Victorian London Locations: Threadneedle Street

November 7, 2015November 7, 2015 ~ wynneb1 ~ 1 Comment

Threadneedle Street is mentioned in The Man with the Twisted Lip, where Neville St. Clair, disguised as Hugh Boone, performs his beggary. Boone sits, “Some little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the left-hand side,” just outside the opium den (Doyle 5). This is where Mrs. St. Clair spots her husband flailing from a window. Before this interruption she walks skeptically, “glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab, as she did not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself” (Doyle 4). The story gives the impression that this was an impoverish and faulty area.

A historical account of Threadneedle St. recalls the area was occupied by “cripples on go-carts who haunted the neighbourhood” (Thornbury, “Threadneedle Street”). This alludes to Doyle’s story quite well considering St. Clair portrayed Boone as a cripple.

Taken from the “Charles Booth Online Archive,” the area surrounding Threadneedle Street was classified as poor. (See Poverty Classification Key.)

It’s hard to see clearly, but the street is located mid photo, above St. Michael. View the “Booth Archive” page, here.

Here’s a better glimpse of Threadneedle Street from 2000.

The crime and poverty as described in The Twisted Lip and the Poverty Classification (Booth Archive) of Threadneedle St. correspond well.

So, how much crime actually surrounded Threadneedle Street based off of the story in The Twisted Lip? Using “Old Bailey Online,” I was able to find multiple accounts of grand larceny, murder and theft in the Threadneedle St. area. From the Conviction of Henry Harrison, Mr. Harrison, escaped prisoner, hid for sometime in the home of a Mr. Garway. As it is mentioned, “He takes a Lodging at Mr. Garway’s in Threadneedle-street, on the twenty third day of December, and there he continued till about the first of January” (“Henry Harrison, Killing”). Mr. Harrison was a convicted murderer. Pretty profound!

A particular case involved several pieces of stolen clothing by a man named Joseph Johnson, carrying “the Goods of William Savage” from London’s Lombard Street to Threadneedle Street (“Joseph Johnson, Theft”). Other cases involved pickpocketing, and violent encounters. A constable was charged with Edward Lynch, where on “Threadneedle street, [the prisoner] drew a knife upon the prosecutor” and made attempts at the constable as well (“EDWARD LYNCH, Theft”).

Charles Rice, who had stolen innumerable goods, was spotted on Threadneedle Street. Once, by a man named Thomas Edwards who “was coming up Threadneedle-street, when [Rice] was in custody,” and another time by Alexander Barland who saw [Rice] heading towards the “Edinborough coffee-house” (“CHARLES RICE, Theft”).

Edinborough wasn’t the only coffee-house mentioned near Threadneedle St. From “British Histories” I learned of the “North and South American Coffee House (formerly situated in Threadneedle Street)” (Thornbury, “Threadneedle Street”). There was also the Baltic Coffee House, where merchants and brokers occupied their time. It was described as a “rendezvous of tallow, oil, hemp, and seed merchants” (Thornbury, “Threadneedle Street”).

Threadneedle was also the site of the French Protestant Church where red pavement lined the streets. The findings of pavement are rather remarkable and exceptionally crafted (Thornbury, “Threadneedle Street”). It goes to show that Threadneedle St. was not solely defined by theft and poverty but the site of pleasant coffee-houses and decorated pavement.

The Threadneedle Street Pavements:

Works Cited

“Joseph Johnson, Theft, October 1720 (t17201012-3).” Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Web. 6 November 2015. <http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17201012-3-defend38&div=t17201012-3#highlight>

“Henry Harrison, Killing, April 1692 (t16920406-1).” Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Web. 7 November 2015. <http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t16920406-1&div=t16920406-1&terms=+threadneedle%20+street%20#highlight>

“CHARLES RICE, Theft, September 1785 (t17850914-125).” Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Web. 7 November 2015. <http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17850914-125&div=t17850914-125&terms=+threadneedle%20+street%20#highlight>

“EDWARD LYNCH, Theft, September 1776 (t17760911-34).” Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Web. 7 November 2015. <http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17760911-34&div=t17760911-34&terms=+threadneedle%20+street%20#highlight>

Thornbury, Walter. “Threadneedle Street.” Old and New London: Volume 1. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1878. 531-544. British History Online. Web. 7 November 2015. <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol1/pp531-544>

“Plate 50: Threadneedle Street, Pavements.” An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London, Volume 3, Roman London. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1928. 50. British History Online. Web. 5 November 2015. <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/london/vol3/plate-50>

Victorian London: Making-Up

August 31, 2015August 31, 2015 ~ Johanna Turano ~ 2 Comments

After searching for a while trying to find an article that interests me in Lee Jackson’s Dictionary of Victorian London, I stumbled upon the Women’s section http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm. I expected most of the articles to provide false tips and ridiculous fads for the women of Victorian London, but to my surprise, many of the articles gave useful advice. The article Making-up introduced women to the most refined way to make yourself presentable to society. For example, to put too much rouge on one’s face would cause a lady to “look like a clown” and overdoing it would make one look “foolish” and frankly, offend the rest of society. I found it almost comical that women of that era cared so much about one simple aspect of their appearance.The next paragraph however, talked about to danger of whitening your skin with powder and how that to do such an unthinkable thing “is even worse than rouging”. It seemed, at this point, that make-up all together during this period was too troublesome and only caused controversy. Surprisingly, there is a way to have a happy medium with make-up in Victorian London, it just takes much effort and time to do so. To ensure you have the best possible outcome in your rouging ventures, “It should be put on in straight lines under the eyes, for a layer of carmine heightens their brilliancy; three other layers lower down should be gently rounded off, and be placed exactly between the nose and ears, never reaching below the mouth…” just in case anybody really wanted to be a pro at making yourself not look like a side-show freak on the streets of Victorian London. The author of this article did in fact promote the use of one’s natural glow and blush to assure the ladies that their own delicate coloring is even better than the finest of make-ups, which I found amiable and considerate.

Slang in Victorian London

August 30, 2015 ~ crookr1 ~ 3 Comments

The words “Area-sneak”, “Cracksman”, and “Tuck-up Fair” all, surprisingly, have something in common; they are all part of Victorian slang from London, England. Upon first hearing of such wild and fantastical words and phrases, they sound almost too weird to be real. But in all honesty, some words used today in the 21st century are as nonsensical as theirs. Slang is only a testament of the creative and innovative nature of language throughout time. For example, in Victorian London there were sometimes handfuls of different ways to say the same phrase. So way back when, a man would not “go away” or “withdraw”; he would instead “bolt”, “slope”, “mizzle”, “make himself scarce”, “walk his chalk”, “make tracks”, “cut his stick”, or “cut his lucky”. Why does there need to be so many variations of the same saying? The world may never know, but such variety of language makes for a much more scintillating conversation. There was also slang specific to crime back in Victorian London, much like there is today. The terms “area-sneak”, “Cracksman” and “Tuck-up Fair” are examples of such jargon- their meanings being a thief who sneaks down areas to see what he can steal in kitchens, a burglar, and The Gallows respectively. Some have logical connections to their meanings, while others’ explanations could only make sense in a Victorian Londoner’s mind. Either way, the words and phrases spice up the language to make conversation more unique over time. Who knows what sayings will be created and reshaped over the next 100 years, hopefully the 21st century will have a (s)language as varying and creative as Victorian London’s.

Online Assignment #1: Victorian London’s Bethlehem Royal Hospital

August 30, 2015 ~ tomicice1 ~ 2 Comments

While perusing through Lee Jackson’s “The Victorian Dictionary,” I was attracted to the topic of Health and Hygiene, specifically Mental Health. I chose to focus on The Bethlehem Hospital and I wanted to look at the hospital itself and the stigma surrounding mental illness and patients. Upon reading Peter Cunningham’s entry from the Hand-Book of London, I saw that the hospital’s nickname was “bedlam.” I did some digging on Google and saw that this term was actually coined after the hospital’s conditions! Bedlam means chaos or madness. The hospital itself was reported to be in very bad condition, and it’s patients were seen as chaotic lunatics; which makes the reasoning behind the term “bedlam” understandable. In the entry from The Pictorial Handbook of London there are sickening depictions of the gruesome way patients were treated. The hospital used the patient’s abnormality as a way to gain profits. About 400 pounds were collected annually from displaying the naked patients. They would be chained to the walls of their cells, and pestered so “the most violent manifestations of their maladies” were shown (The Pictorial Handbook of London). Fortunately in 1770, this practice was annulled. Unfortunately, the condition in which patients were kept did not improve until later years. An article depicting a positive reaction of the hospital is Cruchley’s London in 1865: A Handbook for Strangers: The method and regimen adopted are those which have been suggested by the wisdom and humanity of the present school of medicine. Love, and not fear, is the great principle of government, and the unhappy insane are watched over with the tenderest pity. In John Timbs’ Curiosities of London, written in 1867, he describes the hospital as “scrupulously clean” and comments on the “decent attire of the patients” and the “unexpectedly small number of those under restraint.” These accounts show the dramatic change of both the physical state of hospitals chiefly dealing with mental illness and the stigma towards the patients. Over time, the patients were shown more and more humanity, and given more humane living spaces.

Children’s work in Victorian London

August 29, 2015 ~ derziezo1 ~ 2 Comments

The Victorian age bright side was the industrial revolution with its great inventions and scientific progress, but this magnificent age had also a dark side to it a social dark side. George R. Sims in his chapter How the Poor Live, exposes one aspect of this dark side: deep poverty, a situation that forced the young members of families, the children, aged between six and ten to “work hard at dangerous trades for their living “. Girls work long hours for pennies in a ‘Bronzing factory’ using dangerous chemicals which caused fatal illnesses without taking any precaution and without getting any protection either from their bosses or families. Another example is of young boys sometimes age six or seven working in sawmills, again no precautions were taken resulting in fingers loss or worse even loss of hands to the machines. Lead poisoning was another fatal condition that those young children died of working in the lead industry and Lemonade bottling factories where bursting bottles maimed children who were doing the job.

The poorer the family the younger the kids who went to work. James Greenwood, in his book The Seven Curses of London from 1869, describes the stages that little boys went through from the age of seven to become a prestigious “errand boy” when they are ten. They worked from early morning till the late hour of the evening winter and summer alike to earn something. ‘Uncle Jonathan’ In his Walks In and Around London, from 1895, described them as the “children of the poor who have to earn their own living”. Not earning any money resulted usually in cruel beating or other cruelties at home. The jobs ‘Uncle Jonathan’ described are not these dangerous jobs that make the reader shiver but more of mundane little independent initiatives that render the kids transparent, unnoticeable. Those kids were to be found in markets, like Covent Garden in Uncle Jonathan’s story, where at about five or six o’clock in morning those kids showed up to buy their merchandise for the day, boys and girls alike: flower girls, Orange-girls, the little match-sellers, telegraph boys etc. Other kids worked as scavengers, collecting horse discharge from the dangerous bustling roads, risking their life for pennies.

Online Assignment #1: Researching Victorian London

August 29, 2015 ~ dastona1 ~ 1 Comment

Using Lee Jackson’s “Victorian Dictionary”, I read many articles about crime in Victorian London. I was interested in how the burial of suicides was treated during this time. This particular article was part of Yale University Press in 2014. I found the parallels of these times and today’s times immediately. The man in this article (who was never named) is said to have been an unexpected target of suicide, although in hindsight, the signs were there. “It was not uncommon to hear him banging away of a night in his bedroom down below, but as there was nobody down there that he could shoot but himself, amongst several other whimsies of his, was winked at by the people of the house on account of his general good conduct”. No one worried about his use of firearms because he appeared to be a genuine person. The man was found dead in his room, by way of a guillotine that he had meticulously built. The article discussed the sixteen jurymen’s deliberation of his death. The debate began with the question of his sanity. “The last person who conversed with him found him rational and in no way excited. So far from showing symptoms on insanity, he had always appeared a very sensible man indeed.” In defense of the claim on his sanity, the jurymen spoke of his calm and calculated manner in which he had to have constructed the machine that caused his death. Once it is decided that he will be buried, the man in the article is referred to as, “it”. As if to point out the deliberate attempt to dehumanize the man and prepare for the heartless burial. The article does describe the desire of a particular man to follow the law. It is still apparent that the man has no one to care for him when a makeshift coffin is prepared and arrangements for the proper burial are overlooked. Eventually, the man is buried in a hole that was previously dug and his poor excuse for a coffin is only covered just enough to allow another coffin to be buried on top of it.

Zach Pollock Extra Credit- Victorian Traffic Lights.

January 30, 2015 ~ Annie Swafford

Traffic lights… we hate them with all our heart. They make us have to bring our car to a halt and force us to wait about two minutes so it can turn green again before we can carry on with our journey. Sure they prevent car accidents, but they’re just oh so inconvenient.

One may believe that the traffic light was invented after World War II when car culture in America was heating up. But you’re wrong, very wrong. The traffic light wasn’t even invented in the twentieth century, it first appeared during the (record scratch) Victorian Age? No no, that doesn’t seem right, are you serious? So who might you ask, invented these wonderful (yet annoying) devices?

Well my fellow curious researcher, traffic lights were invented by J.P. Knight who installed the first one outside the House of Parliament in 1868. http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1460,00.html . Meanwhile the American Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression to some) ended just three years prior!

Truth be told, while browsing through the Victorian Dictionary, I was quite shocked when I saw this under transport. I knew that traffic lights existed before the Great Depression, but not this far back. But hey, you learn something new everyday.

It was described as;

a column 20 feet high, with a spacious gas lamp near the top, the design of which is the application of the semaphore signal to the public streets at points where foot passengers have hitherto depended for their protection on the arm and gesticulations of a policeman – often a very inadequate defence against accident.

Thou shall not pass

So even the blokes over a hundred years ago knew that vehicle accidents must be prevented and they were able to invent such a device that today, prevents numerous car accidents, even though they’re such an annoyance. You do have to give them credit for this though.

Lauren Gao’s Extra Credit: Victorian London: A bit of ee-nif ‘cant’,

January 29, 2015 ~ Annie Swafford

Now the two Victorian London accents I, most likely, just insensitively appropriated and horribly butchered were of the Costermongers and London’s Cadgers (beggars). While reading around Lee Jackson’s Victorian London Dictionary, in the Words & Expressions tab, I stumbled into a short piece about the different English accents just within the city of London itself. Everything from the metropolitan elite, to the poor, or to the (actual) meat butchers themselves have surprisingly distinguished manners of pronunciation, granted, just within the radius of a city.

And we thought we had a lot of accents here in the U.S.

Continue reading →

Extra Credit: Victorian London Dictionary – “Ladies Shopping”

January 29, 2015 ~ Annie Swafford

While browsing through the Victorian London Dictionary trying to look for an article that would intrigue and catch my interest, I finally found the one! SHOPPING – Something that I know how to do best….

While perusing through the article called “Ladies Shopping” I came across a quite accurate definition of shopping, if I do say so myself. As defined by The London Victorian Dictionary, “Shopping is the amusement of spending money at shops.” Women love shopping as much as men love to play sports. Unlike shopping, sport involves the payment of one’s own shot, however shopping may be maintained by getting it paid for.

During Victorian London, the best places for shopping were fashionable streets and bazaars. Street-shopping essentially is directed toward hosiery, drapery, and jewelry of the richer sort. Bazaar and Arcade-shopping, to fancy articles, nick nacks, and perfumery. I learned that women had to act differently depending on the type of shopping they are doing. “In street-shopping walk leisurely along, keeping a sharp look-out on the windows. In bazaar-shopping, beat each stall separately.” They also advised women to finish street-shopping before she takes on the bazaars and arcades because the last two refer to mostly articles of no manner of use.

I chose this article because I really enjoy going shopping and I found it fascinating how the diversion and entertainment of shopping has evolved over the years.

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