Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London

Introduction

The Stone of Brutus
The mythical ancient heart of London keeps a low profile

Walls, amphitheatres and temple
What the Romans left for us

Shut that gate!
The doors to the City

At sixes and sevens
The City livery companies

Dick Whittington
London’s pantomime perennial – truth or fiction ?

A Tale of Two Cities
And one salmon

Propping up the Bar
The Temple boundary

Throw another tax record on the fire
The burning down of Parliament

London Calling
From Roman trading post to world capital

‘A disgrace to civilisation’?
London and its metropolitan mayors

London Bridge is falling* down
*burning, blowing or being pulled

A river runs through it (usually)
London’s long-gone frost fairs

Dirty old town
Bazalgette and the Great Stink

London’s eternal railway ring
Commuting to the very end

Dr Cuming’s ‘Infernal Regions’
London’s Underground railways

An ambling horse
The origin of the Hackney carriage

From hearses to Bendies
London’s buses

Rhyming slang and Bow Bells
How to tell if you’re a proper Cockney

At home with saints and sinners
Crosby Hall’s colourful occupants

London’s burning again…
Women with full bladders on alert

St Giles takes one for team GB
Poets, martyrs, bombs and the turning point of the Battle of Britain

London Smog
‘Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be’

1851 – a great year for exhibitions
The Prince and the ‘most generally unpopular man’

London’s park for children
Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital

Sub judice in absentia
The lost Inns of Court

An extravagant prince and an ambitious architect
The measure of the Royal Mile

Keeping it in the family
How the posh streets got their names

The history behind the geography
Walking through London’s heritage

A well-appointed city
London’s watery resources

Property magnates with stiff collars
The grounds for the invention of retail therapy

Royal rowing and dodgy dealing
The story of Leicester Square

Secure foundations
London’s inspirational institutions

Water, water, everywhere
London’s lost rivers

’Neath the Shade of the
Ruislip Poplars
The joys of Metro-land

What lies beneath
London’s hidden tube stations

Capital crime and punishment
London’s famous prisons

The journey to the scaffold
Newgate’s morbid processions

‘Yours truly, Jack the Ripper’
The Whitechapel terror writes

The long and short arms of the law
London’s police forces

The White City
Once a temple to Olympic exertion – now shrine to consumerism

HMS Smallpox
Some unusual London hospitals

The Maiden Tribute of
Modern Babylon
The Pall Mall Gazette

Lifeblood of London
The capital’s power stations

Gone but not forgotten
The Festival Hall’s lost companions

Meat, veg, coarse language and fences
The offerings of London’s lively markets

Usurers by any other name
The pawnbrokers of Lombard Street

Hammerbeams and Hoovers
Art Deco in London

‘A roost for every bird’
Philanthropy and London’s poor

City of God?
London’s places of worship

Empire of the bun
Lyons Teashops and Corner Houses

Wren, Rutherford – and Ribbentrop
Patrons of London’s learned establishments

Acting up in Theatreland
Life beyond the fringe

Pubs, pints and professors
London’s drinking culture

The Magnificent Seven
London’s cemeteries

I
n 1901 London was, in a very real sense the capital city of the world. As Queen Victoria approached the end of her long reign (she died in January of that year) she reigned over the greatest empire the world had ever seen, comprising about a fifth of its surface area and a quarter of its inhabitants. ‘Pax Britannica’, enforced by the Royal Navy, ensured that no major international conflict on the scale of the Napoleonic Wars had taken place for almost a century. The Port of London was by some distance the busiest in the world with its forests of masted vessels bringing food and raw materials from every corner of the world and exporting manufactured goods from Britain, the workshop of the world. And the City of London, within the famous square mile that had first been bounded by its Roman Walls (still visible in many places), was the undisputed centre of world commerce and finance. In the course of a century London’s population had grown from less than a million to more than six million, making it the most populous city on earth. This concentration of humanity had presented tremendous challenges to engineers, builders, social reformers and politicians who had struggled, with some success, to make London a safe place in which to live as well as a prosperous and busy one.It continued to expand up to the outbreak of World War II. Since that time the population of London has fallen as its inhabitants have moved to suburbs and new towns but although it is no longer the world’s largest city it remains the one with the richest history. It is still possible, with little effort, to find traces of the city which was built by the Roman invaders and sacked by an enraged Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, reputedly buried beneath the feet of busy travellers as they hurry along platform ten of King’s Cross Station. The Roman gates of the city are still remembered in names like Aldgate (home of Geoffrey Chaucer as he watched the Peasants’ Revolt unfold in 1381) and Cripplegate, close to the lodging house of one William Shakespeare and to a small church, St Giles’s, which was the scene of a turning point in which Britain fought for its life and that of the free world in 1940. And one cannot move far in London without being reminded of the personalities who made its history: Richard Whittington who helped make London the centre of the trade in wool; Thomas Gresham who ensured that London would become the financial centre which it remains in the 21st century; Prince Albert who, though his support for the Great Exhibition of 1851, left us not only the hall named after him but the Kensington museums which lie behind it. Then there is Big Ben which caused its creator so much trouble that he died prematurely and the Underground Railway which would never have been constructed without the activities of a motley crew of fraudsters, bankrupts and gaolbirds as well as a few honest men. And whatever is that strange ‘London Stone’ almost hidden behind a grill attached to a bank in Cannon Street, not to mention the metal tube which passes above the trains within Sloane Square Underground Station? Why, that’s the River Westbourne of course. And who was John Snow who has a pub named after him just off Carnaby Street? Well, he was a teetotal doctor who found the cause of cholera. This book tells you about all these amazing people and events which helped to make London the world’s most astonishing city, with a surprise around every corner.