more facts about london

Executioners

The name of the first known public hangman in London is "Bull" (of "Night Court" fame? incidentally, when is that show going to come out on DVD!). Hangman Bull was followed by the more famous Hangman "Thomas Derrick." Derrick is famous, why? Because of this ingenious device that he invented for more efficient hanging of mans. Derrick's invention was like a crane upon which 23 condemned people could be hanged together. Fun fact: Over time, this device was modified and put to more general use as a crane for unloading and hoisting vessels on board ships etc., but it still bears the name "Derrick".

As you can imagine, being an executioner back in Elizabethan times was no more popular a job as it is today. Basically, there was a palpable fear that friends and families of the hanged would find out who the executioner was and seek revenge. Executioners were often coerced into taking the job. Thomas Derrick had been convicted of rape but had been granted a pardon by the Earl of Essex on the condition that he become an executioner (which explains why Derrick didn't hang, himself). Fun fact: Derrick executed more than 3,000 people in his career including, ironically, his pardoner -- the Earl of Sussex -- in 1601. Talk about biting the hand ... or hacking off the head.

Coffee Houses

My trips to Borough Market for Monmouth Coffee are the impetus for learning more about the history of coffee shops in London. Thanks be to Peter Ackroyd, who devotes some space to this very important topic in his biography of London.

The most famous establishments of 18th century London were coffee houses. They found their origins in the middle of the 17th century when, according to a contemporary note recoded in “The Topography of London", ‘theire ware also att this time a Turkish drink to be sould almost in eury street, called Coffee, and another kind of drink called Tee, and also a drink called Chacolate, which was a very harty drink’. The first coffee house was set up in St. Michael’s Alley, off Cornhill, in 1652.

Tea (like coffee, but not as good)

Tea was bad-ass!

The grocer Daniel Rowlinson was the first man to sell a pound of tea, in the 1650s. J. Ilive, author of “A New and Compleat Survey of London” in 1762 blamed the ‘excessive drinking of Tea’ for enervating ‘the Stomachs of the Populace, as to render them incapable of performing the offices of Digestion; whereby the Appetite is so much deprav’d’. A pamphleteer in 1758 declared tea-drinking to be ‘very hurtful to those who work hard and live low’ and condemned it as ‘one of the worst of habits, rendering you lost to yourselves, and unfit for the comforts you were first designed for’. London tea gardens acquired a dubious reputation. Suburban retreats devoted to the drinking of tea and other pleasant pastimes became associated ‘with loose women and with boys whose morals are depraved, and their constitutions ruined’ and were well known ‘for the encouragement of luxury, extravagance, idleness and wicked illegal purposes.’

Tea was so dirty!!

Restaurants

London’s reputation as the purveyor of drab and unpalatable food began essentially in the mid-19th century. Henry James, in 1877, was scathing about London’s restaurants ‘whose badness is literally fabulous.’

Some things never change!

What do sandwiches have to do with gambling?

A whole heck of a lot, as it happens.

The Earl of Sandwich ‘passed four and twenty hours at a public gaming table, so absorbed in play, that, during the whole time, he had no subsistence but a bit of beef, between two slices of toasted bread, which he eat without ever quitting the game. This new dish grew highly in vogue … it was called by the name of the minister who invented it.’

If only I could invent something through a combination of laziness and addiction. Some Earls have all the luck!