Forget six counties overhung with smoke, / Forget the snorting and piston stroke, / Forget the spreading of the hideous town; / Think rather of the pack-horse on the down, / And dream of London, small, and white, and clean.
William Morris (1834-1896)
On 17 July 1841, the first edition of Punch appeared under the joint editorship of Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew and Stirling Coyne. A gentleman on an omnibus was seen tossing a copy aside and declaring, ‘One of these ephemeral things they bring out; won’t last a fortnight’.
On 17 July 1895, the Great Wheel built for the Empire of India Exhibition at Earl’s Court was opened to the public on this day and demolished in 1907
‘Monkey Suckers’ perfected the art of drilling into barrels stored at East End docks then using tube to suck out a bottle, or two, of rum
Cheapside get its name from the Saxon word for market – ‘chepe’ as this was London’s main market in medieval times
More than 1,000 bodies are buried underneath Aldgate station, in a plague pit built over 2 weeks in 1665, its location is now Aldgate Underground Station
The last person to be executed at the Tower of London was Josef Jakobs, a German Intelligence agent. He was shot by firing sqaud in 1941
It is probable that Charles Dickens modelled the Cratchit’s house in Camden Town on his first London home at 16 Bayham Street
Samuel Scott’s speciality was to tie a noose around his neck then jump off Waterloo bridge and dance in the air before returning safely, ultimately he didn’t
Fulham FC are the oldest professional football club in London having been derived from St Andrew’s Church team
Farringdon underground station is the only station from which passengers exited en masse on their way to a public hanging
Every July the two companies take part in ‘Swan Upping’ which is the marking and census of all cygnets between Sunbury and Abingdon
In 1949 a flock of starlings landed on the minute hand of Big Ben it put the time back by 4.5 minutes, and snow caused the clock to ring in the New Year 10 minutes late in 1962
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.
Six degrees of Separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”) refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularised by a play written by John Guare in 1990 and the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game that became popular in the late 1990s. If you shake CabbieBlog by the hand for instance you are but two steps from our Queen.
Let’s try a blatantly self-serving experiment. If the principle of “six degrees of separation” is correct, then it should be possible to spread the news of CabbieBlog to the entire world simply by word of mouse. If each person who saw this site told even just one other person about it, the chain should eventually reach the entire world. Of course, I don’t need or want the whole world to know about this site, just all the English speaking people. If everyone who might enjoy this site found out about it, I could hardly ask for more.
If you were to metaphorically shake CabbieBlog’s and you would only be two degrees of separation from Her Majesty The Queen, as look where that would get you.
Ask any cabbie and he’ll be able to name the bridges spanning the Thames, to help we even have three adjacent crossings conveniently spelling CAB: Chelsea, Albert and Battersea bridges.
Most bridges are fairly modern, the current incarnation of London Bridge opened in the 1970s, although previous versions go back much further, Tower Bridge dates back to 1894, and our three CAB bridges only date back a few years: Chelsea 1937, Albert 1859, Battersea 1890.
So which is London’s oldest bridge?
The little-known Clattern Bridge, built-in 1293 holds the record. Named because of the noise of horse’s hoofs would make as they crossed. This bridge is still functioning, although these days the structure is driven or walked, rather than ridden, over.
Unlike the others, technically the bridge doesn’t cross the Thames. The Clattern Bridge crosses the River Hogsmill a tributary of the Thames, in Kingston, just before it joins the mighty Thames.
There is a bright blue badge on the central span of Clattern Bridge, featuring the coat of arms of Kingston, itself dating from 1623, recognisable from the three salmon on a blue background. The Domesday Book entry for Kingston mentions three salmon fisheries in the Thames, hence their inclusion of them on the county’s badge.
To prove how robust was its construction, the bridge is part of Kingston High Street, and still in use, unlike Hammersmith Bridge with less than 135 years of use.
Featured image: The Clattern Bridge is a bridge over the Hogsmill River in Kingston upon Thames. It was built around 1175 and is thus one of the oldest intact bridges in England. It replaced an older Saxon bridge which was known as the Clatrung Bridge. Its various names, such as the Clateryngbrugge, are thought to derive from the clattering of horses’ hooves as they crossed the bridge. The bridge still carries a full load of modern vehicle traffic. Up to the 18th century, the bridge was used as a site for the ducking of scolds with a cucking stool. The bridge also featured in the traditional game of football held in the centre of Kingston each year on Shrove Tuesday. It was the goal for one of the teams, while the nearby Kingston Bridge was the other goal, by Loco Steve (CC BY-NC 2.0).
More than 124,000 leaked documents disclosed by Mark MacGann, Uber’s former chief lobbyist for Europe has confirmed the ethically questionable practices of how Uber has flouted national laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.
Over 180 journalists at 40 media outlets have discovered how Uber developed sophisticated methods to thwart law enforcement; undercut established private hire and decimated the London cab market; lobbied George Osborne, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, who was described as a ‘strong advocate’; and put pressure on governments to rewrite laws to help pave the way for the app-based, gig-economy model of taxi-hailing that has since proliferated across the world.
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