Don’t send a poet to London.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
On 20 October 1927 in celebration of the Battle of the Marne, when the German army was stopped before capturing Paris in August 1914, Emile Guillaume’s 16ft statue of a naked woman holding a sword aloft – ‘La Déliverance’ – was unveiled at Henly’s Corner on the North Circular Road. A gift from press baron Lord Rothermere, the statue has had a number of local names including ‘Dirty Gertie’, and due to corrosion ‘Gangrene Gertie’.
On 20 October 1862 serial killer Catherine Wilson was the last woman to be publicly hanged in London, was thought to have poisoned six victims
The narrowest house in London lies next door to Tyburn Convent and was built to block a passage used by grave robbers, it is one metre wide
The 15th Century Crosby Hall once home to Thomas More was moved from Bishopsgate to current Chelsea riverside location in 1910
Lionel Logue who cured King George of his stammer had his practice at 146 Harley Street from 1926 to 1952 in the film Portman Place was used
The first bomb to be dropped on London by Zeppelins is commemorated by a plaque at 31 Nevill Road, N16
The Trafalgar Square lions were sculpted from life Landseer used dead lions supplied by London Zoo until neighbours complained of the smell
On Tower Hill is an entrance to the 1870 Tower Subway. You could ride under the river in a carriage pulled by cable
On 5 March 1870 the first ever International Football match was held at The Oval – England vs Scotland – the first of many England draws 1-1
London Bridge became so congested that in 1722 it became the first place in Britain where it was made compulsory to drive on the left
The weathervane on the Royal Exchange in the City is a grasshopper not a cock, the former being the crest of its founder Sir Thomas Gresham
The Queen’s jewellery collection is so extensive it has to be stored in a room the size of an ice rink, 40ft below Buckingham Palace
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.
As any fireman will tell you there is a myriad of causes attributable to the origin of a fire and in the aftermath of The Great Fire of London dozens of theories were put forward. We blamed the French – as always – in the guise of a deranged silversmith, Robert Hubert, who confessed and was promptly executed, it was discovered afterwards that he had arrived in the country two days after the conflagration. William Lilly, a famous astrologer, was next in the frame having predicted a major fire in the previous year; he only just managed to save his neck by persuading a special committee of the House of Commons of his innocence. Next, the Catholics were accused, they were always a popular whipping boy since the Reformation, and no doubt the Jews were also held to blame.
Now we have strayed into the blaming culture for one simple reason, this week, based on around 20 years of historic data, a study published in The Lancet claims that by 2030 as many as 48 per cent of British men could be obese. Why you might ask has this anything to do with a fire nearly 350 years ago? Well bear with me on that one.
As you might imagine the City Fathers thought long and hard about the fire’s cause and the destruction of their city and decided to erect in Cock Lane, which it was claimed was at the western limit of the fire’s destruction, this little statute. The Boy on Pye Corner was deliberately made fat (although by modern standards he appears just a little chubby) to add emphasis to its inscription:
The Boy on Pye Corner was erected to commemorate the staying of the Great Fire which beginning at Pudding Lane was ascribed to the sin of gluttony when not attributed to the Papists as on the Monument.
So there you have it, junk food was to blame.
Curiously the original building on this site, which was demolished in 1910, upon which the Boy was placed, was a pub called The Fortunes of War and was favoured by the resurrection men who sold corpses to the anatomists at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital opposite. The corpses fresh from road, river, grave and hangman’s noose or just murdered were exhibited in an upstairs room by the landlord, labelled with the finder’s name and presumably with a suitable price attached.
The name of the alley – Cock Lane – was first recorded in 1200, and probably signified a lane where fighting cocks were reared and sold. In the late Middle Ages Cock Lane was the only place north of the Thames where brothels were legally sanctioned, handy is if your cabbie refuses to go south of the River.
CABBIE (n.) (colloq). Erudite Fellow much given to express anti-Whig opinion who upon exchange of monies will, by Hansom carriage, convey a Person within London’s northern environs.
David Styles (b.1947), Dr. Johnson’s Magnum Opus
On 13 October 1884 despite opposition from the French, Greenwich was finally adopted as the meridian of Longitude from which standard times throughout the world are calibrated. Because the Earth is not perfectly round, and because different locations on Earth have different terrain features affecting gravitational pull, traditional ways to measure longitude have proved inaccurate, it’s now 334 feet east off the original.
On 13 October 1905 Emmeline Pankhurst and Anne Kenney we’re arrested and charged with assault when protesting for women’s suffrage at a meeting in London
On 13 October 1660 Major-General Thomas Harrison, one of the commissioners to sign King Charles I’s death warrant was the first person to be found guilty of regicide, was hanged, drawn and quartered
On or around the site occupied by 61-63 Kings Cross Road was once Bagnigge House the home of Nell Gwynne, mistress of Charles II
Winsor Castle had a trapdoor cut in the floor of Queen Anne’s rooms to hoist by means of pulleys her obese frame into the state rooms below
Churchill called the Thames “the golden thread of our nation’s history”, MP John Burns described it as, “The St. Lawrence is water, the Mississippi is muddy water, but the Thames is liquid history”
At St Pancras Church the caryatids supporting the roof didn’t fit the space and had to have several inches removed from their midriffs
Fortnum and Mason was started by Queen Anne’s footman having sold part-used candles from St James’s Palace to fund the store with Hugh Mason
In 1926 Kitty and Leslie Godfree from 55 York Avenue, East Sheen became the only married couple to win the mixed doubles at Wimbledon
There are 412 escalators on the Underground, Waterloo has 25; the longest at 197ft is at the Angel; Chancery Lane the shortest at just 30ft
Horseferry Road commemorates a 16th century ferry which took men and animals across the Thames until 1750 when Lambeth Bridge was built
Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, the 23rd Lord Shrewsbury is the only earl to have a car named after him they were manufactured in Ladbroke Grove
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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