AN ECCENTRIC GUIDE TO LONDON

Then there was "Bumper" Harris and his wooden leg.


On 4 October 1911 Earl's Court received the first public escalators, or 'moving stairs' on the Underground. They linked the District line platforms to the Piccadilly line, but the public were wary of them and so a man with a wooden leg, who was known as 'Bumper' Harris, was paid two shillings a week to ride up and down all day demonstrating how safe it was.

Some old ladies were not encouraged in the slightest, because they had a suspicion about how Mr Harris had lost his leg in the first place.

"Bumper" had lost his leg when it was sandwiched between two train carriages when they bumped together.

Ow.

I love London and its history, tho I dont really have anything to tell you about it.

Benthem should have met up with Prof Gunther Von Hagens who discovered plastination, a way of preserving corpses for centuries.

Lord Rothschild, his Capybara and a carriage pulled by Zebras.


Lionel Walter Rothschild, scion of the famous banking family, was exceedingly fond of zebras. In 1894 he harnessed three to a carriage and drove them through the streets of London and on to the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.
He was also an exceptionally keen ornithologist. In 1931, in order to pay off a debt to a blackmailing peeress, he sold his collection of 280,000 bird skins to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He also amassed a collection of 2.25 million moths and butterflies, which, upon his death in 1937 at age 69, was bequeathed to the Natural History Museum in London. The insects now lie pinned in glass-bottomed drawers within tall wooden cabinets in the bowels of the museum, their wings still shimmering in glorious shades of green, orange, and purple.



Lord Rothschild was, in fact, fascinated by any animal that ever walked, crawled, swam, or flew upon the face of the earth. In his lifetime he assembled the largest collection of fauna ever accumulated by one man. His menagerie included a flock of flightless kiwis from New Zealand (which accompanied him to Cambridge when he arrived as a university student in 1887), 144 giant tortoises imported from the Galápagos Islands, a sheep-size South American rodent called a capybara, as well as wild asses, spiny and scaly anteaters, emus, and kangaroos. All these animals were allowed to roam freely around his Tring Park estate in Hertfordshire, 33 miles north of London. Thousands of others were stuffed and placed in a nearby museum, which has changed little since Rothschild's time. In variety of species and sheer, enchanting eccentricity, this collection has no peer.

There is an excellent book which i was reading (waded through about 500 pages of it a few months ago) entitled London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd . . .

Dirty Dick's Pub. Bishopsgate.

Dirty Dick's Pub certainly lived up to its name - it was absolutely filthy, dead cats, the lot.
The story goes that one Nathaniel Bentley's bride-to-be died on the eve of their wedding.
He was devastated, and locked up the room in which he had prepared the wedding feast, never to be opened again. After this tragic event he never washed again or changed his pants. When his cats died he just left them. When he died, a local publican bought all of his belongings and displayed the filthy collection in his pub.
In the mid 80's the pub was cleaned up and the disgusting collection removed - a sad day, I remember it happening.

THE DAY MY FATHER WAS SENTENCED AT THE OLD BAILEY


On the 10th May 1941 - a 550 bomber raid dropped more than 700 tons of bombs and thousands of incendiaries. This was probably the worst raid of the Blitz with nearly 1500 people killed and around 1800 seriously injured. The Chamber of the House of Commons (Parliament) was destroyed. The House of Lords, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, St James's Palace and Lambeth Palace were amongst the many buildings damaged.
Almost all the major mainline railway stations were also damaged as were 14 hospitals, the British Museum and the Old Bailey.

OLD BAILEY


My Dad, a 20 year old London Fireman at the time, and another dozen or so firemen, worked on putting out the fire at the Old Bailey from about midnight, through to 8am the following morning.
During their search of the building (for bodies or survivors), his team came across the robing rooms, where the judges dress before attending a trial.
When the fire was out, a roll call was announced, whereupon the firemen had to line up in a certain spot, to ascertain if any were missing.
My dad's team came out of the building, dressed in red flowing robes, wearing judges wigs with their steel helmets perched on top.

Unbeknown to them, a Judge (in civvies) had arrived to inspect the damage, and flanked by two policemen, was standing next to the Chief Fire Officer, asking questions about what had survived.

When he saw six judges lined up, wearing steel helmets and firemens boots, he walked over to them and shouted to the policemen to keep them exactly where they were, as he was going to dress, in order to pass immediate sentence for impersonating a high court judge in time of war.

My father and his colleagues stood to attention for about five minutes, sh*tting themselves that they were going to get imprisoned, or even shot.

The judge came out, wearing his robes, and walked up to the first man.
He walked down the line, looking each fireman square in the eye, pulled a bottle of scotch from under the robe, and sentenced each man to take a large swig from the bottle, after which he took a large swig himself and thanked the men for their hard work.
He then ordered them to remove the wig and robe, return home and get a good days sleep.



Dad during WW2 (on top of a building in the Strand).....taken from a negative, so excuse the poor quality.

I'm enjoying your view of London much more than Ackroyd's.

reading along. more more more!

Thanks Set, I am at present sifting through old photos, but can't seem to find the particular one I'm after.

If I find it, I can tell another good fireman's story. (much better with the picture).

While we're on the subject of the Old Bailey.......


Whipping
Offenders (mostly those convicted of petty larceny) were sentenced to be stripped to the waist and flogged "at a cart's tail" along a length of public street, usually near the scene of the crime, "until his [or her] back be bloody".




Publicity was traditionally an essential feature of this punishment, but occasionally even in the late seventeenth century the courts ordered that the punishment should be carried out in prison or a house of correction rather than on the streets. From the 1720s courts began explicitly to differentiate between private whipping, which took place inside or immediately outside Newgate Prison, a house of correction, or the Old Bailey; and public whipping, which was carried out in the traditional way.


Over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the proportion of whippings carried out in public declined, but the number of private whippings increased after 1772 owing to a loss of faith in the alternative punishments of transportation and the death penalty. The public whipping of women was abolished in 1817 (after having been in decline since the 1770s) and that of men ended in the 1830s.

A GUIDE TO COMMITTING THE PERFECT MURDER.

RULE 1. If you wrap the corpse in paper, do not use a piece which has your name and address on it.

Mrs. Amelia Dyer was a singularly nasty piece of work. She had changed address many times and used several aliases, so perhaps it didn't occur to her that she could be traced through a past identity. In 1895 she moved to Reading, and advertised that she would board and adopt children. In March that year a bargeman pulled the corpse of a baby out of the Thames. It was wrapped in a parcel which bore a name and a Reading address. It took time to trace the identity of the owner of the original parcel, and by the time Mrs. Dyer was arrested six more of the sad little corpses had been found. Her sole motive had been greed, accumulating fictitious boarding fees while quickly disposing of the infants. She was hanged in June 1896. No-one will ever know the numbers of her victims, but at the time of her arrest she had been carrying on her trade for fifteen years.

RULE 2. Do not use an unusual murder weapon which only you of all the victim's family and friends, know how to use.

Archibald Brown was a tyrannical man. His cruelty made the lives of his long-suffering wife and his son, Eric, a misery. A victim of an accident, Brown was confined to a wheelchair, and required nursing attendance. Eric had volunteered for the Army in 1942, and in July, 1943, he came home to London on leave.
The nurse was taking Brown for an outing in his bath chair when there was a tremendous explosion. The nurse survived but Brown was blown to pieces. The explosion was caused by an anti-tank device, a British Hawkins No. 75 Grenade Mine, which had been placed under the chair seat. Eric had spent some time on the day of the tragedy locked in the air-raid shelter where the bath chair was kept. It was found that he had attended lectures on the Hawkins No. 75 Grenade Mine, and there were supplies of these at his Company H. Q. The evidence pointed directly to Eric - in fact it was difficult for it to point anywhere else. He was tried and found guilty but insane.

Lord, did you ever find the title of the book we discussed a few weeks back?

The one concerning the trial of the resurrectionists which took place at the Old Bailey?

It was called "The Italian Boy."

I don't remember the ressurectionist conversation, Gus. However, I do remember we were looking for the book title re. the occupation of the Channel Islands during WW2.

That one was called "Islands in danger", methinks.

I stand corrected. However, "Islands in Danger" is not the book of which I speak. I will continue my weary search.

You, on the other hand, should check out "The Italian Boy". Quite enlightening.

Cheerio, pip, pip.

See y'all, pardner.

JACK SHEPPARD

A Daring Housebreaker, who made Ingenious Escapes from Prison and even tried to foil his Executioner at Tyburn on 16th of November, 1724
Although only in the twenty-third year of his age when he was executed at Tyburn, on the 16th of November, 1724, Jack Sheppard had become so notorious as a housebreaker and prison-breaker that his exploits were the talk of all ranks of society. A great warrior could not have received greater attention than this famous criminal. Books and pamphlets were written about him; a pantomime at Drury Lane, called Harlequin Sheppard, was based on the story of his adventures, and so was a three-act farce, called The Prison-Breaker. Dozens of songs and glees referred to his prowess, and clergymen preached sermons about him. Sir James Thornhill, the celebrated painter who decorated the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, painted his portrait, from which engravings in mezzotinto were made.......................



.........."He behaved with great decency at the place of execution, and confessed having committed two robberies for which he had been tried and acquitted. He suffered in the twenty-third year of his age. He died with difficulty, and was much pitied by the surrounding multitude. When he was cut down his body was delivered to his friends, who carried him to a public-house in Long Acre, whence he was removed in the evening and buried in the churchyard of St Martin's-in-the-Fields."

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/Courses/95c/Texts/sheppard.html

THE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER


During the French Revolution the tomb of the French king Louis XIV was wrecked and plundered. His heart was stolen and sold to Lord Harcourt who later sold it to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend William Buckland. One night at dinner, the Dean, who liked to experiment with food, ate the embalmed heart!

(sidenote).....When a pineapple was first shown to the aforementioned Louis XIV, he immediately grabbed it and took a giant bite. He cut his lips and thereafter outlawed pineapples in France.