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.

A bear called Martin (27.05.11)

I can never recall a time when we weren’t sharing our home with an animal. My father, and his father before him, held senior positions at London Zoo and from time to time he would, as they say, bring his work home.

Until recently I assumed that London Zoo was the capital’s first menagerie, little realising that not long after the Tower of London was built, it was to become London’s first house for animals.

Exotic creatures have long been considered an appropriate gift from one ruler to another, as early as the 12th century there is evidence that King John (1199-1216) received three boatloads of wild beasts from Normandy. Records show that in 1235 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II gave Henry III three leopards on the occasion of his wedding to Eleanor of Provence, a lion followed and in 1252 a polar bear complete with its keeper both gifts from Haakon IV of Norway.

The only place to house these dangerous creatures was in England’s most secure citadel, the Tower of London, whose walls provided the perfect enclosure. At that time the creatures were locked away from public view, except the time when the shackled polar bear would be led onto the Thames foreshore to wash and fish for food.

When in 1255 Louis IX of France gave Henry an elephant the Sheriffs of London were asked to build and pay for a 40ft long wooden elephant house, later it was put to good use as one of the Tower’s many prison cells.

The menagerie grew and Edward I created the official position of The Master of the King’s Bears and Apes. By the 16th century the collection was opened to limited public view, and by James I’s reign within the Tower’s confines were recorded a flying squirrel, a tiger, a lioness, five camels and an elephant.

Christopher Wren was charged with designing a lion’s house in 1672. Built-in the southeastern corner it comprised two stories, an attic and cellars. I could never understand when in the modern London Zoo people would eat their lunch in the Lion House for a lion’s faeces have an odour all of their own. In Stow’s Survey of London published in 1720, he records: “The creatures have a rank smell, which hath so affected the air of the place (tho’ there is a garden adjoining) that it hath much injured the health of the man that attends them, so stuffed up his head, that it affects his speech.”

Animal husbandry was in its infancy: ostriches were believed to have the ability to digest iron – one died after being fed no fewer than 80 nails. An Indian elephant housed in St. James’s Palace was given a daily glass of wine from April to September as they believed it couldn’t drink water during those months.

By 1821 the collection had dwindled to four lions, a panther, a leopard, a tiger and a grizzly bear called Martin.

A new keeper was appointed, Alfred Cops, who was devoted to his charges. For the first time in the menagerie’s history Cops went out and purchased animals for the collection. Soon the Tower contained over 280 animals and the public flocked to view them. In one unfortunate incident, a boa constrictor wrapped itself around Cops’ neck as he was feeding it in a bid to entertain the tourists.

A victim of its own success most of the animals were transferred to the new Zoological Society of London, in Regents Park was the society had established London’s first zoo. That transfer started in 1832 and by 1835 the last of Alfred Cops’ collection had been rehomed ending 600 years of exotic animals at The Tower of London.

Now, this whole forgotten chapter is to be celebrated with a special exhibition at the Tower, called Royal Beasts, which opens tomorrow. Watching over the visitors will be one of its most unusual tenants a polar bear which will sit outside the Bloody Tower, where there was once direct access to the Thames. But really to welcome visitors to the exhibition it should have been a bear called Martin.

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.

Horses for courses (20.05.11)

With Boris cabs now becoming Public Enemy Number One and with ever more traffic flow restrictions, and councils trying to turn London’s roads back to Victorian times, an average speed of 8 mph is now still no higher than they were a century ago when we used Shank’s Pony. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to imagine that London’s streets would have been more pleasant with four-legged horsepower. A good example is this film of traffic passing in front of the Bank of England in 1903.

By the end of the 19th century, 300,000 horses were working in the capital, each producing four tons of dung a year, amounting to a total of 1 million tons a year which was good for roses, typhoid and dysentery, but little else. Horses were also involved in an average of 175 fatal accidents a year in addition to the deaths caused by transmitted diseases from the dung.

Horsepower lasted well into the last century: Old Kent Road’s horse-drawn tram was taken out of service in 1913; incredibly by 1935 five per cent of transport some 20,000 horse-drawn carts were still to be seen in the capital; as nowadays cabbies were reluctant to any change, the last horse-drawn cab, plied the Victoria Station rank and only retired on 3rd April 1947.

Camden Market, now a shopper’s paradise for the weird and wonderful was once a horse hospital for the 1,300 horses employed in the environs of King’s Cross, treating among other injuries those caused by animals slipping on wet cobblestones.

London’s equine past is commemorated in several street names. Horseferry Road led to one of the few crossings across the Thames, this one from the 16th century was used until 1750 and owned by the Bishops of Lambeth.

Jacob the Circle Dray Horse, Queen Elizabeth Street: The famous courage dray horses were stabled on this site from the early nineteenth century and delivered beer around London, from the brewery on Horselydown Lane near Tower Bridge. In the sixteenth century, this area was known as Horselydown which derives its name from Horse-Lie-Down, a thing that horses did here before crossing the river at London Bridge to enter the City of London.

Equine statutes litter London’s landscape, but one in St. James’s Square illustrates just how dangerous riding horses can be: this statute of King William III was erected in 1806 and there is something strange about it. A small molehill lies at the feet of Sorrel, the King’s horse. What is the molehill for? The answer is that William is said to have died of pneumonia, a complication from a broken collarbone, resulting from a fall off his horse. Because his horse had stumbled into a mole’s burrow. William was the Protestant King brought to England from Holland to replace the last Catholic: King James. James’s supporters and all Jacobites then and now still toast “the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat”. The mole that killed a king. The saying “Dutch Courage” also comes from William III’s reign.