LONDON GIN (n.) Inexpensive alcohol-based tipples used to quell dissent much favoured William Hogarth’s satire.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
Obsolete technology
I was out walking the other day and looking up, usually, I’m looking down to see what my dog is up to, I came across this piece of GPO ceramic history.
When I was young, the sight of this technology attached to a property’s fascia was an indication that the family was pretty comfortably off, for they could afford a telephone.
In those days after waiting months to have a phone line, you’d share it with a neighbour. Regularly when lifting the receiver you could hear a conversation by your ‘shared’ line user. Etiquette required you to immediately replace the handset on the receiver and not listen in.
Now wherever I go around this little outpost of north-east London men are up telegraph poles (why on earth do we call a tree trunk supporting telephone lines – a telegraph pole?) attaching wires and black boxes. It all looks very efficient, and BT has even subcontracted all this climbing malarkey.
Now to press this brave new world of telephony upon us we’re getting emails warning us oldies much of our 1960s technology won’t work, while ambitious young men knock on our doors in an attempt to lure us away from our current provider with deals ‘we can’t ignore’, and our daily paper forecasts calamity awaits our future ability to call for help should we need help.
But hang on a moment, haven’t we been here before? If memory serves, around the turn of the century all our pavements were dug up to lay conduit in anticipation for cable TV and the Internet. But here it is, the telegraph method of communicating is still being used for 21st-century communications, and the wooden pole is even named after a Victorian invention.
Couldn’t the owners of the plastic pipes under our pavements just lease the tube to whoever has a contract to supply a property, just as our electricity and gas are delivered by the company of our choice, and just remove those overhead cables? With climate change and the increased winds predicted BT might be forced to take the subterranean path.
London in Quotations: Craig Taylor
London is actually a beautiful place when the weather’s good; the mood is lighter and everybody’s smiling. But for the other 350 days a year, it’s miserable. You’re standing there waiting for the bus in the rain or you’re waiting for a train on a platform and it’s freezing. Always a persistent drizzle – or if it’s not drizzling, it’s overcast and cold.
Craig Taylor (b.1976), Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now – As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
London Trivia: A perfect storm
On 7 January 1928 a perfect storm hit London. Heavy snow, followed by a sudden thaw with heavy rain combined with a high spring tide and a storm surge raised the water levels on the Thames. A massive flood ensued, water overflowed from the City to Putney and Hammersmith, fourteen people drowned and 4,000 were made homeless. The disaster contributed to the eventual building of the Thames Barrier.
On 7 January 1618 Sir Francis Bacon, one of the cleverest of his generation, was made Lord Chancellor of England by his patron King James I.
A punishment in London’s Victorian prisons was oakum picking. Prisoners were given old ships’ rope with the task of unpicking the strands
On Admiralty Arch is a small nose said to be Lord Nelson’s second nose – it’s not. Placed there in 1997 by an artist as a form of protest
In 1924, the first baby was born on the Underground, on a train at Elephant and Castle on the Bakerloo Line
Harold Wilson always drank Lucozade during speeches – but from a blue glass, as he worried that in a clear one it would look like Scotch
Victorian poet Swinburne and artist Rosetti shared 16 Cheyne Walk Chelsea with Rosetti’s menagerie including a pet wombat
London’s oldest hotel Claridge’s opened as Mivart’s Hotel in 1812 by French chef Jacques Mivart. He sold out to William Claridge in 1838
Charlton means ‘homestead belonging to the churls’. Churls were the lowest rank of freeman during medieval times
On the Metropolitan line, trains can reach over 60mph but the average is a mere 20.5 miles per hour including stops
Inventor Richard Arkwright who with John Kay invented the spinning-frame that produced a strong cotton thread lived at 8 Adam Street, Strand
There is evidence to show that in medieval London, off Cheapside, there was a road, probably frequented by prostitutes, named Gropecunt Lane
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: Sidney Street Seige
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.
Sidney Street Siege (03.01.11)
One hundred years ago today an incident occurred in east London that brought to the public’s attention a man that 28 years later would lead Britain in its fight against Hitler.
In the first decade of the 20th century London had become a hotbed for Latvian revolutionaries. In an uprising some five years earlier 14,000 men, women and children had been massacred in reprisal by the Russian army, when an uprising to overthrow the Tsarist regime was foiled. With a deep distrust of their own police who had tortured their ringleaders the survivors had come to London to organise another revolution and to raise funds for their cause.
Armed they had held up banks, shops and factories and two robbers had been killed the previous year in a London robbery which had left seven policemen wounded and two innocent bystanders dead.
At 10pm on 17th December 1910 a shopkeeper living above his premises in Houndsditch heard noises from downstairs, fearing a break-in at the jewellers next door he alerted a nearby policeman, who was joined by two constables, three sergeants and two plain clothed colleagues (in those days burglary was taken seriously). Knocking on the door they were let in by a man pretending not to understand, who was instructed to fetch someone who could speak English. The police did not know at the time but they had stumbled on the compatriots of last years’ bungled robbery, who were in the process of breaking through a wall trying to get to the jewellers safe.
What ensued can only be described as a massacre as the anarchists opened fire on the unarmed policemen, leaving three dead and two crippled for life.
For the local predominantly Jewish population, it was as if the terror they had fled from in Eastern Europe had emerged on the Sabbath amongst their own community. Within days two of the gang had been arrested and a third was suspected of fleeing the country.
In the early hours of 3rd January 1911 following a tip off 200 police officers surrounded a house in Sidney Street and a six hour gun battle ensued.
The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill (highlighted in the picture) arrived on the scene and characteristically he led from the front, directing the police (a style of leadership sadly lacking in today’s politicians), and when the criminals inside set fire to the house to cover their exit he refused to allow the fire brigade to extinguish the flames. Eventually two bodies were found in the ashes and one fireman died from falling debris.
The two arrested were subsequently put on trial but acquitted through lack of evidence as most of the witnesses were either dead or had fled the country.
One of the acquitted, Jacob Peters, remained in London returning to Russia in 1917 and became deputy head of the Cheka, the Soviet Secret Police. Thousands were killed on his orders and many of the executions he personally carried out gaining the nickname “The Executioner”.
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