Lost London (6 page)

Aldwych

B
UILT IN AN AREA PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS
S
T
Clement’s Inn Fields, Clare Market was established in 1651 on land owned by Lord
Clare, whose family home – ‘a princely mansion’ – once stood here.

The market was held every Wednesday and Saturday and became famous for its meat and fish. By 1850, more than twenty-five butchers were slaughtering almost 400 sheep and 200
bullocks a week. However, the gradual encroachment of slum dwellings saw the market’s reputation decline. Writing in 1881, Walter Thornbury noted that ‘merchandise at present exposed
for sale ... consists principally of dried fish, inferior vegetables, and such humble viands, suited to the pockets of the poor inhabitants of the narrow courts and alleys around’.

The market was not to survive many more years. Much of the land on which it stood was used for the building of the Royal Courts of Justice. Today, its name is remembered in a meagre passageway
on the campus of the London School of Economics.

Clerkenwell

B
UILT IN
1794
ON THE SITE OF A COLD
spring discovered in 1697, this prison was notorious for the severity of its regime.

It was immortalized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote:

As he went through Coldbath Fields he saw a solitary cell:

And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint

For improving his prisons in Hell.

The first prison governor, Thomas Aris, allowed inmates one visitor and one letter every three months. Hopes that the next governor might oversee an improvement in conditions were dashed when
Aris was replaced by a military man with even harsher views. Under the guidance of George Chesterton from 1828, the prison population doubled to 1150. Many were short-term prisoners, and 10,000
petty thieves, drunks and vagrants passed through its walls every year. Chesterton did root out corruption in his staff by placing spies among them, but he also imposed a vicious regime on the
prisoners, including total silence. Protesters were flogged, placed in solitary confinement wearing leg irons, and fed bread and water.

Perhaps the jail’s most famous inmates were the Cato Street conspirators (led by Arthur Thistlewood), who were subsequently moved to the Tower of London before being hanged at Newgate.
Coldbath Fields was closed in 1877 and demolished in 1889, the site later becoming the home of the Mount Pleasant sorting office.

Regent’s Park

A
VAST ROTUNDA BUILT IN
R
EGENT
’
S
P
ARK BY
Decimus Burton between 1824 and
1827, with a dome very slightly larger than that of St Paul’s Cathedral.

It housed a huge canvas panorama of London, painted by Thomas Hornor. However, the attraction’s initial popularity soon waned and in 1831 the building was sold to opera
singer John Barham, whose dream to turn it into an opera
house took both his fortune and his health. Briefly used for magic-lantern shows, the Colosseum was demolished in 1872
and is now covered by Cambridge Gate.

Today’s street slang and text-speak can trace their roots back to the Victorian costermongers (street traders) who developed a language of their own. Their motives were
very similar to those of the slang-merchants of today – to mark themselves out as separate and special, and to avoid being understood by the authorities. As one costermonger was reported as
saying:

The Irish can’t tumble it anyhow; the Jews can tumble it better ...
Some of the young salesmen of Billingsgate can understand us – but only at Billingsgate, and they think
they are uncommon clever, but they’re not quite up to the mark. The police don’t understand us at all. It would be a pity if they did.

Here are a few favourite costermonger phrases:

Chelsea

T
HOMAS
C
RAPPER WAS SUBJECT TO AN ENDURING
myth that he lent his name to a popular slang verb (the word crap derives from the
Dutch
krappe
),

Thomas Crapper was a plumber who ran a very successful business (on the King’s Road in Chelsea) making celebrated water closets between 1861 and the late 1920s.
Crapper’s former premises at 120 King’s Road became the site the of Dorothy Perkins store.