London Trivia: First television broadcast

2 November, 2025 Gibson Square 5 Comments

On 2 November 1936, the BBC’s ﬁrst high deﬁnition television service was ofﬁcially inaugurated with a transmission from Alexandra Palace. The programme was received by only 20,000 television-owning homes within 35 miles of the palace and was described as ‘ﬂickering’.

On 2 November 1953 the Samaritans, based in the crypt of St Stephen’s Walbrook, received its ﬁrst call. It was founded by the Revd Chad Varah, vicar of St Stephen’s, with the stated aim ‘to befriend the suicidal and despairing’

On 2 November 1824 Henry Fauntleroy, a partner of Marsh, Sibbald 81 Co., bankers of Berners Street, was sentenced to death for forgery. He was executed at Newgate before an estimated 100,000 people

In Star Yard Holborn stands a late Victorian gents’ ‘pissoir’. Another one in is to be found in Twickenham, a similar example is in Regency Street

In 19th century London, middle class men lived to 45, workmen and labourers life spanned half that time and children were lucky to survive until five

It was at the Merchant Taylor’s Hall, in 1607 in honour of King James I, that the National Anthem was first sung

The West End’s oldest theatre, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, is also reported to be haunted by the Victorian music hall star and panto dame Dan Leno, whose spirit is said to exude the scent of lavender oil

You are allowed to use a camera in a London Royal Park, but not a tripod, nothing is mentioned about the use of a monopod

Richmond Golf Club’s 1940 rules: Known unexploded bombs are marked by red flags at a not guaranteed safe distance, a player whose stroke is affected by a explosion may play another ball from the same place

There are thirty-three bridges of all types across the tidal Thames up to Teddington Lock, a distance of just under 99 miles

Filming on location in the Underground costs £500 per hour (plus VAT) unless you have a crew of less than five

At 440 feet the village of North End on the edge of Hampstead Heath is the highest inhabited point in London

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: Letting off steam

1 November, 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.

Letting off steam (12.10.12)

In the 1930s a successful hoax succeeded by selling hundreds of 10 guinea tickets for a charity ball to be held at a house in Leinster Gardens.

When the underground line was being built Nos. 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens were dismantled leaving just their 5ft-deep façades, the space left behind allowed the trains to empty their smoke boxes before entering the next tunnel. Today the fake houses can still be seen while behind them the District Line rattles along its way.

At Crystal Palace Park in 1864 a novel way of transporting the public through a tube was opened which obviated the need to let off steam.

A large tube enough to accommodate entire carriages was assembled, and the air was forced through the tube, in the manner of a bicycle pump, to propel the train and its hapless passengers along the tube’s entire length, at the other end of its quarter-mile length giant fans would suck the train to its destination.

It cannot have come as a surprise to any passengers of this mode of transport to learn that it closed after a few months. Rumours later persisted that the tunnel was haunted by skeletons dressed in Victorian clothes still sitting in an old railway carriage. We shall never know as the site was demolished in 1911 to make way for the Festival of Empire celebrations.

Travel along the southern section of the Bakerloo Line and you enter the tube that the Waterloo & Whitehall Railway laid down in 1865. Running parallel with Hungerford Bridge this underwater cast-iron pipe was expected to take passengers in trains propelled along its length by fans sucking or blowing the carriages along. Fifteen trains an hour and costing 2d for a first-class ticket, second class for a ha’penny less and third class at a bargain 1d. Unfortunately for its operators, the company went bust before they could experience this ‘commodious, and well-lighted’ form of transport.

London in Quotations

London in Quotations: Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Quote 27 October, 2025 Gibson Square 3 Comments

London’s like a forest . . . we shall be lost in it.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915), Taken at the Flood

London trivia

London Trivia: Welsh Secretary meets ‘stranger’

26 October, 2025 Gibson Square 5 Comments

On 26 October 1998: Welsh Secretary of State, Ron Davies was ‘robbed at knifepoint’ after meeting a stranger as he strolled on Clapham. He said he picked up a man and a woman before driving to Brixton, where the passengers turned on him and took his car, wallet and phone. He resigned as Welsh Secretary shortly afterwards.

On 26 October 1950 the ﬁrst sitting was held in the rebuilt Chamber of the House of Commons; it had been destroyed by enemy action on 10 May 1941

On 26 October 1981 Kenneth Howarth, an explosives ofﬁcer with the Metropolitan Police, was killed whilst attempting to defuse an IRA bomb in the basement toilet of a Wimpy restaurant on Oxford Street

The sarsen that stands outside the Guildhall in Kingston is known as the Coronation Stone, 7 Saxon kings are said to have been crowned there

The only former Prime Minister to die in 10 Downing Street was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman saying: “This is not the end of me” – it was!

During Tony Blair’s tenure, 37 computers, 4 mobiles, 2 cameras, a mini-disc player, a video recorder, 4 printers, 2 projectors and a bicycle were stolen from 10 Downing Street

The Tabard Inn which once stood in Talbot Yard behind Guy’s Hospital was the 65-mile fictional starting point of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Covent Garden’s Stukeley Street was formerly Coal Yard where Samuel Pepys saw pretty resident Nell Gwyn standing in a doorway

The German Gymnastic Society, now a restaurant, at King’s Cross established in London in 1861, was Britain’s first purpose-built gymnasium

A signalling box in Tottenham Court Road’s ticket hall sealed in 2013 to be opened in 2063, it contains an Oyster Card and a Baby on Board badge

The King’s cockle-strewer was employed to spread powdered cockleshells on Pall Mall so paille maille could be played in the 17th century

In November 1903 The Daily Mirror was launched from 2 Carmelite Street the paper started well until the owner Alfred Harmsworth allegedly said, “Women can’t read and don’t want to read”

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 gaping problem

25 October, 2025 Gibson Square 3 Comments

A gaping problem (09.10.12)

When taking my daughter for her first job interview, we were sitting on the tube when a drunk sitting opposite awoke to the announcement “Mind the Gap”. Our slumbering passenger then started to doze off again, until that is, we reached a later stop and upon hearing the Mind the Gap announced a second time declared to the rest of the carriage “Blimy! That bloke gets around”. It was the perfect antidote to break the pre-interview nerves my daughter was feeling at the time.

The original Mind the Gap announcement which had awoken our slumbering friend was first heard in 1968 when AEG Telefunken supplied the recording of an unknown actor, unfortunately, the fellow had insisted on being paid a royalty every time his voice was heard. Unsurprisingly that recording was scrubbed and re-recorded by someone cheaper.

Sound engineer Peter Lodge then took up the baton and his sound tests proved so popular with the powers that be it was decided that his own voice should be the announcement broadcast.

The Earl of Portland was a title bestowed on the first Earl for mopping the fevered brow of King William III who at that time was struck down with smallpox. The 12th and current Earl can be heard on the Piccadilly Line, his Mind the Gap announcement earning him the princely sum of £200. He is best known as the actor who plays David Archer in Radio 4’s The Archers.

The gap problem like so much these days can be blamed on London’s bankers. When tunnelling commenced early in the last century, engineers were concerned that the excavations would undermine the City’s banks. It was decided, where possible, to tunnel beneath the roads, many of which followed their Medieval routes.

As a consequence despite billions being spent on planning, building, refurbishing and rebuilding our trains just don’t fit the stations. Passengers on the Central line at Bank are regularly reminded of this fundamental flaw in the Tube system.

This fear of being sued by powerful property owners has meant Bank Station has one of the sharpest bends on the Tube network. This sharp bend has even become represented on John Beck’s iconic Tube map where the station’s given its own unique kink. There is even some speculation the bend had to be made even sharper so the tunnel didn’t end up in the Bank of England’s vaults.

The company clearly didn’t fear the church though because it gained permission to demolish St. Mary Woolnoth. A public outcry prevented this but it still dug up all the bodies in the crypt to build lift shafts.