David Long - Bizarre London

BIZARRE LONDON

David Long

Constable London

Constable & Robinson Ltd

55-56 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

Copyright David Long 2013

The right of David Long to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication
Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4721-0931-6 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-4721-0933-0 (ebook)

Printed and bound in the UK

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Cover design and illustration by Sara Mulvanny

BIZARRE LONDON

As a sprawling world city covering some 600 square miles, with 300 different languages spoken and more than 8 million people sharing a history stretching back 2,000 years, its hardly surprising that London throws up so much that is strange, unexplained or just plain odd.

From a highwayman dressed as a bishop to a duke so shy he surrounded his garden with frosted glass walls nearly 80 ft tall, its always had more than its fair share of eccentrics. Londoners have similarly been subject to some of the weirdest laws, requiring golfers to wear red, MPs not to wear armour, and the rest of us to abstain from carrying planks along pavements or playing cards within a mile of an arsenal or explosives store.

And, of course, London has also been able to lay claim to some of the most extraordinary buildings anywhere in Britain. From an underground caf converted from a council loo to an authentic Tudor palace moved brick by brick to a more attractive riverside setting, they include Britains tallest family home spread over eleven floors of a genuine Wren church spire as well as its smallest listed building and a museum of anaesthetics.

But even so, in a place like London not that anywhere is remotely like London this sort of thing is only the start. Britains shortest canal, its least secret secret bunker and most private public house, its biggest bang, the only part of the National Cycle Network on which bikes are banned, and the most outrageously expensive takeaway meal ever ordered youll find them all in the following pages.

From Boudicca to Boris and beyond, the list of curiosities is as long as it is varied. Skating on lard? The Victorians were doing it in London. Sixty days of rioting after theatre prices went up by sixpence? That happened here, too, in 1809. And the worlds first ever female urinal? Well, that made its debut in London in the 1920s, but had to be removed almost immediately when women started using it in an uncleanly manner. How could anyone be tired of London?

David Long, May 2013
www.davidlong.info

And in any case, I have only a little neck.

Anne Boleyn

Rouse met an appropriate end for a cook. Found guilty of attempting to poison his master, he was boiled alive on a spot between Barts Hospital and Smithfields meat market. The meal he had prepared made the Bishop of Rochester deeply unwell, and sixteen of his attendants died. After being briefly displayed on a spike, Rouses head was chucked into the river.

The last direct descendant of the Plantagenet line, the Countess was doomed after appearing to side with Catherine of Aragon against Henry VIII. On the day small, frail, ill and sixty-eight years old she refused to submit to the block and had to be forced down on to it. As she struggled, the axe struck her a glancing blow on the shoulder but somehow she leapt up and attempted to run for it. Once subdued, it took another ten blows to finish the old lady off.

The French watchmaker was hanged after admitting he started the Great Fire of London. In reality, he had been framed for the crime by anti-Catholics, but burning down a house carried the death penalty at the time. Londoners wanted revenge for the more than 13,000 properties that had been lost to the flames, and Hubert Catholic, foreign, apparently stealing highly paid work from English craftsmen was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and must have fitted the bill perfectly.

The illegitimate son of Charles II, when the Duke of Monmouth was found guilty of treason in 1685, the inept executioner, Jack Ketch, took five blows with an axe. Even then, as he was almost certainly drunk, his work had to be finished off by a man with a knife.

Primitive technology has enabled the odd villain to escape the drop, but its a myth that if the mechanism failed they were declared free men. OBryan was a convicted footpad a thief who preyed on pedestrians who somehow survived a hanging. But when he was re-caught, re-convicted and re-hanged, his body was then boiled in tar to make absolutely sure he wouldnt escape justice again.

THE ETIQUETTE OF EXECUTION

Until 1753, women found guilty of murdering their husbands could expect to be burned at the stake, although kindly attempts were sometimes made to strangle them before the flames really began to hurt. For centuries, beheading was similarly considered more honourable than hanging, and the really privileged such as Anne Boleyn, as queen might be dispatched with a sword rather than the more mundane and brutal axe.

Hanging was always thought good enough for the masses, however, and traditionally condemned men (and not a few women) were taken from Newgate Gaol in the walled city where the Old Bailey is today to the so-called Tyburn Tree north of Hyde Park. On the way, each would be presented with scented nosegays by crowds that could number into the tens of thousands. Convicts could also enjoy a last drink free of charge along the way.

The pub of choice was the Masons Arms, which is still open for business today in Seymour Place, W1. There is nothing left of the gallows, however, which stood in what is now the south-west corner of Connaught Square. The structure was large enough to hang twenty-one at a time and, bizarrely, there was an order in which the executions were to be carried out. Traditionally, the public liked to see highwaymen dispatched first as the so-called aristocrats of crime (see ) then common thieves, and finally anyone convicted of treason.

The Scots sailor-turned-pirate was probably no worse than any other but he has somehow become legend. As befits his trade, he was hanged on the Thames at Wapping Stairs, for long enough for three tides to wash over his body, and then again at Tilbury where his rotting corpse was left swinging in the wind for more than twenty years.

Accused of the hideous Ratcliffe Highway Murders when members of two families had their throats cut Williams was, in all likelihood, innocent, but hanged himself in his cell before a jury could decide. With suicide illegal, and (more significantly) bloodthirsty Londoners feeling cheated of the gruesome spectacle they felt they deserved, his corpse was paraded through East London and a stake driven through his heart before the burial at the crossroads of New Road and Cannon Street Road, E1.