Lost London (28 page)

Westminster

O
RIGINALLY FORMED BY A LOOP OF THE
T
HAMES
and the division of the Tyburn River, this island may have been inhabited by the
Romans.

King Offa (who died in 796) issued a charter describing it as a ‘loco terribili’ (or terrible place), its modern name deriving
from the thorns
that covered the area.

Perhaps keen to make use of existing Roman foundations, Sebert (540–616), an early Saxon convert to Christianity, chose the island as the site of his second church, the Minster in the West
(hence Westminster). Early Christian legend has it that the night before the church was due to be consecrated it was visited by St Peter who:

...in an unknown garb, showed himself to a fisher on the Surrey side, and bade him carry him over, with promise of reward. The fisher complied, and saw his fare enter the new-built Church of
Sebert, that suddenly seemed on fire, with a glow that enkindled the firmament. Meantime the heavenly host scattered sound and fragrance, the fisher of souls wrote upon the pavement the alphabet in
Greek and Hebrew, in twelve places anointed the walls with the holy oil, lighted the tapers, sprinkled the water, and did all else needful for the dedication of a church
.

The fishermen of the Thames were said to have been granted nets full of salmon as a reward, as long as they gave one-tenth to the new church.

This early building was subsequently destroyed by Vikings, but Edward the Confessor, England’s penultimate Saxon King, built not only Westminster Abbey here but also a home, Westminster
Palace, now better known as the Houses of Parliament. By the 12th century, much of the surrounding land had been cultivated and had lost its inhospitable reputation. It thus quickly developed as a
centre of government, remaining so to this day.

With the land drained and the river covered over, Thorney Island (or the Isle of Thorns) has long since disappeared, although the name lives on in Thorney Street, which runs parallel to Millbank
off Horseferry Road.

Over the next ten years, Sir Joseph Bazelgette oversaw a massive sewer-building scheme that lay down over 2000 miles of brick sewers and created embankments on both sides of
the Thames.

An unforeseen opportunity arose for impoverished city-dwellers who were prepared to enter the sewers at the riverside during low tide in search of old metal, coins, rags and bone, to be sold
later. The venerable Henry Mayhew recorded their bizarre and unpleasant work, having interviewed several of these men who called themselves toshers: ‘Stories are told of sewer hunters beset
by myriads of enormous rats, and slaying thousands of them in their struggle for life, till at length the swarms of the savage things overpowered them, and in a few days afterwards their skeletons
were discovered picked to the very bones.’

The toshers always travelled in groups of three or four for protection, armed with a long rake which guarded against vermin but which could also be used for pulling themselves out when they
became embedded in the ‘mud’. These subterranean travellers told stories of a mythical animal that ranged the darkest passages – not unlike the stories of crocodiles in New
York’s sewers – and many toshers believed a family of ferocious wild hogs resided in the sewers of Hampstead.

The income for the most successful practitioners of this dirty business was not inconsiderable, with Mayhew estimating the trade brought in around £20,000 in total each year – or a
loss from each London home of 1s 4d.

Marble Arch

T
O CLOSE THE SCENE OF ALL HIS ACTIONS HE
Was brought from Newgate to the fatal tree;
And there his life resigned, his race is run,
And Tyburn ends what wickedness begun.

So went an old verse, for from 1300 until 1783 Tyburn was the foremost site of public execution in London. Named after the stream that ran nearby, most commentators place the
site of the gallows at the junction of Edgware Road, Oxford Street and Bayswater Road. Today, a small stone plaque on the traffic island there commemorates the spot where approaching 50,000
criminals – from murderers to counterfeiters, thieves to traitors, rapists to religious offenders – met their ends, often in front of a large and rowdy crowd.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth
I
, the infamous Tyburn tree was erected. This awful device was triangular in construction, each of its three oak beams capable of
hanging
eight miscreants – that is to say, twenty-four at once should the need arise. It was popularly known as the ‘Triple Tree’, ‘the Deadly
Never-green’ and ‘the Three-Legged Mare’.

Hanging days were virtually public holidays and such occasions became known as the Tyburn Fair. Thousands would line the streets from Newgate Prison to Tyburn to watch as the condemned were
transported to their place of execution. At the hanging on 14 November 1724 of the notorious escapee, Jack Sheppard, it is thought that 200,000 people watched – equivalent to one-third of the
capital’s entire population at the time.

The phrase ‘getting back on the wagon’ – meaning never to drink again – arises from the journey made by the condemned along this route. At St Giles they were
traditionally offered a bowl of wine – their last ever drink – before getting back on ‘the wagon’, a cart that was taking them to their death. The rope that was to hang them
was already hung around their necks and their coffins lay at their feet.

At the place of execution, grandstands were built to
accommodate paying spectators, while ballad-singers played hurriedly penned songs about that day’s criminals in
the hope of earning a few pennies. Meanwhile, there was a thriving trade in ‘penny bloods’, one-page news sheets detailing the life histories, crimes and sometimes even the last words
of the doomed. Hogarth depicted such a scene in plate 11 of
Industry and Idleness
.

The right of the condemned to speak their last free from the threat of any further punishment may well have been the tradition that led to the creation of Speakers’ Corner. The last public
hanging at Tyburn took place on 7 November 1783, when one John Austin was executed for highway robbery. A month later, public hanging resumed, but this time outside Newgate Prison.

Lambeth

L
ET ME SIT AND SADLY PONDER

on the glories of Vauxhall;

Sink this mouldy mildewed present;

from its grave the past recall
.

Is’t the punch that stirs my fancy—

or the gooseberry champagne,

Sets phantasmal shapes careering

through the chambers of my brain?

P
UNCH
1859

Early records show that in 1621 a manor house was owned by the Vaux family, who were successful vitners. By the 1660’s the gardens surrounding
‘Vaux Hall’ were a popular resort for city dwellers. The season lasted from May until August, and guests would wander the site listening to the birds, sharing picnics and enjoying
music, often also provided by the guests themselves.

Samuel Pepys visited numerous times during the period he kept his diary – between 1660 and 1669. He first visited in 1662, but under his entry for 28 May, 1667 he writes
‘Went by
water to Fox (sic) Hall, and there walked in Spring Gardens. A great deal of company; the weather and gardens pleasant, and cheap going thither: for a man may go to spend what he will, or nothing
at all: all is one. But to hear the nightingale and other birds, and here fiddles and there a harp, and here a Jew’s harp, and there laughing, and there [to see] fine people walking, is very
diverting.’

One of the main attractions of the gardens was their appeal for those wishing to meet members of the opposite sex – the long arbours and walk-ways were perfect for hiding from anxious
parents. It soon however became a resort of prostitutes. in 1712, Sir Roger de Coverley, was interrupted by one such, during a leisurely stroll in the moonlight. She invited him to buy her a bottle
of ale, and his reply was that ‘She was a wanton Baggage, and bid her go about her Business.’ He complained on leaving that he would rather ‘if there were more Nightingales, and
fewer Strumpets’.

Running for nearly 200 years, and through the reigns of ten monarchs, its greatest period was during the management of Jonathan Tyers, from 1727 until his death in 1767. His best-known events
were a series of ‘Ridotto al Fresco’, which were masked balls.