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.

Fluffers, harlots and herb-strewers (24.06.11)

People are always asking about what it’s like to be a cabbie and how we did “The Knowledge”; even Londoners ask it would seem the public’s appetite for enquiring into our fellow’s jobs is undiminished. But no matter how unusual a London cabbie’s profession might be, it has nothing comparable to some very strange ways to earn a living in the capital.

Take the Constable of the Tower of London who for 600 years has been officially authorised to extract a barrel of rum from any naval vessel using the river; any livestock falling from London Bridge he has the right to claim as his own, and should your pig stumble into his moat he will charge you 4d an old penny for each leg. One of his staff – The Ravenmaster – is charged with preventing the ravens from leaving the Tower, as tradition dictates that England’s crown will fall should they so to do. An unlikely event as he rather cheats by clipping their wings.

James Donalson is commemorated by a 17th-century memorial in St. Margaret Pattens Church, Rood Lane, as being the man who specialised in selecting spices – The City Garbler.

In the 1860s with London’s population one-third of today’s size, 80,000 prostitutes were touted for business giving the decade the nomenclature “the heyday of the whore”. During the Profumo Affair, Harold Wilson was quoted as complaining about a society which pays a harlot 25 times as much as it pays its Prime Minister.

In the days when London’s streets were not as clean as today’s, Lady Herb-Strewers were employed to scatter sweet-smelling petals wherever the monarch processed within the royal apartments as well as outside in the streets. Today the Fellowes family, of which Julian Fellowes – director of Gosforth Park – is a member still claim that hereditary right on behalf of their eldest unmarried daughter to be the official lady herb-strewer.

Now replaced by machines Fluffers were employed for years on London’s underground to walk the tunnels each night collecting waste material, the largest component of this waste left behind by the passengers – human hair.

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.

Cracking the Code (21.06.11)

With the news that the Olympics site has been designated with its own postcode, my question today is: “Does anyone understand postcodes in London?”

Until now, the E20 postcode of Albert Square in BBC’s soap Eastenders (no I don’t watch it either) was merely fictitious, but Olympic bosses applied for premises on the Stratford site to use the iconic postcode, and the move, due to be taking effect for the start of the Games next July, has been made despite the next available East London code being E19. Postcodes it would seem have no obvious logic to their designation and no relevance in relation to the adjoining areas.

To complicate life for a cabbie house numbers sometimes have even and odd numbers on opposite sides of the street, while on others the numbers run sequentially up one side and down on the opposite side, in addition, some houses are designated a street and number even though their front door actually opens onto an adjacent road; the lowest number on any street is supposed to be the house closest to Charing Cross or is that an urban myth?

If London’s postcodes are allocated alphabetically why is it that E2 is Bethnal Green; E3 Bow; E4 Chingford; E5 Clapton; E6 East Ham; E7 Wanstead; and then arbitrarily E8 Hackney?

Conversely, if the postcode number denotes its position away from the centre of London why is NW1 near Mornington Crescent but NW2 miles away in Cricklewood; and Sloane Square SW1 while Brixton Hill is SW2 and Scotch Corner just yards from Sloane Square near Harrods SW3? How does that work?

You have to ask yourself, just why it is necessary for Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to be in five different postal districts unevenly divided between W1, W2, W8, SW1 and SW7, with the lines curving and twisting through the parks.

It all started out so simple; during the 1840s the number of letters being sent in London was increasing rapidly, with many localities having similar street names, and letters were often misdirected. So in the 1850s, a committee was instructed to find a way to stop the confusion. They originally planned to rename the streets, but many residents objected, so they decided instead to split the city into various sectors. The two central sectors were EC and WC (East and West Central) and the outer ones were named N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW after the points of a compass. A scheme which involved people adding these letters to their addresses was implemented between 1857 and 1858. In 1866 in author Anthony Trollope, then a surveyor, who also introduced our red pillar boxes, suggested that NE be merged into E and then S vanished two years later, after being split between SE and SW.

While it is immensely helpful for the Post Office in locating addresses, without a vast knowledge of the postcode system it is of little use to the man, or cabbie, on the street, except to perhaps point people to a general area, say within 10 miles from their destination. If you want to find where you are going don’t rely on a postcode; use a map or better still jump in a cab and let him figure it out.

Some notable postcodes:
SAN TA1 – Father Christmas
GIR OAA – Girobank
RM1 1AA – Royal Mail Customer Service
E20 – Walford (Eastenders) or the Olympic Park
SW1A 1AA – Buckingham Palace
SW1A 0AA – House of Commons
SW1A 0PW – House of Lords
SW1A 2AA – 10 Downing Street
SW1A 2AB – 11 Downing Street
W1A 1AA – BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place