In the somewhat grimy surroundings of Clerkenwell Road stands St Peter’s Italian Church, built in the 1860s and once the centrepiece of London’s main Italian community based around nearby Saffron Hill. By the 1930s this community numbered about 11,000 and was well established, being associated particularly with the catering industry, not least in the manufacture and sale of ice cream. The Italians had largely avoided the surge of anti-immigrant feeling which culminated in the 1905 Aliens Act and which had been particularly directed at Jews from Russia and Poland. They were, however, hit hard in June 1940 when Mussolini declared war on Britain. Not only did they have to put up with violent attacks and destruction of their property by mobs of ‘patriots’ but because they were now considered as enemy aliens, large numbers of men and youths were interned on the Isle of Man. Worse was to follow. On 1 July 1940 the former luxury-liner Arandora Star left Liverpool bound for Canada. The passengers were internees. They consisted of 712 Italians and 478 Germans, many of them from London. Most of them died when the Arandora Star was torpedoed by a German submarine. This example of the appalling stupidity and tragic waste of war is remembered in a plaque near the main entrance to St Peter’s Church which can be seen from the street. Although this example is somewhat out of the book’s time frame, it was felt that the poignancy of the memorial warrants its inclusion.
Charles Macklin (1699–1797), previously mentioned, was a distinguished actor-manager who deserves a memorial for longevity but actually gained one for being aggressive. He was notorious for his fiery temper and he frequently got into fights during one of which he killed his opponent. He escaped the death penalty on the grounds of self-defence but was traumatised by the trial and before his death ordered a memorial showing a skull being pierced by a knife. This is a wall tablet which can be seen on the wall of St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden.
Very easy to miss in Cloak Lane, EC4, parallel to Cannon Street, is an incised stone memorial to the dead who were formerly interred nearby in the churchyard of St John the Baptist. When a section of the District Railway was built in the early 1870s, it was deemed necessary to remove the human remains buried nearby to be reverentially interred elsewhere and to commemorate the event with a suitable reminder in stone.
The Church of St Peter ad Vincula can be found within the precincts of the Tower of London. Many people who were executed nearby on Tower Green lie buried there including Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, the Earl of Strafford and the Duke of Monmouth, but as curious a memorial as any is that to the lesser-known Captain Valentine Pine. He was a seventeenth-century soldier of fortune who died in 1677. His epitaph is notable for containing his name in acrostic, albeit using some poetic licence. It starts thus:
Vndaunted hero, whose aspiring mind,
As being not willing here to be confin’d,
Like birds in cage, in narrow trunk of clay,
Entertain’d Death, and with it soared away.
In the church of St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, EC4, is a memorial to Hobson Judkin, ‘The Honest Lawyer’. He died on 30 June 1812. A tablet explains that his friends got together to erect the monument, ‘as a token of gratitude and respect for his honest and friendly conduct to them through Life.’ It goes on to urge anyone reading the tablet to model their conduct on that of Judkin. Can it be that he was the first and last ‘Honest Lawyer’?
St Edmund the King in Lombard Street, EC3, contains an inconspicuous wooden tablet commemorating the Reverend Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy (1883–1929). An Anglican priest, he wrote poetry in his spare time. He was an army chaplain on the Western Front during the First World War and in 1917 he won the Military Cross for a number of forays into No Man’s Land helping the wounded while under heavy enemy fire. He was the rector of St Edmund’s from 1921 to 1929. Popular with the ‘other ranks’, he attracted the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’ during the war because of his pragmatic habit of gaining the confidence of the troops by dispensing Woodbine cigarettes along with spiritual succour. The nickname was an affectionate one but Kennedy was heartily sick of it after the war because it stuck to him. His experiences led him to Christian socialism and pacifism and he wrote several poems about his wartime experiences. One of them includes the line: ‘Waste of glory, Waste of God – war!’
At the busy traffic intersection where Shoreditch High Street, Kingsland Road, Hackney Road and Old Street meet is the Church of St Leonard’s in Shoreditch. A memorial on the north wall remembers the life and work of Dr James Parkinson (1755–1824) who lived locally and used the church for worship. Parkinson was the first medical man to analyse and describe the distressing shaking palsy eponymously known as Parkinson’s Disease. More eye-catching is the memorial to Elizabeth Benson who died in 1710. This shows two realistic skeletons energetically pulling at the branches of an uprooted tree – symbolic of the Tree of Life – from which hangs a shroud containing a Latin inscription.
In the churchyard of St John-at-Hackney in Mare Street, E8 you can find a fairly ordinary table tomb, below which are the remains of one of England’s saddest eccentrics. This was James ‘Mad’ Lucas who died and was buried here in 1874. He became a rich recluse obsessed with a fear of physical attack. He was devoted to his mother and when she died, he embalmed her himself and placed her remains in a glass coffin in the substantial family home at Great Wymondley near Hitchin. Nothing would persuade him to surrender the body for burial and eventually police had to break in and take her away. This experience clearly unhinged Lucas. He then built strong barricades inside his house, armed himself and employed bodyguards to deter unwanted strangers. He slowly took on the appearance of a hermit and never washed, combed his hair or cut his nails. He had a soft spot for tramps, however, perhaps because he looked like one himself, and he kept sweets for the local children who came to the house, as long as they didn’t mock him. His fame spread and he had many visitors, including Charles Dickens, and gave short shrift to those whose bona fides he doubted. He died from a stroke. He is recalled in the name of the village pub at Great Wymondley – The Hermit of Redcoats.
Sir Nicholas Crisp was an ardent Royalist who, before he died in 1666, expressed the wish that his heart might be buried at the feet of his hero, Charles I. His wishes were largely ignored because his heart was placed in an urn close to his own memorial in the church of St Paul in Hammersmith, his body being buried in the churchyard. Crisp made provision for his heart to be removed from the urn once a year and refreshed with a glass of wine. This ritual was scrupulously observed until the middle of the eighteenth century when the urn was sealed up.
St John’s Wood Church, NW8 contains a number of memorials. Perhaps the most interesting person commemorated is John Farquhar who died in 1826. Having made a fortune as a dealer in arms and munitions to the East India Company and as a speculator, he bought Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. This extraordinary building was the brainchild of the fabulously wealthy but extremely eccentric William Beckford. Highly educated but a shy and complex man of reclusive nature, he resolved to spend a substantial part of his fortune building a replica of a medieval abbey with a great octagonal tower 300 feet high. No sooner was this enormous structure complete than it fell down. Displaying the innate optimism of the true eccentric, Beckford immediately set to work rebuilding it but the job was only just completed when the kitchens collapsed bringing down substantial parts of the abbey’s fabric with them. Undeterred, Beckford embarked on a second rebuilding but by now even his financial resources were so strained that he was forced to sell Fonthill. Although Farquhar had presumably heard the phrase ‘buyer beware’, he eagerly bought the place lock, stock and barrel only for it to collapse once more not long after he had moved in. Farquhar was no mean eccentric himself. When Beckford met him for the first time he immediately dubbed him ‘Old Filthyman’ because, despite his wealth, he lived in appalling filth and squalor and looked like a tramp severely down on his luck.
In St Luke’s in Charlton Village, SE7, is a monument comm
emorating Spencer Perceval who, as Prime Minister, was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812. It would have been but cold comfort to him had he known that he was assassinated by mistake. He had a premonition of death the night before he died and, clearly shaken, he poured out his fears to his family who urged him not to attend the House that day. He agreed but a message arrived requiring his attendance at a crucial vote. When he arrived at the House, lurking in the lobby was John Bellingham who nursed a strong sense of grievance against Lord Leveson Gower, a former ambassador to Russia. Bellingham blamed him for not making sufficient effort to secure his release from a Russian prison. Bellingham shot Spencer Perceval at close range, either because he mistook him for Gower or because he was in such a state of distress. Bellingham was hanged for the crime just one week later outside Newgate Prison. Spencer Perceval’s last words were accurate but under the circumstances curiously formal, even a trifle pedantic. They were, ‘Oh I am murdered!’
St Mary’s in Rotherhithe, SE16 shows one of London’s most singular monuments. On the north wall is a plaque to Prince Lee Boo. He was a prince on an island in the Pacific Ocean who, despite apparently belonging to a nation of cannibals, displayed great kindness to shipwrecked British sailors in 1783. Out of heartfelt gratitude, they invited him to return home with them. He agreed, but no sooner had he arrived on Albion’s shores than he died of smallpox aged just twenty.
Memorials, placed within a church in remembrance of an individual, cast fascinating light on the fashions, fads, foibles and mores of the times they date from, or more specifically of that section of society that could afford what were sometimes very elaborate and expensive commemorative items. They vary from large florid canopied monuments to simple wall tablets but they nearly always recall the ‘great and the good’ or those who aspired to be such and had the necessary resources to pay for them. When these people died, they clearly felt the need to be remembered in this way. For all that, they did not achieve immortality.
It is only to be expected that the ecclesiastical buildings of London, because of the role the capital has played in the life of the nation, are uniquely rich and diverse in the monuments and memorials to the dead that they contain. Buildings at the heart of places like Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral contain a bewildering profusion of such items, but humbler churches also contain items that shed considerable light on the attitudes to death of our forefathers as well as a mass of primary evidence for the historian of fashion, armour, culture and manners. It should be noted however that the erection of memorials did not always follow on the death of those they commemorate. On occasion, monuments were prepared years or even decades before death while others were commissioned after death and completed so much later that the armour or costume might be of a significantly later style. It is also worth remembering that a monument or memorial is not always placed close to the remains of the deceased. Chest and table tombs, whether inside the church or in the burial ground outside, do not contain human remains, which are interred below ground.
The first time we come across death being specifically portrayed is in the fifteenth century with carved corpses or cadavers complete with burial shrouds. Early examples often show an effigy of the deceased as he was in life surrounded by all the evidence of his worldly achievements. Another effigy, lower down, depicts a corpse in the state that we all can expect, that is, cadaverously wrapped in a shroud and without earthly possessions. To emphasise the contrast between the living and the dead, the corpse is often shown highly decayed and with its skin stretched tightly over the underlying skeleton. Less gruesome to modern eyes was the portrayal of salvation on medieval monuments. This often took the form of a small carving on a tomb-chest of the soul of the deceased being carried up to Heaven by angels in something looking much like a napkin. Skeletons continued to appear but are somewhat less gruesome than earlier ones and by the seventeenth century tend to be superseded by corpses in shrouds symbolising resurrection and immortality. A good example of this genre is the well-known memorial to the poet and cleric John Donne in St Paul’s Cathedral. This is dated 1631 and shows Donne standing upright in his shroud. In fact he is almost teetering on top of the urn and looks positively ghoul-like as well as slightly ridiculous. It is said that Donne had a portrait of himself made which Stone, the sculptor, used as his inspiration. This monument started a fashion. Contemporary alternatives included the depiction of the act of resurrection itself where the corpse of the deceased clad in its shroud emerges from its coffin or from a ground full of bones. Sometimes a corpse was depicted in a recumbent position dressed in its grave apparel and awaiting the Last Trump, often symbolised by a cherub hovering above and blowing a trumpet.
Hatchments make an appearance from around the 1620s. These are diamond-shaped panels usually with a wood frame and painted on canvas or wood. They display the heraldic achievement of the deceased but, as if in code, the background indicates additional information about the marital status of the deceased. The hatchment of a married man who predeceased his wife, the most common hatchment, will display his arms on the dexter side (the left to the observer) on a black background impaling hers against a white background on the sinister side. Hatchments were carried in procession to the church for the funeral service. They might then be removed and displayed as evidence of bereavement and mourning on the house of the deceased, usually over the main door. Otherwise they remained in a prominent position within the church. Hatchments are uncommon in London’s churches. St Edmund the King in Lombard Street, EC3 contains two, that on the east wall of the chancel relating to Princess Charlotte, the only daughter of the obese gentleman who was Prince Regent for so many years and who went on to become King George IV. St James’s in Garlickhythe, EC4 shows two hatchments on the south wall. St Luke’s in Charlton Village, SE7 and St Mary Magdalene in Bermondsey, SE16 contain one each.
Many impressive and large sculptured stone effigies and other memorials survive in London’s churches but in medieval times it was the practice only to bury those who could afford it inside the church. Their memorials could eventually cause problems of overcrowding even though those with the means to have such memorials were only a small percentage of society as a whole. One possible solution was to incise stone slabs with details of the deceased and let them into the floor. These tended to become worn by passing feet over the years so the idea of metal memorials developed, sometimes as part of larger stone ones or sometimes on their own, let into pavements and other flat surfaces.
London had a number of workshops where these brasses were made and it was the custom for those wishing to be remembered in this way, if they were really rich, to commission them during their own lifetime and they might be very fine examples of craftsmanship. Those whose pockets were not quite so deep could choose a standardised ‘off-the-peg’ design but have it embellished with bespoke detail. Between the mid-fifteenth and the early sixteenth century there was a short-lived vogue for brasses depicting the deceased as a skeleton or as a horribly emaciated body in its funerary shroud. Sometimes worms were shown eating away at the bodily remains. The use of memorial brasses largely died out in the sixteenth century although the Victorian period saw something of a revival in their popularity.
Brasses have always been vulnerable to wear and tear, to theft or in the sixteenth and seventeenth century in particular, to the actions of the iconoclasts who ripped them up as evidence of the Catholic imagery they so hated. London is not particularly rich in memorial brasses but a visit to the following places in central London will reward the eager searcher: in the City, All Hallows by the Tower; St-Dunstan-in-the-West; and St Helen in Bishopsgate. Westminster Abbey, as might be expected, contains a rich seam. The Savoy Chapel has a brass commemorating two bishops who died of bubonic plague in 1522.
A distinct oddity among London’s memorials is to be found in the church of St Mary Aldermary, EC4. On the north wall of the chancel is a completely blank monument with an urn and swag, apparently dating from
the early eighteenth century. The story is that this was placed on the wall by a dutiful and grieving widow. Her grief was short-lived because she married a second husband with almost indecent haste whereupon she lost interest in composing a suitable epitaph for the memorial to her first one!
One of London’s most enduring oddities is the preserved figure of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) which is housed in a glass cabinet in the cloisters of University College in Bloomsbury, one of the constituents of what became the University of London. Bentham was a polymath with an extremely wide range of publications to his name and the advocate of various radical causes which gained him respect in some circles and a reputation for eccentricity or even perversity in others. He lent his support to the establishment of an institution for those who were barred from higher education because they were not members of the Church of England – he believed in religious tolerance and the benefits of universal education. He died shortly after the College was opened, having decided that he wanted to remain in it forever, but not before he had had himself publicly dissected. So there he is, ensconced in his cupboard, his favourite walking stick in his hand. It is not surprising that he looks so lifelike. These are actually his embalmed remains with the exception of his head which is a replica in wax. The original is said to have been used as a football. Even the clothes he is dressed in are some of those he wore when alive. Once a year, the mummified Bentham used to enjoy a little excursion. He was carefully carried the short distance to the College’s AGM where he was placed so as to be able to keep an avuncular eye on proceedings. Doubtless, had he been able, he would have declaimed about how much better they did things in his time. Bentham was distinctly odd. He kept a cat called the Reverend Sir John Langbourne and fed it exclusively on macaroni.
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