London; a nation, not a city.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
On 15 January 1880 the first telephone directory was published, its three exchanges had 248 subscribers to The Telephone Company, but remarkably no numbers only addresses. If you wanted to be connected you had to ring the operator and ask for the person by name. No AAAAAAA Hansom Cabs here. The first person listed was John Adam & Co., 11 Pudding Lane. Naturally Alexander Bell was there he had, after all, invented the contraption, and Keith Prowse selling tickets.
On 15 January 1797 John Hetherington charged with breach of the peace and inciting a riot after he was the first to wear a top hat in public
The last person to stand and be humiliated in a pillory in London was Peter Bossy in 1830. It sometimes was dangerous and many lost an eye
Putney Bridge is unique in that it is the only one in Britain with a church at either end St Mary’s Putney north and All Saints Fulham south
Tobacco was used to revive those drowned in the Thames its vapours were thought to restore the body’s balance inserted into the rectum
On 15 January 1559 the Coronation of Elizabeth I took place at Westminster Abbey, it the last occasion on which the Latin service was used
Billy Ocean, born Leslie Charles, took his name from the Ocean Estate, Stepney where he lived. He also worked for a tailor in Brick Lane
In 1868 Edward, The Prince of Wales, regularly visited the (legal) opium den of Chi Ki in Limehouse frequented by sailors
The 1908 Russian Olympic team arrived 12 days late to London because they hadn’t yet started using the Gregorian calendar
Every week the Underground escalators travel the equivalent distance of going twice around the world but very, very slowly
In October 1986 a trio of Daily Telegraph journalists set up The Independent newspaper from 40 City Road, last year the paper stopped printing and was only published online
London only reached its pre-World War II population of just over 8.615 million in January, 2015 after the war it dipped to 6.6 million
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
In a world obsessed with the throwaway culture, London has a few examples of recycling parts of its demolished iconic buildings, not to save them for posterity, you understand, but to increase the developers’ profits.
An Inspired Idea
If you are going to demolish a Wren church you don’t wish to be perceived as a vandal, Oh No.! So how can one give Londoners a symbol of your altruism? Why you preserve the spire of course, but where to re-erect such an historic structure, representing Resurgam as Wren coined it, describing restoring London to its former glory after the Great Fire. And what better location can there be for the spire than a 1960’s housing estate in South-East London? Well that’s the fate of St. Antholin Church, first its spire was sold for £5, a bargain considering its Wren’s only stone spire and octagonal to boot, then for good measure the church was demolished 46 years later.
London Bridge in Hackney?
We have all enjoyed the anecdotal story of selling London Bridge for $2.5 million to the Americans so they could re-erect it at Lake Havasu City, Arizona, when they were under the impression it was Tower Bridge they were purchasing in order to plonk it in the middle of a desert. But what happened to London Bridge’s predecessor? Some of the stonework was incorporated in Adelaide House situated on the north side of the existing bridge, 49 Heathfield Road SW18 is built of the stuff, two stone alcoves grace Victoria Park in Hackney, while a third alcove is to be found in the courtyard of Guys Hospital.
Exporting Romford
When the old Mawney Arms public house was transformed from a traditional East London boozer into a Gastropub, the old interiors didn’t end up in a skip. Complete with the original pub sign it ended its travels in Thailand at a place called Koh Samui. So if you are passing while on holiday and fancy a curry and a pint, it’s available on Thursday during the darts contest.
Gherked off
The grade II listed Baltic Exchange when damaged by an IRA bomb was dismantled piece by peace at a cost of £4milllion. In its place proudly stands the Erotic Gherkin (sorry the Swiss Re: Tower), a testament to modernity. In June 2006 an Estonian businessman while trawling the web for reclaimed flooring came across an advert for the Baltic Exchange being stored in a barn in Kent. Buying it for £800,000 he has shipped it in 49 containers to Central Tallinn, Estonia. All he has to do now is find what part goes where in his jigsaw.
I have come to a point in my life when death is more than an abstract concept. Sometime in the future, you might be surprised to learn, CabbieBlog will cease to post daily, in fact, nothing will emanate from CabbieBlog Towers.
Whether that happens next week or sometime during the next decade I have no idea, but when it does, what happens to everything I’ve produced electronically?
Think of your archive, I bet a lot of your notes, emails, long-form posts and opinions are locked behind passwords, not to mention all your digital photographs. Should a family member or biographer wish to research your life where do they go for material?
So, what happens to these electronic thoughts and memories when one dies? The answer is very unclear.
There is no clarity over who actually owns the millions of keystrokes you’ve lovingly crafted. Take cloud-based email providers Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook or BT, their terms and conditions (look me in the eye and tell me you’ve read their small print), say your emails belong to them.
Surprisingly as bigger platforms are run by Millenials, they have finally embraced the concept that their customers might actually die, and have given this a little thought. Google offers an ‘inactive account manager option’ – a wonderful euphemism – where you can tell this behemoth of communication to pass all your data to ten trusted contacts. Next of kin will not automatically be allowed access, and a request from an executor is not guaranteed.
Facebook offer to freeze or delete an account, if frozen, it only remains visible to the family. Microsoft has a next-of-kin process team but refuses to disclose passwords. Yahoo by contrast is more ruthless, upon hearing of your demise, delete the account.
The process and boundaries are still being explored in this brave new world of digital communication. Should you feel the need to pass on your thoughts and comments to later generations it’s best to download to a device that will last the progress of time, and digital redundancy – remember what happened to floppy discs.
And one final thought, should a world-renowned biographer wish to research your life, best let them have the passwords before it’s too late, it is Friday 13th today.
Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi look set to join Uber in London’s private hire vehicle market. After issuing thousands of vehicles for private hire use, I suppose it makes sense to Sadiq Khan. After the Government curtailed Chinese involvement in rolling out 5G due to data protection concerns, you might have expected Transport for London to follow suit.
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