We panic if there is two centimeters of snow in London.
Sam Riley (b.1980)
London Trivia: Shock and awe
On 19 January 1917 at 6.62 in the evening an explosion at the Brunner-Mond munitions factory manufacturing explosives for Britain’s World War I military effort in Silvertown, West Ham killed 73 people and injured over 400. Much of the area was flattened by 50 tonnes of TNT exploding causing a shock wave felt throughout London and Essex. The largest explosion in London’s history was heard as far away as Southampton.
On 19 January 1937 The Underground Murder Mystery, a play by J. Bissell Thomas, was the first play to be broadcast by the BBC, it was set in Tottenham Court Road station
During the Jack the Ripper investigation the police paid £100 for 2 tracker bloodhounds but they got lost and needed the Police to find them
Bromley Hall, Brunswick Road, Bow is believed to be the oldest brick house in London, and dates back to 1490
It was in Room 507 at the Hotel Samarkand, 22 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill that Jimi Hendrix died of a drugs overdose in September 1970
Had Hitler won World War II he planned to transport Nelson’s Column to Berlin as he believed it was a symbol of British naval supremacy
Sir John Goss who composed the hymn “Praise my Soul, the King of Heaven” was once organist of St Paul’s Cathedral and St Luke’s Church Chelsea
One of the performers at the 1831 opening of London Bridge played tunes by hitting himself on the chin with his fists
In September 2009 London and the River Thames hosted the world’s largest ever plastic duck race with 205, 000 ducks participating
On 19 January 2009 Pawel Modzelewski travelled the 19 bus for 6 hours unnoticed after dying the previous day and left in the garage overnight
In the 1880s workers at the Bryant and May match factory were forced to contribute one shilling to a statue of former PM William Gladstone
The keys to the vaults of the Bank of England which presumably are kept under lock and key – the real ones, not ceremonial ones – are 3 feet long
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: The London beer flood
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.
The London Beer Flood (10.01.12)
The spot where Freddy Mercury stands strutting his stuff, some 200 years ago was one of the most deprived areas of London and the scene of the Capital’s most bizarre tragedy.
Before New Oxford Street was constructed the area behind Centre Point, the St. Giles area, was a rookery where some of the poorest of London lived in dirty, cramped conditions, and on the boundary of the rookery, on the site of the Dominion Theatre stood the Meux’s Brewery.
A popular beer at that time was porter, a dark beer which originated in London during the early 18th century. Prior to that beer was distributed to the publican “very young” and ageing was performed in the ale house, porter was the first beer to be aged at the brewery and dispatched to be drunk immediately. It was also the first beer which could be made on a large scale, and as it was invented in London and drunk by London’s porters it naturally became known as London Porter.
Working in London’s markets were thousands of porters and manual labourers who would daily consume three or four pints of this dark heady brew that had an alcohol content of between 6.6 and 7.0% ABV.
The brewing process of porter enabled producers to make it on an industrial scale, building ever larger vats to accommodate its growing demand. Meux’s Brewery Company had by 1795 vats 22-foot high that could contain 8.4 million pints of beer. So large were these barrels, upon the completion of a new one a reception would be held and one account relates that 200 diners sat down to a meal within its gigantic walls.
This highly profitable enterprise came to an end on Monday 17th October 1814 at about six in the evening, when a corroded hoop on a large barrel prompted the sudden release of over 2 million pints of this heavy brown liquid. The explosion could be heard 5 miles away. It destroyed the brewery wall and badly damaged two houses. Some were drowned by the tsunami of beer and others were overcome by the fumes, while an even greater number were hampered in rescue while using pots to collect this manna from heaven. The area, as today, was very flat and rescuers were sometimes up to their waists in beer trying to evacuate people from their basements.
Some nine people died that day as a direct result of the accident, and one victim died some days later of alcohol poisoning; he had heroically attempted to stem the tide by drinking as much beer as he humanly could.
As with the way of the poor in those days, to try and make ends meet families displayed the victim in their house propped up in an armchair for inspection at a small fee. In one house so many crowded into the room that the floor collapsed, the spectators plunging into the basement, which was of course full of beer.
The smell of beer lasted for months and many lost their homes and livelihoods, while the Meux Brewery was taken to court over the accident, but the calamity was ruled an Act of God with the death simply casualties.
Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi once said: “Bacchus has drowned more men than Neptune”. He could have been talking about 18th-century London.
London in Quotations: Virginia Woolf
. . . to walk alone in London is the greatest rest.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
London Trivia: Frozen out
On 12 January 1789 with the Thames frozen due in part to the river being both broader and shallower than today, a frost fair was in full swing. The ‘Little Ice Age’ lasting from 17th to 19th-century ice fairs were regularly held, the first being in 1608. Frost fairs were often brief as rapid thaws swiftly followed as it did on that day when melting ice dragged a ship anchored to a riverside public house pulling the down and crushing five people to death.
On 12 January 1828 whilst under construction Isambard Brunel’s Thames Tunnel flooded and 6 men died. Brunel himself was fortunate to escape
John Bishop and Thomas Williams who lived at 3 Nova Scotia Gardens, Spitalfields were notorious 19th century body snatchers
The Monument stands on the site of St Margaret’s, the first church to burn down during the Great Fire of 1666
In 1926, suicide pits were installed beneath tracks due to a rise in the numbers of passengers throwing themselves in front of trains
In 1536 in consideration to his wife Henry VIII converted Anne Boleyn’s sentence of death by burning to that of beheading at Tower Hill
A young David Robert Jones went to Burnt Ash Junior School, Bromley in the mid fifties, he is better known today as David Bowie
In 1830 Michael Boai, aka the ‘chin chopper’, gave a concert at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly playing tunes by tapping his chin
Arsenal (originally opened on 15 December 1906 as Gillespie Road) on Piccadilly line is the only station named after a football team
On 12 January 1866 The Royal Aeronautical Society was formed in London, the society’s objectives were “for the advancement of Aerial Navigation and for Observations in Aerology connected therewith”
19th Century Spitalfields was world famous for silk weaving, so much so that Pope Pius IX ordered a seamless silk garment from there
Nineteenth century parish records show Fanny Funk (1859) and Eleazer Bed (1871) as being born In Whitechapel
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.
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