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.

Bathtime in London (18.06.2010)

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, or your hotel uses a cheap hand wash, think about how things used to be here in London in the 1500s:

① Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour, hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

② Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, the women were next followed by the children and last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying; Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water.

③ Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying; It’s raining cats and dogs.

④ There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house; this posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

⑤ The floor was composed of dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying; Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying; a thresh hold.

⑥ In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme; Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

⑦ Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

⑧ Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

⑨ Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

⑩ Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

⑪ England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a . . . dead ringer.

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.

10 Downing Street (11.06.2010)

The world’s most photographed door and CabbieBlog is old enough to have driven down England’s most famous short street in his car, turning round at the end and driving out again. The last time the cab went into Downing Street every corner of the vehicle was checked and checked again, the only purpose at that time of going in was to pick up a bust of the unlamented Tony Blair.

Built in about 1680 by Sir George Downing, Member of Parliament for Carlisle for persons of “honour and quality”, which presumably excluded MPs nominating them for their second homes, the building’s frontage is remarkably unaltered.

Of the original terrace only numbers 10, 11 and 12 remain, acquired by the Crown in 1732, George II offered Number 10 as a personal gift to Sir Robert Walpole, he being an honourable politician would only accept it for his office as First Lord of the Treasury, a gift that a recent incumbent, now moved to Connaught Square, would have bitten His Majesty’s hand off to acquire.

Since that date it has been the official residence of the Prime Minister although many early Prime Ministers did not live there, preferring to remain in their own grander town houses and letting Number 10 to relatives or junior ministers.

Extensive alterations have over the years been made, including incorporating a further two properties at the back, internally improvements to the property have been made by such eminent architects as William Kent and Sir John Soane.

By the middle of the 20th century however, Number 10 was falling apart again. The deterioration had been obvious for some time; the number of people allowed in the upper floors was limited for fear the bearing walls would collapse; the staircase had sunk several inches; some steps were buckled and the balustrade was out of alignment; an investigation ordered by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1958 concluded that there was widespread dry rot; the interior wood in the Cabinet Room’s double columns was like sawdust; baseboards, doors, sills and other woodwork were riddled and weakened with disease.

After reconstruction had begun, miners dug down into the foundations and found that the huge wooden beams supporting the house had decayed. Incredably, there was some discussion of tearing down the building and constructing an entirely new residence. But the Prime Minister’s home had become an icon of British architecture, instead it was decided that Number 10 (and Numbers 11 and 12) would be rebuilt using as much of the original materials as possible.

Some unless Number 10 trivia:

•During expensive alterations in the late 1950s remains of Roman Pottery and a Saxon wooden hut were found in the foundations.

•The zero of the number “10” is set at a slight angle as a nod to the original number which had a badly-fixed zero.

•After the IRA mortar attack in 1991, the original black oak door was replaced by a blast-proof steel one. Regularly removed for refurbishment and replaced with a replica, it is so heavy that it takes eight men to lift it.

•The brass letterbox still bears the legend “First Lord of the Treasury”.

•The original door was put on display in the Churchill Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms.

•Number 10 has been the official home of the Prime Minister since 1735 when Sir Robert Walpole first took residence.

•It has been home to over 50 Prime Ministers.

•Downing Street stands on the site of a former brewery.

•Number 10 was originally Number 5.

•The last private resident of Number 10 was a Mr Chicken.

•The Cabinet usually meets once a week in 10 Downing Street, normally on a Thursday morning, in the Cabinet room.

•The door has no lock.

•It’s postcode is SW1A 2AA

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.

Moving the Mad (04.06.2010)

If you would bear with me for a while as I tell you the tale of how Bedlam became synonymous with a state of total chaos.

Built in 1250 the first Bethlehem hospital was situated just outside the City’s walls near Bishopsgate. Where now the ANdAZ Hotel in Liverpool Street now stands, on a wall adjacent to it a blue plaque marks Bethlehem Hospital’s location. It was here the priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem and like all religious orders in Catholic England it had a duty to help the poor and needy.

Within 100 years the priory had been expanded and new parts were specifically designed to house the “weak of mind”. As auteristic as the monks would appear the treatment meted out to inmates were appalling, if not killed for being possessed with the devil, they were shackled or chained to the wall throughout their stay was the norm. Never washed, fed like animals and as a change to their routine would be ducked in freezing water or whipped.

With the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Priory was converted to a place for those who “entirely lost their wits and God’s great fit of reasoning, the whiche only distinguisheth us from the beast”.

In the late 17th century the hospital moved to open fields just outside Moorfields. A beautiful purpose classical building was provided not for inmates comfort (overcrowding and insanitary conditions prevailed), but for the entertainment of Londoner’s at the weekend. Social attitudes had changed towards them and hundreds would arrive to look around the madhouse, it was deemed to “guarantee to amuse and lift the spirits”.

The hospital’s principle income came from these visitors who paid good money to have their spirits lifted and evidence of wardens deliberately working up the patients to act even more wildly on Sunday afternoons.

The hospital’s name had, over the years, been abbreviated to Bethlem, but now the hospital had become known as Bedlam and the word became synomous with a scene of chaos. It was only when King George III became mad and his plight aroused sympathy that social attitudes started to change.

In the early 19th century that the hospital moved from Moorfields to the building that is now the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth. The patients were brought across London in a long line of Hackney cabs that were prepared to go south of the River with the inmates under a careful guard.

The latest of the long line of buildings is a hospital built at Addington in Surrey.

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.

Have a nice day (01.06.2010)

It started as a promising day, the sun was shining, we had a new Government and yes, I had earned enough to warrant a trip to the bank. I proffered my deposit, the cashier smiled and said good morning, and then her eyes alighted upon a £50 note of mine. In a nanosecond a money checker detection pen appeared and like a censor from the Lord Chamberlain’s Office she had drawn a line across the note.

“It’s a forgery, I’m afraid, and I can’t give it back, but I can if you wish, give you a receipt”. Great, £50 down.

Rapidly striding off to WH Smiths, and taking the cashier’s advice to purchase for myself said detector pen, my mood darkened.

In an effort to cheer myself up and repair my dented ego, I did a bit of research on counterfeiting and also to confirm that I wasn’t the only London cabbie to get caught.

As a large city London has vast sums of cash changing hands each day, and this makes the Capital a perfect place to distribute this worthless junk. This was recognised in the Middle Ages and they used some rather novel methods to deter offenders.

Clipping was a popular past time in this period, where small clips were taken from the edge of a coin and using them to mint a counterfeit. Coin clipping is why many coins have the rim of the coin marked with stripes, text or some other pattern that would be destroyed if the coin were clipped, a safeguard attributed to Isaac Newton, after being appointed Master of the Mint.

Unlike today the threat to England’s economy from counterfeiting and ultimately the country’s security was appreciated by Parliament and offenders had a multiple choice of punishments, ranging to having one’s ears removed to hanging.

The Treason Act 1415 was an Act of the Parliament of England which made clipping coins high treason and punishable by death. (It was already treason to counterfeit coins.) The Act was repealed by the Treason Act 1553, and then revived again in 1562. The Act originally only protected English coins, but was later extended in 1575 to cover foreign coins “current” within England. The Coin Act 1575 also abolished (for coin clipping only) the penalties of corruption of blood and forfeiture of goods and lands (see what I mean by multiply punishments).

In modern times fraudsters have now a range of aids to perfect their craft making detection harder, so there is far more counterfeit currency in circulation. Remarkably last year the total amount of fake £1 coins hit 37.5 million, the highest sum since the coin was introduced in 1983, and a rise of 26 per cent since 2007, when 30 million were found to be fakes. Even more remarkable is that convicted forgers these days retain their ears, and only serve the shortest of sentences.

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.

100 years down the drain (28.05.2010)

Readers of a delicate disposition should log off now for today’s post is about well… spending a penny.

With a surname like Crapper you would have thought another choice of vocation would have been preferable, for apparently the derivation of the vulgar verb, is not taken from Thomas Crapper’s surname, as many believe, but comes from Middle English word crap itself a derivation from the Dutch Krappe.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Thomas Crapper’s death, the man one could argue, who has improved all our lives immeasurably with his invention of the floating ballcock (another inappropriately named device), and although he did not invent the ceramic toilet he revolutionised the public attitude to toilets with the first bathroom showroom.

Thomas Crapper came to London from Yorkshire at the age of 11 in 1848, first setting up shop as a sanitary engineer on what is now Draycott Avenue, but later his firm that became celebrated for their water closets opened at for business at 120 King’s Road [see picture], his showroom alas is now an empty clothing shop.

Throughout history our ancestors have found ingenious ways to use them and we apparently spend three years of our lives sitting on them, so how did we get on without Thomas Crapper?

The Romans viewed going to the toilet as a social affair, they would discuss the news and gossip of the day and maybe even negotiate a business deal whilst they were there, the City wine bar of its day. Not surprisingly, toilet paper had yet to be invented; instead a piece of sponge fixed to a short wooden handle was used and shared by everyone.

In the Middle Ages, the wealthy built “garderobes”, little rooms jutting out from the walls of their homes. Garderobes, to “guard”’ the “robes” were also used to store clothes, as the smell kept moths away. It’s this medieval loo that we take the word “wardrobe” from, but not everyone had such a luxury, many would have used chamber pots during this period, throwing their waste out of a window, shouting “gardy loo” – Gardez l’eau is French for “watch out for the water”. In fact the City would fine householders if the detritus reached above a certain height outside their city homes.

The Tudors would happily “pluck a rose” (as they called it) anywhere: in chimneys, corners of rooms or in the street. Toilets by then were often referred to as “the jakes”. Then in 1596, Sir John Harrington invented the first water closet with a proper flush. Queen Elizabeth I used it and was so impressed that she had a “john” built at her palace, hence the expression of “going to the john”, however, it was not widely used elsewhere as it was expensive to install.

By the 1700s, the most likely place to keep your chamber pot was in the dining room, often in a sideboard. Chamber pots and commodes were commonplace even into the 1800s and if staying at a wealthy house, in your bedroom you could pull out the drawer and inside find a metal bowl “pee pot”, one for the man and another for the lady, which could be used and then emptied by the chambermaid in the morning.

It wasn’t until 1775 that Alexander Cummings invented the first modern flushing toilet, but later into the 19th century and the height of the British Industrial Revolution, the population in towns and cities increased, but the number of toilets didn’t. Neighbouring families would often have to share an outside privy, the “necessary house”. It wouldn’t be until 1910 that the toilet was changed to the closed water tank and bowl that we all know and love.

Toilet facts:

Gongfermorswere the people who removed human excrement from privies and cesspits (gong being another word for dung).They were only allowed to work at night.

Royal loos were scrubbed out by workers called gongscourers.

In 1760 George II expired on the toilet.

People would tip ash from fireplaces and nearby coke furnaces on top of sewage to stop it smelling.

The normal charge to use a public toilet was a penny. People spoke of “spending a penny” as a polite way of saying they were going to the loo.

Before toilet paper was invented people would use leaves, moss, stones, and grass, rags, and oyster or mussel shells bits of broken pots or bunches of herbs. Wealthy ladies would use goose feathers.

The first loo paper was used in Britain in 1857. It was sold in chemists from under the counter because people were embarrassed to see it on display.

Toilet rolls were not sold until 1928 and coloured paper wasn’t introduced until 1957.