you?’ the landlord asks.

  A more cautionary tale is told in Paul Screeton’s book Mars Bars and Mushy Peas, of the only child of a north London Cypriot family, who is left alone for the first time. Half an hour after his strict parents have left for their holiday in Limassol, the boy is smoking, drinking whisky and masturbating to hard-core porn while naked. If only he had waited longer; his parents soon came home, having forgotten their passports.

  In 1978, a couple were caught out having sex in a small two-seater sports car somewhere in Regents Park. The near-naked man suffered a slipped disc, trapping the woman under ‘200 pounds of pain-racked, immobile man,’ said a Dr Brian Richards. In her desperation to be free, the woman began honking the car horn with her foot. A crowd gathered, including women volunteer workers serving tea, while the fire brigade cut away the frame of the car. After the woman is finally helped out of the car and given a coat, she is distraught and asks, ‘How am I going to explain to my husband what happened to his car?’

  The Tumour in the Whale was published the same year (1978)and carried a similar story. The car was stuck for at least an hour at the end of someone’s driveway before the homeowner went to investigate. The woman is more blasé after the rescue workers apologise for having to cut the top of her husband’s car away. ‘That’s all right,’ she says. ‘It’s not my husband.’

  In the world of urban legends, getting a penis out in the wrong place can be lethal: I am sure most have heard the story of the man who accidently urinated on the electric rail of the London Underground and was killed by the electric current jumping back up at him. The man is usually drunk, and it is late at night so he thinks he can get away with his public urinating. Sometimes he thinks he is polluting a river, other times he is just so drunk he does not care. There is even a news story from the Daily Mail and Evening Standard newspapers on 22 July 2008 of an unnamed 41-year-old Polish tourist who died whilst urinating on the live rail at Vauxhall rail station.

  Many doubt that you could electrocute yourself by weeing on an electric rail. In 2003, the American television programme Mythbusters tested the myth by constructing an anatomic
ally correct man full of yellow liquid. The urine flow was compared to one of the male presenter’s actual flow filmed on a high-speed camera. With the mannequin’s flow all present and correct, it was released over a live rail. It became apparent that urine does not come out in a continuous stream, but quickly breaks into droplets on the way down, making it, the programme makers said, difficult if not impossible for the current to conduct back up to the penis and hands. Online discussion forums and comments are a useful place to pick up people talking about such ephemeral things as this. Online it was presumed that the initial shock would cause the man to jump, removing the flow from the rail. The voltage of an electric fence or rail line would not kill instantly, unlike in one tragic example in Monsanto of a man urinating on a downed power cable lying unseen in a ditch.

  Whilst investigating the possibility, Chicago’s The Straight Dope website found that in two cases in America of death by supposed ‘electric wee’ the victims had both made physical contact with the rail whilst urinating. So while the coroner’s report could correctly state that the two people – an adult man and a 14-year-old boy – had died while urinating on an electric rail, it was the physical contact with the live rail during or afterwards that had killed them. It is possible that this is what happened at Vauxhall. The man died around 5.20 p.m. on 12 July, when it was light and there were plenty of witnesses. This is not the late-night lethal release of legend. It was reported in the Metro on 22 July 2008 that the man had gone onto the rail line to relieve himself, so it is possible that he physically touched the live rail while down there, as his body was found slumped over the track. I have not been able to check a coroner’s report on the death and, in all honesty, do not wish to read it.