Gilly Pickup - The A-Z of Curious London

This book is dedicated to my beloved mother, Janet Reekie, who passed away while I was writing it. She would have been proud and, like me, she loved London too.

T HANK YOU to London, the greatest city in the world, because, without her bottomless wealth of stories, history and characters, this book would not exist.

Thank you to Matilda, my commissioning editor, for putting enough trust in me to write The A-Z of Curious London , and everyone whose enthusiasm and encouragement helped to keep the pages flowing. My appreciation also goes to all those who, when they found out I was writing this book said, Oh, how exciting! Let me know when its finished and Ill go and buy a copy. Nows your chance!

I am grateful for the images received from various sources credits are given with each individual image used and I would also like to thank the photographers whose work is made available through Wikimedia Commons, again I have listed details with each image.

Grateful thanks to Sydney, Lester and most of all, my husband Mike, for help, advice, ideas, and endless cups of invigorating coffee. Mikes suggestions and support have been invaluable.

London, c . 1590. (Maps of old London ed. G.E. Milton. (1908 author Ralph Agas from Wikimedia Commons)

T HIS BOOK is full of spooky, gruesome, weird but true things about one of the worlds greatest cities. I have tried to bring the past to life and keep the present interesting in this compendium, a book to dip into when the mood takes you, or read from A to Z if you prefer. Although it includes a lot of history, it does not dwell on the boring bits. So, if you want to trawl through pages and pages of serious history, this is not the book for you. My advice is to treat it as a fun companion. Brimming full of stories to astonish, amuse and inform some of Londons best-kept secrets are unravelled in these pages.

London is a particularly rich source of strange tales: from the gruesome (why did a dentist keep his dead wife on view in a shop window?); the bizarre (a doctor who treated epilepsy by firing a gun near to his patients to frighten the illness away); the quirky (a 4,000 -year-old mouse made from Nile clay); the seriously grisly (the murderer who drank his victims blood before dissolving them in acid); the naughty (the Queen who showed an ambassador her bare bosom); the scary (the tube station where the blood-curdling screams of an eighteenth-century murder victim have been heard); and the simply peculiar (the dance you would definitely never, ever, ever want to do).

View over London. ( VisitBritain / James McCormick)

Piccadilly Circus around 18901900. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-08577)

To sum up, you will read of eccentrics, legends, murders, scandals, ghosts, incredible characters, weird historical facts and yarns galore. I was sorry when I reached my allotted word count, because there are so many more tales to tell about this extraordinary city. Those included only just scratch the surface. I hope you enjoy reading The A-Z of Curious London as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Gilly Pickup, 2013

ARRESTED FOR WEARING A TOP HAT

London haberdasher James Hetherington was arrested on the Strand in 1797 for wearing a top hat. In fact, he caused a terrible commotion as no one had ever seen a hat like it before, and according to a newspaper of the day, passers-by panicked, women fainted and children screamed. It is even said that a boy suffered a broken arm when he was knocked down in the hullabaloo. Hetherington was charged with causing a breach of the peace by appearing on the public highway wearing a tall structure of shining lustre calculated to disturb timid people. You could say that was the beginning of something big as far as headgear went and, after the tumult subsided, people started to place orders for top hats. It reached its heyday in the nineteenth century, when it was said that an assembled gathering of gentlemen looked like the chimneys of the Industrial Revolution!

Whilst on the subject of hats, the worlds oldest family-run hat shop was founded in London in 1676 . Around this time, after the Great Plague and Fire of London caused havoc in the City, well-to-do families and tradesmen started to move westwards. In medieval times, the City constituted most of London, but over the years the conurbation grew far beyond it. As the Citys boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, it is now only a tiny part of the metropolis, although it holds city status in its own right.

Soon the development of the West End had begun, encouraged by landowners who had lost heavily during the English Civil War and needed to raise money from their estates. George James Lock was one of these tradesmen. The patriarchal head of the Lock family was Sir John Lock and they had interests in coffee, chocolate and tobacco imported from Turkey. When the Great Fire of 1666 disrupted the business, the family moved to the West End. In 1686 , funded by his successful trading concerns, George James Lock became the leaseholder of seven houses in St Jamess Street. On the site there had once stood a real tennis court built in 1617 for the then Prince of Wales, who became Charles I. George lived in one of the houses, and rented the other houses out to merchants and private individuals.

The Strand, c . 1901. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-68658)

The bowler hat was created at James Locks business in 1850 , for a progressive farmer from Norfolk called William Coke. It was a domed hat, hardened by the application of shellac, designed to protect the heads of gamekeepers from overhanging branches. The hat was a snug fit to ensure that it would not easily blow or fall off. The prototype was made by Southwark hat makers, Thomas and William Bowler, and was brought to St Jamess Street to be tested by William Coke himself. He did this by jumping on the hat and, satisfied that it withstood his weight, he purchased it.

The Lock & Co. shop has supplied headgear to the great and the good including Oscar Wilde, Napoleon, Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Depp. The shop has been at St Jamess Street (SW) since the mid- 1700 s and was even patronised by Admiral Lord Nelson, who bought his first hat from Locks in 1800 . It was made of beaver fur with a black silk cockade and cost s d . He became a frequent customer and later purchased a black silk hat for an unnamed lady, almost certainly his mistress, Emma Hamilton.

In 1803 , he returned to the shop. The glare of reflected light from the sea and the battle hazards of smoke and grit were affecting his good eye, and he was worried that he would lose the sight in that one too. He asked if the shop could make him a hat with a built-in shade, protecting both eyes. Lock & Co. made him two hats to this specification and the drawings survive today in the shops archives.