Queen Victoria experienced a very long reign and by 1897 had been on the throne for an astonishing sixty years. She processed through the city of London as part of her celebrations. Vast crowds assembled to see the sovereign drift past in her carriage. The Diamond Jubilee festivities saw dignitaries and soldiers come to London…
Another blog post in my current series on Newgate prison – demolished over a hundred years ago and replaced by the Old Bailey court building By the end of the nineteenth century, if you committed a murder north of the Thames – you would face the hangman at Newgate. If you committed it south of…
Stand at Tottenham Court Road station and let your eyes drift from the Dominion Theatre past New Oxford Street and down Charing Cross Road. Now imagine that this whole stretch of London extending down to St Martin’s Lane and back to Drury Lane was one huge enormous slum. A warren of impenetrable alleyways, wooden houses,…
