Lost London (22 page)

That was not the end of the night’s entertainment, either. There followed a ballet dance between a man and a woman that shocked our audience member to his very boots:

If there had been any feat of agility, any grimacing, or, in fact, anything with which the laughter of the uneducated classes is usually associated, the applause might be accounted for: but
here were two ruffians degrading themselves each time they stirred a limb, and forcing the brains of the childish audience before them to thoughts that embitter a lifetime.

Shoreditch

T
HE PRECURSOR TO ALL
L
ONDON
’
S LIDOS
(
OR
open-air swimming pools) was the
subject of a wonderful piece of rebranding. Located on Old Street, this was an ancient spring famed in the 17th century for its duck-hunting but with a reputation for accidents.

The London historian, John Stow, once called it Perilous Pond due to the number of young men who had drowned in it. In 1752 it was converted at considerable expense into a
gravel-bottomed swimming pool by the jeweller William Kemp, opening in its new guise as the Peerless Pool in 1752.

It measured 170 x 108ft and was filled with water to a maximum depth of 5 feet. Kemp charged an entry fee of one shilling, making it the preserve of the wealthy, who had access to marble
changing rooms. Shaded by fine trees, the pool soon became a popular city resort. For a hundred years people came to swim in the summer and skate in the winter but by 1850 it had been built over.
The nearby Peerless Street and Bath Street are now the only indicators that it was ever here.

Swimming, however, went on to take the capital by storm, and the 1930s saw an explosion in the growth of lidos, almost all of which have now been lost to redevelopment.

So also were ‘fraudulent corn, coal, and cattle dealers, cutters of purses, sellers of sham gold rings, keepers of infamous houses, forgers of letters, bonds, and deeds, counterfeits of
papal bulls, users of unstamped measures, and forestallers of the markets’.

The medieval punishment of standing in the pillory saw the culprit strapped into a wooden contraption that held the hands and head exposed as the good folk of the town hurled abuse, rotten fruit
and often much, much worse at the offender. The principal locations of London’s pillories were Cheapside, Cornhill, Old Bailey, Palace Yard and Charing Cross. Other temporary pillories were
regularly erected elsewhere, including Clerkenwell Green and St James’s.

Should a magistrate have considered a particular crime worthy of extra punishment, additional grotesque forms of retribution could be added to the sentence. For instance,
those found guilty of spreading rumours might have their ears nailed to the pillory. William Prynne, a lawyer and vociferous opponent of the established church, was pilloried three
times in the 1630s. He had one ear cut off while pilloried at Palace Yard, and the second was removed at Cheapside. Imprisoned for life, he continued to write seditious tracts and was pilloried
again, and the letters S and L (for ‘Seditious Libeler’) branded on his cheeks.

Many lost their lives in the pillory, the reaction of the public being so vehement against them. Others fared better though, such as Daniel Defoe who claimed he was pelted with flowers when he
was given a sentence for attacking unpopular practices in the church. The punishment was formally abolished in 1837, James Peter Bossy having the dubious honour of being the last man to endure it
on 24 June 1830 at the Old Bailey.

Mass graves were undoubtedly dug, but the vast majority of these were in traditional graveyards. The records of St Bride’s Church for the period of the last great
outbreak of plague, in 1665, show that although a vast number of parishioners
died – over 2000 – they were nearly all accommodated in one of the church’s
three graveyards.

Daniel Defoe in his
Journal of the Plague Year
records having seen new mass graves being dug in a variety of city churchyards, although how much veracity we can place on his information
is debatable. His book, which is more novel than reportage, was written in 1722. Defoe was 4, or possibly 6 years old at the time of the plague, his date of birth being unsure.

At various times large numbers of bones have been discovered when new Tube lines are dug, or when new buildings erected. The Broadgate construction around Liverpool Street Station uncovered a
vast quantity – but these are thought to have been the dead from the original Bedlam Hospital which once occupied the area.

Samuel Pepys makes no mention of plague pits in his diary for 1665 – and he lived and stayed in the city for much of the time. It is likely, though, that Bunhill Fields was first opened to
bury the plague dead at the height of the infestation in August 1665.

The most enduring myth is that Blackheath is so named as it was the burial site used during the Black Death (1348-1350), although this is untrue. Recorded in 1166, nearly 200 years beforehand as
‘Blachehedfeld’ – it is derived from the colour of the soil – black.

But the tanning businesses of Bermondsey – remembered in road names such as Leather Lane and Leathermarket Street – needed one particular resource that the
capital’s working class could collect for themselves on the very streets where they walked: dog dung.

Called ‘pure’ because of its cleansing property when curing leather, it was gathered by the bucketful. The white variety was the most valuable so collectors were often found to have
adulterated their finds with mortar from walls. It is estimated that when the tanning industry was at its peak, 300 people made a living collecting pure. The irrepressible Henry Mayhew provided
this description of the unfortunate workers:

The pure-finder ... is often found in the open streets as dogs wander where they like. The pure-finders always carry a handle basket, generally with a cover, to hide the contents, and have
their right hand covered with a black leather glove; many of them however dispense with the glove, as they say it is much easier to wash their hands than to keep the glove fit for use. Thus
equipped, they may be seen pursuing their avocation in almost every street in and about London, excepting such streets as are now cleansed by the ‘street orderlies’ of whom the
pure-finders grievously complain, as being an unwarrantable interference in the privileges of their class.

Langham Place

T
HE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE
‘P
ROMS
’, Q
UEEN
’
S
Hall opened in 1893
but was not an initial success.

Containing two auditoria – one with seating for 2500 and the other a smaller room for chamber orchestras and an audience of 500 – in particular, its décor did
not immediately strike a chord with music lovers.