London Urban Legends (5 page)

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.

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

T
HERE 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.’