Category Archives: London Characters

Negretti & Zambra, Admiral FitzRoy, James Glaisher. From London to Orkney via Greenwich

I have just put up the final dates until next summer for these two walks if you would like to explore these areas with me, using my father’s photos from the late 1940s:

The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain on Sunday 20th of October. Click here to book.

The Lost Streets of the Barbican on Saturday the 2nd of November. Click here to book.

This post was not in my long list of posts to write. It was a chance discovery that resulted in a fascinating set of connections that led back to London. (I am probably guilty of over using the word fascinating, but I really found this one so interesting).

And in a weird coincidence, shortly after, I found a related plaque and tree in London, that I have walked past hundreds of times and never noticed.

The story starts in early September, when we were in Orkney for a few days, the cluster of islands off the north coast of Scotland.

Orkney has long been somewhere we have wanted to visit – Neolithic stone circles, henges and standing stones, a Neolithic village older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, lots of walking and a stunning coast.

We had taken the ferry from Scrabster on the coast of the Scottish mainland, over the Pentland Firth and arrived at Stromness, the second largest town in Orkney.

At this point, London seemed a very distant place, and London and the blog were not on my mind.

Walking along the street that runs the length of the older part of Stromness, we reached a slightly wider open space in front of Stromness Parish Church:

And on the left as you looked at the church there was a large, rectangular white box:

The box held a barometer and thermometer of some age:

And this is where the London connection comes in as the instrument was made by the scientific instrument company of Negretti & Zambra who were based in London.

In 1864 Negretti & Zambra published a little book with the title of “A Treatise on Metrological Instruments”, and the book included details of the type of instrument installed at Stromness in Orkney, as one of their public barometers:

The barometer in Stromness was one of Negretti & Zambra’s Fishery or Sea-coast Barometers, and the book included the following description of the instrument, which is shown to the left of the above page from the book:

“The frame is of solid oak, firmly secured together. The scales are very legibly engraved on porcelain by Negretti and Zambra’s patent process. The thermometer is large, and easily read; and as this instrument is exposed, it will indicate the actual temperature sufficiently for practical purposes.

The barometer tube is three-tenths of an inch in diameter of bore, exhibiting a good column of mercury; and the cistern is of such capacity, in relation to the tube, that the change of height in the surface of the mercury in the cistern corresponding to a change of height of three inches of mercury in the tube, is less than one-hundredth of an inch, and therefore, as the readings are only to be made to this degree of accuracy, this small error is of not importance.

The cistern is made of boxwood, which is sufficiently porous to allow the atmosphere to influence the mercurial column; but the top is plugged with porous cane, to admit of free and certain play.”

Detail of the scale at the top of the column of mercury, which is in the glass tube in the middle:

The scales either side are marked with the height of the mercury column in inches of mercury – the way in which atmospheric pressure was, and still is, measured (although millimeters and millibars are also used instead of inches).

On the left are the forecast weather conditions for the height of mercury if the height of the column of mercury is rising, and on the right are the expected weather conditions for a falling column of mercury.

At the very top of the scale we can see the names of Negretti & Zambra as the manufacturers of the device, and on the right we can see their locations; 1 Hatton Garden, 122 Regent Street and 59 Cornhill, so this is a company with a considerable London heritage.

The top of the scale in more detail is shown below:

The company of Negretti & Zambra was founded in 1850 by Enrico Negretti and Joseph Zambra.

Enrico Negretti (who also used the first name of Henry) was an Italian, born in 1818, and who had emigrated to London at the age of 10. In London, he served an apprenticeship as a glassblower and thermometer maker.

Joseph Zambra was born in Saffron Walden in Essex in 1822, and also had Italian heritage as his father had emigrated from Como. Zambra learnt the skills he would later use in their company as his father was an optician and barometer maker.

Zambra moved from Saffron Walden to London in 1840, living within the Anglo-Italian community which was based around Leather Lane in Holborn, and it was here that he met Negretti, and with complimentary skills, they decided to go into partnership to form the firm of Negretti & Zambra on the 23rd of April, 1850, and operating from 11 Hatton Garden, where they specialised in the manufacture of barometers and thermometers.

Whilst they did make and sell barometers for home use, their reputation came from the design and manufacture of barometers and thermometers with an accuracy, ease of use, and robustness, that could be used in very difficult locations, and for measuring temperature and pressure where they had not been measured before, for example by taking deep sea temperature measurements.

They held a number of patents in both the design and manufacture of instruments, and they were the only English manufacturers to win a medal at the 1851 Great Exhibition and as recorded at the top of the scale on the Orkney barometer, they were appointed opticians and scientific instrument makers to Queen Victoria.

The range of instruments manufactured by the company expanded rapidly, and their 1864 Treatise on Metrological Instruments includes a catalogues of instruments for the home, for portable use , for use up mountains, marine barometers, storm glasses, botanical thermometers, brewers thermometers, instruments to measure humidity, instruments to measure the amount of rainfall, and others to measure steam pressure and to measure pressure in a vacuum.

Their catalogue included a drawing of their three central London locations at Cornhill in the City, Hatton Garden / Holborn Viaduct, and Regent Street:

So the Stromness, Orkney barometer was made in London, but why is it there?

This is where Vice-Admiral FitzRoy, the next name comes into the story.

Robert FitzRoy was born on the 5th of July, 1805 in Ampton, Suffolk and he had a very wide ranging career, being an officer in the Royal Navy, a Governor of New Zealand, and was interested in scientific matters, particularly the weather and the storms that were so dangerous to travelers on the sea.

He was the Captain of HMS Beagle, when Charles Darwin was onboard on their almost five year voyage around the world between 1831 and 1836.

FitzRoy became a member of the Royal Society in 1851, and three years later was appointed as the head of a new organisation within the Board of Trade that was tasked with the collection of weather data from ships at sea and coastal ports. This would evolve into what we know today at the Met Office.

Weather data was important, as in the middle of the 19th century there was no systematic method of weather data collection from across the country and also no weather forecasting.

Whilst this was a relatively small problem for those on land, it could often be a matter of life and death for those at sea, and there were numerous ship wrecks and deaths as a result of storms that hit without any warning.

An example from 1858 in the Inverness Chronicle covering the waters around Orkney shows the impact:

“MELANCHOLY LOSS OF SIX MEN – Early last month the herring-fishing boat Margaret, of Tonque, in the parish of Lewis, after prosecuting the herring fishing here, left for home, in company with hundreds of others, which were overtaken by a heavy gale of north-easterly wind soon after passing through the Pentland Firth. the boats fled in all directions, where there was the shadow of a chance of shelter.

Many reached the lochs of the west coast of Sutherland; one reached Skaill Bay, in Orkney; one crew was picked up by an American vessel and landed here, their boat being subsequently found and taken to Stornoway. meanwhile, intelligence of the safe arrival of the Lewis crews, with the exception of that referred to, has reached; and the appearance of a portion of the wreck of their boat, driven ashore at Birsay, in Orkney, leaves no room to doubt their sad fate.

When last seen the boat was about ten miles off Cape Wreath, making for the Minch of Lews, on the evening of Friday the 10th, when other boats in their company was parted from them by the violence of the storm.”

FitzRoy wanted to make weather information, including some indication of the forecast weather, available for fishermen, such as those in the above article, and for shipping in general.

His scheme was to distribute barometers to fishing communities and coastal villages around the country, and Negretti and Zambra were responsible for the manufacture of the barometers.

According to the Treatise on Metrological Instruments by Negretti and Zambia, FitzRoy was responsible for the wording on the barometer scale, with the predictions for weather based on whether the column of mercury was rising or falling and the height of the column. Fitzroy’s wording can be seen on the Orkney barometer.

Barometers were loaned free of charge to poor fishing communities, or were funded by a wealthy local, or through voluntary donations. This last method was used for the barometer in Orkney, which is recorded at the very top of the instrument, which can just be seen in one of the photos earlier in the post.

The barometer was sent from London to Orkney on the 27th of October 1869, and it was number 98 in the chain of barometers around the coast. The first barometers in the network seem to have been sent to their coastal location in early 1861, and the network expanded rapidly over the coming years.

The arrival of the barometer was recorded in the Orcadian newspaper on the 20th of November 1869:

“BAROMETER – The barometer, which we mentioned last week was to be sent here for the guidance of fishermen and others, has arrived; but as yet no suitable site has been obtained for its erection. The barometer is the gift of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and was consigned to their honorary secretary here – Mr. James R. Garriock – in whose shop window it is now on view. A register of its indications is, we understand, to be kept, and will be exhibited alongside the instrument. In front of the barometer is a thermometer.”

The Stromness, Orkney barometer was installed a couple of years after FitzRoy’s death, but became part of FitzRoy’s initial barometer network, where readings of the barometer were telegraphed back to Fitzroy’s Meteorological Office in London, where the collection of data was used to put out rudimentary weather forecasts.

These first forecasts were very basic, for example the following is from the Yorkshire Gazette on the 13th of February, 1864 – one of the first forecasts sent out from London:

“WEATHER FORECAST – Admiral Fitzroy telegraphs that a gale may be expected, most probably from the southward.”

A very simple, but very valuable forecast if you were a fisherman.

In the 1860s, problems within the Meteorological Office, and the many challenges with other organisations and users of the forecasting service (for example as the forecast came from the Met Office which was part of the Board of Trade, a Government department, it was seen to be an official pronouncement and therefore subject to far more criticism and challenge than a local forecast). FitzRoy also had financial problems and suffered from depression.

Possibly due to all these pressures, Robert FitzRoy took his own life on the 30th of April, 1865.

There were many, long obituaries in the newspapers of the time, with the following being typical of the first few sentences:

“ADMIRAL FITZROY – The public have lost a valuable servant and humanity a friend, unwearied in his efforts to save life, in the death of Admiral Robert FitzRoy, the head of the Meteorological department of the Board of Trade, who committed suicide on Sunday morning. The sad event took place at Lyndhurst House, Norwood, Surrey. The unfortunate gentleman had been for several days in a very low state; but nothing in particular was apprehended by his fronds, who considered the marked change in his manners owing to over study, and this, no doubt, has been the cause of the catastrophe.”

Robert Fitzroy’s legacy was the Met Office, that is still responsible for providing weather forecasts today, along with the few remaining barometers he designed and were installed in fishing and coastal villages around the British Isles, such as the one in Stromness, Orkney.

Negretti and Zambra continued to capitalise on their relationship with Robert FitzRoy, and the barometers that they had produced for him, after his death.

Thomas Babington took over the Meteorological Office after FitzRoy’s death, and wrote to Negretti and Zambra, complaining that their advertising was implying that all barometers used by Fitzroy were made by Negretti and Zambra and that they were using the “absurd title of storm barometer”, which implied that their barometers had an ability to predict storms.

Babington’s letter does not seem to have changed Negretti and Zambra’s marketing strategy, as they continued advertising in much the same way as before.

Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy:

There is one other name I need to track down, along with the connection to Greenwich.

On the body of the Stromness barometer is the following label:

The statement that the barometer reads correctly with Greenwich Standard was signed by James Glaister, F.R.S.

Firstly why Greenwich?

If you were distributing a network of barometers around the country and receiving their readings centrally in London, and making forecasts based on these readings, it was essential that you could trust the reading from each barometer, and that they were correctly calibrated, so that if they were all in the same place, they would all have the same reading.

This is where Greenwich came in to the process. the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is well known for its astronomical work, but the institution was also responsible for many other scientific activities, and one of the departments at the Royal Observatory was the Department of Meteorology and Magnetism, and James Glaister was the Superintendent of this department for 34 years, including the period when the barometers were being dispatched across the country.

I assume the process must have been that they were manufactured by Negretti & Sambra in central London, then sent to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, where they were calibrated and checked against a standard barometer reading at the observatory.

The label with James Glaisher’s signature was then attached, and the barometer shipped to the coastal location where it was to be installed.

James Glaisher was a fascinating character. Born in Rotherhithe on the 7th of April 1809, the son of a watchmaker which probably contributed to his interest in scientific instruments.

The family moved from Rotherhithe to Greenwich, and Glaisher’s first experience of the Royal Observatory came from a visit when he was aged 20.

His first job was working on the principal triangulation of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland. This was the process of measuring distances and heights, essential to producing accurate maps.

After this he worked at the Cambridge University observatory, under Professor George Airy, who would become Astronomer Royal at Greenwich in June 1835, and Airy bought Glaisher from Cambridge to Greenwich and the two continued to work together.

In 1838 Airy put Glaisher in charge of the new magnetic and meteorological department which Airy had established at Greenwich, and he would work in this role for almost 40 years. One part of his new role was making and managing the recording of meteorological observations, and he was also responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the instruments used, and by 1850 he was the recognized authority in the country for the verification of meteorological instruments, which is why his name is on the barometer in Stromness, Orkney.

He was one of the founders of the British Meteorological Society, and was elected as the society’s first secretary.

James Glaisher:

James Glaisher by Samuel Alexander Walker. albumen carte-de-visite, 1860s
NPG x22544© National Portrait Gallery, London

Although Glaisher’s work at the Greenwich Royal Observatory was important, and contributed considerably to the measurement and observations of the weather, and in the type and accuracy of the instruments used, to the general public he was best known for his ballooning exploits. These were carried out under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, with the intention of making observations and measurements at high altitudes.

The following is a report from the 18th of April, 1902 on James Glaisher’s 93rd birthday, and covers his ballooning exploits in some hair raising detail:

“SEVEN MILES IN THE AIR – NONAGENARIAN BALLOONIST’S REMARKABLE RECORD. Mr. James Glaisher, F.R.A.S, who made the highest balloon ascent ever recorded, has just celebrated his 93rd anniversary of his birthday. Mr. Glaisher will be remembered by the world’s scientists as the father of meteorology in England. He founded the Royal Meteorological Society in 1850, and from 1841 until the present time has supplied the quarterly and annual meteorological reports published by the Registrar-General. Now he thinks it is time he handed over the task to another. It was on September 5, 1862 that Mr. Glaisher, accompanied by Mr. Coxwell, a dentist and aeronaut, made the most famous of his balloon ascents.

‘I was a married man’ he said in the course of a conversation the other day, ‘and I did not think a married man ought to go ballooning, but I found that I must go up myself if I wanted observations properly taken, so I took to ballooning and made 29 ascents.

The September ascent was from Wolverhampton. The balloon soared up above the clouds and Mr. Glaisher, as was his custom, kept his eyes on his instruments and his notebooks until he recorded a height of 28,000ft. Then he found that he had lost the use of his limbs, and he saw Mr. Coxwell climb up to the ring and try to seize the valve rope, but Mr. Coxwell’s hands were so benumbed that he could not use them. He seized the valve-rope in his teeth and thus tugged the valve open.

Meanwhile Mr. Glaisher had fallen unconscious, with his head over the side of the car. He was unconscious for 13 minutes, and when he recovered, the balloon, which had been going up at a rate of 1000ft a minute, was descending at the rate of 2000ft a minute. During the interval it is calculated that the balloon rose to a height of over seven miles.

Another of Mr. Glaisher’s adventures happened at Newhaven. While he and Mr. Coxwell were high up the clouds parted, and they found themselves all but over the sea. Mr. Coxwell hung on to the valve-rope so long that the balloon lost all its gas, and fell two or three thousand feet to the earth. The car and the instruments were smashed, but the balloonists escaped with slight injuries.”

The wonderfully described “Mr. Coxwell, a dentist and aeronaut” was Henry Coxwell, who, as well as being a dentist was a professional balloonist and Glaisher partnered with Coxwell so he could takes scientific measurements during the ascent which Coxwell controlled.

Coxwell made a number of ascents across London, many for show, including from Cremorne Gardens (Chelsea), Woolwich and Mile End Road.

The Wolverhampton ascent is remarkable. Most commercial jet airliners will travel at somewhere between 5.5 and 7 miles at their cruising altitude. Just imagine looking out of an airliner’s windows at that height and seeing two Victorian balloonists in their wicker basket.

James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell illustrated in their balloon:

James Glaisher; Henry Tracey Coxwell by Negretti & Zambra albumen carte-de-visite, late 1862 3 1/2 in. x 2 1/2 in. (90 mm x 62 mm)
Given by John Herbert Dudley Ryder, 5th Earl of Harrowby, 1957
Photographs Collection NPG x22561

Surprisingly, both Glaisher and Coxwell both lived a long life, and both died peacefully, rather than in a balloonoing accident. James Glaisher lived to the age of 93 and Henry Coxwell reached the age of 80.

The 2019 film The Aeronauts was based on Glaisher and Coxwell’s highest ascent, with Eddie Redmayne playing James Glaisher, however Henry Coxwell was completely left out of the film, with the character of the balloon’s pilot being Amelia Wren, played by Felicity Jones.

The Great Storm of 1987

Robert Fitzroy founded the Met Office in 1854, and began the process of gradually producing more and more accurate weather forecasts.

By a rather strange coincidence, soon after returning from Scotland, I was walking past Charing Cross Station, somewhere I have walked hundreds of times, and noticed for the first time, a couple of plaques on one of the pillars outside the station which record one of the most dramatic weather events for a very long time. They also remind us how over 100 years after the founding of the Met Office, forecasting was still difficult:

The top plaque records the “Great Storm” that struck south east England in the early hours of Friday the 16th of October 1987, and that in “four violent hours London lost 250,000 trees”:

I well remember that storm. I got home late that evening after a leaving do for a work colleague at, if I remember rightly, the Punch & Judy in Covent Garden, and it seemed to be getting very windy.

Overnight, the chimney on our house came apart, brick by brick, but luckily no further structural damage.

After the storm, Angus McGill of the Evening Standard launched an appeal to replace many of London’s lost trees (McGill is commemorated on the lower plaque), and the oak tree at the eastern edge of the station boundary is one of the trees planted as a result of the appeal.

The tree is in the photograph below, and the two plaques are on the left hand pillar behind the tree:

Well over 100 years after Fitzroy founded the Meteorological Office, in 1987, forecasting the weather was still a challenge, and Michael Fish’s forecast on the Thursday before the storm has become somewhat infamous as an example of getting a forecast wrong (in reality, high winds were forecast, but the storm tracked slightly further to the north and was a deeper low than had been forecast):

The Orkney Islands

The Orkney Islands are really rich in history and natural landscapes. Probably best known for Scapa Flow, the large, sheltered body of water between the islands, where the German Navy High Seas Fleet was scuttled in the First World War, and used by the British Navy of the First and Second World Wars as a Naval Base, there is much else to discover.

Some examples;

The Italian Chapel

We left Kirkwall in bright sunshine and after a short drive to the chapel found ourselves in thick fog.

The Italian Chapel was built by Italian prisoners of war during the Second World War, who were based on the main Orkney island, and were used to build the causeways between the main island and South Ronaldsway.

The chapel was mainly built and decorated using concrete, one of the few available materials at the time, and is really remarkable:

The Standing Stones of Stenness:

Four upright stones of an original twelve, that date back over 5,000 years.

Ring of Brodgar:

A 5,000 year old stone circle, originally of 60 stones, with 36 surviving today, and at least 13 prehistoric burial mounds.

Skara Brae Prehistoric Village:

A remarkable, 5,000 year old Neolithic settlement, first uncovered by a storm in 1850 when part of the site was revealed when some of the sand dunes that had been covering the settlement for centuries were blown away.

A number of the individual houses still have some of their stone furniture in place.

Brough of Birsay:

A tidal island, reached when the tides are right, across a causeway. The island has Pictish, Norse and Medieval remains.

Leaving Stromness (where the barometer is located), on the ferry to the Scottish mainland:

The Stromness barometer is number 98 of around 100 barometers installed around the coast by Robert FitzRoy’s project. It continued to be read until 2005, and was restored in 2014 using funding from the Townscape Heritage Initiative.

Stromness library includes a book about FitzRoy and his barometers, as well as the operators manual for the barometer.

Whilst the barometer aims to forecast the weather, it also tells a fascinating story of the mid-19th century, with Negretti and Zambra being London’s foremost scientific instrument makers. Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy founding the Met office, as part of the Board of Trade, and James Glaisher, who ran the Meteorological and Magnetic Department of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and who was a daring balloonist in his quest to measure temperature, pressure etc. of the atmousphere.

I know I overuse the word, but this is a really fascinating story, of which I have just scratched the surface.

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Campden Hill Water Tower, an Observatory and Sir James South

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Before heading to Campden Hill, a quick reminder that if you are interested in discovering the history of the New River, New River Head, the Oak Room and Devil’s Conduit, there are a few tickets remaining for a walk by Islington Guides starting this coming week. I will be guiding on a couple of these walks and they can be booked at this link.

For this week’s post, I am in the area between Kensington Gardens and Holland Park, in Campden Hill Road, looking up the street towards the now demolished water tower as seen in this photo by my father, and dating from 1951:

The same view in August 2022:

The view nearest the camera has hardly changed. The buildings on either side of Campden Hill Road are the same. What has changed is the view in the distance where the water tower once stood is now a development of flats.

The Campden Hill water tower was built as part of the 19th century roll out of water supplies across an expanding London.

The Grand Junction Water Works Company purchased the land at the top of the road in 1843, and built a reservoir. This was followed by a pumping station and the water tower. (I have also read reports that the water works opened in the 1820s on land purchased from the Dowager Marchioness of Lansdowne, and that the water tower was built in 1847).

The water tower is unusual in that it did not hold a water tank. Instead, large pipes ran up the tower, and these would hold water, with the height of the pipes adding to the pressure of water supplied from the location.

I have shown the location of the water tower, and the associated water supply infrastructure, within the red rectangle in the following map:

The map shows that the water tower was just over half way up Campden Hill Road, but we need to look at another type of map to understand why it was located at this point in Campden Hill Road.

The following map (from the excellent topographic-map.com) shows land height as different colours, with blue as the lowest height, up through green, orange, red and pink as the highest. I have placed a black star symbol at the location of the water tower, and as can be seen by the surrounding colours, this is the highest point in the area, and the natural height of the land would have given a pressure advantage to water from the site, to which the water tower would have added.

The name of the road – Campden Hill Road – also highlights that the road runs both up and down a hill. Next to the original location of the water tower, we can see the road descending in both directions. Looking north:

And looking south:

There was a local myth that involved the height of the land where the water tower was located. Almost opposite the location of the water tower is a pub called the Windsor Castle, and the myth was that before the water tower was built, a keen eyed observer could see the real Windsor Castle from this high point, hence the name of the local pub.

This myth was certainly still going into the 1950s when a letter in the Kensington Post disputed that you could have seen the castle from this point, and it was even doubtful that you could see the castle from the top of the tower.

This source of the name is not mentioned on the pub’s website, which does though claim the 1820s as the age of the pub, so it does pre-date the water tower.

The water tower and associated infrastructure became part of the Metropolitan Water Board in 1904 when the MWB took over the assets of the many water companies operating in London, and brought these under the control of a single, London wide, water supplier.

The water tower was last used for the storage of water within it’s pipe in 1943, and was then redundant for a number of years. Plans to demolish the tower started in the early 1050s and in the 28th of March 1952 edition of the Kensington News and West London Times, there was an article with the headline “Goodbye to the Great Grey Tower”. The newspaper had asked local residents how they felt about the loss of the tower and reported that their general reply was that they would “Miss it dreadfully”.

The tower would though remain for many years, and during the 1960s it was leased to Associated Rediffusion who had equipment to relay television signals mounted on the tower.

There were a number of proposals for what would replace the tower throughout the 1960s, many reported in the Kensington Post, who also sent a photographer to take some photos of the view from the top of the tower.

It would finally be demolished in the first months of 1970, and the site of the water tower and associated works is now occupied by the housing seen in the following photo:

As well as being part of London’s water supply, and a local landmark, the Campden Hill water tower is also unique as it is (as far as I know) the only water tower to feature in, and on the cover of a work of literature:

The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesteron is a rather unusual book. Published in 1904, it tells of the story an alternative reality, where the country is ruled over by a randomly selected head of state, one Auberon Quinn who had been a clerk. Quinn decides to turn London into a form of medieval city. One man, Adam Wayne, takes this very seriously, and uses it as a means to support local pride. Wayne even went to the length of setting up a Notting Hill army to fight invaders from other neighbourhoods – hence the title of the Napoleon of Notting Hill.

Theoretically set in a London of the future, the book describes technology and the city as it was when the book was written.

The water tower features many times in the book, including in Chapter Three —The Great Army of South Kensington, where the various forces of different streets and local areas assemble and where battle takes place, for example:

“Morning winked a little wearily at me over the curt edge of Campden Hill and its houses with their sharp shadows. Under the abrupt black cardboard of the outline, it took some little time to detect colours; but at length I saw a brownish yellow shifting in the obscurity, and I knew that it was the guard of Swindon’s West Kensington army. They are being held as a reserve, and lining the whole ridge above the Bayswater Road. Their camp and their main force is under the great Waterworks Tower on Campden Hill.”

and:

“In the event of your surrendering your arms and dispersing under the superintendence of our forces, these local rights of yours shall be carefully observed. In the event of your not doing so, the Lord High Provost of Notting Hill desires to announce that he has just captured the Waterworks Tower, just above you, on Campden Hill, and that within ten minutes from now, that is, on the reception through me of your refusal, he will open the great reservoir and flood the whole valley where you stand in thirty feet of water. God save King Auberon!”

The reason why Chesterton set his book in the area, and uses the water tower as a key feature must be that he was born in Campden Hill on the 29th of May, 1874, so he knew the area very well, and the water tower would have been a very familiar feature.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a really strange book, but good to have the Campden Hill water tower recorded in a work of literature.

Walking south, down the hill from the location of the water tower is this terrace of large residential buildings:

One of which has a blue plaque recording that the photographer Bill Brandt lived here:

I felt rather guilty taking the photo of Bill Brandt’s plaque on a modern digital camera, when I should have been using my father’s old Leica film camera.

Brandt was a master of film photography. Born in Germany in 1904, he moved to London in 1933, and would spend the rest of his life in the city until his death in 1983.

I have no idea when, and for how long he lived in Campden Hill Road, however a number of his photographs were taken inside the building, many of which date around the 1940s, so he was there for some of that decade.

Brandt took a series of photos of London during the war, and his photos of the Underground being used as air raid shelters have become representative of that period in London’s history. Many of his wartime photos of London are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum:

Christ Church, Spitalfields: Man sleeping in a stone sarcophagus in Christ Church:

Continuing on down Campden Hill Road, and the area around the road is full of interesting architecture and plenty of history and interesting characters. I cannot cover everything I would like to in the space of a weekly post, so I will pick one small street which has plenty of interesting stories to tell.

In the map below, I have put a blue oval around Observatory Gardens, a small street that leads from Campden Hill Road to Hornton Street:

I will come on to the origin of the name Observatory Gardens, however lets have a look at the buildings first.

Along the northern side of Observatory Gardens is a continuous terrace of brick houses with white painted detailing.

By 1870, the land now occupied by Observatory Gardens had been purchased by Thomas Cawley, a local south Kensington builder. He subcontracted the construction of the street, however his subcontractors went bankrupt, so Cawley completed the work himself, and the street was finished in 1883.

The street suffered some severe damage during the last war when a German bomber crashed into Campden Hill Road, having taken off a large roof in Observatory Gardens, and the crater in the street causing additional damage. A report in the West London Observer on Friday the 18th of April 1941 tells the story:

“London experienced one of the heaviest raids of the War during Wednesday night and early Thursday morning and numerous heavy, high-explosive missiles as well as thousands of incendiary bombs were dropped. Damage was on a large scale and many people were killed.

The German radio yesterday (Thursday) declared that the raid was the heaviest ever on London and the biggest raid of the War, and that 100,000 fire bombs were showered down.

On Thursday morning thousand of Londoners made their way to work over hose-pipes and broken glass, while firemen, begrimed and exhausted, still dealt with the smoldering ruins. Many had to make extensive detours to reach their place of business and thousands found their offices and shops bombed out when they got there.

Altogether five Nazi planes were brought down, one of which crashed in Campden Hill Road, a turning off Kensington High street. Actually the plane hit the roof of a large house in Observatory Gardens before crashing into the roadway about 50-feet away. Bombs from the plane must have crashed into the road in front of this house as there is a very large crater.

The German plane finally came to rest by the side of a large Hostel, part of the University of London.

At the controls was a dead pilot. No traces of other members of the crew could be found, so it is assumed that they had jumped. Later the bodies of two Nazi airmen were discovered in the locality, badly mutilated.

Residents at Campden Hill Road heard the whistle of the approaching aircraft before it crashed. There was no engine noise. Wardens say that it was not on fire.

The bomber touched chimney pots and then disintegrated in small pieces. Its heavier parts, one of the engines and two propellers, landed on the top of a block of flats where some Maltese evacuees were billeted.

An oil tank burst at the same time, and two rooms of the top floors of the flats, which were being used for bedding and linen, caught fire.

During the day, thousands of people passed the spot to see the scattered remains of the bomber. By the afternoon there was little to see as army lorries had conveyed the debris to one of the various scrap bases set aside for this purpose.”

Observatory Gardens was left badly damaged by the crash of the bomber, and as with so many streets across London, the street would not recover for a couple of decades.

In the years after the war, Observatory Gardens became very run down, and it was not until the 1990s that the street we see today emerged. Whilst the exterior of the buildings were restored, much of the interior of the buildings appears to have been considerably rebuilt.

Before Thomas Cawley purchased the land and developed Observatory Gardens, the land was owned by Sir James South, a fascinating character who made astronomical discoveries and also appears to have spent a fair amount of time in the courts.

Sir James South purchased a house and land in 1827 from the Phillimore family, and set about building an astronomical observatory in the grounds.

He started a career as a surgeon in Southwark, and there established an observatory in Blackman Street. He worked with the astronomer John Herschel on the observation of double stars, but he was often difficult to work with, and was frequently drunk.

Despite this, he became President of the Astronomical Society in 1829, but after arguments with a number of Fellows, his involvement with what would become the Royal Astronomical Society faded.

He continued his observations from his house on the land that is now Observatory Gardens, and got involved in a number of disputes with the council who were proposing to extend Camden Hill Road. He believed that the vibrations from traffic on the extended road would impact his telescopes and his observations.

His legal disputes were not just about issues that threatened his observations, he would take legal action on many issues that he daily encountered. One was in 1855 when he took a conductor of a Paddington omnibus to court for deceiving him.

South had apparently hailed the omnibus near King’s Cross and had asked the conductor if it was the Royal Oak omnibus. The conductor confirmed that it was, so South boarded.

The bus continued to Chapel Street by when all the passengers had left the bus, with the exception of South. The conductor stated that the bus would not be going any further than the next stop, and South got into an argument with the conductor regarding the destination of the bus, and that the conductor had informed South that it would go to Royal Oak.

At court, the conductor denied that he had told South the omnibus was going to Royal Oak, stated that South had got on the bus without speaking. Despite this, the court sided with Sir James South and convicted the conductor with a penalty of 20 shillings plus costs.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the case of Sir James South and the conductor of an Omnibus shows that South would take an issue to court no matter how trivial it was, and with the unequal resources and reputation of an omnibus conductor and Sir James South.

Sir James South:

The Illustrated Times published an obituary for Sir James South on the 26th October, 1867:

“We have to announce the death of Sir James South, F.R.S. at an advanced age. He was the son of a dispensing druggist, who towards the close of the last century carried on in business in Blackman-street, Borough; but James South entered upon a higher branch of the medical profession, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. For some years he practiced his profession in Southwark, and in the intervals in business pursued the study of astronomy, in connection with which he made some extremely valuable observations. In 1822 and 1823, in conjunction with Sir John Herschel, he compiled a catalogue of 380 double stars.

After this he removed to Campden-hill, Kensington, where he constructed an observatory, to which he devoted the closest attention during the remainder of his life, and which has achieved European fame. He was one of the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society, and was for a time its president. In 1830, on the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington, who was then prime Minister, he received the honour of knighthood, and for several years past he has enjoyed a pension of £300 a year on the Civil List for his contributions to astronomical science.

The account of Sir James South’s astronomical observations during his residence in Southwark is published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1825, and is accompanied by a description of the 5 foot and 7 foot equatorials with which they were made. one of these instruments is still mounted and in excellent condition at the Campden-hill Observatory. There are also in the observatory a 7 foot transit instrument, and a 4 foot transit circle. Sir James South was born in 1785.”

The street name Observatory Gardens is therefore named after Sir James South’s observatory that once occupied the land. The following photos shows the end of Observatory Gardens, where the street meets Hornton Street:

One of the newspaper reports I read about the water tower is that the arrival of the Grand Junction Water Works Company, and the resulting reliable supply of water, was one of the reasons why the area developed rapidly during the first half of the 19th century, and that much of that development was of large, ornate, houses.

At the eastern end of Observatory Gardens is Hornton Street, and this is the view looking north – of many of those large, ornate, houses:

And the view looking south, as the hill which gave the area its name continues to descend towards Kensington High Street. Lots more red brick and white decoration:

One thing I realised as I get towards the end of the post is that I have not explained the origin of the name Campden Hill. The Hill element obviously comes from the hill on which the area is built, and that resulted in the water tower being built here. Campden came from Campden House, a large house that was built here by Baptist Hicks, 1st Viscount Campden in the 17th century. The Camden in his title came from Chipping Campden in the County of Gloucester.

In the 19th century and much of the 20th century, there was a considerable amount of infrastructure supporting the provision of water, gas and electricity across London. As with the Campden Hill water tower, so much of this has disappeared, as the technologies used to distribute these services has changed.

Campden Hill is a fascinating area to explore, and I hope this post has provided an indication of what can be discovered across some of the streets.

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John Snow and the Soho Cholera Outbreak of 1854

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Epidemiology has come to public attention as one of the key areas of expertise needed to reduce the spread of Covid-19. The pandemic has come as something of a shock given the significant reductions in disease over the last 100 plus years, although in reality, such a global event was probably only a matter of time given the background transmission of new diseases, and the interconnectedness of the world in the 21st century.

Contagious disease has long been a very significant problem. Outbreaks would rise and fall, killing many thousands of people, often in limited areas. Prior to the mid 19th century, thinking was often that disease was caused and transmitted by a miasma – a form of “bad air”.

It took the work of a number of Doctors and Scientists to prove this was not correct, and to trace the real cause of disease transmission, and one of these was Dr. John Snow, often called the founding father of Epidemiology. His work on the transmission of Cholera in London would demonstrate conclusively how this killer of large numbers of Londoners was transmitted.

The British Medical Journal describes Epidemiology as “the study of how often diseases occur in different groups of people and why. Epidemiological information is used to plan and evaluate strategies to prevent illness and as a guide to the management of patients in whom disease has already developed.”

Although John Snow’s work on Cholera covered the whole country, including outbreaks across London, he is more widely known for one outbreak in 1854 in Broad Street, Soho, and a couple of weeks ago I had a walk around the area to find the focal point of the outbreak, and the pub that bears his name:

The John Snow pub stands on the corner of Broadwick Street (originally Broad Street) and Lexington Street (originally Cambridge Street). A number of streets in this area of Soho have changed their names since the mid 19th century.

The pub building dates from the 1870s, and was originally called the “Newcastle-upon-Tyne”, The name changed in 1955 to commemorate the centenary of the work in the area of John Snow.

He traced the source of the local Cholera outbreak to a water pump that stood in the street outside the current pub. I will detail how he did this later in the post. Today, there is an imitation pump in the same spot:

The pump was installed in its current position in 2018, having been removed three years earlier due to building work which included extension of the pavement. The replica pump had been installed in a slightly different position to the original, and a pink granite curb stone had marked the location of the original pump.

One of the fascinations of London is that historical reminders tend to accumulate, and the pink granite curb stone was retained, and can now be seen to the left of the plinth on which the pump is mounted, now in the correct position.

The pump is also unusual in that it does not have a handle – the reason for this will be explained later in the post.

And on the pub wall is a plaque by the Royal Society of Chemistry naming John Snow as the founding father of Epidemiology for his work in the area:

The pump and pub in Broadwick Street:

John Snow was born in York on the 15th of March 1813. A career in medicine seems to have been defined at an early age,. When he was 14 he started work as an apprentice for William Hardcastle, a surgeon in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

He had early experience with cholera outbreaks, and during 1831 he worked on an outbreak at Killingworth Colliery. It was here that he appears to have started making detailed notes on the outbreak – gathering the data that would be essential in understanding the root cause.

He moved to London in 1836 to study at the Hunterian School of Medicine, and a year later started hospital practice at the Westminster Hospital. The following year, 1838, he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and in 1850 became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.

Doctor John Snow:

Data gathering in 19th century London was actually rather good. The Registrar General published regular returns detailing the number of deaths by date, cause and location. Where possible, information also included age, gender and profession, so a mass of data was available for evaluation, however outdated theories often prevented the use of data to find the root cause of disease outbreaks.

London could be absolutely filthy. Much of London was not yet connected to the expanding sewer network. Houses often had cesspools directly underneath, raw sewage was pumped into the Thames, contaminated water would be dumped in the streets and ditches.

The city’s cemeteries were overflowing, with bodies piled high in crypts and churchyards.

One of the main theories was that disease was carried in dirty air. Air polluted by rotting vegetables, dirty water, the waste from industry, and from the city’s cemeteries.

There was also no real separation between drinking water and contaminated water. For example, raw sewage was pumped into the Thames, a short distance from where water was taken out for distribution to houses and pumps.

There were frequent outbreaks of cholera. 1849 being the year of the most recent outbreak, however there was also a background rate of cholera deaths happening every year.

Data recorded by the Registrar General identified the number of deaths per week, aligned with the source of water for the house where the person lived, or the death occurred. The following table shows a period of six weeks in 1854. The table focused on south London, an area where there were significant numbers of cholera deaths.:

The table shows the source of the water supplied to each house where there was a death. The “Unknown Sources” column included a large number of houses where the residents did not know where their water came from as the landlord would pay the bill (and therefore they had no control of the source of their water).

The table implies significant problems with the supply of water by the Southwark Company, but this may have been down to a much larger population.

Much of the evaluation of the data was by John Snow. He obtained the addresses for houses where deaths had occurred from the Registrar General, and spent time going house to house to gather more information.

Evaluation of the data enabled a comparison of the mortality rate for each of the water companies to be identified, and this confirmed the issues with the Southwark Company, who had a mortality rate of 857 per 100,000 inhabitants compared with 169 and 194 for the Lambeth and Kent companies:

The Lambeth Company had problems during a previous outbreak in 1849, but had since moved their intake from the Thames upriver to Thames Ditton, which was above the tidal limit of the river at Teddington.

At Thames Ditton, water flowed towards London and there was no wash back in of water due to the tide. This meant that water was less polluted. In central London, there was more inflow of sewage, and this was often swept back in on a rising tide, increasing significantly the level of pollution.

The Southwark Company were still drawing their water from the river at Battersea, not far from a number of sewage outlets at Vauxhall.

Lambeth was the only company to change where they took water following the 1849 outbreak. In 1854, the Southwark Water Company was classed as having the most impure waters, and would not change their water intake till later in the year.

John Snow investigated the source of water used by as many of those who died from cholera as he could find. Some of his records are truly appalling by modern standards:

At 4, Bermondsey Wall, on 23rd July, the daughter of a bookseller, aged 4 years, cholera 9 hours – Thames water, by dipping a pail in the water
At Falcon Lane, Wandsworth, on 3rd August, the daughter of a chemist deceased, aged 14 years, premonitory diarhoea 4 hours, cholera 24 hours – Water from a ditch into which cesspools empty themselves
At Charlotte Place, Charlotte Row, Rotherhithe, July 29th, the son of a barge-builder, aged 3 years, cholera 3 days – Tidal ditch
At 5 Slater’s Alley, Rotherhithe, July 29th, a labourer, aged 33, cholera 3.5 days – Thames Tunnel water, fetched from John’s Place

Rotherhithe was badly effected. and John Snow mentions Charlotte Row, Ram Alley and Silver Street as “places where the scourge fell with tremendous severity”.

He also states that Rotherhithe had been badly supplied by water for many ages past, and that people were forced to drink from old wells, old pumps, open ditches, and the muddy stream of the Thames.

Cholera deaths across London were increasing rapidly during the months leading up to the first week of September. I took the weekly total from the Registrar Generals report, put them in a spreadsheet, and created the following graph which gives a good visual view of the increase.

So in the summer of 1854, cholera was causing deaths across the city, and John Snow was using methods that would become common in epidemiology to understand the impact, and to identify the cause. As well as the cases caused by infected water supplies, the case for which he would be remembered was an outbreak in Soho – a poor area where many of the residents were dependent on water from water pumps.

John Snow investigated the Soho outbreak, and he provided a comprehensive report to the St James, Westminster Cholera Inquiry Committee in July 1855.

Some houses in the area who could afford the cost were supplied by piped water from the Grand Junction and the New River Companies, and in houses that took this water he had found very few instances of cholera. His examination of the water pumps in the streets found the majority had impurities visible to the naked eye. Residents of Broad Street had also informed Snow that water from their local pump had an offensive smell.

At the start of his investigation, Snow requested data on deaths from the General Register Office. He found that the majority of these deaths had taken place near the Broad Street water pump, and after interviewing many of the residents found that those who had died from the disease had regularly drank water from the pump.

There was no other major outbreak in the area, and the common factor was the Broad Street water pump, so on the evening of Thursday 7th September 1854, John Snow had a meeting with the Board of Guardians of St James’s Parish and presented his findings. As a result, the handle of the pump was removed on the following day.

John Snow plotted cholera deaths on a map of the area, with the number of bars representing the number of deaths at each location. The Broad Street pump was close to the long dark line just to the right of centre of the map.

Many of the street names have since changed. To show the number and spread of deaths on a street map of today, I have plotted the numbers on the map below. The dark blue star in the centre is the location of the pump. The numbers represent the total deaths listed for that street, so for example the number 44 to the right of the pump represents the total number of deaths in Broad Street to the left and right of the pump (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors).

There were a high number of deaths in Poland Street (21), and many of these occurred at the workhouse which is represented by the black rectangle in the above map.

Some of the deaths recorded by Snow at the workhouse are really sad, as often these would be recorded as “female unknown, age unknown”.

The workhouse is also shown in this extract from the 1894 Ordnance Survey map. The pump is again marked by the dark blue star. A short distance to the right is another building that demonstrated to John Snow that the pump was the source (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland’).

None of the workers at the Lion Brewery caught cholera, despite being in the centre of the outbreak. On interviewing those at the brewery, it was found that “none of the workers drink water” – so perhaps they only drank beer.

John Snow wrote to the Medical Times and Gazette, describing his findings:

“I had an interview with the Board of Guardians of St. James’s parish, on the evening of the 7th, and represented the circumstances to them. In consequence of what I said, the handle of the pump was removed on the following day. The number of attacks of cholera had been diminished before this measure was adopted, but whether they had diminished in a greater proportion than might be accounted for by the flight of the great bulk of the population I am unable to say. In two or three days after the use of the water was discontinued the number of fresh attacks became very few.

The pump-well in Broad-street is from 28 to 30 feet in depth and the sewer which passes a few yards away from it is 22 feet below the surface. the sewer proceeds from Marshall-street, where some cases of cholera had occurred before the great outbreak.

I am of the opinion that the contamination of the water of the pump-wells of large towns is a matter of vital importance. Most of the pumps in this neighbourhood yield water that is very impure; and I believe that it is merely to the accident of cholera evacuations not having passed along the sewers nearest to the wells that many localities in London near a favourite pump have escaped a catastrophe similar to that which occurred in this parish. ”

The lack of a handle on the replica pump we see today is a reminder of the work by John Snow to get the handle removed.

The affected area formed the sub districts of Golden Square and Berwick Street. The number of deaths for each street in these two districts are shown in the following tables:

There is other interesting data to be extracted from the Registrar General’s lists. They also include the age of each of those who had died (where known). I extracted these to a spreadsheet, sorted and created the following graph to show the numbers that died within each age range.

The fall off at later ages is not a reflection of reduced impact of cholera, rather there were fewer people to infect in these age groups – London was a young city.

This is reflected in the high death rate of those aged between 0 and 9 years. The reduction between the ages of 10 and 29 was a surprise as there would be more people of these age groups in the area. Perhaps people of these age groups worked away from the pump, were not at the stage when they were in the workhouse, or perhaps being younger and stronger there was a higher survival rate.

The Westminster Cholera Inquiry Committee in July 1855 included a detailed investigation of the sewer and water infrastructure in the street and the house closest to the pump. The report produced by the Committee included the following drawing:

The diagram shows how close the drains were to the well. The inquiry also examined the cesspool shown by the front of the house and the well. It found the cesspool in very poor condition, and that the mortar between the bricks of the cesspool had decayed allowing the contents to leak into the ground, only a very short distance from the well.

The report also includes the following drawing showing the front of the house, the vaults underneath the pavement, drain and well.

The Westminster Cholera Inquiry Committee report of July 1855 includes a substantial section from the Reverend Henry Whitehead who was assistant curate of St Luke’s Church in Soho during the 1854 outbreak. Whitehead had assisted John Snow with many of the interviews of those living in the streets around the water pump.

Whitehead had initially been sceptical about the cause of the outbreak, being a believer of the miasma theory however he came to the same conclusions as Snow, and was very diligent in his research and interviews of the population.

In his report to the committee, Henry Whitehead recorded the challenges of follow-up research as so many people had moved out of Broad Street, and that approaching the summer of 1855 there was a general feeling of uneasiness in the street – concern that cholera would once again return with warmer weather.

Henry Whitehead identified two houses opposite the pump. One had deaths from cholera and confirmed that they took water from the pump. The adjacent house used water from the New River Company and had no illness.

Although the initial findings to identify the source of the outbreak concentrated on deaths, the follow-up inquiry found that there were 50 cases where people had survived.

John Snow’s map shows the water pumps of the area. I plotted these on a modern day map to show where the water pumps of 1854 would have been located on today’s streets. Again, the Broad Street pump is the dark blue star, red stars the other water pumps:

Comparing the above map with the map of deaths does again show the high values clustered around the Broad Street pump, with lower numbers as other water pumps became closer.

Broad Street is today named Broadwick Street. the name change happened in 1936 when the eastern section leading to Wardour Street was included – this small section had formerly been called Edward Street (named after Edward Wardour who also gave his name to Wardour Street).

Much of Broadwick Street has changed since the cholera outbreak of 1854, however almost opposite the John Snow pub is a terrace of houses that were there, having been built between 1718 and 1723 as part of the westwards expansion of Broad Street. The terrace is shown in the following photo:

The following photo shows the view looking west along Broadwick Street from close to the Berwick Street junction. The Lion Brewery, which did not have any cholera deaths as none of the workers drank water, occupied the block on the left which now has the brick facing to the upper floors. The brewery was demolished in 1937.

On the corner of Broadwick Street and Berwick Street is the Blue Posts pub. The current rather attractive building dates from a 1914 rebuild, however there had been a pub on the site since the original development of the area, and it is shown on the 1894 OS map.

A rather obscure claim to fame for the Blue Posts pub is that a model of the pub was destroyed by a brontosaurus in the 1925 film Lost World. The following clip shows the pub just before the brontosaurus crashes in and demolishes the building.

Apparently the animators, who created a rather impressive animated film for the 1920s, drank in the pub they chose to destroy for the film.

Lantern over the corner of the Blue Posts pub:

View down Berwick Street showing how a present day pandemic has effected the restaurant trade in Soho:

North western corner of Broadwick Street and Berwick Street with demolished building leaving only the corner façade for inclusion in whatever comes next:

Further back towards Wardour Street, and the following building is on the corner of Broadwick Street (the part that was Edward Street), and Duck Lane, which being towards the Wardour Street end of Broad Street “only” suffered two deaths during the outbreak of 1854.

The ground floor of the building is occupied by the Sounds of the Universe record store:

John Snow’s work was not only around research into the causes of cholera. He was a practicing physician at the Westminster Hospital, and also worked on the technique of anesthesia including how different doses of anesthetic effected the human body.

When Queen Victoria gave birth to Prince Leopold in 1853 and Princess Beatrice in 1857, it was John Snow who administered the obstetric anesthesia.

During the 1854 outbreak he was living at 18 Sackville Street, off Piccadilly. He was a teetotaler and vegetarian for much of his life. He died in 1858 at the young age of 45.

For further reading, the report on the cholera outbreak in the Parish of St. James, Westminster, during the autumn of 1854 can be found in the Wellcome Library collection here.

The second edition of John Snow’s “On the mode of communication of cholera” can be found on Google Books here.

Reading these publications really does make you appreciate the engineering, rules and regulations that are behind the clean water when you do something as simple as turn on a tap.

And the next time an epidemiologist comes on the TV or Radio to talk about the current pandemic, think about John Snow, knocking on doors across London, gathering data on the many cholera outbreaks of the mid 19th century.

alondoninheritance.com

New Terrace, Duncan Terrace, Colebrooke Row and Charles Lamb

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The following photo is from the early 1980s and shows part of a terrace of houses. The house on the left with the pediment has a plaque stating “New Terrace – 1791”. The location is in Islington, a short distance south east of Islington Green. New Terrace, now Duncan Terrace is separated from Colebrooke Row by a strip of grass which has an interesting history.

This is the same view almost 40 years later. The perspective is not exactly the same as the trees in front of the house with the pediment have grown significantly and obscure the pediment and plaque when looking from the original viewpoint.

Many of the terraces in this part of Islington were in a poor state in the early 1980s, but the decade would bring a transformation to the area. New Terrace at the time seemed to have escaped the problems suffered by many other terraces and was in good condition as the terrace approached the age of 200 years.

The location of New Terrace is shown in the following map extract. To the south east of Islington Green, the terrace is the upper row of houses in the red oval, north of Charlton Place (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors).

The houses in this area have a complex history, with piecemeal construction starting in the 18th century. Originally, the land was comprised of agricultural fields, clay pits and nursery gardens.

In 1613, the New River was constructed, and the route can still be traced today by the grass strip that runs from New Terrace all the way down to City Road. In the above map, the green strip shows the grass and public park between Duncan Terrace and Colebrooke Row, the grass strip running further north in front of New Terrace is not shown on the map, but is indicated by the gap between the terrace and Colebrooke Row.

Duncan Terrace is named after Admiral Duncan the commander of the Naval Fleet at the Battle of Camperdown against the Dutch in 1797.

Colebrooke Row is named after Sir George Colebrooke who developed the Colebrooke Row side of the street.

New Terrace was built in 1791 by James Taylor, a young surveyor and builder. The terrace has gone through a number of name changes from New Terrace to Colebrooke Terrace, to Duncan Terrace, the name which remains to this day.

The grass strip running in front of the terrace was the route of the New River. The river was enclosed in a pipe in 1861 which was covered and planted. The pipe was out of use by 1950 and was then removed leaving the grass strip as a reminder of the early history of London’s water supply.

Looking north along the original route of the New River:

The view to the south showing how the terrace was built at a raised level to the river:

As the terrace could not face directly onto the New River, a raised pavement was built in front of the terrace, and this remains today to give access to the front doors of each house:

In 1793, Taylor continued the southern extension of the terrace and built what are now numbers 46 to 49 Duncan Terrace on the opposite side of the junction with Charlton Crescent. This area was originally known as Clay Pit Field as it had been occupied by clay pits, extracting clay for the manufacture of bricks, but as the clay was exhausted, the land was more valuable as a site for houses.

This southern terrace followed a similar design to the northern New Terrace with a raised pavement between the houses and the New River:

Further south along Duncan Terrace is the rather magnificent church of St John the Evangelist, built as a result of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 which released Catholics from the restrictions that had been imposed on them since the Reformation.

The land was purchased for the church in 1839, and the design completed by the Catholic architect Joseph John Scoles. It took a number of decades for the church to be completed with work on the towers commencing in 1873.

The terraces either side of the church are today in lovely condition, but as with much of Islington this is a result of restoration work over the last few decades and the considerable increase in value of properties in the area.

In 1953, the route of the New River had not yet been landscaped, or turned into a park, as shown in the following photo from 1953, and there was a gap in the terrace where one of the houses had suffered bomb damage.

Image credit: London Metropolitan Archives, City of London: catalogue ref: SC_PHL_01_182_53_19

Crossing the route of the New River and into Colebrook Row and the street is lined with similar terraces:

And this is where the Regents Canal enters the Islington Tunnel – this is the view looking along the canal on approach to the tunnel:

The entrance to the Islington Tunnel, under Colebrooke Row. The tunnel runs to Caledonian Road and is 878 meters long.

Walking back along Colebrooke Row, and the park follows the route of the New River and separates Colebrooke Row and Duncan Terrace. They are now landscaped, planted with trees, with a central path running the length of the park:

Although today there is a one way system running through the parks, with the appropriate warning signs about social distancing:

The following photo shows the eastern side of Colebrook Row, with the street, then the New River route on the left, then Duncan / New Terrace (on the left but not visible in the photo). As can be seen from the slight differences in architectural styles, the terrace has changed over time. as different builders added to, demolished parts of, and changed the style of the buildings.

I have walked from New Terrace at the top of the oval in the map, to the Regents Canal at the lower end of the oval, and back again along Colebrooke Row, as there is one house to find that is earlier than all the other houses, and was once the home of a rather interesting character.

The white painted house at the end of the terrace in the following photograph is Colebrooke Cottage, number 64 Duncan Terrace, dating from around 1760.

Colebrooke Cottage was originally a single house, standing alone in the fields that covered the area, and faced onto the New River. It remained a single house until the construction of New / Duncan Terrace on the left. The following photo shows Colebrooke Cottage, New / Duncan Terrace to the left and the route of the New River running between terrace and road.

The following print shows Colebrooke Cottage as it was before the construction of New Terrace. It is rather idyllic view. The cottage is surrounded by trees, the New River runs along the front and a boy is fishing in the river © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Comparing the two prints shows a number of differences mainly down to 19th century changes, including a reduction in the number of windows. Restoration work in the 1970s uncovered evidence of the side windows that would have had to have been bricked up when New Terrace was built.

The print is titled Charles Lamb’s House At Islington.

Charles Lamb was a poet and essayist. Born in Office Row in the Temple in 1775 where his father worked in the legal profession. On the death of his father’s employer, the family consisting of Charles, his sister Mary and their mother and father had to leave the house tied with his father’s job and move into cramped lodgings nearby.

After a short spell at the South Sea Company, he moved to the East India Company in 1792, where he would spend the rest of his working life. He was employed as a clerk, a job he did not enjoy.

His first published work was a small collection of sonnets that he provided for a book of poems published by Coleridge in 1796.

But it was not until the 1820s that he achieved a degree of fame when he published a series of essays in the London Magazine under the name of Elia (a name he adopted, allegedly the last name of an Italian man that had also worked at the South Sea Company)

However in many ways he had quite a tragic life which probably influenced his writing.

After the death of his father’s employer, the family were forced to move to cramped lodgings, and Charles and his sister Mary seem to have been responsible for supporting the family, and it was the resulting pressure which probably led to his sister Mary, in a fit of insanity to kill their mother and badly wound their father.

Charles took Mary to an asylum, and to avoid her imprisonment, he agreed to look after her at home, which he did for the rest of his life.

Mary did suffer mental health problems for the rest of her life, but she also published works with Charles, including a retelling of Shakespeare for children, a book which is still published today.

He did not marry. His first proposal of marriage to one Ann Simmons was rejected which led to a short period of what at the time was called insanity, probably what we would now call depression.

His second attempt at marriage, with a proposal to an actress Fanny Kelly was rejected, probably because she could not contemplate a life which involved looking after Mary.

He moved to Colebrooke Cottage in 1823 and stayed there for only 4 years, but it was here that he was the happiest he had ever been. He retired from work at the East India Company, and lived here with Mary, surrounded by books and the Islington countryside, and entertained literary friends. He described leaving his job as “33 years’ slavery…a freed man, with £441 a year for the remainder of my life”.

He described the house as a cottage, “for it is detached, with six good rooms. The New River runs close to the foot of the house and a spacious garden is behind. I feel like a great lord, never having had a house before”.

However the writer Thomas Hood called it a “cottage of ungentility for it had neither double coach house nor wings, and like its tenant, it stood alone”. Some author snobbery or competition perhaps.

The New River caused occasional problems for his guests as the myopic writer George Dyer fell into the river after leaving the house.

In 1827 he left Islington and moved to Enfield, followed by a move to Edmonton in 1833, where he died the following year after a fall.

A print of Charles Lamb dating from 1828 © The Trustees of the British Museum:

A London County Council plaque is on the front of Colebrooke Cottage to commemorate Charles Lamb’s time on Colebrooke Row, Islington.

Walking along Colebrooke Row, there is not really anything that would stand out – it’s a street of rather nice late 18th / early 19th century terrace houses as can be found across much of Islington. I went there to find the location of one of our 1980s photos. However, what makes this street so special is a single house that remains from the time when this was all agricultural land and clay pits. Finding one of the few places where the route of the New River can still be clearly seen, and how houses were built to face on to the New River.

And finding a literary character who was in the shadows of the major literary characters of the time, who should have had a happier life, but who seems to have enjoyed a few years surrounded by the Islington countryside.

alondoninheritance.com

Dr Barton’s Airship

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Staying at home has provided the opportunity for more research into a number of London related subjects, and in this post I would like to introduce you to one of the early pioneers of flight, who built his machine at Alexandra Palace, and flew from Alexandra Palace to just outside of Romford, Essex. This is the story of Dr Barton’s Airship.

At the end of the 19th century and during the first years of the 20th century there was considerable competition to demonstrate powered flight. The concepts were clear, but the design and build of a machine were challenging with the technology and materials available at the time.

The Wright brothers in the US were working on a machine that led to the first powered, heavier than air and manned flight in 1903. The Wright brothers machine was very rudimentary, but was something that today we would recognise as an aeroplane. Other inventors were taking a different approach.

One was Francis Alexander Barton, a medical doctor from Beckenham in Kent. Born in 1861, Barton had always been interested in mechanical invention and was an early user of the motor car. He had also been experimenting with balloons and by the end of the 19th century was President of the Aeronautical Institute.

Dr Barton looking suitably late Victorian / Edwardian:

He had been working on a design for a powered airship that used some of the principles that would be adopted into the design of aircraft – the use of aeroplanes, or small wing-shaped structures, that would allow the airship to be navigated without the use of ballast or the release of gas, constraints that limited the time an airship could spend in the air.

Barton saw his airship as a stepping stone to a future aircraft design where the balloon of an airship could be removed and the craft would be held aloft and navigated by the use of aeroplanes, or wings as we would call them today.

Dr Barton proposed an airship design to the War Office, who in 1901 gave him an order for a machine. He hired Frederick Rawson as a consulting engineer for the project and in 1902 they started work on the machine in space that had been provided to him at Alexandra Palace in north London.

A model of the proposed airship used to support the proposal to the War Office is shown below:

A hydrogen filled balloon provided the lift for the machine. Below this was a bamboo structure with a platform for those who would operate the airship. At the rear was a large rudder to steer the craft left and right, and along the platform are the “aeroplanes” which would help provide up and down navigational control to remove the need to release gas, or use ballast.

Diesel motors also supported on the platform were connected to propellers which would push the airship through the air.

The crew of the airship would also sit on the platform, surrounded by the bamboo structure and a hydrogen filled balloon just above.

Dr Barton had some competition and the Brazilian Santos-Dumont was also using a similar design. The following view of his machine shows how exposed crew were below the balloon:

Dr Barton’s airship was gradually taking shape at Alexandra Palace. Building the machine was relatively standard engineering, however the real risk was with the generation of sufficient hydrogen gas to fill the airship balloon. Hydrogen is an exceedingly flammable gas and early 20th century, amateur airship builders were perhaps limited in their approach to safety when dealing with hydrogen.

A report in the Daily News on the 5th July 1904 covered an explosion at Alexandra Palace where Dr Barton was very lucky to survive:

“DR BARTON’S AIRSHIP – EXPLOSION OF GAS – INVENTOR BADLY INJURED. The work of constructing Dr. Barton’s airship at Alexandra Palace has been attended by numerous incidents, none of which, however, have occasioned personal injuries to those engaged in the undertaking. Yesterday, what might have been a much more serious affair, attended by the gravest results to the balloon and its inventor, occurred in the early hours of the morning.

The airship itself is rapidly approaching completion. The gas necessary for the inflation of the balloon is manufactured in a miniature works just outside the shed which contains the airship. Here iron shavings are thrown into a very strong solution of sulphuric acid, which is contained in specially constructed lead-lined generators.

About two o’clock yesterday morning, Dr. Barton fancied the generator was not working as quickly as it should; so, standing on the platform which is fixed about halfway up the generators, he removed the plate and threw in another pailful of iron shavings.

A tremendous explosion ensued, the force of which may be gathered from the fact that it woke the manager of the works, who was asleep in his house a mile and a quarter away, and blew the pail which Dr Barton had been using to the boundary of Alexandra Park.

The labourers engaged immediately ran to the assistance of Dr. Barton, who was found lying on the platform, the railing of which had prevented his being blown to the ground. He was at once carried into the airship shed, and medical aid was sent for.

In the meantime the injured man became unconscious. Two doctors arrived about three o’clock, and he was carried to his home some distance away on the ambulance stretcher attached to the Palace. There it was found that the patient had received serious burns about the face, and his hair and moustache were partially burnt away.

The worst injury, however was to the eyes, a number of fine particles of iron having been blown rather deeply into both. By the aid of a powerful magnet these were all removed, and Dr. Bremner, who with Dr. Maler performed the operation, believe that in the absence of complications Dr. Barton will be quite restored within a week.”

Despite this set back, Dr. Barton was made of strong stuff and was soon back at work.

Dr. Barton standing in the bamboo frame of his airship:

Dr. Barton, and the Alexandra Park Trustees were also in trouble with the council in 1904 as the borough surveyor had found out that waste from the gas-producing plant was being dumped in the Council’s sewers. The surveyor was told to monitor the situation.

The first trial of the airship was in July 1905, when:

“A preliminary trial of Dr Barton’s airship took place at the Alexandra Palace, and it claimed that at a height of 40ft, she obeyed her helm well and readily forged ahead against the wind, which was blowing at an estimated rate of between 15 and 20 miles an hour. The airship was not allowed to make an unfettered trip. The balloon, which it will be remembered, was originally designed for the War Office, is 180ft long, 60ft high, and 40ft wide. The aeroplanes and motors, the propellers and rudders, all worked smoothly, and the balloon had a lifting capacity of several tons.”

By 1905, construction and flight of the airship had taken so long that the War Office had cancelled the contract, and Dr. Barton was now funding the airship from his own funds.

Soon after the trial, also in July 1905, the airship would make its first, and only flight. The Essex Newsman reported on the 29th July 1905:

“Immense interest was taken in the ascent of Dr. Barton’s airship at the Alexandra Palace on Saturday afternoon. The airship rose gracefully at 4.45, and it was universally agreed that the ascent was a magnificent one. Dr. Barton was in charge, and he was accompanied by Mr. E. Rawson, Mr. Spencer, and Mr. Gauderon.

In the upper air the ship was cleverly maneuvered, but a wind was blowing, in the teeth of which it was found impossible to steer the ship. After some clever tacking, therefore, Dr. Barton gave up the idea of steering the airship back to the Palace grounds. After over an hour’s sail he descended at Havering. The airship was well seen from various parts of Essex, and the ease with which the tacking operations seemed to be done evoked great admiration.

After the descent, alas the ship was wrecked. At Heaton Grange, Havering, at the house of Sir Montagu Turner, a garden party was in progress, and the descent of an airship close by was not the least interesting item of the day’s proceedings. Two farm labourers ran after the trail rope and hung onto it.

At that moment the keel touched the turf and she bounded about 50ft in the air, throwing the men head over heels. In the rebound, the ship cleared a hedge which divides the field from a few acres of potatoes on the other side, and the anchor catching in the obstruction, the ship pulled up and sank gracefully to the earth, which she touched without a tremor.

Then came an exciting time. As the ship lay there, on a perfectly even keel, Mr Gaudron and Mr Rawson, in a moment of forgetfulness, joined Dr. Barton in the bow, where the latter was receiving the congratulations of the garden party. This sudden shifting of the weight upset the equilibrium and the stern of the airship rapidly rose in the air.

With presence of mind, Mr. Harry Spencer, who had remained in the stern, grasped the ‘ripping gear’ with which the ship was fitted and tore open the balloon from end to end. Once the rip started, the imprisoned gas did the rest, and with a noise comparable to that of a dozen rockets being fired at once, what remained of 200,000 feet of pure hydrogen was liberated and the vessel sank back to earth.”

The flight had been a success, flying a straight line distance of over 14 miles, and landing perfectly. The airship was destroyed through the excitement of those who had made the flight, rushing to meet those who had come to see them.

It must have been quite a sight – the following view is of Dr Barton’s airship before take off at Alexandra Palace.

The route of the airship (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors):

The landing-place on today’s map, just north-west of the Gallows Corner roundabout on the A12:

Dr. Barton had put a considerable part of his life and money into the project. The final paragraph of the Essex Newsman article provides a rather poignant summary of the day’s flight:

“In the potato patch as the aeronauts passed home there stood a solitary policeman, engaged in a nocturnal vigil over all that remained of the labours of twenty years and the expenditure of more than £4,000.”

Dr. Barton would not construct another airship. The future was flight without hydrogen balloons, and Dr. Barton did have an attempt at a float plane which he built at the Isle of Wight. This was also constructed of bamboo as it was a strong and importantly cheap material. There was no engine of sufficient light weight for the plane, so Dr Barton conducted some tow tests, but the float plane was wrecked on one of these tests.

He did briefly look at another airship design just before the first world war, however he was unable to get enough support for the project, and he returned to medicine.

Dr. Francis Alexander Barton died in April 1939 – a turn of the century amateur inventor and pioneer of flight, and probably one of the few people to have flown from Alexandra Palace to Havering, near Romford in Essex.

alondoninheritance.com

St John at Hampstead and George du Maurier

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Last Saturday was a windy, sunny spring day in London, so what better than to spend an hour exploring the cemetery of St John at Hampstead.

The reason for this specific cemetery was to find a rather unusual grave that my father had photographed in 1949. This is the grave of George du Maurier.

The same view 70 years later in 2019:

The grave today does not appear as well looked after as in 1949. There was some space surrounding the grave in 1949, however today there are many more graves alongside. The tree on the left has been cut down and today only the stump survives. One of the significant differences which I find in many of my father’s photos is the number of cars in the street. In 1949 streets were generally free of parked cars, in 2019 there are very few streets without parked cars, or lots of passing traffic.

George du Maurier, or to give him his full name, George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier, was born in Paris on the 6th March 1834 and died on the 8th October 1896.

His grandparents on his father’s side were French and according to an 1886 newspaper account, emigrated to England during the “Reign of Terror” during the French Revolution. Later accounts state that his grandfather was a glassblower and left France to avoid fraud charges, adding the du Maurier name to give the impression of a French aristocratic background.

His father returned to Paris and it was there that George was born. He spent much of his childhood in France until the family returned to London and George started as a student at the Birkbeck Laboratory of Chemistry.

The Hampstead and Highgate Express on the 24th July 1886, in their series on well known residents features George du Maurier and explains that whilst his father wanted him to become a chemist, including going to the expense of setting up his own private laboratory, George was more interested in the arts and “humorous draughtsmanship“.

After the death of his father, he gave up chemistry and went to Paris to study art. He later returned to London, after spending an additional three years in Germany and Belgium and started in his career as a draughtsman, producing drawings for publications. Punch was the publication that became most associated with his work, and he produced drawings for Punch for twenty five years.

George du Maurier photographed in 1889 (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

The article in the Hampstead and Highgate Express described his work: “Over a period of nearly twenty five years he has contributed to ‘Punch’ an almost endless series of drawings illustrative of the manners and customs of English society. Some of its phenomena, the shams, affectations, meannesses and frivolities peculiar to its salons and garden parties, and some other scenes of fashionable life, are treated by the artist with the most biting satire. But a great deal belonging to English life and society, especially its venial weaknesses, is treated by the artist from the humorists’ standpoint, namely that of light satire and good humour. In an appreciation of beauty and grace as seen in his numerous presentments of women and children, and in his general design of his pictures, Mr du Maurier excels all preceding English pictorial humourists. In the ‘Punch’ contributions he has not only shown power as a graceful and refined artist, but in his drawings for that amusing periodical there are touches of wit, humour, satire, subtle observation, and poetic suggestiveness which are indisputably the work of a man of genius.”

A couple of examples of George du Maurier’s work for Punch are shown below (both ©Trustees of the British Museum).

The following drawing is an illustration for Punch, dated the 18 October 1880. It is described as “What our Artist has to put up with, a man talking and touching the shoulder of another, both standing before a group of three pictures, other figures examining other pictures on the surrounding walls”.

The following drawing is dated the 12th January 1878 and is a study of two female figures sitting in a carriage on the Metropolitan Railway.

He also produced numerous sketches for his own amusement, including many self portraits. This one on paper, stamped with his home address in Hampstead shows George du Maurier exclaiming ‘Hooray!’ at the arrival of the post with his dog dancing nearby.

George du Maurier married Emma Wightwick, who he had met whilst in Germany. They had five children. One of his children was the actor Sir Gerald du Maurier, who was the father of the authors Daphne du Maurier and Angela du Maurier.

In his later years, George du Maurier turned to writing and produced three novels between 1889 and 1897- Peter Ibbetson, Trilby, and The Martian. Trilby was a significant best seller with the Victorian story of a fallen woman with a good heart.

George du Maurier was 62 when he died of heart failure. He had lived at two locations in Hampstead during his life, but had moved around a number of times and at the time of his death was living at Oxford Square, near Hyde Park.

His funeral at St John at Hampstead was a significant event, attended by many dignitaries of the day, authors and the staff of Punch magazine.

The memorial at his grave is unusual, and I cannot find any references as to why the design was chosen.

I am also unsure why my father chose to photograph du Maurier’s grave given the number of famous names buried at St John at Hampstead. My father was also a draughtsman, professionally for the St. Pancras Borough Council Electricity and Public Lighting Department, then the London Electricity Board, but also was interested in drawing many other subjects and it may have been this interest in an earlier draughtsman that prompted the choice of grave to visit and photograph.

George du Maurier’s grave is in the “Additional Burial Ground” just across the road from the church of St John at Hampstead and the original graveyard. The extension opened in 1812. This is the view of the additional burial ground from Church Row. The church is on the left, just behind the car. George du Maurier’s grave is up against the railings, just behind the poster.

Another view of George du Maurier’s grave. Underneath the name and dates of birth and death is written “A little trust that when we die, we reap our sowing and so – good bye“.

The monument above the grave is to Geoirge du Maurier, however there are panels inset to the front and sides that record the children of George and Emma du Maurier.

Here, their eldest son, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Louis Busson du Maurier is recorded as being killed in action on March 10th 1915 at Alston House, near Kemmel in Flanders.

Marie Louise Busson du Maurier, their youngest daughter.

Gerald Hubert Edward Busson du Maurier, their youngest son.

There are numerous fascinating graves in the cemetery of St John at Hampstead. Walking around is a history lesson of the past couple of centuries.

The following grave and monument was not there when my father took the photo at the top of this post. It is immediately to the left (when looking from the road) of George du Maurier’s grave and is the grave of Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party from 1955 to 1963, along with his wife, Dora.

Adjacent to the grave of Hugh Gaitskell are plaques to the Hampstead resident, comedian and satirist Peter Cook and his wife Lin.

Strangely Wikipedia states that Peter Cook’s ashes were buried in an unmarked grave so either the plaques are in the wrong place, or Wikipedia is wrong. – I suspect the later.

There was one specific grave that I was interested to find, and after some searching I found the grave of Sir Walter Besant.

Sir Walter Besant was born in Portsmouth in 1836 and died in Hampstead in 1901. His life almost matching the reign of Queen Victoria.

He was a prolific author of both novels and factual books. Two of his more famous novels, “Children of Gibeon” and “All Sorts and Conditions of Men” dealt with the living and social conditions of east London and the relationship between east and west London. The later book helped with the establishment of the People’s Palace in east London by John Beaumont. The book included the planning and build of a Palace of Delight to provide education, concerts, picture galleries, reading rooms etc. free to the people of east London. The name used in the book was part taken by the People’s Palace, and the book brought funding and support to the People’s Palace.

For many of his books, he worked with the author James Rice and the two men went walking across London to gather background for their books. James Rice died in 1882 and in the preface to “All Sorts and Conditions of Men”, Besant wrote: “The many wanderings, therefore, which I undertook last summer in Stepney, Whitechapel, Poplar, St. George’s-in-the-East, Limehouse, Bow, Stratford, Shadwell and all that great and marvelous unknown country we call East London, were undertaken, for the first time for ten years, alone. They would have been undertaken in great sadness had one foreseen the end. In one of these wanderings I had the happiness to discover Rotherhithe, which I afterwards explored with carefulness; in another, I lit upon a certain Haven of Rest for aged sea captains, among whom I found Captain Sorensen; in others I found many wonderful things, and conversed with many wonderful people”.

I suspect that during the 19th century there were quite a few authors wandering the streets of east London.

In a review of one of Besant’s book, the London Evening Standard wrote in 1901 a paragraph that is just as true today:

“It is commonly said that half the world is ignorant of how the other half lives. That is more than true of London, for its vastness limits the social outlook of its inhabitants to the narrow groove of their daily work. How little do most people know of the occupations, or even names, of their immediate neighbours. Sir Walter Besant however is well acquainted with the region he is describing and his details are always equally graphic and correct.”

Sir Walter Besant spent six years abroad when he was a Senior Professor of Mathematics at the Royal College in Mauritius. He was Secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Besant was also instrumental in the founding of the Society of Authors and became the first Chair of the society. During his time with the society he was active in furthering the cause of copyright for an author’s work.

Sir Walter Besant, looking very Victorian in 1896 (photo © National Portrait Gallery, London)

The reason why I wanted to find Besant’s grave was that I have many of his historical and topographical books on London. They are comprehensive studies of a specific period in time and of a region of the city. Full of early photos, drawings and maps. This is my copy of Besant’s London books published by A&C Black.

The London Evening Standard on the 11th June 1901 carried a comprehensive obituary of Besant.

It records that “When the People’s Palace was opened by Queen Victoria, the obligation which London and the nation owed to Mr. Besant was publicly recognised, and in 1895 the honour of Knighthood was bestowed upon him, amid universal approval.”

He was married to Mary Foster-Barham, and the obituary illustrates how male and female children were treated differently. The obituary records that when he died, his two sons, Philip and Geoffrey were both at the Front (South Africa). The former being a Captain in the 4th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the latter a trooper in the Imperial Yeomanry. Of his daughters, the only mention is that one unnamed daughter was with Walter Besant at the time of his death.

It was fascinating to find the grave of an author that has provided me with a Victorian view of the history of London.

It was a pleasure to walk round and explore the “Additional Burial Ground” of St John at Hampstead on a sunny spring day.

The cemetery is at the exactly right place between being wild and too manicured. Last autumn’s leaves still cover the ground, moss covers many of the graves and narrow paths provide walkways across the cemetery. The houses of Hampstead close in on the cemetery boundaries.

This stunning Magnolia tree will look magnificent in a couple of weeks (providing the flowers have not been blown away with the recent gales).

There are so many graves that tell an interesting and often tragic story of 19th and early 20th century life. This is the grave of Arthur Llewelyn Davies who died in 1907 and his wife Sylvia Jocelyn who both died at the same age of 44 (although in different years).

Perhaps the only good thing about their relatively young deaths is that they would not have to suffer the deaths of their eldest son George who was killed in action at the age of 22 on the 15th March 1915, and the death of their fourth son Michael who drowned whilst bathing at Oxford where he was an undergraduate at the age of 20.

Inscriptions also record how individuals (or their families) wanted to be remembered. This is the grave of George Atherton Aitken – The Very Mirror Of A Pubic Servant.

After visiting the additional cemetery, I walked across the road to visit the church of St John at Hampstead and the original cemetery.

References to a chapel on the site date back to the 14th century. The core of the current church was consecrated in 1747 with the spire being added in the 1780s. The church was expanded during the middle of the 19th century to support the growing population of Hampstead. During the rest of the 19th century there would be improvements (such as gas lighting), decoration and minor changes. The church was given a lighter colour decoration in 1958 to replace the dark Victorian interior.

The interior of St John at Hampstead today:

The original cemetery around the church has a number of fascinating graves of those who have made their mark over the centuries.

Close to the church is the grave of John Harrison.

The inscription provides a summary of Harrison’s work;

“In memory of Mr John Harrison , late of Red Lion Square, London. Inventor of the Time-Keeper for ascertaining the Longitude at Sea.

He was born at Foulby, in the County of York, and was the Son of a Builder at that Place, who brought him up to the same profession.

Before he attained the Age of 21, he without any Instruction employed himself in cleaning and repairing Clocks and Watches and made a few of the former chiefly of Wood. At the age of 25 he employed he Whole Time in Chronological Improvements. He was the Inventor of the Gridiron Pendulum and the Method of preventing the Effect of Heat and Cold upon Time keepers by Two Bars of different Metals fixed together. He introduced the Secondary Spring to keep them going while winding up and was the Inventor of most (or all) of the Improvements in Clocks and Watches during his Time.

In the year 1735 his first Time keeper was sent to Lisbon, and in 1764 his then much Improved fourth Time keeper, having been sent to Barbados the Commissioners of Longitude certified that it had determined the Longitude within one Third of Half a Degree of a Great Circle having erred not more than 40 Seconds in Time.

After near Sixty years close Application to the above Pursuits, he departed this Life on the 24th Day of March 1776, Aged 83.

Mrs Elizabeth Harrison Wife of the above Mr John Harrison departed this life March 5th 1777, Aged 72.”

Despite the success of the trial with the fourth time keeper (model H4), Harrison had problems with the Board of Longitude which had been set up to oversee the trials and a financial award for the accurate measurement of Longitude under the Longitude Act. The Commissioners on the Board of Longitude did not feel that sufficient trials had been carried out, and they initially offered part of the award (£10,000) with a further £10,000 if Harrison’s time keeper could be replicated by other manufacturers. This would have required the design details of Harrison’s time keeper to be published freely for other manufacturers to use.

Harrison did eventually get a substantial financial award from Parliament, with the support of the King.

The grave of an artistic Hampstead resident can be found up against the boundary wall of the cemetery. This is the grave of the artist John Constable.

Constable was a frequent visitor to Hampstead and lived for many years in the area, including in a house in Well Walk between the years 1827 until 1834. It was from the drawing room of the house in Well Walk that he painted a number of views across to the centre of the City.

An example being the following view with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the centre distance. An inscription on the rear of the painting reads: “Hampstead. Drawing Room 12 o’clock noon Sept.1830” (Image ©Trustees of the British Museum)

The hilly nature of Hampstead is visible in the graveyard, as the land descends from the high point of 135m at Whitestone Pond down towards the River Thames.

The graveyard is also managed in such a way that whilst it is not too wild, it is not manicured and a plaque at the entrance provides information on the range of wildlife that can be found.

Towards the south east corner of the graveyard, just across Frognal Way, there is a rather large construction site.

I believe this was 22 Frognal Way, which was occupied by a modernist house built to the design of Kentish Town architect Philip Pank. The house was commissioned by Harold Cooper and built in 1978. Cooper was the founder of the Lee Cooper jeans brand. After his death in 2008, the house became derelict and although there were attempts to get the house listed and restored, planning permission appears to have been given for demolition and construction of a new house.

The new building will be low profile consisting of a single story as viewed from street level, however as can be seen by the size of the excavation in the above photo, the new building will have considerable basement space.

Some of these building sites where basements are constructed for residential homes appear more like a Crossrail construction site. I suspect I know what the neighbours think about having such a large excavation on their doorstep.

The church of St John at Hampstead, the original and additional graveyards, are a fascinating place to explore, and if you have a couple of hours spare on a sunny day, there is no better place to learn about the residents of this area of north London.

alondoninheritance.com

Laystall Street, Giuseppe Mazzini And The School Board For London

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Laystall Street is a turning off Clerkenwell Road, slightly to the west of Leather Lane. A short distance along Laystall Street there is an unusual plaque on the first floor of one of the terrace houses.

In 1986, the ground floor was occupied by a hairdresser:

In 2018, the ground floor is now a model agency, but the same plaque can be seen on the first floor:

The large and rather ornate plaque is to Giuseppe Mazzini:

Giuseppe Mazzini was born in Genoa, Italy in 1805 at a time when Italy consisted of several independent republics and city states, rather than as a unified country.

He qualified as a lawyer, but his main interest was republicanism and the unification of Italy into a single nation state.

He was involved with, and organised a number riots and attempted insurrections to try and bring about unification. He also formed a secret political organisation called Young Italy (as mentioned in the plaque) dedicated to the unification of the country.

His activities resulted in periods of imprisonment, exile from Italy and, in his absense, a sentance of death.

In the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s, periods in exile included London from where he continued to work in the cause of unification. The plaque in Laystall Street might be interpreted as indicating that he lived in the house whilst in London, however there is a Blue Plaque on the house at 155 North Gower Street which was his London residence, and he also spent some time close by in Hatton Garden.

The Laystall Street plaque is a record of “La Società per il Progresso degli Operai Italiani in Londra” (the Society for the Progress of Italian Workers in London).

Laystall Street and surrounding streets were once a centre for Italian immigrants and the area had a large Italian population. The Society for the Progress of Italian Workers in London was founded in May 1864 under the joint presidency of Mazzini and Guiseppe Garibaldi (who also shared the same views on republicanism and the unification of Italy)

The aim of the society was to engage the Italian population of London in the unification cause. The club originally met in Mazzini’s house in Hatton Garden, before moving to Farringdon Road, before occupying 10 Laystall Street where the club would stay until 1930 when the society moved to Red Lion Street.

The plaque in Laystall Street is dated 1922, when the society had already been based in the building for many years. I cannot find any information as to why it is only to Mazzini, one of the founders of the society and does not mention Garibaldi.

The Red Lion Street premises were seized during the 2nd World War, but returned to the society after the war, who then changed their name to the Mazzini-Garibaldi Club.

Given the siezure of the premises of the society and the internment of many Italians as enemy aliens during the last war, it would be interesting to know if the Laystall Street plaque survived on the building during the war, or whether it was removed and reinstalled after the end of the war.

Giuseppe Mazzini photographed during one of his visits to London:

Giuseppe Mazzini was involved in a notorious act of letter opening by the British Government. In 1843 Mazzini’s cause attracted the support of two officers in the Austrian Navy, who landed in the Kingdom of Naples to support some riots that Mazzini was organising. The two were immediately captured and executed. The Illustrated London News on the 12th May 1849 in an article about Mazzini reported that:

“He is well known to the English public, through the notoriety acquired by Sir James Graham in opening his letters in the English Post-office, and communicating their contents to the Austrian Government, which led to the death of the noble-hearted brothers, Bandiera,”

In describing them as “noble hearted”, the Illustrated London News appears to have had some sympathy for their cause.

The view along Laystall Street from Clerkenwell Road:

The source of the name Laystall Street is interesting. The word Laystall can refer to a place where rubbish or dung is deposited. It can also refer to a place where cattle are kept. This would imply an old source of the name, so I checked John Roque’s 1746 map of London.

The area around Laystall Street has changed singnificantly since 1746. Clerkenwell Road was not there, and the majority of streets have since changed their names.

Laystall Street is just to the west of Leather Lane, it has a slight turn into Clerkenwell Road, and then runs back at an angle of about 45 degrees to Clerkenwell Road.

In 1746, in the right place, with the right alignment was a street named Leicester Street (see the map extract below). Leather Lane is running from the middle of the map to the lower edge. Leicester Street is to the left of the map, running to the left edge from the junction of Leather Lane, Ayre Street and Windmill Hill).

The words Laystall and Leicester sound similar, so perhaps Laystall was just a corruption of the street name in 1746, however the Encyclopedia of London attributes the name to the traditional meaning of a rubbish dump which was probably towards the Mount Pleasant end of the street as this was originally a lane that ran down to the River Fleet and the area was known as a rubbish dumping ground. Perhaps Roque has just recorded the incorrect name?

Laystall Street was cut in half in the early 1890s when Rosebery Avenue was built, and the area north of Laystall Street underwent considerable development with the demolition of the old Coldbath Fields prison and the construction of the Mount Pleasant Post Office.

The extract below from the 1895 Ordnance Survey map shows Rosebery Avenue newly completed, cutting through Laystall Street:

I walked further down Laystall Street. On one of the buildings there is the rather nice sign of the Newgate Press preserved:

The view looking up Laystall Street from the junction with Rosebery Avenue:

In the 1895 Ordnance Survey Map, there is a large school occupying the northern side of Laystall Street after it crosses Rosebery Avenue. The school buildings are still to be found:

The school retains a very nice London County Council coat of arms with the name of the school below:

The school also includes the following sign for the School Board for London:

The above two photos show two of the key organisations responsible for the expansion of a structured education system across London.

The School Board for London was created by the 1870 Elementary Education Act to provide elementary school places for all poor children. It became the largest provider of school places across London.

The School Board for London was in operation between 1870 and 1903, when the London County Council took over responsibility for education across London.

Another sign on the school building gives 1876 as the date of the school, six years after the Elementary Education Act, but also names the school as the Laystall Street School:

The Illustrated London News on the 5th August 1876 provides a glimpse into the challenges of providing schools in central London:

“A board-school was opened, on Monday night, in Laystall-street, Gray’s Inn Road, by Sir Charles Reed. in the ‘block’ where the school is situated Sir Charles stated that places were required for 2075 children. The difficulty of getting a site in the metropolis was very great, and it was sometimes costly; but, cost what it might, the board must have a school placed in the particular locality in which it was required. He thought if his colleagues were to be blamed for anything it should be because of their tardiness in providing school accommodation in that district, which would have the additional provision given to it without injury to the other schools there. He saw a letter in a newspaper the other day in which the writer, speaking of the school board, said ‘Their present school in Laystall-street, which will open unblessed by us on Monday next, is within sixty yards of a church school.’ He (Sir Charles) believed the parents of that district would bless that school, and that would be quite enough. Sir Edward Currie also spoke, and stated that the site of the new school was the smallest and the most costly that the board had purchased in London. The school was intended to accommodate 502 children, at a cost of about £10 per head.”

The original name was Laystall School, as Rosebery Avenue did not exist. It was built 14 years after the school was constructed.

The two signs also probably tell us how and when the name changed. The school was built in 1876 as the Laystall Street School by the School Board for London. In 1903 the London County Council takes over the school and it is probably then that the name also changes after the construction of Rosebery Avenue – a much larger street than Laystall Street (sorry, but I love these little connected details you can find across London’s streets).

The school today is the Christopher Hatton Primary School, named after the Elizabethan politician who also gave his name to Hatton Garden.

I always feel I never do justice to the history of the areas I cover in my posts, however it is fascinating what you can find in London’s streets and in Laystall Street there is an Italian nationalist, possible long lost rubbish dump that gave the name to the street, and a glimpse into the development of schools at the end of the 19th century – not bad for a short walk.

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Sir Stafford Cripps At Charing Cross Station

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Sir Stafford Cripps at Charing Cross Station is one of the more unusual notes that my father wrote on the photos that he printed from his negatives, but that is what I found on the subject of this week’s post and was written to describe the following photo.

The photo was taken at the junction of Villiers Street and Embankment Place at the rear of the Embankment Underground station (the rear assuming that the front of the station is on the Embankment). The same location today:

In my father’s photo, the view is from the outside of what is today the entrance to Embankment Underground Station. At top left are the rail tracks leading from the bridge across the River Thames into Charing Cross Station, with the footbridge running alongside the main rail bridge. The brick buildings line the side of the rail tracks as they run into the main station. Across the street can be seen a couple of awnings in front of some shops in Villiers Street.

I assume the two figures with hats are Police, and it looks like a car has pulled up and the man with white hair is being greeted by the man with dark hair.

My father named the location as Charing Cross Station, but I am outside Embankment Station.

The underground stations around Charing Cross have had a rather complex series of names over the years.

The Embankment Station currently serves the District, Circle, Northern and Bakerloo lines.

Of these lines, the first to be built was the 1870 extension of the District Railway from Westminster to Blackfriars. A station was created on this extension to serve Charing Cross Station, however as the cut and cover construction technique was being used for the railway, it could not run underneath the station, so was run along the new Victoria Embankment. As the aim of the station was to serve Charing Cross Railway Station, it was given the name Charing Cross.

In 1906 the next underground line opened, the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (the Bakerloo) which also had a station just outside and to the northwest of the main Charing Cross Railway Station which was given the name Trafalgar Square, and the station that terminated at what is now the Embankment Station was an interchange to the District Railway Charing Cross Station, but was given the name Embankment.

The next underground line was the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway which again had a station just outside the main entrance to the Charing Cross Railway Station, called the Strand Station. The extension of this railway terminated at today’s Embankment, which then was given the full name Charing Cross, Embankment Station.

In 1915 the name reverted back to simply Charing Cross Station, hence my father’s reference to Stafford Cripps at Charing Cross Station.

In 1974, the name changed again to Charing Cross Embankment and a couple of years later, in 1976 the name changed to Embankment and has stayed the same since. The stations outside the main entrance to Charing Cross Railway Station combined and took the name Charing Cross.

I hope I have got that right – any corrections appreciated.

The following extract from a 1963 underground map shows the station configuration with Charing Cross Station where the Embankment Station can now be found with Trafalgar Square and Strand Stations just to the north.

This is the view looking from roughly where the car had stopped in 1948 into the rear of the Embankment Station on a rather wet Saturday:

Sir Stafford Cripps was a Labour politician and at the time of the 1948 photos was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the post war Labour Government.

Originally a lawyer, Stafford Cripps joined the Labour Party and was appointed Solicitor General by Ramsay MacDonald. He was highly critical of the National Government that was formed in 1931 and throughout the 1930s argued up and down the country for a form of revolutionary Socialism, to such an extent that a report in the Manchester Guardian stated that “if Sir Stafford Cripps continues, he is much more likely to be the architect of a British Fascism based on the fears of a frightened middle-class than is Sir Oswald Mosley”.

In 1939 he was expelled from the Labour Party after pushing for a Popular Front with the Communist Party, although he would continue to be supported by the constituents of his East Bristol constituency.

Despite being outside of the Labour Party, he was appointed to be the Ambassador to Moscow during the early years of the war, based on Churchill’s believe that a hard left representative would find favour with Stalin. During his time in Moscow, Stafford Cripps reputation grew back at home as he was seen to be strengthening Russia’s resistance to the Nazi invasion.

Back in the UK, from 1942 to 1945 Stafford Cripps was the Minister of Aircraft Production.

Prior to the 1945 General Election Cripps rejoined the Labour Party and after the Labour victory was appointed as the President of the Board of Trade, and from 1947 as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His time in Moscow had softened his views on Communism as his experiences of Stalin had brought into question the morality of Communism, but he still retained a strong socialist viewpoint.

His training as a lawyer armed Stafford Cripps with a very logical approach to roles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was faced with a country broken by years of war and in urgent need of a rapid growth in manufacturing and export to bring in much needed foreign currency and to rebuild the country after six years of war.

I searched newspapers for any reference to Stafford Cripps visit to Charing Cross Station, but could not find anything – it did not help that my father did not record the actual date in 1948. There are though hundreds of newspaper reports of Stafford Cripps speaking in his role as Chancellor of the Exchequer, calling for more steel production, the expansion of manufacturing, more export, and arguing the case for austerity due to the countries financial condition.

Despite the need for austerity, Stafford Cripps did support high levels of expenditure on social causes such as housing and health.

Stafford Cripps had suffered from Colitis for many years, and his deteriorating health forced him to resign in 1950, and he would die two years later on the 21st April 1952.

The London Daily Herald wrote on the following day:

“By the death of Sir Stafford Cripps the country loses one of its greatest servants, the Labour Movement one of its greatest members.

His intellectual gifts won him pre-eminence, whether at the Bar or in politics. But he added to them other and perhaps greater qualities. He was a man of complete integrity, of superb courage, and of selfless devotion to duty.

He did not flinch, when the war was over, from the task of warning the country, first as President of the Board of Trade, then as Chancellor, of the bleakness of the economic outlook and of the continuing need for austerity.

That earned him for a while unpopularity and even derision in many quarters. But derision turned to respect and admiration as it was realised how sound his judgement and advice had been.”

In addition to the first photo at the top of the post, my father took a second photo which looks to have been taken from just inside the station with the walls of the station entrance to the right and above.

Two men are walking towards the station entrance, with a policeman by their side. One is wearing a chain of office and the other is wearing a bowler hat. What I do not know is which one is Stafford Cripps.

I am not aware that the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer comes with a chain of office, however I get the impression that the man in the above photo in the middle appears to be the most important.

The following photo is of Sir Stafford Cripps in 1942. Is he the man with the Chain of Office or the man with the bowler hat? (photo NPG x88329 © National Portrait Gallery, London)

In some ways I am left with more questions than I have answered in this post. Whilst I have found the location of the original photos, I cannot be certain which of the men is Sir Stafford Cripps and I have no idea why he was walking to the Embankment Underground Station on a wet day in 1948.

I also do not know whether my father was at the station to take the photos, or whether he was just passing and happened to see a famous politician, he nearly always had his camera with him so perhaps this was how the photographs were taken.

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Sir Polydore de Keyser – Hotelier And Lord Mayor

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There are names that keep coming up whilst exploring London’s history, and this week’s post is about one of those names, Sir Polydore de Keyser.

I first came across him whilst writing about the area directly to the north of Blackfriars Bridge. Then a few months ago, my blog started to get a number of redirects from the Guardian website from an article about the Supreme Court judgement on Brexit – a judgement in which de Keyser’s hotel was referred to several times. I also recently found Polydore de Keyser again during a walk through Smithfield.

I was taking photos of the market buildings as the area will undergo considerable change in the years to come, when I saw a plaque I had not noticed before on the corner of a building at the junction of West Smithfield and Snow Hill (the corner of the building facing the camera on the right of the following photo, the plaque is just below the round window)

The plaque records that the market was opened by Sir Polydore de Keyser on the 7th November 1888:

So who was Polydore de Keyser? There does not seem to be much written about him, so I thought a read through some old newspaper archives might shed some light on this interesting character with the foreign sounding name, and from the above plaque was Lord Mayor in 1888.

I found the fascinating story of an immigrant from the Continent who reached the highest of offices in the City of London, but who also faced continual criticism because of his origins.

Polydore de Keyser was born in 1832 in the Belgium town of Termonde (the French name or Dendermonde in Flemish) in the north west of Belgium between Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent.

He moved to London in 1842 with his father, Constantin de Keyser and mother, Catharina Rosalia Troch. His father had been a teacher in Belgium, but on arrival in London he purchased a hotel which he renamed de Keyser’s Royal Hotel. A strange career change and I have been unable to find any references as to why the de keyser’s moved to London and took up the hotel business.

One of the first references to Polydor de Keyser are in newspaper adverts across the country from 1856. He was an importer of the German drink “Maitrank” and his advert in the Newcastle Journal on the 19th July 1856 reads:

“THE LIQUID HEAVEN of the Germans – Who that has tasted the delicious ‘Maitrank’ or May drink of Germany, can ever forget it. Poetic in name, and inspiring in its essence, it is the wine of wines. the exquisite flavour of that lovely mountain flower – the Waldschloschen appears to be heightened by its being wedded to the juice of the grape, and may well the refined connoisseur hang upon the memory of its tempting fragrance. The worshippers of this nectar have become almost frantic with delight by the announcement that a Herr Polydore de Keyser has succeeded at length in imparting to it the additional charm of effervescence, a right sparkling attribute, which it alone required to bring it to perfection”.

Orders were requested to be sent without delay to either Polydore de Keyser of 24 Cannon Street, London, or to his agents across the country. Maitrank could be purchased for 72 shillings per dozen.

Also in 1856, Constantin left the running of the hotel to his son Polydor.

He does not seem to have been involved in any activities that justified a newspaper article for a number of years, he was running his hotel and probably getting involved in societies and good causes in his local area and that justified an interest due to his background.

In 1866, at a meeting in St. Ann, Blackfriars, Polydore de Keyser subscribed £2, 2s to a testimonial to acknowledge the service of Mr. R.E. Warwick who had “for many years past has endeavored to obtain a better distribution of the charges for the relief of the poor in Unions”. At the meeting, other subscribers included the Mayor and Alderman so de Keyser was moving amongst those who managed the running of the City.

A year later, de Keyser was perhaps using his European contacts as he was acting as a steward for an anniversary celebration for the German Hospital in Dalston, held in the London Tavern on Bishopsgate Street.

Polydore de Keyser already had a hotel in Blackfriars, the hotel that his father became the proprietor of when he arrived in London. This was the Royal Hotel, in Chatham Place, New Bridge Street, Blackfriars.

Chatham Place was the space at the northern end of Blackfriars Bridge, between the bridge and New Bridge Street. The following map shows the location in 1832:

I cannot find the exact location of his original hotel, however I suspect it was part of the block on the left of Chatham Place as this is where his new hotel would be built.

Newspaper reports help provide an idea of the way local commissioners and wards worked, and how complaints could be resolved. In the London City Press on the 26th March 1870 there is a report that he was summoned before the Commissioners of Sewers.

He had been summoned to explain why he had not carried out a number of works to his hotel to make it safe. There was a crack in the hotel but it had been filled in years before and had not changed since. The charge was thrown out on the grounds that Alderman Stone found the building was not dangerous and that the complaint by a Mr Power was malicious as de Keyser had apparently made an earlier complaint against him to the Commissioners of Sewers.

By 1872, de Keyser was ready to make his mark on Blackfriars and an article in the Morning Post of the 6th May 1872 announced the plans for his new hotel:

“IMPROVEMENTS AT BLACKFRIARS – In the background of the Victoria Embankment there are many ugly spots, which can only be beautified by the enterprise of private individuals, the Metropolitan Board of Works having no authority over the unsightly looking places alluded to. One of the chief eyesores is the ungainly group of gasometers at Blackfriars Bridge, and it would certainly be a pity if such monsters should remain in their current position. It is gratifying to know that they will cumber the ground where they are reared but a short time longer, as a very enterprising and highly respected Belgian, Mr. Polydore de Keyser, of the Royal Hotel at Blackfriars, now a citizen of London, has matured a vast plan by which a hostelry such as can only be paralleled by that called ‘grand’ at Paris will be shortly added to the few handsome buildings to be seen along the river front. This hotel, when completed, will extend from the corner of William Street, along a curved frontage of 380 feet, on to the entrance of the ground at the back of the embankment, sweeping away the gasholders now there.

The hotel, the design for which is in the modern French style, will have an entrance from the embankment into a spacious courtyard, into which carriages can drive, whilst the ground floor and basement will contain a series of elegant shops. The hotel is to be fitted up on the Continental system, with a spacious and handsome dining room as well as another room facing the embankment. Mr Gruning is the architect, and Messrs. Trollope and Sons the builders. it is anticipated that it will be completed and opened within a period of 21 months. On Saturday the foundation-stone was laid, in the presence of a large company of ladies and gentlemen by Miss Wich, daughter of the Belgian Consul, and at the dinner which followed, Sir Benjamin Phillips who was in the chair, wished every prosperity to Mr. de Keyser, a sentiment in which his numerous friends most cordially joined.”

The hotel opened in 1874 and the following print shows the hotel in that year.

An interesting feature appears to be a tunnel from the edge of the river allowing deliveries to be made by river, then transported into the hotel underneath the road. If you click on the photo to enlarge, you will see there is a man rolling a barrel into the tunnel.

This later photo from the southern end of the bridge also shows the hotel curving round from the Embankment.

The Morning Post on the 7th September 1874 carried the following report of the opening of the hotel:

“THE NEW ROYAL HOTEL – The latest addition to the palatial hotels with which London is now adorned is to be found in the new Royal Hotel, at the City end of the Victoria Embankment, which is to take the place of the Royal Hotel in Bridge Street, so long kept by Mr. Polydore de Keyser, representative in the Common Council of the Ward of Farringdon Without. This hotel, now completed, was open to the friends of Mr and Mrs de Keyser on Saturday, and after a pretty thorough inspection of this magnificent building, it may be safely said that in many respects it is altogether unequaled in London or in any of the great Continental cities, not excepting the famous caravanserai in Geneva, Interlaken, and other places to which tourists resort in such numbers. As Mr de Keyser has had ample experience in providing for his numerous foreign and English visitors, and as the internal arrangements have been carried out after his own designs, it may be safely said that nothing is wanting to make a stay in the new hotel agreeable. The view from the front windows over Blackfriars Bridge and the Embankment and over the busy Thames extending to London Bridge on the one hand and Westminster on the other, is most remarkable, and will give anyone a just idea of the immense traffic constantly going on in the metropolis.

The restaurant is capable of seating 400 visitors, and on the five floors there is a vast number of rooms either for bed chambers or sitting rooms. Those on the lower floors, which may be presumed to be state apartments, are fitted with exquisite taste and with every comfort; while in the upper apartments are equally calculated to make a stay in every way agreeable. All the adjuncts of a first class hotel, such as billiard, smoking, reading and drawing rooms for ladies, are provided, and the lifts and arrangements for ventilation are on the most approved principles. On Saturday Mr. and Mrs De Keyser welcomed at a dinner and subsequent concert some 400 of their friends, who heartily wished them success in their great undertaking. The new building, large as it is, is but half of that which is intended, the other portion being destined to occupy, with some slight deviations, the site of the buildings in which business has hitherto been carried on.”

The following pages from an 1891 brochure for De Keyser’s Royal Hotel provide an idea of what would await a guest during their stay at the hotel. (From New York Public Library Digital Collections – free to use without restrictions)

De Keyser seems to have been involved in numerous other activities as well as running his hotel. In 1875 he was elected to the Committee of the Hotel Keepers’ Association and in 1876 he was on the London Executive Committee for the organisation of the British exhibits at the Brussels Exhibition. It was at this exhibition that he would meet the Prince of Wales who declared himself “well pleased with the British section in all respects”.

I get the impression that de Keyser was a master of the art of networking.

In 1877, de Keyser was elected as a Common Councilman of the Ward of Farringdon Without and in 1882 he was elected as an Alderman of the same ward, although this was not an appointment to which everyone agreed. There were two protests against de Keysers appointment, one by Mr. ex- Sheriff Waterlow who was the unsuccessful candidate and one by Mr. john Hill and other electors of the ward, on the grounds that de Keyser was an alien born, and that he was the holder of an innkeepers licence.

To address these protests, a special meeting of the Court of Aldermen was held at the Guildhall on Tuesday 20th June 1882. He had won the election by over 300 votes so he had won the election fairly and clearly. The final decision was delayed until the first week of July when the protests that he could not be an Alderman as being alien born and holding an innkeepers licence were overruled and de Keyser took his seat as an Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon Without.

An example of the activities that de Keyser took part in through his role as an Alderman is a report of a meeting of the inhabitants of the Precinct of St. Brides, held in St. Bride’s Church on Thursday May 22nd 1884 when de Keyser was in the chair. The meeting was held to discuss the impact of the London Government Bill, part of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882 that was continuing the consolidation of powers from the various Vestries and Wards that had been the traditional holders of local power across London.

The meeting resolved that “In the opinion of this meeting the Municipal Bill for London, if it becomes law, would be prejudicial to the interests of local self-government, and would create a vast system of centralization involving increase of rates, with no compensatory increase of efficiency.”

Despite the meeting’s resolution it was powerless to prevent the gradual centralization of powers across London.

In 1887 de Keyser reached the pinnacle of City of London governance when he was elected Lord Mayor, however the election was somewhat contentious and newspaper reports highlight the fact that he was an “alien” he was “born in Belgium” and that he was “the first Roman Catholic who has been elected to the civic chair since the Reformation”.

One newspaper report stated that “The gentleman who took his seat on Tuesday in the civic chair of the City of London has before him a somewhat difficult task. The difficulty arises from the fact, principally, that Mr. Polydore de Keyser is a foreign born subject of her Majesty. The spirit of freedom and tolerance, of which Englishmen are prone to boast upon every available occasion, has made it possible that a naturalized alien should occupy the high position of Chief Magistrate of the greatest city in the world. Unfortunately, however, there is just now rife a feeling of resentment against anything foreign among the masses, which Mr. Polydore de Keyser will, we hope, do nothing to aggravate. he has hitherto demeaned himself under inquisitiveness of a peculiarly active kind so wisely and so well that we may safely give him credit for sufficient tacticianly discretion to sail the civic ship safely and unimpaired through the troubled waters into which, we fear, she is destined to pass before the expiry of his term of office at the helm.”

A rather amazing article which seems to be saying that although we are tolerant, just keep quiet and see out your term as quickly as possible.

As a Catholic immigrant from Belgium, Polydire de Keyser who started selling Maitrank through newspapers was now the owner of the Royal Hotel, Blackfriars and the Lord Mayor of the City of London – quite an achievement.

The following portrait of de Keyser (© National Portrait Gallery, London) shows him in November 1887 at the start of his year as Lord Mayor.

And a photo of him during his term as Lord Mayor:

During his term of office, de Keyser took part in all the activities expected of a Mayor. There were preparations for an exhibition in Paris, he attended fund raising events (for example a “Smoking Concert” in aid of Police Charities), there was plenty of entertaining at the Mansion House, concerts at the Guildhall School of Music, fairs and bazaars to be opened.

In May, probably due to his heritage, there was a reception and dance at the Mansion House for the “burgomasters and aldermen from Belgium” at which there were “over 500 ladies and gentlemen present to meet the representatives of Belgian municipalities, and the guests on arriving were received in the saloon by the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress” – one of the very few references to de Keysers wife, Louise Piéron who he had married in 1862.

During his term of office, there were continuing critical, often abusive, articles written about de Keyser, for example:

“The worthy Polydore de Keyser must be either an exceptionally guileless or an abnormally conceited person. Last week he inspected the boys of the training ship Warspite, and, of course, favoured them with the usual florid oration. In the course of his speech he announced that the Lady Mayoress had great pleasure in giving each boy a Jubilee shilling, which he hoped they would keep throughout their future lives as a souvenir of the present occasion!’ The notion of a British tar treasuring up Herr de Keyser’s shilling for years, and studiously refraining from spending it on grog is really sublime.”

In August, de Keyser returned to the town of his birth, Termonde in Belgium where the “streets and houses were gaily decorated with the mingled colours of Belgium and England, and the arms of the City of London”.

The following painting (By Jan Verhas (kunstschilder) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) shows the celebrations put on by Termonde for de Keyser’s return:

In September, there was the prospect of a new Lord Mayor with thoughts turning to who would follow de Keyser. Newspaper reports continued to focus on de Keyser’s foreign birth as in the following from the London Letter section of the South Wales Daily News:

“Next Saturday the Livery of the City of London will meet to elect a successor to Alderman Polydore de Keyser as Lord Mayor. After this strange foreign name it will be a relief to get a thoroughly English patronymic as Whitehead. There is little doubt but that Mr Whitehead, who is the senior Alderman not having passed the chair, will be selected.”

The “Jack the Ripper” murders took place during de Keyser’s time as Lord Mayor. Although Whitechapel was outside of his jurisdiction, on the 2nd October 1888 it was reported that “the Lord Mayor, Mr Polydore de Keyser, after consulting Sir James Fraser, Chief Commissioner of the Police of the City of London, announced that a reward of £500 would be given by the Corporation for the detection of the miscreant.”

At the end of his term as Lord Mayor, de keyser became Sir Polydore de Keyser and performed his last public duty as Lord Mayor, the opening of the new Fish Market which is where I found the plaque featured at the start of this post. The London Evening Standard report of the official opening published on the 8th November 1888 reads:

“THE NEW FISH MARKET – The Lord Mayor (Sir Polydore de Keyser) yesterday opened the new Fish Market in Farringdon Street which has been specially erected for the trade by the Corporation of the City of London. The building, which was designed by the late Sir Horace Jones, has been constructed by Mr. Mark Gentry, at a cost of about £26,000. It is situated at the southern roadway leading from Farringdon Road to Long Lane and fronting Snow Hill. The market, which covers an area of 14,000 square feet, has been erected over the joint lines of the Metropolitan and London, Chatham and Dover Railways.

The Lord Mayor, who went in semi-state, accompanied by the Sheriffs (Mr. Alderman Gray and Mr Newton) was received at the principal entrance of the building by the Chairman (Mr. James Perkins) members of the market committee and the Town Clerk.

A silver gilt key was handed by Mr. Perkins to the Lord Mayor, with which he unlocked the huge iron gates amidst the cheers of those assembled outside.

His Lordship having been conducted by the Town Clerk and the members of the Market Committee to a dais, covered with scarlet cloth, at the southern end of the building.

Mr. Perkins, Chairman of the Markets Committee, briefly explained the circumstances which had induced the Corporation to construct the present market. The old fish market on the other side of the roadway, which was originally intended for the sale of fruit and vegetables, had proved a loss to the Corporation of about £10,000 a year. Hence the erection of the present market, Billingsgate having proved insufficient for the supply of fish for the Metropolis. Nearly every shop in the new market was let, and the old market would be used in future for fruit and vegetable. the Corporation hoped that it would be successful, and prove advantageous to the salesman.

The Lord mayor, who was heartily cheered, in declaring the market open, said he was exceedingly pleased to think that his last public duty in his official capacity was to open a market which, he hoped, would result in great benefit to the community, to the Corporation, and to the ward of which he was Alderman (cheers). the Corporation had for years past shown the great interest it took in these matters, and how thoroughly alive it was to the great responsibility of making all our markets as complete and as commodious as possible (cheers). In addition to supplying the wants of London and the suburbs, which now numbered nearly 6,000,000 inhabitants, our markets supplied the wants of the people all over the country. Having complimented the architect and builder upon the magnificent market which they had succeeded in producing, his Lordship formally declared the market open,

Cheers having been given for the success of the market, the proceedings terminated.”

de Keyser ended his term as Lord Mayor at the end of the same week as opening the new market. Even then, newspapers continued to provide a negative portrait of de Keyser as a foreigner, for example, in reporting on the banquet for the new mayor, the Pall Mall Gazette on the 10th November 1888 reported:

“The faces of the distinguished guests afford a remarkable study in physiognomy. The new Lord Mayor has a handsome, clear-cut head and an expansive brow, offering a marked contrast to the florid and jolly hotel-keeping countenance of the late Belgian de Keyser. It was very amusing to hear the toastmaster pray for silence of the late Lord Mayor, as if poor Sir Polydore de keyser were dead and about to rise – say, from the Guildhall vaults.”

On the 4th December 1888, de Keyser was at Windsor Castle to receive his knighthood from Queen Victoria.

After ending his term as Lord Mayor, de Keyser continued organising British participation in overseas exhibitions. In 1889 he was the Executive President of the British Section at the Paris Exhibition.

He also continued his role as Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon Without and in October 1891 was presiding over a meeting of the inhabitants of the ward who were objecting to the letting of any portion of land on the Thames Embankment to the Salvation Army as it would be detrimental to the interests of the City including the concern that “there was no doubt that the processions &c, with drums, trumpets and cymbals, would lead to danger”.

In 1892 de Keyser resigned from the post of Alderman on the account of “bodily infirmity” – among other issues, he was going deaf.

In July 1893 a bust of Sir Polydore de Keyser was unveiled at the Mansion House. It was presented as a token of respect to de Keyser who had played an important part in the affairs of the City and the Ward of Farringdon Without.

Sir Polydore de Keyser died on Friday 14th January 1898 after a “long battle with cancer”. His funeral was on the 19th January and on the 20th the London Evening Standard reported on the funeral:

“The remains of Sir Polydore de Keyser, formerly Lord Mayor of London, who died on Friday last, were interred yesterday in the family vault in Nunhead Cemetery. There was a large attendance of mourners, headed by Mr. Polydore W. de Keyser, his adopted son and nephew, and Messrs. C.M. and A. Fevez, other nephews. Among those present were Alderman Sir Joseph Savory M.P. who served as Sheriff with Sir Polydore in 1883; Mr Alderman Treloar, who succeeded him in the Court of Alderman; Mr. W.J. Soulsby, representing the Lord Mayor; Mr. Marshall Pontifex, Ward Clerk of Farringdon; the Rev. Henry Blunt, rector of St. Andrew’s Holborn, who was Sir Polydore’s Chaplain when Lord Mayor; Colonel Sewell, representing the Spectacle makers’ Company; Mr. H. deGrelle Rogier, the Belgian Consul; Mr. Wilhelm Ganz, Mr. E.A. Gruning, Mr. Walter Wood, Mr. C. Val Hunter and deputations from the Belgian and other Societies with which Sir Polydore was associated. The Service at the grave was read by the Rev. John Stevens, rector of the Roman Catholic Church of Our Immaculate Lady of Victories, in Clapham Park Road. Lady de Keyser who died in 1895, is buried in the same vault.”

de Keyser did not have any children of his own, but appears to have had a large extended family, including a number of nephews, one of which he appears to have adopted in some way. In the year before his death, his ownership of the hotel was transferred into a separate company, the Company of de Keysers Royal Hotel Limited. I assume he did this to make the distribution of his assets after his death easier as shares in the company were set aside to provide annuities to various members of his family. His adopted nephew Polydore Weichand de Keyser also inherited an annuity and the residue of his estate.

Sir Polydore de Keyser then fades into history. His nephew however continues to play a part both in the governance of the City and in London’s hotel business.

An article in The Sphere on the 9th May 1908 reports on the opening of a new hotel – The Piccadilly Hotel – of which the nephew Polydore de Keyser (he appears to have dropped the name Weichand) was the joint manager. He was described:

“as a man of great energy and ability. He is the nephew and adopted son of Sir Polydore de Keyser, who was Lord Mayor of London twenty years ago. Educated at Westminster School and on the Continent, de Keyser has devoted many years to the practical study of modern hotel-keeping. The great success of de Keyser’s hotel affords conclusive proof of his administrative ability. he is deputy lieutenant of the City of London and a member of several City companies.”

So as well as the hotel business, he was also following in his uncle’s footsteps in the City of London.

de Keysers Royal Hotel continued in operation until the First World War when it was requisitioned to house officers. I suspect that after the war it had lost much of its pre-war grandeur and the world was a very different place approaching the 1920s than it had been when the hotel was built in 1874. In 1921 it was leased to Lever Brothers who eventually purchased the building in 1930 in order to demolish it, and build their new office, which is still on the site today, and occupied by Unilever (formed by the merger of Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie in 1929).

Margerine Unie originated in the Netherlands in the 1890s when Jurgens Van den Bergh opened the first factory to produce margarine. Given de Keyser’s continental European origins it is somewhat fitting that a part Dutch business occupies the same site as his hotel.

One final question – why did de Keyser feature so prominently in the Supreme Court judgement on Brexit? The Guardian article explains this better than I can, however in summary it appears that the de Keyser hotel company applied for compensation after the hotel at Blackfriars was requisitioned during the First World War. Government did not approve any compensation although Parliament had already set out terms for wartime compensation so it was whether the Government has the right to ignore a decision already made by Parliament, and de Keyser’s judgement of 1920 was one of the landmark cases as the de Keyser Hotel Company successfully sued for compensation.

Unilever House is now on the site of de Keysers Royal Hotel at the northern end of Blackfriars Bridge. This is Unilever House under construction:

And this is Unilever House today. The curved facade follows the same curve as de Keyser’s Royal Hotel.

That is Polydore de Keyser, a fascinating Londoner. An immigrant from Belgium who became Lord Mayor of London and a leading London hotelier. As far as I have been able to check, there have not been any other Lord Mayor’s who came to London as an immigrant since de Keyser.

Newspapers only provide a glimpse of his life, but I suspect he must have been highly ambitious and driven to achieve what he did. I hope the plaque at Smithfield survives to keep his name associated with the market he opened in 1888.

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Gray’s Inn Place, Sun Yat-sen And A London Kidnapping

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The subject of this week’s post is another post war photo taken by my father showing a bombed building with only the lower part of the front facade remaining.

The one distinguishing feature is the plaque on the remaining wall. The location is Gray’s Inn Place, a small gated area within Gray’s Inn. The gate separates Gray’s Inn Place from Warwick Court which leads down to High Holborn.

The same location today:

The building on which the plaque is now mounted is the City Law School. The building to the right is the same in both photos and appears to have been faithfully restored with the majority of the external features remaining the same.

The wall and railings in both photos also appear the same, confirming that the physical separation of Gray’s Inn from the local area has been in place for many years.

The plaque is to Sun Yat-sen and given that it appears to be undamaged in the post war photo, I have no reason to doubt that it is the same plaque in place today.

Sun Yat-sen is recognised as the father of the Chinese Republic and is honoured in both China and Taiwan. I am not going to attempt to explain his role in the complex Chinese politics of the time. I have read a number of histories and chronologies of his life on the Internet and it would take a much better understanding than I have of Chinese history at the end of the 19th Century and start of the 20th to try and explain his role. The key fact is that he was the first President of the Chinese Republic and worked to bring about a modern approach in a country that had been under Imperial rule for many centuries. In this post I will focus on his brief time in London and the affair that made headlines in the country’s newspapers in 1896.

Sun Yat-sen originally studied medicine at a college in China run by a Dr James Cantlie and qualified in 1892. Sun was also involved in a number of political activities including a coup attempt in 1895 which went wrong and resulted in Sun having to escape from China and a long period in exile.

In 1896 he arrived in London where he again met Dr James Cantlie who had returned to London in 1895 and it was Cantlie who arranged the lodging in Gray’s Inn Place for Sun.

The impact of Chinese politics extended to London. Sun would walk regularly to study in the British Museum and also to visit Cantlie and whilst on one of these walks on Sunday October 11th 1896, close to the Chinese Legation in Portland Place, he was tricked by some Chinese men into entering a building which was part of the Legation.

Cantlie received word of Sun’s imprisonment at the Legation and started to campaign for his release trying both the Home and Foreign Office and the newspapers, initially with The Times (who did not appear interested and would not publish the story) to The Globe who did publish with such graphic headlines that it resulted in the Government taking action, and Sun being released on Friday 23rd October 1896.

The Globe article on the 23rd October was titled “The Kidnapping Case” and read:

“We have received information this afternoon of the fact that depositions reached the Home Office yesterday to the effect that Sun Yat Sen was detained at the Chinese legation, and these were immediately communicated to the Foreign Office. Lord Salisbury has, in consequence, addressed a request to the Chinese Minister for the immediate release of the prisoner”.

The Globe article also included Dr. Cantlie’s statement which makes for a fascinating read of what was happening on the streets of London in 1896:

“A representative of “The Globe” called to-day at the house of Dr. James Cantlie, Dean of the College of Medicine for Chinese who is the friend of Sun Yat Sen, referred to in the accounts of the kidnapping case which has been published. Dr. Cantlie had drawn up a full statement of the affair which the following is the substance:

Sun Yat Sen says the Doctor is a Chinese friend of mine, and has been detained in the Legation since last Sunday week. I knew Sun in Hong Kong intimately. He studied medicine at the College there, at which I was a lecturer, from the year 1887 until he qualified. He was a brilliant student and started to practice in Macao, a settlement some 13 miles from Hong Kong. He was, owing to the success which attended his practice there, induced by his friends to go to Canton. I then lost sight of him for some months, but fortunately he called upon me in Hong Kong, and said he had got into some trouble with the Chinese government. I recommended him to consult a lawyer. I saw a lawyer the next day, but he would not tell me where Sun was, in case the news should get about. I next saw Sun in Honolulu, on my way home in March of this year.

I found he was going England, and I urged him most strongly to prosecute his medical studies in England, and advised him to come to London in October, when the medical classes opened.

This he did for he called upon me in London on the 1st October. He spent the day with me at my house. I then found lodgings for him for a few days. He came backwards and forwards to my house, but suddenly his visits ceased, and I learned from his landlady that he had not been seen at his lodgings for a few days.

On Saturday evening, October 17th at 10:30 I received information from a source there was no gainsaying that Sun was a prisoner at the Chinese Legation, and that in a few days he was to be sent out to China, where he would certainly lose his head. I immediately went to Sir Halliday Macartney’s house at 3, Harley-place, but the house was shut up, and the constable on duty in the road told me they had gone away for six months. I then went and reported the matter to the Marylebone Police station. Not receiving any offer of immediate help, I then went to Scotland Yard and laid the matter before the authorities.

On Sunday, October 18th, I again called at 3 Harley Place in the hope of finding a caretaker from whom I might get Sir Halliday’s address. Not gaining admission, I went to seek the advice of Dr. Manson, as he knew Sun while his pupil, and who had seen him at his house in London a few days previously. Whilst I was there we received confirmation of the previous night’s report from another source. This was communicated in, if possible a still more definite way and we were able to get at the truth.

A note from Sun placed the matter beyond all doubt, especially as his handwriting is familiar to us. Dr. Manson took the case up, and we went to Scotland Yard to report further particulars. Afterwards we called at the Foreign Office and reported the matter there. Dr. Manson then called at the Chinese Legation and asked for Sun. He was told there was no such person there, and he then told the Chinese that we knew Sun to be there, and the fact of his detention had been communicated to the Foreign Office and the police,

We then had the further satisfaction of knowing that should the Chinese ascertain that something had leaked out, Sun light be saved. I posted a private detective to watch the Legation, in case an attempt should be made to smuggle him away in the night. Our information was that he would be smuggled away and that in all probability the attempt would be made on Tuesday, the 20th.

The time at our disposal was so short that we did not know how best to obtain protection. On Sunday night, October 18th, I called at the office of the Times and reported the matter there, asking if they thought it better to delay publication of the news until it was seen how things would turn out. On Monday 19th, I had again a private detective employed in watching the house. I kept him there until Tuesday, when I removed him, as I learned that a Scotland Yard official had taken up the duty of watching the premises.

Since then I have had surreptitious communications from Sun. and have been able to convey a message to him, stating that Dr. Manson and my self were doing everything possible to secure justice. He had taken his food better since and has also slept better. He was afraid to eat previously, being in the greatest dread of Poison. At one time he threatened to commit suicide, but our communications allayed his fears. His guards have been doubled since the Chinese got to know the circumstances, and his window has been secured, as it was found that he was writing notes and throwing them out the window. The endeavor to obtain his release, I believe proceeded satisfactorily, and unless deferred hope causes him to give way to extreme measures, all may yet be well.

Sun thus briefly describes the procedure of his capture. Whilst passing the Chinese Legation on his way to my house, on October 11th, he was accosted by two China men, who quietly go on either side of him, and, as they were opposite the Legation, hustled him in and locked the door. He was then pushed into a room by an English gentlemen, who locked his door, and stationed a guard over it. The report given out by the Chinese Legation that Sun is a lunatic is ridiculous, but it was on that pretence that his passage was engaged on board a vessel that was to take him to China.

The latest report from the Legation is that the Emperor of China does not want Sun now,

At one time in this singular affair it was put in our power to effect a rescue. we were sorely tempted to do this on being constantly met at the legation with the direct lie that Sun was not there. Considering however, the slur cast upon the laws of this country by the Chinese, we thought, and were advised, that it would be more in keeping with the dignity of British law that justice should be more effected through the ordinary channels.

When the matter is concluded and Sun is set at liberty, I will ask the public to reward my informants, who have, no doubt, been the direct means of saving a man’s life. they made the communication at great personal risk and sacrifice.

(Signed) James Cantlie. M.B., F.R.C.S”

After his release from the Chinese Legation and the threat of certain execution had he been smuggled out to China, Sun continues to spend many years in exile, travelling the world to gather support for his cause, before finally events in China allowed him to return on January 1st, 1912.

On May 5th 1921 he was sworn in as President of the Republic of China, something that would not have been possible if not for the efforts of Dr. James Cantlie in London in 1896.

Returning to Gray’s Inn Place, I cannot find a date for when the plaque was made and installed, but it must have been pre-war. It was made by the Estonian sculptor Dora Gordine who moved to London in the early 1930s, so I suspect the plaque was made between then and 1939.

Dora Gordine married Richard Hare and set up a studio home at Dorich House in 1936, which Dora had designed, near Richmond park. The house is now the Dorich House Museum.

The following photo shows the house at the end of Warwick Court, next to the building on which the plaque is mounted. Compare this with the post war photo and as well as the main features of the building, there are a couple of other survivors.

On the first floor, to the left of the central window is a Hydrant sign which was in the pre-war photo, where there was also a plaque on the extreme left of the building at the same level. Whilst the plaque is not there, the outline of the plaque remains. I wonder if this was the Gray’s Inn boundary marker (dated 1697) now on the second floor the house.

The best place to see the plaque is in Gray’s Inn. If you walk up Warwick Court and entrance is closed, you can still see the plaque on the wall to the right. Even here, the conversion of so many London buildings to luxury apartments continues.

The following photo shows the entrance to Gray’s Inn Place today.

A fascinating story of a London kidnapping, a story that I did not know about until I found the location of my father’s photo of a bombed building and a single plaque that had survived the considerable damage inflicted on Gray’s Inn.

There is a chronology of the life of Sun Yat-sen on the web site of the Dr. Sun yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei.

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A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Category Archives: London Characters

Negretti & Zambra, Admiral FitzRoy, James Glaisher. From London to Orkney via Greenwich

The Great Storm of 1987

The Orkney Islands

The Italian Chapel

The Standing Stones of Stenness:

Ring of Brodgar:

Skara Brae Prehistoric Village:

Brough of Birsay:

Campden Hill Water Tower, an Observatory and Sir James South

John Snow and the Soho Cholera Outbreak of 1854

New Terrace, Duncan Terrace, Colebrooke Row and Charles Lamb

Dr Barton’s Airship

St John at Hampstead and George du Maurier

Laystall Street, Giuseppe Mazzini And The School Board For London

Sir Stafford Cripps At Charing Cross Station

Sir Polydore de Keyser – Hotelier And Lord Mayor

Gray’s Inn Place, Sun Yat-sen And A London Kidnapping

The Great Storm of 1987

The Orkney Islands

The Italian Chapel

The Standing Stones of Stenness:

Ring of Brodgar:

Skara Brae Prehistoric Village:

Brough of Birsay:

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