On 6 May 1902 the last hanging was enacted at Newgate Prison. Aware of the extortionate cost of stringing up criminals, the apparatus was moved to Pentonville for future use. The last to avail themselves of this fine piece of engineering was George Woolfe, for the murder of Charlotte Cheeseman. The scaffold didn’t go to waste, 121 men were hanged at Pentonville the final execution at took place on 6 July 1961.

On 6 May 1990 after changing names for numbers, then adding the prefix 01, eventually 071 and 081 were introduced on this day, before going on to add 020

In May 1760 Earl of Ferrers became the only peer to be hanged for murder, wearing his wedding suit and taken in his carriage from the Tower to Tyburn

A small section of the old London Wall survives in the trackside walls of Tower Hill station at platform level. One of the largest pieces of the wall also stands just outside this station

When the Bishop’s Geese-prostitutes-had ‘goose bumps’ it did not mean they were cold or scared but had unfortunately caught venereal disease

The Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian line, was founded by Charles II in 1675

The folk tune London Bridge is Falling Down refers to Norwegian King Olaf who suggested destroying the wooden bridge while occupied by Danes

Buck’s Club, the London gentlemen’s club which once boasted Churchill as a member, is where the Buck’s Fizz was invented

London Marathon’s youngest male winner was 22-year-old Kenyan Sammy Wanjiru in 2009, he died two years later after falling from a balcony

The escalator at Angel station is not only the longest on the Tube network, but the longest anywhere in Western Europe

When Sir Christopher Wren his and craftsmen took 35 years to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral they were criticised for taking too long

In May 2013 London was deemed as the city with the most multi-millionaires more than in the whole of France (4,224 against 3,800)

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.

On 29 April 1826 a public meeting was held chaired by Sir Stamford Raffles. Its purpose was to ascertain the viability of importing animals and putting them on display to the public. Sir Stamford had his reservations as to the zoo’s location “The Regent’s Park is to be the headquarters . . . though we do not know how the inhabitants of the Park will like lions, leopards and lynxes so near their neighbourhood”.

On 29 April 1968 after 139 years of operation the Metropolitan Police’s first black woman, Fay Allen (21) started work in Croydon

The term ‘down-under’ comes from a tunnel on Millbank which deported prisoners were led in chains to barges on their first leg to Australia

Chiswick House built to house Lord Burlington’s art collection became a lunatic asylum before being listed for demolition in the 1950s

In 1974 Cass Elliot died of a heart attack in Harry Nilsson’s Mayfair flat the same block that The Who drummer Keith Moon died 4 years later

The Lamb and Flag pub at St Christopher’s Place in the 19th century was reputed to be the haunt of anarchists

Naked statutes outside Zimbabwe House caused an outcry when unveiled in 1908 the building opposite replaced its windows with frosted glass

Pasqua Rosee a Sicilian servant first introduced coffee to London first to his master’s guests then in a shed by St Michael Cornhill in 1652

Set up in 1869 the Hurlingham Club originally hosted pigeon shooting before becoming a major venue for tennis

The longest tube journey one can take without changing trains is Epping to West Ruislip a distance of 34.1 miles

In April 1755 after 9 years work and payment of 1,500 guineas Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London

Zizzi is French for willy at Zizzi’s on the Strand in April 2007 a man ran in took a knife jumped on a table dropped his trousers and cut off his penis

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.

On 22 April 1760 history was made this day by Belgian Jean-Joseph Merlin. The instrument maker demonstrated his invention much loved by children ever since. At a masquerade at Carlisle House in Soho Square, while playing a violin he roller skated across the polished floor. Unfortunately he had not mastered the art of stopping – with or without – a violin and crashed into a large wall mirror severely injuring himself.

On 22 April 1884 an earthquake centred in Essex was felt by workmen at the top of Victoria Tower as it swayed 4 inches

On 22 April 1737 William Hicks Wallingford’s MP was attacked by highwayman Dick Turpin in a coach travelling to London through Epping Forest

Richard Rogers’ Lloyds building was completed in 1986 and Grade I listed in 2011, the youngest building ever to gain that level of protection

In Charterhouse Square are the remains of a monastery where monks prayed for the souls of those who died in the 1348 Black Death

Huguenots (French Protestants) fled to London in the 1680s because of religious persecution in France, with many settling in Spitalfields

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (he of Sherlock Holmes fame) once described Putney as the ‘cultural desert of South London’

The BBC’s Maida Vale Studios started life as Maida Vale Skating Palace and was the largest roller skating rink in the world

The highest temperature recorded at the London Marathon 21.7C degrees on 22 April 2007: coldest 13 years previously in 1994 at 7.6C degrees

Tufnell Park is named after landowner William Tufnell who’s manor (since demolished) stood on the site occupied by the Holloway Odeon

Before the BBC pips, Ruth Belville made a living by setting her chronometer at Greenwich, then touring London’s watchmakers selling the time

On Good Friday a bun is put on the ceiling of Bow’s Widow’s Son pub in memory of one baked by a widow for her drowned son

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.

On 15 April 1984 one of England’s greatest entertainers collapsed and died in front of millions of television viewers. Tommy Cooper was midway through his act televised live from Her Majesty’s Theatre when he grabbed the curtain and collapsed on stage. The audience thinking it was part of his act laughed. He would often hand cabbies an envelope saying cheerily: “Have a drink on me”, inside, they would find a tea-bag.

On 15 April 1936 the swastika-draped coffin of German Ambassador Leopol von Hoesch was driven to Victoria Station while thousands lined the route in silence

St Martin Le Grand maintained right of sanctuary as late as 1697 and became a Mecca for counterfeit jewellers breaking the law with impunity

The 32 capsules on the London Eye are representative of the 32 London boroughs, and each one weighs as much as 1,052,631 old pound coins

Kenneth Williams lived at 8 Marlborough House, Osnaburgh Street until his death on the 15th April 1988 his final note was “Oh, what’s the bloody point”, Rob Brydon later bought the flat

Known formally as The Palace of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament was cited by the river Thames so it could not be totally surrounded by a mob

On 15 April 1755 after 9 years work and payment of 1,500 guineas Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London

According to the Guinness Book of Records London has the oldest bicycle shop in the world (Pearsons of Sutton, established as a blacksmiths in 1860)

Only 14 men have run each and every one of the 34 London Marathons, one is former head teacher Mike Peace his best time is 2:37.12 in 1991

The lowest number not used by a London bus is 218 all lower numbers may be found but 218, 239 and 278 are the only missing numbers below 300

Peek Frean’s was a popular biscuit brand, known as Biscuit Town its huge factory in Bermondsey claimed to be the world’s biggest

On 15 April 1988 Eliza Sophie Caird (Eliza Doolittle – Missing) was born in Camden her grandmother is Sylvia Young of the Sylvia Young Theatre School

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.

On 8 April 2013 Margaret Thatcher died at her suite in the Ritz Hotel. She may have helped invent soft-serve ice cream, after graduating from Oxford she worked as a research chemist at a Hammersmith food manufacturer J. Lyons and Company and was part of a team tasked with ‘whipping more air into ice cream’. They came up with a kind of ‘soft ice cream’ using fewer ingredients and saved money on production costs.

On 8 April 1989 the longest single movement in Western musical history was performed at the Proms, Odyssey was 96 minutes punctuated by a grandfather’s clock chimes

In 1880 it was suggested redrawing London’s borough boundaries making each one hexagonal to stop cabbies cheating on their fares

Putney Bridge is unique in that it is the only one in Britain with a church at either end (St Mary’s Putney and All Saints Fulham)

On 8 April 1943 author James Herbert was born in the East End. He later went to Columbia Road nursery and Our Lady of the Assumption School

The green cab shelters were erected by Victorian philanthropists with the stipulations that no alcohol to be consumed nor politics discussed

On 8 April 1967 Dagenham’s Sandie Shaw (Sandra Goodrich) became the first UK act to win the Eurovision Song Contest with Puppet on a String

Between 1927 and 39 London boasted no fewer than 27 greyhound tracks. Today only three tracks survive, at Wimbledon, Romford and Crayford

Between 1743 and 1939 with fourteen Islington had the highest concentration of public and private swimming baths ever recorded in Britain

London cabbies are forbidden to transport passengers suffering with a ‘notifiable disease’, bubonic plague is but one disease specified

St. Paul’s Cathedral took so long to build in 17thC London that a lazy worker at the time would be called a St Paul’s workman

The Camberwell Beauty is the colloquial term for Nymphasil antiopa, a velvety, chocolate brown butterfly rarely seen because it migrates annually to Scandanavia from London

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.