Rules, regulations and by-laws, don’t they get you down? And London has more than its share.

Don’t touch the walrus or sit on the iceberg

The walrus has been on display at the Horniman Museum for more than a century. One of the most popular exhibits in the museum, probably due to its odd shape as it appears stretched and ‘overstuffed’ as it lacks the skin folds characteristic of a walrus in the wild. Over one hundred years ago, only a few people had ever seen a live walrus, so it is hardly surprising that ours does not look true to life. He sits on his own ‘iceberg’.

Don’t feed the pigeons

Ken Livingstone, as the first London mayor, dealt with the plague in Trafalgar Square of what he called “flying rats”. Those guilty of the offence can be punished with a £500 fine. When the square was pedestrianised Westminster Council realised the North Terrace outside the National Gallery was not covered by the ban and amended the law to prevent determined feeders from exploiting a loophole.

Don’t climb on the lions

Consultants conducted a survey in 2011 and discovered corrosion, scratches and ‘cracking’ on the lions in Trafalgar Square, and found litter pushed into their mouths.
The inspectors also discovered that the bronze on the south-east facing lion had been worn down to a thickness of just 0.2 inches, up to three times thinner than the same parts of the other lions. The same lion was seen to vibrate when visitors climbed on its back. They suggested that children stop acting out scenes from The Lion King./span>

Don’t touch a pelican

Pelican-touching is ‘expressly forbidden’ should you happen to find one in a London park, according to the Royal Parks and Other Open Spaces Regulations 1997. But should you have a desire to get your fingers bitten, you can pet one if ‘prior permission is obtained’. Presumably from the park, not the pelican.

Don’t mate with the Queen’s corgis

Apparently, you were once forbidden to allow your dogs to mate with one of the Monarch’s corgis. Presumably, this is to avoid any unwanted mongrel offspring, the dogs that is.

Don’t kill a swan

The Queen doesn’t own all the breeds of swan in England, but she does have first dips on mute swans. But she’s only allowed to eat them, as long as she and her diners are guests of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Mute swans are a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981 and killing them is punishable with a £5,000 fine.

Don’t handle a salmon suspiciously

Under the well-known Salmon Act of 1986, it’s illegal to handle salmon ‘under suspicious circumstances’. You’ve been warned.

Normally at this time of year we expect the West End’s shopping streets to put up a show at Christmas, but during the 1960s this wasn’t the case, with only Oxford Street entering into the festive spirit. The Regent Street Association realising their less prestigious cousin was taking all the compliments were not to be outdone. They hired a well-known Italian designer charged with producing a ‘tasteful’ display to rival their competitor.

His solution was to produce giant white flying angels made out of papier-mâché posed with their faces looking down serenely at the crowds below.London in those days was renowned for rain, in fact, you could spot an American a mile-off for they came here prepared for their visit wearing the ubiquitous white raincoat, Columbo style. This particular November had seen an exceptional amount of rain, even by London standards.

The Italian designer just hadn’t taken in the fact that Northern Europe is considerably damper than the Mediterranean. Soon the press was running the story about Pregnant Angels, no doubt to the amusement of Oxford Street retailers.

Journalist and author Alf Townsend takes up the story:

I noticed a guy done up in heavy waterproof gear and wearing a yellow sou’wester. He was sitting on a cart that Westminster Council road sweepers used in those days and I thought to myself, “this bloke is out late”. He came over to ask for a light and we got talking. He said his job started after the traffic had died down and, picking up this long pole with a wicked-looking blade at the end, he told me that the pole could reach some 40 feet when it was extended. His job was to pierce the angel’s tummies and let the water out – hence his heavy waterproofs! We had a good laugh over it – especially when he said the guys back at the depot called him, “the Holy Terminator”..

The Regent Street ‘Angels’ can be found on the Guardian’s vintage photographs of Christmas in London.

Featured image: Regent Street – Angel Christmas Lights (2016-2018). The theme is angels, inspired by the first Regent Street Christmas lights in 1954, by Oast House Archive (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The idea that in 1885 there was a Japanese village located in Knightsbridge, the heart of bustling Victorian colonialism, may strike many as something more akin to today’s multi-cultural London, yet, in the nascent years of Anglo-Japanese relations, a corner of Victorian London was, for two years, from January 1885 until June 1887, transformed into ‘The Japanese Native Village, erected and peopled exclusively by natives of Japan’.

[T]HE EXHIBITION was completely contained within Humphreys’ Hall, which was south of Knightsbridge and east of what is now Trevor Street, employing around 100 Japanese men and women in a setting built to resemble a traditional Japanese village.

According to advertisements placed in the Illustrated London News:

Skilled Japanese artisans and workers (male and female) will illustrate the manners, customs, and art-industries of their country, attired in their national and picturesque costumes. Magnificently decorated and illuminated Buddhist temple. Five o’clock tea in the Japanese tea-house. Japanese Musical and other Entertainments. Every-day Life as in Japan.

The result of the opening up of Japan to trade with Britain in the 1850s, an English craze for all things Japanese had built through the 1860s and 1870s, led by the British perception of Japan as a mediaeval culture.

The Japanese Village was visited by over 250,000 in its first months. Attracted principally by a massive amount of press attention, showing its replica Japanese houses populated by genuine Japanese men, women and children as well as its: “magnificently decorated and illuminated Buddhist temple”.

The Japanese Village opened only two months before Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado opened at the Savoy Theatre in March of that year.

Gilbert had begun work on the libretto of The Mikado long before that, in May 1884, and had in fact finished Act 1 two months before the Japanese Village opened. It was fortuitous, however, that at the height of Japanese mania the most popular songwriters of their day brought their work to a London stage.

The Japanese Village, however, had assisted in various aspects of the stage production. Indeed, the programme of The Mikado in 1885 actually carried an acknowledgement of the support received from the Japanese Village:

The Management desires to acknowledge the valuable assistance afforded by the Directors and Native Inhabitants of the Japanese Village, Knightsbridge.

It was this energy and intense curiosity that contributed to the founding of the Japan Society in 1891, an organization which today still enthusiastically promotes and celebrates Anglo-Japanese relations.

If you have a desire to immerse your senses in Japan, you could go along to the School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS University – at the western corner of Russell Square. Above the Brunei Gallery, there is a small perfectly formed Japanese garden [featured], complete with raked gravel, wisteria and lemon thyme.