Lost London (16 page)

Bermondsey

S
OME YEARS AFTER THE INITIAL SERIALIZATION
of
Oliver Twist
in 1837, Dickens was attacked over his portrayal of the site of Bill Sikes’s
death, Jacob’s Island.

Politicians refused to believe that such an awful place existed in their city. In a preface to a new edition of the book, Dickens wrote: ‘In the year 1850 it was publicly
declared by an amazed alderman that Jacob’s Island did not exist and had never existed. Jacob’s Island continues to exist (like an ill-bred place as it is) in the year
1867...’

Standing between the horribly polluted Neckinger River and a man-made ditch built as a mill-run for the medieval Bermondsey Abbey, Jacob’s Island was a south London rookery similar in
character to those at St Giles and Summertown. With a population of 7,286 people according to a survey of 1849, it was described in
The Morning Chronicle
thus:

On entering the precincts of the pest island, the air has literally the smell of a graveyard, and a feeling of nausea and heaviness comes over any one unaccustomed to imbibe the musty
atmosphere. It is not only the nose, but the stomach, that tells how heavily the air is loaded with sulphuretted hydrogen; and as soon as you cross one of the crazy and rotting bridges over the
reeking ditch, you know, as surely as if you had chemically tested
it, by the black colour of what was once the white-lead paint upon the door-posts and window-sills, that the air is thickly
charged with this deadly gas. The inhabitants themselves show in their faces the poisonous influence of the mephitic air they breathe. Either their skins are white, like parchment, telling of the
impaired digestion, the languid circulation, and the coldness of the skin peculiar to persons suffering from chronic poisoning, or else their cheeks are flushed hectically, and their eyes are
glassy, showing the wasting fever and general decline of the bodily functions.

The ditches were filled in during the 1850s and many of the buildings were destroyed in a fire that raged for two weeks in 1861.

Pimlico

A
RED
-
BRICK AND LATTICE
-
WORK PUBLIC HOUSE
near Ebury Bridge, Pimlico, famed as the haunt of
lovers.

Named after either the original landlady and her fanciful gardens – replete with arbors and alcoves within which the amorous could exchange sweet nothings – or,
alternatively, after a famous pyrotechnician from the reign of George
I
, Jenny’s Whim provided much the same as other pleasure gardens did but with a few added
surprises. In
Henry Angelo’s Reminiscences
, the author recorded that it was ...
much frequented from its novelty, being an inducement to allure the curious to it by its amusing
deceptions. Here was a large garden; in different parts were recesses; and by treading on a spring – taking you by surprise – up started different figures, some ugly enough to frighten
you outright – a harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrific animal.

Bowling, skittles and even duck-hunting were some of the other diversions available. Judging from an article in
The Connoisseur
of 15 May 1755, Jenny’s Whim was particularly popular
with the middle classes:

The lower sort of people have their Ranelaghs and their Vauxhalls ... Perrot’s inimitable Grotto may be seen for only calling for a pot of beer; and the royal diversion of duck-hunting
may be had into the bargain, together with a decanter
of Dorchester, for your sixpence, at Jenny’s Whim.

Some of the building survived until the 1860s but it was then demolished to make way for railway lines into Victoria Station.

Bank

O
PENED IN
1680
BY
J
ONATHAN
M
ILES
,
THIS WAS
the
birth-place of the London Stock Exchange.

By 1690 there were over 100 companies trading their shares in the city and traders would meet at Jonathan’s (and also at Garraway’s Coffee House) to gather news
from other traders and from merchants entering the city via the Thames. At Jonathan’s, the news was written up on boards behind the bar.

Over time, traders developed a network of runners who would bring them all the latest on returning ships, whether it be tales of disaster and lost hauls or great successes. The runners would
also elicit information from the servants of other merchants. When all this information was relayed back to the coffee shop, prices would rise or fall accordingly.

In 1689, John Castaing, an enterprising Huguenot broker, began writing a weekly list of stock and bullion prices and exchange rates, which he published on Tuesdays and Fridays as a sheet called
The Course of Exchange and Other Things.
Although there were other lists in circulation, Castaing’s became
the premier source of financial information and was
printed for the next hundred years.

When Jonathan’s was burnt down in the Cornhill fire of 1748, it was immediately rebuilt with the support of various brokers and was given the name ‘The Stock Exchange’.
Jonathan’s was also the venue for much of the speculative trading in the South Sea Company that led to the financially disastrous Bubble of 1720 which ruined the fortunes of many.

So read the prospectus for Kilburn Wells and tea-rooms, published on 17 July 1773. Kilburn was an iron-rich chalybeate spring in the grounds of the long vanished Kilburn Abbey.
Contained within the Bell Tavern, the spring was fitted with a pump in 1742 so that ‘the politest of companies could come and drink the waters’.

Mildly purgative, milky in appearance and with a bitter taste, the water was said to contain more carbon dioxide than any other spring in Great Britain. It briefly rivalled
Islington Spa in popularity and, ‘being but a morning’s walk from the metropolis’, The Bell provided visitors with breakfast ‘together with the best of wines and other
liquors ... the great room being particularly adapted to the use and amusement ... fit for either music, dancing or entertainments’. The Bell was demolished in 1863; a stone plaque on Kilburn
High Road and Belsize Road now marking the site.