This is your blog author appearing in the latest episode of Private Lives of the Monarchs on Yesterday TV/UKTV – looking at the secret life of Queen Victoria. She spent much of her time in our city of London at Buckingham Palace and Windsor but what was this seemingly respectable woman getting up to behind…
A day trip to Georgian London could have involved going to see a prisoner put to death or watching a live amputation by a well known surgeon
London hangings and other forms of execution took place in different parts of London as Tony McMahon discovers looking back over the centuries
Ten tantalising facts you may not have known about one of London’s biggest public squares, Lincoln’s Inn Fields near Holborn
Wherever you go in central London there are plague pits under your feet – literally thousands of skeletons of those who died in a horrific way
Elizabeth Brownrigg was a brutal eighteenth century murderer with a violent streak who tortured her female charges, eventually killing one of them. But she came to grisly end herself. Elizabeth was married to James Brownrigg, a plumber who moved with his wife in to Flower-de-Luce Court off Fleet Street. It was the year 1765 and…
There are many hidden treasures in London that I’m still discovering after a lifetime in this city. One that I was completely unaware of until recently was the dog cemetery in Hyde Park. From 1880 till about 1915, about 300 dogs and some cats and birds were interred in a plot of ground near the…
The church of St James’s Garlickhythe in the City of London has a little secret that’s not put on display anymore. It’s a mummy that used to be a key attraction. In a 1937 guide to London, there’s a photo of what’s claimed to be a medieval body. It was discovered in 1839 when the…
In a seventy year old guide to Soho in my London book collection, there’s a chapter titled: Wide Boys, Spivs, Dippers and Steamers. It details the murky criminal underbelly of London’s entertainment district. Because mid-twentieth century Soho was a dangerous place. But also exciting. As the book puts it: One has only to take a short…
Chas Baker was a prominent high street mens outfitter in the late nineteenth century. Here you can see one of their stores in Fleet Street and a couple of adverts from a London map and guide the company sponsored.
