Georgian London: Into the Streets

by Lucy Inglis

  ‘shocking usage … shocking manner’: The Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1760.

  ‘whereof she did languish’: Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, accessed 4 February 2012), trial of Willy Sutton (February 1761), tl7610225-18.

  ‘soon fell in with a fleet’: quoted in Annette Hope, Londoner’s Larder: English Cuisine from Chaucer to the Present (London, 2005), 120.

  ‘besiege(d) with five or six heaps’: ibid., 189.

  ‘not fill my guts’: Ned Ward, The London Spy, first published 1706 (London, 1955 edition), 32.

  ‘fine inns’: François de La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England, 1784 (Cambridge, 1933 edition), 20.

  ‘mostly under the care of’: diary excerpt from The Antiquaries Journal (1958), 334.

  ‘such a size’: John Taylor, The life, death and dissection of the largest elephant ever known in this country and was destroy’d a few days since at Exeter ’Change (London, 1826), 5.

  ‘through the whole flooring’: Francis T. Buckland, Curiosities of Natural History, Volume 1 (London, 1857), 119.

  ‘folded his forelegs under him’: ibid., 120.

  ‘a multitude of obscene prints’: Mary Thale (ed.), The Autobiography of Francis Place, 1771–1854 (Cambridge, 1972), 51.

  ‘infested with vermin … lap of the mother’: ibid., 52.

  Lucina featured: Julie Peakman, Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England (Basingstoke, 2003), 23.

  5: SOHO AND CHARING CROSS

  ‘south of Holborn’: an abbreviation first recorded in 1641 as So:ho, according to ‘General Introduction’, Survey of London, Volumes 33 & 34. St Anne’s, Soho (London, 1966), 1.

  ‘is not exactly in anybody’s way’: Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, first published 1839 (Ware, 1995 edition), 14.

  ‘There were few buildings’: Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, first published 1859 (Cambridge, 2008 edition), 80.

  ‘fitted for business … experimental philosophy’: ‘Soho Square Area: Portland Estate – Nos. 8 and 9 Soho Square: The French Protestant Church’, Survey of London, 33 & 34, 62.

  ‘he is quite my companion’: E. Beresford Chancellor, The Romance of Soho: Being an Account of the District, its Past Distinguished Inhabitants, its Historic Houses, and its Place in the Social Annals of London (London, 1931), 62.

  The theme of scientific learning: Thomas Martin, ‘Origins of the Royal Institution’, The British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 1, no. 1 (June 1962), 49.

  ‘that the most extensive’: ‘Soho Square Area: Portland Estate – Carlisle House: Soho Square’, Survey of London, 33 & 34, 73–9.

  ‘On Saturday last’: Chancellor, The Romance of Soho, 70.

  ‘I concluded she would open’: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, in 6 Volumes, for 1771 (London, 1840), 13.

  ‘some great Jock’: Rictor Norton, ‘William Beckford: The Fool of Fonthill’, Gay History and Literature, 16 November 1999 (www.rictornorton.co.uk/beckfor1.htm).

  ‘a desert of magnificence’: William Hazlitt, Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries of England (London, 1824), 284.

  Thomas De Quincey fled his school: all quotes from De Quincey’s life are taken from his autobiography Confessions of an English Opium Eater (London, 1822).

  ‘the Large House … SHIPWRECK’: Public Advertiser, 12 April 1781.

  ‘Many parts of this parish’: William Maitland, The History of London from the Romans to the Present Time (1739), quoted in Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham, London Past and Present: Its History, Associations and Traditions, first published 1891 (Cambridge, 2011 edition), 50.

  Paul de Lamerie: details of his life are taken from P. A. S. Phillips, Paul de Lamerie (London, 1935).

  Here, treatises on fireworks: Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, accessed 5 February 2012), trial of Robert Jones (July 1772), tl7720715-22.

  ‘All Englishmen … the latest news’: César de Saussure, A Foreign View of England in 1725–1729: The Letters of Monsieur César de Saussure to his Family, translated and edited by Madame Van Muyden (London, 1902), 64.

  ‘a mass of cork’: Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: His Life and Times, Volume I (London, 1971), 340.

  ‘Gentlemen may have’: British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 1799 (June 1895), 1388.

  ‘an attitude … a mold from him’: John Hunter, quoted in Martin Postle, ‘Flayed for Art: The Écorché Figure in the English Art Academy’, British Art Journal, vol. V, no. 1 (2004), 57.

  ‘He who endeavours’: Joshua Reynolds, Seven Discourses on Art (London, 1769), Discourse 1.

  ‘fell into the position’: Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace, Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now (Berkeley, California, 2001), 87.

  ‘These kind of figures’: quoted in Postle, ‘Flayed for Art’, 60.

  ‘a black, a native’: Alexander Penrose, Benjamin Robert Haydon 1786–1846 (London, 1927), 93.

  Thomas Lawrence was particularly impressed: Wilson’s story is taken from Clarke Olney, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter (Athens, Georgia, 1952).

  ‘full tide of human existence’: James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, recorded for 1775 (London, 1833 edition), 266.

  ‘a young woman’: ‘Trafalgar Square and neighbourhood’, Survey of London, Volume 20. St Martin-in-the-Fields, Part III (London, 1940), 7–14.

  ‘genteelly bred … another erratum’: Memoirs of the Life and Writing of Benjamin Franklin, written by Himself (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1818), 45.

  ‘were 13 houses’: Mary Thale (ed.), Autobiography of Francis Place, 1771–1854 (Cambridge, 1972), 227.

  ‘covered with ballads’: ibid., 229.

  ‘crazy, tumbledown old house’: John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens: Volume I (New York, 1966), 21–2.

  ‘mean street’: Johnsoniana; Or, Supplement to Boswell (London, 1842), 53.

  ‘Immediately in front of the Horse Guards’: Thale, Autobiography of Francis Place, 229.

  ‘cross the eastern entrance’: Reports from Committees (London, 1828), 74.

  6: MAYFAIR

  Mayfair takes its name: Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay and John Keay, The London Encyclopedia, third edition (London, 2008).

  ‘All the Way through’: Daniel Defoe, writing in Applebee’s Weekly Journal, 17 July 1725.

  ‘Man of Taste’: the title of William Hogarth’s engraving satirizing Lord Burlington and his friends.

  ‘one of those edifices’: The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford, Volume III (London, 1798), 487.

  ‘half the land’: Alexander Pope, ‘Summary’, Epistle IV: An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington (London, 1731), v. 65.

  ‘heiress of a scrivener’: ‘The Acquisition of the Estate’, Survey of London, Volume 39. The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part I (London, 1977), 1.

  What took place there: details of The Tragedy are taken from Charles Gatty, Mary Davies and the Manor of Ebury (London, 1921), 54–81.

  ‘a wretched attempt’: James Ralph, A Critical Review of the Publick Buildings, Statues and Ornaments of London and Westminster (London, 1763), 108.

  The nine-year-old Mozart: Emily Anderson (ed.), The Letters of Mozart and his Family (London, 1966), 50–51.

  At the same time: ‘The Social Character of the Estate: A Survey of Householders in c.1790’, Survey of London, 39, 83–6.

  By the last decade: ibid., 86–9.

  The magnates: see J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England, 1660–1924 (London, 1986).

  ‘most profligate … turf’: quoted in ‘Grosvenor, Richard, first Earl Grosvenor (1731–1802)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  ‘I have wished myself’: quoted in ‘Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773)’, ODNB.

  ‘Who they are’: Philip Dormer Stanhope, Letters: Volume 1 (London, 1847) Lette
r LXX, London, May the 15th, O. S. 1749.

  ‘Mr. Tollot says’: ibid., Letter CXL, London, May the 2nd, O. S. 1751.

  ‘I feel a gradual decay’: Philip Dormer Stanhope, Letters: Volume 4 (London, 1847), Letter CCCLXXXVII, London, April 22, 1765.

  ‘lively descriptions’: Charles Knight, ‘Strawberry Hill: Walpole’s London’, London: Volume 3 (London, 1851), 159.

  He began to turn: noted in ‘Clive, Robert, first Baron Clive of Plassey (1725–1774)’, ODNB.

  ‘Who is the writer?’: Edward Walford, ‘Berkeley Square and its neighbourhood’, Old and New London: Volume 4 (London, 1878), 326–38.

  ‘Mr Chairman’: Percival Spear, Master of Bengal: Clive of India (London, 1974), 189.

  ‘Primus in India’: the inscription on Robert Clive’s monument in the Church of St Margaret at Moreton Say.

  ‘an excellent carver’: The Somerset House Gazette (London, 1824), vol. i, 38.

  ‘a box with colours’: Helena Hayward and Pat Kirkham, William and John Linnell, Eighteenth-Century London Furniture Makers (London, 1980), 52.

  ‘the central point … idiots in my house’: quoted in ‘Montagu, Elizabeth (Robinson) (1720–1800)’, ODNB.

  ‘infested with’: ‘Berkeley Square and its neighbourhood’, Old and New London: 4, 326–38.

  ‘they swarmed’: William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians (London, 1859), 296.

  ‘If you take a meal’: César de Saussure, A Foreign View of England in 1725–1729: The Letters of Monsieur César de Saussure to his Family, translated and edited by Madame Van Muyden (London, 1902), 194.

  ‘He was a genteel’: details of John Parry’s life are taken from Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, accessed 5 February 2012), Ordinary of Newgate’s account (June 1754), OA17540605.

  ‘passing out of the world’: Thackeray, The Virginians, 296.

  ‘You will do … very well for me’: Robert Chambers, Book of Days (London, 1869), entry for 12 January.

  ‘Such abundance of choice’: Claire Williams, Sophie in London, 1786 (London, 1933), 87.

  ‘silk-bag shop … without a groan’: ‘Piccadilly: Northern tributaries’, Old and New London: 4, 291–314.

  ‘six feet two’: Nikolai Tolstoy, The Half-mad Lord: Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford (1775–1804) (London, 1978), 90.

  ‘over the fire … crest-fallen’: quoted in ‘Pitt, Thomas, second Baron Camelford (1775–1804)’, ODNB.

  ‘equally replete’: Donna T. Andrew (ed.), London Debating Societies 1776–1799 (London, 1994), 218.

  ‘his gaiety’: Ian Kelly, Beau Brummell, The Ultimate Dandy (London, 2005), 98.

  ‘principally assumed … Poodle’: William Jesse, The Life of George Brummell, Esq., Commonly Called Beau Brummell: Volume I (London, 1844), 117.

  ‘five o’clock on a fine summer’s morning’: Thomas Raikes, quoted in ‘Berkeley Square and its neighbourhood’, Old and New London: 4, 326–38.

  ‘Parliament of Monsters’: William Wordsworth, The Prelude (London, 1850), Book 7, l. 714.

  ‘One gentleman poked’: Mrs Matthews, Memoirs of Charles Matthews, Comedian: Volume 4 (London 1839), 133.

  ‘apparently smiling on me’: Giovanni Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia (London, 1822), 39.

  7: MARYLEBONE

  ‘live decently’: Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz, quoted by Gordon Mackenzie in Marylebone: Great City North of Oxford Street (London, 1972), 94.

  ‘the next Entertainment’: Bernard Mandeville, ‘Of Execution Day, the Journey to Tyburn, and a Word in Behalf of Anatomical Dissections’, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn (London, 1725), Chapter 3.

  In 1718, John Price: details of Price’s life and death are taken from Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, accessed 6 February 2012), trial of John Price, the quondam Hangman (April 1718), tl7180423-24.

  In 1763, James Boswell watched: details of Paul Lewis’s hanging are taken from Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s account (May 1763), OA17630504, and James Boswell, London Journal 1762–1763 (London, 1952 edition), 245.

  ‘incessant Assiduity’: C. E. Wright, ‘Portrait of a Bibliophile VIII, Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, 1689–1741’, The Book Collector, vol. 2 (1962), 170.

  ‘in very great measure’: A. S. Turberville, A History of Welbeck Abbey and its Owners (London, 1938), 384.

  They lodged at: Mackenzie, Marylebone, 180.

  ‘Saxonic element’: Robert DeMaria, The Life of Samuel Johnson: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1993), 114.

  ‘the handsomest man’: Extracts from the diary of Thomas Hearne (London, 1869), entry dated 19 July 1734.

  ‘many scarce and valuable’: William Curtis, A Catalogue of the British Medicinal, Culinary, and Agricultural Plants Cultivated in the London Botanic Garden (London, 1783), ii.

  ‘the finest piece’: Milo Keynes, ‘The Portland Vase: Sir William Hamilton, Josiah Wedgwood and the Darwins’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, vol. 52, no. 2 (July 1998), 237.

  ‘I wish you may soon come’: letter dated 5 February 1784, ibid., 239.

  ‘a simple woman’: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, in 6 Volumes, for 1785 (London, 1840), 6.

  ‘we knick-knack men’: Susan Jenkins, Portrait of a Patron: The Patronage and Collecting of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1674–1744) (Aldershot, 2007), 128.

  ‘was once standing … purposely for him’: John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and his Times: Volume I (London, 1829), 107–8.

  Billy grew up in the house: the details of Billy’s life are taken from Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: Volume II (London, 1851), 467–9.

  ‘the Dunghill’: Henry Whistler quoted in Trevor Burnard, ‘European Migration to Jamaica, 1655–1780’, The William and Mary Quarterly, ser. 3, vol. 53, no. 4 (October 1996), 786.

  The average white: ibid., 779.

  ‘flamboyant eccentric’: Lesley Lewis, ‘Elizabeth, Countess of Home, and Her House in Portman Square’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 109, no. 773 (August 1967), 450.

  ‘known among all’: William Beckford quoted in Leo Hollis, The Stones of London: A History in Twelve Buildings (London, 2010), 163.

  ‘Are there any grounds’: Donna T. Andrew (ed.), London Debating Societies 1776–1799 (London, 1994), 154.

  ‘Ought not the Word Obey’: ibid., 291.

  ‘She diffuses’: quoted in David Brandon and Alan Brooke, Marylebone and Tyburn Past (London, 2007), 33.

  ‘brilliant in diamonds’: quoted in Hollis, The Stones of London, 179.

  ‘the woman clothed’: Leeds Mercury, 22 October 1803.

  Yet many hundreds: Jan Bondeson, The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square & Other Medical Marvels (Stroud, 2006), 163.

  ‘Do Ladies … affirmative’: Andrew, London Debating Societies, 178.

  By the late eighteenth century: Anne Laurence (ed.), Women and Their Money, 1700–1950: Essays on Women and Finance (Oxford, 2008), 14.

  John Elwes: the details of his life are taken from The Lives and Portraits of Curious and Odd Characters (London, 1852), 52–63.

  ‘the finest street’: quoted in Hollis, The Stones of London, 27.

  ‘the Best Drawings’: Roy Porter and Aileen Ribeiro, Richard and Maria Cosway: Regency Artists of Taste and Fashion (Edinburgh, 1995), 20.

  ‘Cosway, though a well-made little man’: Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 325.

  ‘the last time I called’: Porter and Ribeiro, Richard and Maria Cosway, 30.

  ‘at the Elder Christie’s Picture-Sales’: Allan Cunningham, The lives of the most eminent British painters, sculptors and architects (London, 1833), 4.

  ‘kept [a Florence hotel]’: A Brief Account of the Roads of Italy (London, 1775), 23.

  ‘kept a house in style’: ‘Recollections of Richard Cosway’ in Library of the Fine Arts or Repertory
of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Engraving, Volume 4 (London, 1832), 186.

  ‘they were not fashionable’: William Hazlitt, The Plain Speaker: Opinion on Books, Men and Things (London, 1870), 131.

  He was part of: See Vincent Carretta (ed.), Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Kentucky, 1996).

  Richard Cosway died suddenly: Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 325.

  Dr Fountain was a friend of Handel: this anecdote and the descriptions of Marylebone Gardens on the following pages are taken from the definitive account by Mollie Sands, The Eighteenth-Century Pleasure Gardens of Marylebone, 1737–1777 (London, 1987).

  ‘the turbulent’: Robert Bell, Description of the Conditions and Manners of the Peasantry of Ireland (London, 1804), 27.

  ‘The extensive waste’: Charles Knight, Passages from a Working Life (London, 1873), 119.

  ‘had then an evil reputation’: ibid.

  8: THE RIVER THAMES

  ‘took Water … Symphonies’: Daily Courant, 19 July 1717.

  ‘In fact, the whole river’: Thomas Pennant, An Account of London (London, 1790), 281.

  In Rotherhithe: ibid., 56.

  ‘the best mode … Maritime Labourers’: Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Commerce and Police of the River Thames (London, 1797).

  Industrial mills: Roy Porter, London: A Social History (London, 1994), 196.

  ‘They were hospitable’: Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: a cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work: Volume III (London, 1851), 328.

  ‘The pleasantest way’: Don Manuel Gonzales, Portuguese merchant, quoted by John Pinkerton in A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in all Parts of the World: Volume 2 (London, 1808), 85.

  ‘piteously … Monsoon Dock’: quoted in M. Dorothy George, London Life in the XVIIIth Century (London, 1930), 66.

  ‘On the river’: Ned Ward, The London Spy, first published 1706 (London, 1955 edition), 177.

  ‘broil’d … onions’: ibid., 33.