London Trivia: First fatal car accident

17 August, 2025 Gibson Square 4 Comments

On 17 August 1896, three imported Roger-Benz vehicles were being exhibited at the Dolphin Terrace, Crystal Palace. Arthur Edsall drove at bewildering speed, 4mph, and erratically knocked down and fatally injured Bridget Driscoll who was attending a Catholic League of the Cross fete with her sixteen-year-old daughter. She was the country’s ﬁrst fatal car accident victim.

On 17 August 2010 Waterloo Bridge, then known as the ‘Strand Bridge’, was opened. It was pulled down in 1936

HMP Pentonville built in 1842 at a cost £84,186 12s 2d was intended to be a holding prison for convicts awaiting transportation

If London was a country it would be the 8th biggest in Europe in monetary terms and the greenest city of its size in the world with two-thirds covered in green space or water

Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum has a collection of over 45,000 objects including a collection of English delftware drug storage jars amongst which is the oldest known dated piece in the world

Winston Churchill attended the scene of the Siege of Sidney Street and narrowly escaped death when a stray bullet was fired through his hat

A pyramid to cover Trafalgar Square was proposed by Irishman, Colonel Frederick Trench, MP to commemorate the triumph at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805

The Grosvenor Hotel (now Thistle Victoria) was one of the first hotels in London to have a lift called at the time ‘a rising room’

Boxing legend Sir Henry Cooper trained in the gym above the Thomas a Becket pub previously at 320 Old Kent Road, Walworth

The Tube’s world-famous logo, ‘the roundel’ (a red circle crossed by a horizontal blue bar), first appeared in 1908

In 1661 the first postmarks in the world were struck at Post Office Court near to where today’s Bank of England now stands

In 1661 the world’s first postmark was struck at the General Post Office located in Prince’s Street opposite the Bank of England

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.

Previously Posted

Previously Posted: Sex and the Olympic City

16 August, 2025 Gibson Square 2 Comments

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.

Sex and the Olympic City (31.07.12)

When the London 2012 Olympic organisers announced that the Games would bring local jobs to the community it was probably not what they had in mind. Major sporting events always tend to precipitate a boom in the sex industry, with thousands of visitors – site workers, spectators and athletes – flooding an area and London is not any different.

Prostitution and the Olympics go back to the Games inception. In fact for the early Olympiads, competing in 776 BC, the winners were invited to take their pick of prostitutes from the Temple of Aphrodite.

In an attempt to make London 2012 not only the greenest but the cleanest Olympics ever, over the past year, more than 80 brothels near the Olympic site have been closed down and prostitutes have complained they are being driven from the streets by imposing curfews and giving Asbos to stop them touting for business.

Apparently, hordes of sex-hungry sports fans are expected to fuel a spectacular boom in the sex industry. And that’s just for starters health experts have added their voices to warn that this surge in demand for sex could “increase the spread of sexually transmitted infections”.

A campaigning group warns of the potential threat to the sexual health of Londoners and promises to distribute 500,000 free condoms in what it, rather imprudently, characterises as “hot spots” for sexual activity.

With blatant disregard for the Olympic brand online, ‘escort agencies’ are renaming themselves, Olympic Escorts and others offering ‘gold medal services – come to win a gold medal with this Olympic London Escort’.

With the Olympic site locked down and the only realistic transport links starting from Stratford, I for one, cannot see how the visitors are going to be able to meet the escort of their choice if the destination is in the Stratford area, or do these ‘services’ have nothing to do with Olympian spirit apart from the scale of their charges?

London in Quotations

London in Quotations: Charlotte Brontë

Quote 11 August, 2025 Gibson Square 3 Comments

The City seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar are such serious things, sights and sounds. The City is getting its living – the West-End but enjoying its pleasure.

Charlotte Brontë (1815-18560) Vilette, 1853

London trivia

London Trivia: Greenwich Observatory started

10 August, 2025 Gibson Square 3 Comments

On 10 August 1675 one of Wren’s many projects, apart from building ﬁfty churches, two theatres and Temple Bar, was also the designing of Flamsteed House, home of the ﬁrst Greenwich Observatory. King Charles II, a keen astronomer, laid the ﬁrst stone on this day.

On 10 August 1925 the Maharajah of Patiala took over 35 luxury suites at the Savoy while wearing special underpants costing more than £200

The Blind Beggar was the scene of another gruesome murder when street thief Bulldog Wallis stabbed a man through the eye with an umbrella

Pall Mall was the first street in England to be lit by gas by the splendidly named New Patriotic Imperial and National Light and Gas Company

Bread Street in the City of London, is the birthplace of 17th century English poet John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost

Found in Westminster Abbey after the Queen’s coronation: 3 pearl ropes, 20 brooches, 6 bracelets, a diamond necklace, 20 coronet gold balls

Contrary to popular myth, the statue of Nelson on his column in Trafalgar Square doesn’t have an eye patch

Green Park comes from when Charles II picked a flower giving it to the most beautiful woman, not his wife who ordered all flowers be removed

The Artillery Garden, Finsbury is the oldest venue for archery in the world, Fraternity of St. George 1509 uses traditional longbows

The reason London taxis are so high is so that gentlemen don’t have to remove their top hats, particularly when going to Ascot

Benjamin Franklin invented the lighting conductor and St Paul’s Cathedral was the first public building in the world having it affixed to it

Of the 700,000 dogs in London 10,000 each year end up at Battersea Dogs Home where contrary to urban myth only the old and dangerous are destroyed

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.

Previously Posted

Previously Posted: A Marathon read

9 August, 2025 Gibson Square 2 Comments

A Marathon read (24.07.12)

Just how do they do it? I mean when an actor is given a major part to play, just how so they remember their lines. I only ask because last weekend a mighty 76-page tome thudded onto my doormat.

Years in the planning and in less than six days I have to commit it to memory.

The publication goes under the catchy title The taxi and private hire information handbook and was compiled by the Olympic Delivery Authority.

Comprising 23 maps, a dozen graphs and scattered liberally with gobbledegook straight from a script of Twenty Twelve: ‘No taxis or PHVs will be permitted to pass through a VSA without the correct VAPP’. It makes for an interesting read.

Like an inexperienced actor learning his lines in Hamlet, we have to make sense of this impenetrable jargon.

SatNavs will be obsolete as so many roads are either closed or had their direction changed. It is going to be hard for us but for private hire with their reliance on technology, it will be impossible.

The maps make for interesting reading. Should a spectator require a cab from the Olympic Stadium they will have to walk 1,400 metres (or nearly a mile in old money). Cross a 6-lane dual carriageway, and walk under a flyover to find the rank located, if memory serves, behind a caravan park.

According to the comprehensive map, only two small ranks service all the major hotels in Park Lane, but that is probably because every 5-star hotel in London is fully booked with the Olympic Family.

Sorry I’d better get back to memorising all this I only have three days to learn my lines.