A fatal fire at a luxury London hotel in 1845 was the subject of extensive newspaper coverage, and caused people to question the safety of public buildings and the efficacy of existing fire rescue services. Writing almost forty years later Georgiana Bloomfield, who was a witness to the fire, explained in her Reminiscences of Court and Diplomatic Life the impact …
Medical Marvels, or, Selling Anything to Anyone
If at any point you have read my piece on Benjamin Rackstrow, whose museum at no.197 Fleet Street drew fascinated crowds, you will have realised that he had an extraordinary range of interests. Many of these were decidedly curious, and few more curious than the Chair of Beatification, an alarming contraption that passed a massive electrical charge through the body …
Inferno at Campden House in Kensington
In the early hours of Sunday March the 23rd 1862 Kensington was quiet. Good folk, who were waiting for the sabbath, were in bed, and not so good folk, who were not waiting for the sabbath, were kept indoors by a heavy rain storm and fierce winds. But this peace was not to last. North of the High Street, and …
Peckham Past, or, Images of Basing Manor
As a footnote to my recent piece on the Babbs I am returning to Peckham. Both the Babbs—John Staines and his sister Charlotte Elizabeth—were born in this area of South London. John painted two delightful oils of weatherboarded houses in the High Street, just yards from the grandly named Basing Manor. I have already touched on the history of the …
Poison, Passion, Pie and the Pavilion Theatre
At about nine o’clock on the evening of Tuesday the 30th of July 1850 Mr James Henry Walker Elphinstone, one of the popular comedians and actors of the Royal Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel, was in his dressing room. His preparations for the next performance were interrupted by Thomas King, a dresser, who carried with him a small package wrapped in …
The Most Unkindest Cut, or, The Butcher’s Boy and the Cook
One of the most memorable minor characters in the novels of Charles Dickens is the young butcher in David Copperfield. We first meet him in Chapter Eighteen, when David is a pupil at Dr Strong’s school in Canterbury. The description of him—he has a broad face and a bull neck and rough red cheeks—is not exactly flattering. He greases his …
The Girl in the Dolly Varden Hat, or, The Suicide of Alice Blanche Oswald
Thomas Ingham, a printer’s compositor, was walking home from work just before six o’clock on the evening of Thursday the 5th of September 1872. His journey to 80 Webber Street in Waterloo taking him south over the old bridge. He saw a woman walking briskly towards the second recess from the Middlesex side. The woman was young and petite—just over …
Family Art, or, John Staines Babb and Charlotte Elizabeth Babb
Among the hidden treasures of the British art world are two small oil paintings of South London by John Staines Babb dated 1896. They are in fact a pair, showing the same scene from two different viewpoints. Babb, who died in the early years of the twentieth century, is not an artist one is likely to hear about in the …
Undesirable or Unlucky Maid? Lucy Constable and the Walworth Robbery
On the 24th of February 1856 an anguished cry for help echoed around Sutherland Square in Walworth, disturbing the peace of a Sunday evening, when the good folk of the neighbourhood were either at church or occupied with suitable sabbath activities. Rushing from their houses they found a young maidservant bleeding profusely from her neck and hand and begging for …
The Duchess’s Wolf, or, A Strange Story from the Strand
The morning of the 2nd of March in the year 1820—a Thursday just weeks into the reign of George IV—was a stormy one in London. Between five and six o’clock in the morning the wind began to blow with great violence from the north west. As darkness lifted the wind grew stronger, until it was gusting enough to inflict damage …