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.

Falstaff’s Curse (29.07.11)

A curious tale relating to the land known today as Seven Dials and St. Giles exists; it claims that this district will be forever cursed. With modern Oxford Street at its northern boundary, Charing Cross Road to the west, with Endell Street and Long Acre at its east and south respectively, this small area still retains the layout of many of its original medieval streets, which until the mid-19th century was a dense warren of tiny courtyards and alleyways, where large numbers of criminals and prostitutes lived.

A medieval leper hospital existed there amid open fields and the parish church to the north of the neighbourhood – St. Giles – is dedicated to the patron saint of lepers.

Developers erected houses for artisans and skilled tradesman in the 16th century, with Samuel Pepys commentating on the desirability of the area, but within a few years it had degenerated into an overcrowded and dangerous place.

For years St. Giles church officials paid for a last drink at the Resurrection Gate public house for the condemned on their journey down Oxford Road from Newgate Prison to the gallows and Tyburn. The old Oxford Road now renamed St. Giles High Street follows this route but the Resurrection Gate has been rebuilt by the Victorians and renamed The Angel Inn.

If the condemned man had been a resident of the area extra guards would try to stop any rescue mission as he popped into The Resurrection Gate for a swift half. More often than not the condemned would disappear into the Rookeries, as Seven Dials was known and would never be found.

London’s plague of 1665 began here before wiping out a quarter of London’s population and 100 years later William Hogarth depicted the area in his famous engraving “Gin Lane”, which depicts the effects of alcohol and poverty. Charles Dickens called the area Tom All Alone’s in Bleak House, and it wasn’t until the 1880s when much the Rookeries were demolished to make way for Shaftesbury Avenue and New Oxford Street that the area became accessible to the visitor.

But the strangest fact about this area is that businesses fail to thrive with a turnover rate far higher than elsewhere.

Those in the theatre business regard the Shaftsbury Theatre nearby as jinxed with a higher number of flops than other West End venues. Centre Point, that large office block at the area’s north-western corner, which is now listed, was a London scandal for a decade because it was regarded as so ugly no one wanted to lease office space in it.

St. Giles Church, completed in 1712, is a rare example that has escaped Victorian “improvements” and the bombing in the Second World War, now has facing it this area’s newest addition – Central Saint Giles – a garishly clad office retail complex, itself standing forlorn almost empty as testament to Falstaff Curse.

Why is this small corner of London so unlucky? In 1417 Sir John Oldcastle – reputed to be the model for Shakespeare’s Falstaff – was burned here at the stake on the order of King Henry V. Legend has it that as the flames rose around him Sir John is said to have cursed the land and surrounding area on which he was to die as well as the executioner, the king (who died six years later), and all his descendants.

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.

Boney’s Body Parts (22.07.11)

All cabbies know the location of Napoleon Bonaparte’s nose but few would have realised that at Christie’s in 1972, an appendage belonging to the Emperor of a more personal nature appeared at auction.

Bonaparte died in May 1821 and with claims as to the manner of his demise no fewer than 17 witnessed the autopsy which was carried out the day after he died by his own doctor, Francesco Antommarchi in the company of 17 witnesses, including seven English doctors and two of Napoleon’s aides, a priest named Vignali and a manservant. The Emperor instructed that his heart be removed first and sent to his wife Marie-Louise but that vanished before it could be delivered. The stomach was examined next and it was generally agreed that cancer was the cause of death, although recent claims include the suggestion that he was poisoned. Nothing else is recorded as having been removed during that surgical examination.

Decades later it was commonly rumoured that Napoleon’s penis had been cut off and had been stored away carefully during the autopsy.

No recorded confirmation exists of this and if true one can only suppose that when all 17 had their backs to the corpse Boney’s manhood was quickly snipped off with nobody noticing afterwards he had something important missing.

However, in a 1913 lecture, Sir Arthur Keith, conservator of the Hunterian Collection at the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (certain Napoleonic organs were supposedly in the museum’s possession), ventured what seems to be the indisputable opinion that, given the number of witnesses, the brevity of the autopsy (less than two hours), and the fact that the guy was, come on, Napoleon, the loss of the penis would not easily have escaped notice.

Napoleon’s friend Vignali who administered the last rites was left a large sum of money in Napoleon’s will as well as numerous unspecified “personal effects”, and later Napoleon’s manservant claimed In a memoir published in 1852 in the Revue des mondes that Vignali had indeed been the culprit who removed the body part, although the claim was never corroborated.

In 1916 Vignali’s descendants sold his collection of Napoleonic artefacts to a British rare book firm, which in 1924 sold the lot for about $2,000 to a Philadelphia bibliophile, A. S. W. Rosenbach. The inventory at the time refers to “the mummified tendon taken from Napoleon’s body during the post-mortem”.

During the 1930s A. S. Rosenbach was displaying the “tendon” in a blue velvet case and describing it as Napoleon’s penis. It later would be the centrepiece of a display at the Museum of French Art in New York, how that could have been described as art is anybody’s guess – but Damien Hurst get away with it. A newspaper at the time contradicted Napoleon’s assertion that he was well endowed describing the exhibit as “something like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shrivelled eel . . . one inch long and resembling a grape”.

At Christie’s London auction house in 1972 the punitive penis was put up for sale complete with the velvet-lined case, but having failed to reach its reserve price was withdrawn, probably not for the first time when it was in full working order leading a scandal-mongering British tabloid to trumpet, “NOT TONIGHT, JOSEPHINE!”. Eight years later it popped up again in a Paris auction house and was brought rather appropriately, by John K. Lattimer, a retired professor of urology for $3,000. At the time of writing the penis is still, as it were, in Professor Lattimer’s hands.