When the Les Enfant terribles of apparel arrived at London’s centre of bespoke tailoring of all places opposite Prince Charles’s tailor the makers of sartorial elegance were up in arms to protect their image. Even worse when Messrs. Abercrombie & Fitch opened their flagship store at 7 Burlington Gardens shoppers were greeted by male models stripped to the waist.

[A]ll this might be seen as innovative edgy retail and the American retailers must have thought they were the first owners of that property to shock – how wrong they were. This grand building, known as Queensbury House was once owned by The Duke of Queensbury who seems to have spent his long life as a gambler, drinker and notorious womaniser.

He was the last person to employ a running footman, during one interview for the post; the candidate was given a full livery outfit to wear, despite the particularly hot weather. He was then made to run back and forth in front of the house while the Duke timed him from the balcony. When the Duke shouted “You’ll do for me”, the candidate briskly replied, “and this” (pointing at the gold braided uniform) “will do for me!” at which point he sprinted off, never to be seen again.

The Duke seems to have single handily stopped the consumption of milk in London, for he was said to believe bathing in milk ‘maintained his potency’ and gallons were needed for each bathe, for many years Londoners avoided drinking milk because they feared it may have come from his bath.

In 1752 he moved to 17 Arlington Street, for the primary reason that it was next door to Miss Frances Pelham to whom had come to the attention of his lecherous eyes. Miss Pelham’s brother, the Hon. Henry Pelham, was not enamoured of Lord March as he was then, as a suitor for his sister and had him thrown out of the house. His Lordship was undaunted; he had a bow window built in his house which commanded a view of a convenient window of Miss Pelham’s so he could continue his ardent courtship with her.

He was given the Dukedom in 1778 at the age of 58 when his uncle the Third Duke of Queensbury died having been predeceased by his two children.

The newly ennobled Duke of Queensbury then took up residence in his Mayfair home and pursued a long and distinguished career as a gambler, drinker and womaniser until his death 203 years today on 23rd December 1810.

In his latter years the Duke would sit on the balcony and leer at passing ladies. If any took his fancy he’d have his butler run down and pass lewd messages to them. At the ripe old age of 85 the Duke had Sarah Baartman, the South African Hottentot Venus brought to the house so he could minutely examine her voluptuous figure in private. [ A caricature of Baartman drawn in the early 19th century left ] Regularly lampooned the Duke was known as ’The Star of Piccadilly’ for what the poet Wordsworth satirised his lifestyle in a sonnet as ’degenerate Douglas’.

For all his womanising he is better known for being an inveterate gambler. Men with too much money and time on their hands would wager obscene sums of money on trivial events – which droplet of water will reach the bottom of a window pane, is one often quoted. A member of White’s Club, in 1749 he placed a wager that became known as ’The Race Against Time’. Written in its famous betting book, it’s still in existence and reads:

‘Col Waldegrave betts Ld. March fifty guineas, that his Lordship does not win the Chaise match. N.B. Ld Anson goes col Waldegrave halves. paid.’

In short the Duke wagered that he could get a four wheeled carriage carrying a man and drawn by four horses to run a course of nineteen miles in an hour. It seems incredible now that this should seem so stupendous, but many of that time would have thought it impossible – because even if the state if the roads been better, carriages were heavy and cumbersome, without springs or tyres.

He immediately put all his ingenuity to the problem for he had bet another thousand guineas on the outcome. The rules were carefully regarded and, as no carriage body was required, this was stripped away from the frame by carriage makers he had contracted.

In fact he commissioned several carriages to be built, and at great expense, to find the fastest, lightest one for the race. Even the equipment was given careful scrutiny and the traces were made of silk and harnesses of silk and whalebone. The total weight of the carriage and harness was an incredible two and a half hundredweight.

The event took place on Newmarket Heath on 29th August 1750 at seven o’clock in the morning. Lord Queensbury was a spectator; the dubious privilege of riding in the ‘carriage’ with no seat, no support and little to cling on to was given to his groom. It was said they went off so fast that the carriage had covered four miles in the first 9 minutes. In fact the entire nineteen miles was covered in a phenomenally fast 53 minutes and 27 seconds.

Towards the end of his life Queensbury made a notable figure about London when he drove out. He always wore dark green and had long tailed black horses, and in winter he would also carry a muff. Two servants were seated behind him and his groom, Jack Radford followed on horseback ready to execute any commissions. As Radford’s commissions were usually taking notes and messages to desirable looking girls that took the Duke’s eye he managed to increase his unsavoury reputation.

Hanway Street is a narrow street connecting Oxford Street with Tottenham Court Road and is named after Major John Hanway the developer whose eccentric nephew dared to invade the rights of coachmen. This ancient lane can be traced back to the time of Henry VIII, first known as Hanover Yard then named Hanway Yard. By the 1740’s it was developed and closely associated with coaching inns situated at this busy crossroads, it later was renamed Hanway Street.

[T]he enterprising Major’s nephew was an interesting individual. After the death of his father, the result of a riding accident, Jonas Hanway at the age of 16 was sent to live with his uncle. The next year his uncle, keen to be rid of his charge, young Jonas was apprenticed as a merchant to an English factory in Lisbon.

It was here, during his 12 year stay that he developed eccentricities in dress and views. After a failed love affair he enjoyed the company of reformed prostitutes and against the custom of the day, would tip servant girls.

Returning to London he planned to lead an expedition to Persia to assess the trading of English broadcloth for Persian silks. Ambushed in Russia, with all his goods stolen, he was forced to escape in disguise.

The indefatigable Jonas then spent 5 years trying to recover his trade before returning to London in 1750. Here he developed his most famous eccentricities, always carrying a sword long after their use had fallen from fashion. He would wear flannel underwear and several pairs of socks to ward off ill-health.

He wrote an essay on tea, claiming it blackened one’s teeth, and which he considered the ‘flatulent liquor . . . pernicious to health, obstructing industry and impoverishing the nation’ . . . causing ‘men to have lost their stature and comeliness, women their beauty and chambermaids their bloom.’

Having failed to popularise the use of stilts as a way of sidestepping the muck and grime that covered 18th century streets, his use of an umbrella which were only used by ladies to give shade and as a fashion accessory would bring ridicule but prove a useful shield against mud and stones hurled by mischievous boys.

The umbrella of Hanway’s, which at the time was called a portable room, could not be furled (it would be another 20 years before a folded version would be seen), and carrying one in the crowded streets of London proved unpopular not least from the coachmen and chairmen who carried sedans.

As with today they regarded rain as a boost to their earnings. It was recorded that Hanway underwent:

All the staring, laughing, jeering, hooting, and bullying; and having punished some insolent knaves who struck him with their whips as well as their tongues, he finally succeeded in overcoming the prejudices against it.

The umbrella shop James Smith & Sons a short walk from Hanway Street has his portrait hanging in their shop, the first Londoner who owned an umbrella.

Hanway died at his home in Red Lion Square on 5th September 1786. During his life he published 85 works, many about improving the lot of the poor. Hanway’s Act, put on the Statute Book in 1762, required all London parishes to keep records of children in their care. He was governor of the Foundling Hospital and donated £50 to their cause.

In 1788 a memorial was unveiled in Westminster Abbey, the first ever commemorating charitable deeds, for his philanthropic work.

The site of 37 Albany Street was once home to naturalist William Buckland, Dean of Westminster, a fanatical animal collector and one of London’s strangest characters.

To prove the efficacy of bird droppings as fertiliser he once used great quantities of it to write the word ‘guano’ on the lawn at his Oxford College. When the summer came and the grass had grown well the letters could be clearly seen.

[B]uckland’s house was overrun with animals including two monkeys he let drink and smoke, some he slept with and others were kept till they died and then dissected or just left to rot. But Buckland’s taste for natural history extended further.

He started the Society for the Acclimatisation of Animals which aimed to naturalise exotic animals to widen the nation’s diet. His wide circle of friends were guests at Albany Street and were treated to roasted hedgehog, grilled crocodile streak, slug soup, horse’s tongue, boiled elephant trunk, rhinoceros pie and boiled porpoise head which tasted like ‘broiled lamp-wick’. If you partook of his generous hospitality, the chances are that the dish of the day came from an animal that had roamed Buckland’s house and garden a little earlier as a pet.

Stewed mole was a dish that Buckland announced to be the most revolting thing he’d eaten, though this was before he tried ‘horribly bitter’ earwigs and ‘unspeakable’ bluebottles.

Buckland acquired exotic creatures when there was a death at nearby London Zoo. On one occasion returning from holiday he was furious to discover in his absence, the zoo had buried a dead leopard. Buckland eagerly dug it up for supper.

He showed no qualms in using his taste buds in pursuit of knowledge. Travelling to London on his horse one dark wintry night Buckland got lost, but trusting to his extraordinary sense of taste he simple dismounted, picked up a handful of earth, tasted it, shouted “Uxbridge!” and went on his way – if only London’s cabbies could do the same.

While visiting a cathedral where saints’ blood was said to drip on the floor, Buckland took one lick to determine the ‘blood’ was in fact bat urine.

Buckland’s friend Edward Harcourt, Archbishop of York, was, like Buckland himself, a great collector of curiosities and had managed to obtain what was believed to be the shrunken, mummified heart of Louis XIV. He kept it in a snuff box in his London house and rashly showed it to Buckland during a dinner party. “I have eaten many things”, Buckland is reported to have said, “but never the heart of a King” and before anyone could stop him he
gobbled it up.

Picture: William Buckland in 1843.