Marylebone Journal - Blasts from the Past

BLASTS FROM THE PAST A collection of history-themed articles from the Marylebone Journal 2012-2020

Cover image: Matthew Hancock

02.

18.

Marylebone film locations

Famous Marylebone crimes

SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE

04.

The stories of some of Marylebone’s most notable but less well known residents

TEN

PAST PRESENCE

34.

54.

In 1927, a swimming record was smashed to pieces.

But all was not as it seemed

How an attempt to convince the British of the merits of horse meat met with a determined ‘nay’

20.

38.

58.

How the opinions of drinkers at a Marylebone pub came to influence British military strategy in the second world war

How the world’s biggest band opened a clothes shop—and made a complete pig’s ear of it

The violent tale of James Figg, a fighter without equal in Georgian London

TEN

PINTS OF VIEW

BEATLES FOR SALE

FALLING AT THE FIRST

THE KING OF MARYLEBONE PLAINS

12.

24.

44.

64.

Popular Marylebone singers

The pig woman of Manchester Square: the very human truth behind a popular 19th century myth

The man who funded the building of much of Marylebone, but whose miserliness trapped him in a life of self neglect

Fictional Marylebone residents

TEN

PIG TALES

GILDED CAGE

14.

28.

48.

Insightful quotes from the great and good of Marylebone

The life of Frederick Marryat, who used his wild adventures at sea to bring thrills to generations of readers

How John St John Long charmed his patients into believing in a wildly dangerous ‘miracle cure’

WISE WORDS

SEA WORDS

HANDSOME DEVIL

TEN

66.

STREET STORIES The history behind some of Marylebone’s defining streetscapes

01. History Marylebone Journal Web: marylebonejournal.com Twitter: @MaryleboneJrnl Instagram: marylebonejrnl Facebook: Marylebone Journal

BLASTS FROM THE PAST MARK RIDDAWAY

Editor Mark Riddaway mark@lscpublishing.com Deputy editors Viel Richardson viel@lscpublishing.com Clare Finney clare@lscpublishing.com Managing editor Ellie Costigan ellie@lscpublishing.com

Usually, the Marylebone Journal’s focus is on illuminating the present and looking forward to the future, but there’s much to be said for taking an occasional glance back at the past.

For an area of such relative dinkiness, measuring no more than about a mile in either direction, Marylebone packs in a quite staggering amount of history—all the more remarkable given how lightly populated it was before the middle of the 18th century—and for as long as I’ve been editing the Journal (since not long after the mid-18th century, or so it seems), we’ve set aside space in every issue to explore it. Remarkably, the well of entertaining historical stories— some concerning events of major national consequence, but most of them delightfully obscure—is still very far from dry.

Advertising sales Donna Earrey donna@lscpublishing.com Publisher LSC Publishing 13.2.1 The Leathermarket Weston Street London SE1 3ER lscpublishing.com Contributers Jean-Paul Aubin-Parvu, Glyn Brown, Sasha Garwood, Matthew Hancock, Tom Hughes Design and art direction Em-Project Limited mike@em-project.com Owned and supported by The Howard de Walden Estate 27 Baker Street, W1U 8EQ 020 7580 3163 hdwe.co.uk annette.shiel@hdwe.co.uk The Portman Estate 40 Portman Square, W1H 6LT 020 7563 1400 portmanestate.co.uk rebecca.eckles@portmanestate.co.uk

For this special digital edition, we’ve gathered together some of the best history-themed articles published in the Journal over the past eight years. Some are serious and thoughtful, some silly. Some are sad, some heart-warming.

There’s art and violence, high culture and low morals, fame and infamy, inspiring individuals and proper rogues. Taken as a whole, the impression these stories leave is of an area of London that was and remains a great deal deeper than it is wide.

10 02. Ten

MARYLEBONE FILM LOCATIONS

1 Reds (1981) The magnificent Chandos House, one of the Georgian masterpieces of the Adam brothers, was done up as a Greenwich Village townhouse for Warren Beatty’s hugely ambitious Reds. The legendary Hollywood

5 The 39 Steps (1935) In Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of John Buchan’s The 39 Steps. In the book, mining engineer Richard Hannay lives in an apartment at 122 Portland Place, from where he gets sucked into a terrifying world of spies and killers.

8

libertine wrote, directed and starred in this epic portrait of the radical leftwing journalist John Reed. In the film Beatty, playing Reed, dances with Diane Keaton, playing Reed’s lover Louise Bryant, in one of Chandos House’s grand reception rooms. Beatty went on to have an affair with Keaton, but then that pretty much goes without saying.

For Hitchcock’s film the building’s exterior was recreated in a studio, with the famously wide road dramatically reduced in scale. But there are also genuine shots of Marylebone, not least the beautiful sweep of Park Crescent East where Hannay (played by Robert Donat) abandons a horse and cart at the start of the picture.

GoldenEye (1995) Despite the Russian flags, the Grand Hotel Europe— in which James Bond drinks several martinis and nearly gets asphyxiated between the thighs of the gorgeous assassin Xenia Onatopp— is actually the Langham, London on Portland Place.

We can recommend the quality of the drinks in the hotel’s cocktail bar, but not the thigh thing.

2 The Long Good Friday (1980) The site now occupied by Ask Italian at 60 Wigmore Street was the setting for one of the many crackling scenes that make up The Long Good Friday—the film that makes any other London gangland thriller

6 The Italian Job (1969) In The Italian Job—the original, not the execrable 2003 remake—the most truly memorable scenes take place in Turin, where the Minis wreak havoc, and Crystal Palace, where the bloody doors get blown off.

We can recommend the quality of the drinks in the hotel’s cocktail bar, but not the deadly thigh thing

look like a laughable mockney pastiche.

Gangster Jeff, played by Charlie Fairhead from Casualty (actually an actor called Derek Thompson, but Charlie Fairhead to everyone but his mum), gets spat on by a relative of one of his victims while conducting a clandestine meeting with the corrupt Councillor Harris, played

by Bryan Marshall.

But Marylebone has a small supporting role: after taking a break from his incarceration at Wormwood Scrubs, Noel Coward’s dapper villain Bridger takes a stroll down Harley Street for a checkup with an expensive doctor.

03. Ten

3 7 Withnail & I (1987) Regent’s Park has been a frequent film location.

Most gloriously, the Gloucester Gate entrance, which was once home to an enclosure filled with wolves, provides the backdrop for the closing scene of the peerless

9 Spy Game (2001) Perhaps the most bizarre and completely inexplicable use of a Marylebone location came in Tony Scott’s typically slick, bombastic thriller Spy Game. Early in the film, Robert Redford’s character leaves his house

Darling (1965) In the 1965 John Schlesinger film, Darling, Julie Christie stars as an amoral model who sleeps her way to the top of the London fashion scene. PR mogul Miles Brand, played

by Laurence Harvey, who is seduced by Christie for his big book of contacts, has a very nice swinging sixties pad at 40-41 Wimpole Street.

Withnail & I. Richard E Grant, playing the tired and emotional Withnail, serenades the lurking wolves with a heart-rending passage from Hamlet as the rain pours down around him. The park also plays host to a memorable scene from David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) where Alec (Trevor Howard) gets his tweeds wet when he falls into the boating lake. in Washington DC to drive to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

His route between these two US cities somehow takes him around the Outer Circle of Regent’s Park, where he drives on the wrong side of the road while talking on his mobile phone. Having a seriously faulty sat-nav is surely no excuse for such unsafe driving.

4 A Hard Day’s Night (1964) In The Beatles’ first film, Marylebone station manages to play two different roles. At the start, the Fab Four leave on a train from Marylebone, which is masquerading as Liverpool. They travel through Paddington, and arrive at… Marylebone. This

time, there are huge crowds waiting for them, and they have to run away to prevent themselves from being torn limb from limb by sobbing baby-boomers. In Billy Liar, released the previous year, the station had shown admirable versatility by pretending to be Bradford.

It went on to play itself in the Julian Temple’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.

Richard E Grant serenades the lurking Regent’s Park wolves with a heart-rending passage from Hamlet as the rain pours down around him

10 Parting Shots (1998) For Parting Shots, Michael Winner gathered together the stellar talents of John Cleese, Oliver Reed, Ben Kingsley, Bob Hoskins, Diana Rigg and Joanna Lumley and somehow managed to create one of the worst films ever

made. At one point, the film’s main character, played by singer Chris Rea, holes up in a posh West End hotel, the Majestic, which is actually the Wallace Collection’s Hertford House building in Manchester Square.

Remarkably, the Wallace Collection manages to pull off a far more convincing impression of a hotel than Rea does of an actor.

04. Past presence

PAST PRESENCE From Charles Dickens to William Pitt the Younger, Marylebone has been home to some of the most famous figures in British history. But among its most fascinating former residents are a few that are far less well known.

Here are our favourites WORDS: MARK RIDDAWAY

05. Past presence

EMMA CONS SOCIAL REFORMER 1838-1912

Her intention was to help the poor, but without sentiment: the business was run for profit, and its strict rules encouraged thrift, hygiene and personal responsibility

Looking around the blue plaques of Marylebone, there is one significant characteristic that almost all of the area’s celebrated luminaries had in common: they urinated standing up.

And had beards too, for the most part. But among this parade of Victorian men, a handful of women did force their way into the plaque-makers’ plans— including the formidable Emma Cons.

Born in 1838, Cons grew up near Goodge Street in a working class family with artistic aspirations—her father Frederick was a skilled cabinet and piano case maker. At the age of 14, Cons joined the Ladies Art Guild, a Fitzroy Square cooperative run

by Caroline Hill, which helped turn the creative talents of women into gainful employment.

It was here that she made friends with the principal’s daughter, Octavia Hill— a relationship that would shape her life.

After graduating, Cons found work as a watch engraver, then a stained glass painter. Meanwhile, her friend Octavia, angered by the ugly slums that scarred London, had started a campaign to provide proper housing

for the city’s working poor.

With investment from John Ruskin, she purchased some previously squalid tenements in Marylebone, known as Paradise Place and Freshwater Place.

Her intention was to help the poor, but without sentiment: the business was run for profit, and its strict rules encouraged thrift, hygiene and personal responsibility. Emma Cons was brought in to manage the estates and collect the rent. She threw herself into the job with genuine zeal, proving utterly fearless in dealing with the rough and ready tenants.

She was unafraid of hard work, rolling up her sleeves to help out with the renovations.

Henrietta Rowland would recall her “mounting ladders, mixing colours, ordering and laughing at the men who, when too inexperienced, backward or perhaps indolent, would show resentment at or disinclination for the job.”

In 1869, Julia and Hester Sterling, inspired by Hill and Cons, purchased a block of 38 houses in Marylebone: Walmer Street and Walmer Place.

Cons became manager and moved into the building.

With a £10 donation, she immediately established

a library for tenants, with 300 books. It was a huge success. Less successful was the pub next door which lacked one essential component: plentiful booze.

Having witnessed first-hand the destruction wreaked on poor families by drunken husbands and fathers, Cons became deeply involved in the temperance movement.

She was honorary secretary of the Coffee Taverns Company, which sought to compete with the city’s dens of iniquity by providing wholesome coffee shops. In 1873, the Walmer Castle coffee tavern was opened right next door to her home, with Cons as its manager.

It became a base for her campaigning work, and thrived for a while, but the coffee tavern idea never quite caught on.

After moving out of Marylebone, Cons made even more of a mark on London’s Southbank.

It was here that she helped found Morley College, an adult education centre for the working classes, and turned the Old Vic theatre into an alcoholfree venue which put on great plays at prices affordable to London’s poor.

06. Past presence

ARTHUR WING PINERO PLAYWRIGHT 1855-1934

Ask most people to name the greatest playwright of the late Victorian period, and the answer would probably be a predictable one: Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw. But the same question addressed to the London theatre-goers of the time would doubtless have thrown another name into the mix: Arthur Wing Pinero.

Born in London in 1855, Pinero seemed set to follow his father and grandfather into the legal profession, but at the age of 19 he left law school and travelled to Edinburgh to join the theatre. Two years later he was back in the capital as a member of Henry Irving’s Lyceum company. Never a great actor, he was more likely to play the comedy sidekick than the starring role. The great actress Ellen Terry damned him with faint praise: “He was always good in the ‘silly ass’ type of part, and no one could say of him he was playing himself.”

In 1885, Pinero stopped acting and started writing.

Over the next two decades his plays were a fixture in the West End, drawing huge audiences. His first, The Magistrate, opened at the Court

Theatre in March 1885 to favourable reviews. Like most of his early work it was a bright, funny farce.

His biggest hit, Sweet Lavender, opened three years later and played for 684 consecutive performances: a hugely long run for the period.

In it, Pinero’s usual comedy was layered with sentimentality.

As he matured, Pinero’s plays developed greater depth. While he remained a dab-hand at comedy (his Trelawney of the ‘Wells’, a satire on the theatre world, is probably his most enduring work), the 1890s saw him morph into a writer of ‘problem plays’: the serious, sociallyconscious dramas that captured the London stage in the wake of Ibsen’s successes. The Second Mrs Tanqueray was perhaps the finest of these, essaying the travails of a lower class woman with a colourful sexual history as she battles against middle class hypocrisy.

As with many of Pinero’s plays, it centred upon a strong, intelligent female protagonist. The best actresses of the day loved working with Pinero, with good reason.

In 1909 Pinero became only the second man after

The Second Mrs Tanqueray centred upon a strong, intelligent female protagonist. The best actresses of the day loved working with Pinero, with good reason

WS Gilbert to be knighted purely for services to the theatre. The same year he moved to 115A Harley Street, where he slipped gently into retirement, keeping himself busy with writing essays, chairing committees and generally being an all-round good egg.

Pinero returned to prominence through the letters page of The

Times. In May 1915, after the horrific sinking of RMS Lusitania by a German u-boat, he wrote a thundering missive calling upon the many naturalised Germans in London high society to “break silence and individually or collectively raise their voices against the infamous deeds which are being perpetrated by Germany”. In doing so, he sparked a lengthy and sometimes angry public debate.

On 23rd November 1934, Pinero died at Marylebone Nursing Home. He left behind an impressive body of work and one of the Journal’s favourite ever lines of dialogue, from Sweet Lavender: “While there is tea, there is hope.” That’s something we can surely all get behind.

07. Past presence

JAMES SMITHSON SCIENTIST & PHILANTHROPIST 1765-1829

It was in October 1826, while living at 9 Bentinck Street, Marylebone, that James Smithson signed the document that cemented his place in history. Before that date, he was destined to be remembered (if at all) as a mediocre scientist, best known for lending his name to a not particularly interesting mineral known as smithsonite. But that simple signature changed everything, creating a legacy that transformed the cultural landscape of the United States of America—a country he had never once visited.

The document in question was Smithson’s will. In it, this unmarried, childless, but very wealthy man left his considerable fortune to a young nephew, Henry Hungerford.

The will stipulated that should Hungerford die childless, the money would pass on “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men”.

Smithson died in 1829.

Hungerford passed away six years later. The resulting bequest of over

£100,000—more than £10 million in today’s money—was received with surprise, gratitude and a fair bit of suspicion by the US government which, after considerable debate, founded the extraordinary network of museums and research centres that still bear Smithson’s name.

It’s just about the only name in Smithson’s story that didn’t change.

Smithson was born Jacques Louis Macie, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Macie, a wealthy widow, and her married lover: the powerful aristocrat Sir Hugh Percy, who had been born Hugh Smithson but took the Percy surname when he married into that great English family. Jacques, who was born in Paris, adopted the more English James in 1770. When his mother died in 1800, he changed his surname to Smithson. He may have ditched her moniker, but he was happy to inherit her money, which he clearly invested rather wisely.

Smithson certainly didn’t make much money from his own chosen career. Obsessed with science, he travelled around Europe, never stopping for long in one

Smithson created a legacy that transformed the cultural landscape of the United States of America—a country he had never once visited

place, working through a pretty random series of research projects. He studied snake venom, coffee and the chemistry of human tears, but his most impressive work was in the field of mineralogy.

His peripatetic lifestyle got him into a few scrapes: he was in Paris when the French Revolution kicked off, and then later endured a miserable

experience as a prisoner of war in Germany during the Napoleonic Wars.

His reasons for bequeathing money for the “diffusion of knowledge” are pretty clear—Smithson was an enthusiastic patron of the Royal Institution and an evangelist for the era’s growing swell of scientific curiosity—but his interest in America is less easily explained. He’d never been there, and there’s no evidence that he even knew any Americans.

The loss of his personal papers to a fire in 1865 means his motives are shrouded in mystery. The people of the USA will always be grateful to this great benefactor, whose remains were moved to Washington in 1904, but they’ll never really understand him.

08. Past presence

RICHARD COSWAY ARTIST 1742-1821

Richard Cosway may have lived in the 18th century, but there’s something about his story that feels quite contemporary: a mediocre artist made rich as much through celebrity and and a knack for publicity as through talent—just the kind of thing that critics moan about today.

Born in 1742 in Devon, Cosway arrived in London at the age of 12. He came to the attention of William Shipley, proprietor of a respected drawing school on The Strand, under whose tutelage he became a skilled painter, famed for his beautiful portrait miniatures.

As commissions began to roll in, Cosway “rose from one the dirtiest boys to one of the smartest of men”. His fashionable garments bordered on the outlandish, resulting in his “ridiculously foppish” appearance being mocked by cartoonists.

It was written of Cosway that “his miniatures were not fashionable—they were fashion itself”, aided by his association with the Prince of Wales, who appointed him on a fat retainer. As he went up in the world Cosway moved to Mayfair, then Pall Mall, before settling down in a grand

ISABELLA BEETON FOOD WRITER 1836-1865

house in Marylebone.

Cosway made his money from dealing in great art as well as knocking out his own much-hyped portraits.

An 1820 catalogue of his possessions included 67 Michelangelos, 92 Rubens and 30 Rembrandts.

Cosway’s place on the social scene was central to his success, and he was certainly good company.

William Hazlitt wrote that “his soul had the life of a bird”, and his rather colourful beliefs ensured that life was never dull: “He believed in Swedenborgianism, he believed in animal magnetism, he had conversed with more than one person of the Trinity, he could speak with his lady at Mantua through some fine vehicle of sense, as we speak to a servant downstairs through an ear-pipe.”

According to the engraver John Thomas Smith, “Cosway, though a well-made little man, was certainly very much like a monkey in his face.” His contemporaries appear to have delighted in this fact, but Cosway proved he had a sense of humour about

it by buying a baboon as a pet.

Sadly, the monkey “tore a great piece out of his leg”, before being killed, and then preserved “in spirits, in terrors to all monkeys”. Where Cosway led, Damien Hirst has followed.

In 1781, Cosway married Maria Hadfield, whose story deserves a column of its own—a notable artist in her own right and a talented musician, she carried the scars of a tragic childhood in which several of her siblings were murdered by a serial killer. Something of a free spirit, she travelled widely without her husband and probably had an affair with Thomas Jefferson.

The Cosways’ only child, Louisa, died very young while Maria was off touring Europe. Richard had her body embalmed and kept in the house in a marble sarcophagus, much to his wife’s distress.

When Cosway himself died suddenly in 1821, he apparently keeled over at the very moment that Maria secretly had Louisa’s body interred. He was buried in St Marylebone Parish Church.

Forget everything you think you know about Mrs Beeton, writer of the famous Book of Household Management— a collection of recipes and practical guidance, published in 1861, which taught generations of British women how to boil calf’s feet, curry mutton, treat servants and dress appropriately.

In your mind’s eye, she’s probably the archetype of the Victorian woman of breeding, a conservative and somewhat severe character, highly experienced, probably middle aged, and a cook of some sophistication.

In truth, she was none of the above. Isabella Mary Beeton never made it to middle age—her epochal book was first published when she was 25, and she died just three years later. She came from a lower middle-class background and, while writing her instructions for the affluent housewife, was neither affluent nor a housewife. Instead, she was an ambitious, energetic young journalist.

Isabella had Marylebone in her blood. Her maternal grandparents lived and worked in the area—

09. Past presence

DODIE SMITH NOVELIST 1896-1990

both had been domestic servants in Marylebone mansions, before Isabella’s grandfather opened a livery stable on Wyndham Mews and became a relatively successful small businessman—and her mother, Elizabeth Jerrom, was raised here. Her father, Benjamin Mayson, a linen merchant, lived in Marylebone and had a warehouse in the City.

The couple were living at 40 Upper Baker Street when Isabella, their first child, was born, and she was baptised on 20th April 1836 in St Mary’s, Bryanston Square. Not long afterwards, though, the family left the area, moving to Cheapside to be closer to Benjamin’s business.

At the age of 19, Isabella married Samuel Orchart Beeton, a dashing publisher, who had astutely bought up the British rights to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, before launching Boy’s Own Magazine in 1855. The new Mrs Beeton, while heavily pregnant, took up writing for another of her husband’s publications, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, covering both cookery and home management. After the

tragic death of their young son she threw herself into her work, commuting to her husband’s London offices every day from their home in Pinner.

The most popular recipes and columns from the magazine were collected in a book, which was published in October 1861.

Mrs Beeton wasn’t, though, much of a cook.

With one exception (Useful Soup for Benevolent Purposes), every recipe had been shamelessly robbed from other writers, notably Eliza Action and Hannah Glasse, or sent in by her magazine’s readers.

Isabella’s genius was in setting these recipes out with clarity, consistency and useful notes relating to pricing, seasonality and social mores.

Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management sold millions of copies, and had perhaps as great an influence on Britain as any cookbook ever has or will. She didn’t live to see that influence unfold: in February 1865, aged just 28, she contracted puerperal fever from the unwashed hands of the doctor who had delivered her fourth baby hours earlier, and died within days.

The writer Dodie Smith, who lived for many years at 18 Dorset Square, was a northern lass at heart. Born in Whitefield, Lancashire in 1896, her childhood was an unconventional one, filled with both joy and tragedy.

Her father Ernest, a bank manager, died of cancer when she was still a baby, so she was taken to live in her mother’s family home in Manchester: a house stuffed full of grandparents, aunts and uncles—eight adults in total, all of them boisterous lovers of theatre and music, who treated Dodie like part of the grown-up gang. Her uncle Harold was president of the Athenaeum drama club, and by the age of eight she was regularly appearing on stage.

In 1910, Dodie’s mother Nell remarried and moved to London, where Dodie won a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Soon after, Nell too died of cancer, leaving Dodie orphaned as she entered adulthood. For a few years, the diminutive young actor, big on personality but a little light on talent, managed to scrape a living in minor productions while staying at the Three Arts Club hostel on Marylebone Road.

Eventually, at the age of 26, she decided to throw in the towel and get a proper job instead, going to work at the Heal’s furniture emporium on Tottenham Court Road. Dodie had already tried her hand at writing—in 1915, she had sold a film script, Schoolgirl Rebels, under the pseudonym Charles Henry Percy—but working as a shop girl gave her the time to really knuckle down and give it a shot (while also conducting an affair with Heal’s married chairman).

In 1931, her first play, Autumn Crocus, became a major West End hit and began a run of beautifully written, gently sentimental and hugely popular comedies that brought her wealth and fame, culminating in the highly regarded Dear Octopus (1938), a family reunion story starring John Gielgud.

Then, at the peak of her fame, Dodie disappeared into self-imposed exile.

Her boyfriend—later husband—Alec Beesley was a pacifist, and in 1939, as war loomed, the couple decided to leave for the United States. They would remain there for 14 years, during which time she wrote a Broadway play,

10. Past presence

ALEXANDER DALRYMPLE GEOGRAPHER 1737-1808

rewrote screenplays for Hollywood studios and produced her first and finest novel, I Capture The Castle, a genuine modern classic, shining with wit and charm.

Returning to England, Dodie never quite reached the heights of her pre-war success as a playwright, but she did write her most famous book. In 1934, Alec had bought Dodie a dalmatian as a birthday present. Her friend, the actor Joyce Kennedy, suggested that this beautiful creature would “make a nice fur coat”. The seed planted by this black humour grew into the children’s book The Hundred and One Dalmatians, written in 1956 and adapted by Disney in 1961.

Dodie never stopped writing, although her failure to produce another West End hit continued to frustrate her. She produced four autobiographical volumes, with those devoted to her colourful childhood proving particularly enjoyable, as well as several more novels and children’s books. Ultimately, though, it was those black and white dogs that would prove her most enduring legacy.

Alexander Dalrymple— a long-term resident of Marylebone High Street—was brilliant, fanatical, ill-tempered, thin-skinned and, in his most passionately held belief, completely wrong.

His influence on the events of his time was considerable, but his fame is now vastly outstripped by that of the rivals whose abilities he very publicly scorned.

Born in Scotland to an upper class family, Dalrymple joined the British East India Company at the age of 15 and was posted to Madras, kicking off a lifetime’s fascination with exploration, geography and trade. He spent more than a decade in Asia, immersing himself in the charts and journals of European explorers, before returning to London and starting work on a book entitled An Account of the Discoveries Made in the South Pacifick Ocean, Previous to 1764.

This work, which included the first English account of the voyage of Luís Váez de Torres through the strait between Papua New Guinea and Australia, presented a striking theory: that a huge, highly populated and wealthy continent lay undiscovered

Dalrymple presented a striking new theory: that a huge, highly populated and wealthy continent lay undiscovered in the low latitudes of the Pacific

in the low latitudes of the Pacific.

Dalrymple’s big idea was based on the conjecture that, for the globe to “maintain the equilibrium necessary for the earth’s motion”, the size of the landmass would have to be the same between the northern and southern hemispheres. The weight of Europe and Asia must, he surmised, be

counterbalanced by a vast continent in the Southern Ocean.

To test his theory, Dalrymple was desperate to lead the Royal Society’s planned expedition to the Pacific to observe the transit of Venus. But his lack of experience as a naval commander led to him being passed over in favour of James Cook and Joseph Banks. The latter two would become immortalised for making the first European landing on the east coast of Australia, but Dalrymple was horrified by their failure to find his new continent.

In an open letter, he railed against the “insinuations of cunning men” and chastised Cook and Banks for returning “in ignorance”. He also took aim at the poor quality

11. Past presence

ROSE MACAULAY NOVELIST 1881-1958

of their charts and their apparent obsession with choosing names for newly discovered islands before exploring them properly.

In 1775, Dalrymple was re-employed by the British East India Company, despite having previously been dismissed for being difficult. Later appointed the company’s hydrographer, he carried out valuable work on the publication of accurate charts, but would embroil himself in a public argument at the drop of a hat. He was convinced that the use of Australia as a penal colony was a cover for illegal trade, designed to circumvent the East India Company’s monopolies, and wrote a lengthy tract condemning the idea.

Dalrymple’s career reached its peak when he was appointed hydrographer to the Admiralty in 1795, in which role he continued to carry out vital work on the propagation of charts and maps, but his difficult temperament would be his downfall. He was dismissed in May 1808. When he died a few weeks later, it was, one biographer suggested, a direct result of his “vexation” at being fired.

He was buried at St Marylebone Parish Church.

Virginia Woolf, the greatest novelist of her era, writing in her diary on 18th February 1921, was typically acerbic about Rose Macaulay, a fellow writer who flitted around the edges of her famed—and famously snobbish—circle of upper crust writers, artists and thinkers, known as the Bloomsbury Group: “Something like a lean sheep-dog in appearance—harumscarum-humble—too much of a professional, yet just on the intellectual side of the border.

Might be religious though; mystical perhaps.

Not at all dominating or impressive; I daresay she observes more than one thinks for. Clear, pale, mystical eyes. A kind of faded beauty; badly dressed.”

Rose Macaulay’s dress sense may not have impressed Woolf, but that combination of observational acuity, mysticism and professionalism helped sell a significant quantity of books. Born in Warwickshire in 1881, the daughter of a schoolmaster, Rose studied modern history at Oxford before forging a long and successful career

A series of confessional letters written by Rose to an Anglican priest revealed that she had spent 24 years conducting a clandestine affair with a married man

as a writer. In 1958, she was awarded a damehood for services to literature, but despite her popularity she never managed to pin down a place in the pantheon of 20th century cultural giants—unlike the catty doyenne of the Bloomsbury Group.

For a literary novelist, Rose’s output was prodigious. Over the course of half a century, she produced 23 novels, 10 works of non-fiction and two collections of poetry, culminating in 1956 with The Towers of Trebizond, her most lauded and commercially successful work—the gently comic but highly illuminating story of an eccentric woman’s campaign to convert Turkish Muslims to Anglicanism, with a muchquoted opening line: “‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.”

Rose arrived in Marylebone in 1922 and she never really left, despite the best efforts of the Luftwaffe. In May 1941, she was staying with family in Hampshire when her flat in Luxborough House, just off Paddington Street, was destroyed by a

German bomb.

In a distraught letter to a friend, she wrote: “I came up last night... to find Lux House no more—bombed and burned out of existence, and nothing saved.

I am bookless, homeless, sans everything but my eyes to weep with... It would have been less trouble to have been bombed myself.”

She moved to a flat in Hinde House on Hinde Street, where she remained for the rest of her life, but as a true woman of letters she never really recovered from the trauma of losing her books and correspondence.

After her death in 1958, The Observer published a series of confessional letters written by Rose to an Anglican priest, revealing a double life. In them, she revealed that, far from being a “eunuch” (another swipe by Virginia Woolf), she had instead spent 24 years conducting a clandestine affair with a married man, Gerald O’Donovan. Even her closest friends were stunned by the revelation.

Rose Macaulay may not have been “dominating or impressive”, but nor was she in any way dull.

10 12. Ten

POPULAR MARYLEBONE SINGERS

Known as the ‘prince of tenors’, John Braham was one of the early 19th century’s great opera stars: a fixture at Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

His achievements were particularly remarkable given that he was both an orphan and a Jew: then

5 Cilla Black’s apartment on Portland Place, bought during the first flush of her success as a pop star, became something of a party venue as London began to swing. It was also handily positioned right near the BBC building: perfect for her nascent TV

8 Ringo Starr’s Montagu Square flat became even more notorious in 1968 after John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved in while the Beatles recorded the White Album at the nearby Abbey Road studios. At 11:55pm on Friday 18th October 1968,

considerable impediments to social progress in a narrow, intolerant world.

He enjoyed a colourful life, including having an illegitimate son with the soprano Nancy Storace.

Braham lived at 69 Baker Street in the latter stages of his career, when his voice was beginning to fade and a penchant for disastrous financial speculation was making itself felt.

2 Phyllis Dare was one of the great leading ladies of Edwardian musical theatre, as was her similarly charming and talented sister Zena.

Phyllis’s early career was based upon good looks and a sweet voice—a review of her 1909 hit

career. One famous New Year’s Eve party at Cilla’s place in the late 1960s was attended by the Beatles, the Stones and a whole host of slightly less famous pop stars and models. As midnight approached, Ringo Starr was sent out to find a piece of lucky coal, but no one could hear the buzzer when he returned and he was left out in the freezing cold for two hours. five detectives, two dog handlers and some hastily tipped-off journalists turned up with a warrant to search the flat for drugs, sparking a lengthy stand-off with an enraged Lennon who barricaded the door and refused to let them in. Detective Sergeant Norman ‘Nobby’ Pilcher led the raid—a shameless self-publicist who had previously felt the

The Arcadians reads: “Miss Phyllis Dare does everything that is expected of her; she dances nicely, sings sweetly and looks pretty”—but as her acting ability improved over the years, she was able to take on more demanding roles, eventually adding straight drama to her repertoire.

She spent a period of time living at 119 Gloucester Place.

CILLA BLACK

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collars of both Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton. Warned that he was next on Pilcher’s list, Lennon had already cleaned out the flat, but a small quantity of cannabis resin was nonetheless ‘discovered’.

The Beatle, who was fined £150 for possession of the drug, insisted that he’d been framed. Pilcher was later imprisoned for corruption.

Ringo Starr was sent out to find a piece of lucky coal, but no one could hear the buzzer when he returned and he was left out in the freezing cold for two hours

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13. Ten

Derek Oldham, who lived for a while at 11-15 Wigmore Street, made his name as a tenor in the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, which toured the world putting on Gilbert & Sullivan productions. He left in 1922, fell in love with and married the leading lady in

6 In early 1965, Ringo Starr took over the lease to Flat 1, 34 Montagu Square.

It would go on to become one of the most legendary addresses in pop music.

Paul McCartney used the flat as a demo studio for several classic Beatles songs, while living nearby at Jane When Noel Gallagher moved to Marylebone in 2001 it was as a changed man: his chaotic marriage had just ended, as had years of epic drug use, and the supernova of the Britpop era had started to fade.

Eschewing all of the frothy nonsense connected with stellar fame, Noel became the unstarriest of stars, much loved by the ladies on the Waitrose checkouts.

Asher’s family home at 57 Wimpole Street. William Burroughs visited to record a spoken-word record.

In December 1966, Jimi Hendrix and his manager Chas Chandler moved in with their respective girlfriends, but they were evicted by Ringo the following year after Hendrix whitewashed the walls in a bout of un-sanctioned, LSDfuelled interior design.

4 Elton Hayes was something of a pioneer: one of the first musicians to find success through radio and television rather than live performance. Starting out in 1946 with a regular slot on the BBC Radio show In Town Tonight before being given his first TV

7 10

NOEL GALLAGHER

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his very first West End play, and went on to enjoy what he called “the hard glitter and luxury of the West End theatre—a world of restaurants, supper parties, and all the trappings that went with London theatrical life between the two wars”.

He continued singing and acting throughout the 1930s and 40s, appearing on numerous records and popping up in several films.

For a brief moment around the turn of the millennium, The Libertines were the most exciting band in London. Driven by the creative rapport and personal tensions between their two frontmen, Carl Barât and Pete Doherty, they were a staggering

show—Elton Hayes: He Sings to a Small Guitar— in 1954. Specialising in gentle ballads, folk songs and children’s favourites, he had an easy screen presence which led to him being cast as Alan-a-Dale in Disney’s 1952 film The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men. At the peak of his fame, Hayes was living at 19 Upper Montagu Street.

Madonna bought large swathes of Marylebone real estate back when she was married to Guy Ritchie, wearing a lot of tweed and pretending to be British. For several years, this was her main residence, although she wasn’t a particularly visible presence; certainly not one to be seen singing round the piano at the Golden Eagle or enjoying a fry up in Blandford’s Café. live act on the verge of big things. Then, in 2003, after falling out over Doherty’s drug use, grimy friends and unreliability, the band began to fall apart. Barât was living in a basement flat on Harley Street, which was ineptly burgled by Doherty, who kicked the front door down and made off with a guitar, some books and a mouth organ. He ended up in prison as a result.

14. Wise words

WISE WORDS Insightful quotes from the great and good of Marylebone

15. Wise words

“Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.”

William Ewart Gladstone Politician, lived at 73 Harley Street

“Passionate love, I take it, rarely lasts long, and is very troublesome while it does last. Mutual esteem is very much more valuable.”

Anthony Trollope Novelist, lived at 39 Montagu Square

“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.”

Michael Faraday Scientist, worked as a bookbinder at 48 Blandford Street

“I have the same feeling when I walk in a very beautiful place that I have when I play and it goes right.”

Jacqueline du Pré Cellist, lived at 27 Upper Montagu Street

“The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.”

Arnold Bennett Novelist, lived at Chiltern Court, Baker Street

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

William Pitt the Younger Statesman, lived at 120 Baker Street

“Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way— or always to have it.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett Novelist, lived at 63 Portland Place

“Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.”

Elizabeth Bowen Novelist, lived at 1-7 Clarence Terrace

16. Wise words

“All problems have to be solved eventually by oneself, and that’s where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, a man is an island.”

Kenneth Williams Actor, lived at Farley Court, Marylebone Road

17. Wise words

“To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character.”

JMW Turner Artist, lived at 23 Queen Anne Street

“On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’

I am not able rightly to comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”

Charles Babbage Mathematician, lived at 1 Dorset Street

“All Australians are uneducated, and an unruly mob.”

Douglas Jardine England cricket captain, lived at 21 Bentinck Mews

“Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.”

Edward Gibbon Historian, lived at 7 Bentinck Street

“Leaders should lead as far as they can and then vanish.

Their ashes should not choke the fire they have lit.”

HG Wells Novelist, lived at 47 Chiltern Court and 13 Hanover Terrace

“No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.”

“Civilisation is a conspiracy.

Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.”

Wilkie Collins Novelist, lived at 65 Gloucester Place

John Buchan Novelist, lived at 76 Portland Place

10 18. Ten

The mews shooting The scandal that overturned a government started its slow burn reveal in a quiet Marylebone mews. Before any talk of Russian spies, illicit sex and national security, the Profumo affair began with five gunshots fired at the

5 The bank robbery “Let Sherlock Holmes try to solve this.” This statement, graffitied on the inside of an empty safe in Lloyds Bank on Baker Street in 1971, teased not only the police but all of Britain.

The authorities issued a rare D-Notice prohibiting

8 The Cato Street conspiracy At the beginning of the 19th century, high inflation, food shortages and mass unemployment led to the surge in radical idealism. The government responded to the threat of civil unrest with repressive

door of 17 Wimpole Mews, behind which cowered Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. The shooter, Johnny Edgecombe, a jealous ex-lover of Keeler, was quickly arrested, but this public act of violence sparked the interest of the press—the web of scandal they uncovered led to the suicide of Stephen Ward and the resignation of war minister John Profumo.

2

the press from reporting the robbery, which had netted £3 million, but the story of how four thieves dug an underground tunnel to the bank leaked out anyway.

Even more compelling was the (vigorously disputed) claim that the D-Notice was issued to prevent any talk of scandalous pictures of Princess Margaret, who was rumoured to have kept fruity photos in the vaults. laws and the violent suppression of peaceful protests. In 1820, a small group of enraged radicals led by Arthur Thistlewood plotted to force their way into a dinner hosted in Mayfair by Lord Harrowby.

The entire cabinet would be present at the meal. The plan was to execute the lot of them, and display their severed heads on spikes on Westminster

The Torpey jewel theft In 1871, Michael and Martha Torpey rented a big house in Marylebone.

Masquerading as members of the gentry, they requested that jewels be delivered to the house for viewing, and the hapless seller, duped by the charade, arrived to find a rag of chloroform thrust in his face. His jewels, worth £5,000, disappeared—and so too did the couple.

A SCENE FROM THE BANK JOB (2008)

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Bridge. But Thistlewood’s second in command, George Edwards, who had been deeply involved in the plan, was actually a police spy. The authorities stormed the house on Cato Street in which the gang were gathered. Five of the inept conspirators were deported to Australia, the other five, including Thistlewood, were publicly hanged.

Even more compelling was the claim that Princess Margaret kept her fruity photos in the bank vaults

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY

FAMOUS MARYLEBONE CRIMES

THE BLACKOUT RIPPER

19. Ten

3 The petty treason Until 1828, if a husband killed his wife it was murder, but if a wife murdered her husband it was ‘petty treason’—a far more serious crime.

This was the charge of which Catherine Hayes was found guilty in 1726,

6 9

The Balcombe Street siege Balcombe Street, behind Marylebone Station, was a quiet stretch of council housing that saw very little by way of action—until December 1975, when two elderly residents, John and Sheila Matthews, were taken hostage by IRA

resulting in her being burnt at the stake at Tyburn. In March of that year, she had persuaded her two lodgers, both of whom she was sleeping with, to assist her in the murder of her husband John. After getting him drunk, they killed him with an axe, cut off his head and threw his dismembered body into a Marylebone pond.

The woman in the barrel The scene, from June 1880, rivalled a David Lynch film: a woman found in a barrel in a Harley Street cellar, naked except for the remains of her stockings and garters. Her hair had been shaved off, her teeth sawed down, and her body doused in chloride of lime.

To this day, the woman has never been identified, nor any suspects arrested. paramilitaries, precipitating a six day siege. The gang were on the run from the police after shooting up a restaurant in Mayfair— the climax of a 14-month campaign of terror—and had forced their way into a flat at 22b Balcombe Street.

After almost a week of tense negotiations, the shaken up couple were released and the gang imprisoned for life.

4 The Blackout Ripper Over six tense days in February 1942, the West End was terrorised by a man who murdered four women and attempted to kill two more. His first victim was Evelyn Hamilton, a 40-year-old pharmacist discovered strangled in an

7 The arsonist “My character had been destroyed by a parcel of rubbish!” Jane Cook cried to her surgeon. She had been found hiding in a burning house in 1819 on 69 Seymour Place, where she worked as a servant, with three self-induced cuts

10 The reckless journalist William Thomas Stead was one of the great pioneers of British investigative journalism—but one of his articles landed him in jail for three months.

In 1885, looking to expose corruption in Victorian society, he decided to

air raid shelter in Montagu Square. The violent nature of his crimes and his ability to take advantage of the darkened city led to the killer being nicknamed the Blackout Ripper. After leaving behind fingerprints and a gas mask at a scene, he was discovered to be Gordon Cummins, an RAF cadet from St John’s Wood. He was executed just months later. to her throat. “There is no remedy whatever to get rid of my enemies but to burn in flames.” Cook admitted to the arson, but her intentions were ambiguous.

Was the crime connected to her husband, who witnesses claimed mistreated her?

Why did she say she could not speak the truth “for fear of ruining people”? She was found not guilty by virtue of her insanity. test how easy it would be to procure an underage prostitute. He went to Charles Street (now Ranston Street) and, for £5, procured the 13-year-old Eliza Armstrong from her alcoholic mother. Despite no sexual activity occurring, Stead was sent to prison on the grounds that he hadn’t sought permission from the girl’s father before taking her away.

20. Pints of view

PINTS F VIEW The remarkable story of how the opinions of drinkers at a Marylebone pub came to influence British military strategy in the second world war WORDS: TOM HUGHES ILLUSTRATIONS: MATTHEW HANCOCK

21. Pints of view

22. Pints of view

It is hard to believe that Marylebone was once home to more pubs than anywhere in London. The area was known (and not favourably) as a veritable “El Dorado of drink”. Every street, every corner, every mews, it seemed, had a boozer. Pub crawls are always fun, and Marylebone could test even the most ambulatory tipplers of London. One suggested rota might start in the wee confines of Marylebone Lane at the Prince Alfred; on to the Worcester Arms on George Street, to the Wallace Head in Chiltern Street, a swift half at the grand old Windsor Castle on Crawford Place and arriving in time for last orders at the stately Black Horse on the high street. One tip: don’t come thirsty—for all those pubs now long gone.

Marylebone is not unique, of course. Across the capital, public houses have been shutting down at an alarming rate, often refurbished to serve changing tastes, reborn as restaurants, cocktail bars and, gasp, even coffee shops. And the roll call of the lost pubs of Marylebone is so

much longer than the five numbered above, a short list that merely serves as a device to call attention once again to the last named establishment: the Black Horse.

Since the 1790s, there had been a public house on that site—now numbered 109 Marylebone High Street—and the swaying sign had read The Black Horse from its very earliest days. For much of the Victorian period, the pub enjoyed a raffish, anti-establishment reputation, hosting the “convivial meetings” of the London Labour League and being the scene of the founding of the Marylebone Radical Association in 1880. But by the late years of the 19th century, as part of what was seen as a much overdue clean up, The Howard de Walden Estate launched numerous improvements to the high street, especially the west side. In 1892, the Black Horse was reopened behind one of the grandest pub facades in the realm.

The new Black Horse was designed by a ‘brewery builder’

General Morgan, in mufti, with a big bowler hat, would enter the pub alone and sit off to the side while Wright and his mates returned to their chinwags on tactics and strategy

23. Pints of view named William Bradford and built to conform with the neighbourhood’s “neo-Jacobean domestic revival”. Philip Temple of University College London explains that Bradford relied on aping early-17th century designs, which were suitable for “a large pub at the time in a busy and prosperous area like this”. Even today, more than a century later, the red brick and stone building demands attention. To really appreciate the architecture, the viewer must admire it from over the road. There is a massive bow window, intricately carved stone, and everything is arranged in glorious symmetry, rising four floors above the pavement. The actual entrance to the pub was recessed within the ground level stone archway.

Alas, the Black Horse closed around the turn of the millennium and from 2001 to 2019, the property was home to The Providores and Tapa Room, Peter Gordon’s highly popular restaurant. But those who dined there on Turkish eggs were probably not aware of the forgotten history of the building. During the second world war, behind double sets of tightly gathered blackout curtains, the D-Day invasion was planned at the Black Horse.

All right, that might be a slight exaggeration—but it’s a story worth telling all the same.

In January 1943, at Casablanca, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt were under pressure from our Soviet allies. Stalin hadn’t even come to north Africa, being rather busy with the siege of Stalingrad.

All were agreed that an invasion in Europe had to be launched by the summer of 1944. Where the strike against Hitler’s Fortress Europe would take place, and who would command it, had not been decided.

But the planning was begun under Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Morgan, given the title of COSSAC: Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander. Morgan’s team worked out of Norfolk House, one of the great mansions in St James’ Square.

Peter Wright of the Royal Canadian Engineers was a senior intelligence officer on the staff and while in London he was billeted in Marylebone. On many of the long winter evenings in early 1944, Wright would make his way through the city’s darkened streets for a pint at the Black Horse. Wright would take his glass to a corner table with his evening paper. But he soon found the conversation among the regulars of far more interest—and greater potential.

As everyone knows, the chaps down the pub between them have more than enough ideas to run a football club, Transport for London and the Church of England. Thus, the quiet officer became fascinated by these friendly argy-bargies.

Why aren’t we doing this or that to win the war? In the view of the Black Horse drinkers, the war was being prolonged by “incompetent leadership, by vested interests, and other well known obstacles to progress”.

Wright, without revealing his rank and role in the continuing hostilities, soon joined these nightly conversations. Back at Norfolk House, he couldn’t stop talking about his secret “Black Horse Group”. It became Wright’s habit, whenever he had “a ticklish point of invasion planning”, to swing by the pub and “get the regulars arguing” about how they would carry out

whatever thorny gambit was under discussion.

General Morgan, in his post-war memoirs, recalled that Wright had an “ebullient sense of humour”. On a few occasions, he convinced the COSSAC to come along on an impromptu reconnaissance mission.

Morgan, in mufti, with a big bowler hat, would enter alone and sit off to the side while Wright and his mates returned to their chinwags on tactics and strategy. General Morgan, Freddie to his friends, found it a profitable interlude: “We listened, naturally without their knowledge, to the thoroughly representative body of opinion that congregated at this hospitable bar.”

Now, no one is suggesting that the ultimate call that the great invasion should strike first at Normandy and not Calais was made over a few rounds in a public bar on Marylebone High Street.

But the story of this curious consulting group is right there in General Morgan’s memoirs, Overture to Overlord.

The general’s book wasn’t published until 1950 and when the reporters from the Mail and Express invaded the Black Horse, they found some of the old regulars enjoying a peacetime pint: Fred Bennett, a clerk, Tom Chandler, a butcher, and Leslie Rivers, a well-known furrier from Baker Street. They hadn’t any idea that they’d been of such importance to king and country while standing at the bar rail. With pride, they remembered those conversations and when shown Morgan’s photograph, someone said, “Oh, sure, that’s the bowler hat bloke!”

There’s no plaque on the wall today at 109 Marylebone High Street but the general’s words serve the Black Horse group well: “Sound opinions are not the prerogative of those who are paid to give them.

It is comforting to record that our operation was not launched without, at any rate, some consultation with that cornerstone of Western democracy—the English pub.”

24. Pig tails

25. Pig tails

PIG TAILS

In the 19th century, the press and public became obsessed with a mysterious resident of Manchester Square, said to have the body of a woman and the head of a pig. The Journal uncovers the human truth behind the myth WORDS: GLYN BROWN

26. Pig tails

As long as she remains a virgin, Tannakin will look like a pig.

She must marry, but not a “clowne, bore or pesant”. Then she might be cured. A man must be located, then, of brains and worth, who can see past her looks to her personality. That’s a tough call, some might say, even now

A silly historical story about a woman who’s supposed to look like a pig.

That could be quite fun, you think.

Or I thought, but perhaps I’m shallow. Then you start to research it, and it is of course heart-breaking, whichever angle you approach it from. So now I’ll tell you a tale which says everything we need to know about the monstrousness of people, at their gossipy and unpleasant worst.

The very piggishness of them.

Sometimes, as a woman, you find yourself saying, tsk, I look like a pig. You don’t mean it, it’s just something you dread. And the role of your partner, or cat or whoever you’ve exclaimed to, even if it’s just yourself, is to assure you that you don’t. But there have been times when stories abounded of women with lovely bodies and an ugly pig’s face, almost always someone people are likely to be envious of, generally because she’s wealthy. The idea stems from folklore—a scary fireside tale or an attack on someone with a deformity, or simply not attractive in the accepted way. But it’s not always just myth—or at least it wasn’t in 1814, when rumours swept London that a young, aristocratic woman with a pig’s snout was living, or attempting to carry on a life, in Marylebone’s Manchester Square.

There have always been stories of humans with animal characteristics—they’re something

we try to learn from, or that give children a frisson—but the notion of a woman with a pig face seems to have appeared at the same time, in the late 1630s, in England, Holland and France. It always concerned a wealthy woman who, while pregnant, refused help to a pauper and her children, calling them pigs. The beggar shouts words to the effect of, “You calling my children pigs? Then look out, Lady High and Mighty”, and right enough, when the young aristo is born (but only if she’s a girl), she’s got a snout.

It was subsequently thought that this legend originated in the early 17th century, with the birth of a real child with facial deformities and a speech impediment which caused her to grunt. Appalling, of course.

The study of birth defects had only just begun; at that time, it was still believed that what a pregnant woman thought about could influence the way her children would look.

There has never been a reliably documented case of a human with deformities of this sort surviving into adulthood. But truth has no effect on gossip.

About now we come to a genuinely lovely story, a satisfyingly full version of the early legend: the fable of Tannakin Skinker. In December 1639, five ballads on Skinker were published in London. They’ve vanished, but a version from 1640 exists, snappily entitled A Monstrous Shape: or, A Shapelesse Monster,

a description of a female creature born in Holland compleat in every part, save only a head like a swine, who hath travelled in many parts and is now to be seen in London, shees loving, courteous and effeminate and nere as yet could find a loving mate.

Here’s how the tale goes—it’s moving, and surprisingly far-sighted. Tannakin was born to Joachim and his wife Parnel in Holland, 1618. Joachim, of course, is rich. While pregnant, an elderly woman begs Parnel for money.

She’s busy, says no, no imprecations.

But the woman, irritated at Parnel’s good luck, said witchily: “As the mother is hoggish, so swinish shall be the child...” Tannakin eventually appears, perfect apart from a pig’s snout—“not only a stain and blemish, but a deformed uglinesse, making all the rest loathsome, contemptible and odious to all that lookt upon her in her infancie.” Dreadful stuff. The family raise her in a private room, where she eats from a silver trough, but people find out about her and come to gawp or hear her try to speak. The old woman is tried for witchcraft but even at the stake can’t reverse the enchantment.

When Tannakin is 16, her father consults an astrologian, proficient in the dark arts, about how to undo the curse. It seems as long as she’s a virgin, his daughter will look like a pig. She must marry, but not a “clowne, bore or pesant”. Then she

27. Pig tails

might be cured. A man must be located, then, of brains and worth, who can see past her looks to her personality. That’s a tough call, some might say, even now.

Joachim offers a large dowry— though remember, we must still have no idiots or paupers. Suitors come from far and wide, and all prove themselves to be pussies. A Scottish captain turns up, having spent a month’s pay on a new suit, lifts her veil and literally runs from the room.

A pig farmer says he’s never seen anything like Tannakin’s terrible hooter. Desperate, the family move to London, to Blackfriars, where people talk of the young girl’s elegant dress and demeanour. And then someone offers to marry her.

Wedding service over, the newlyweds adjourn to the bedroom, and as they lie in bed, presumably staring at the ceiling, Tannakin reaches for her husband’s arm.

She’ll release him from his vows, she says, if he’ll just look at her now. He turns, and sees “a sweet young Lady of incomparable beauty and feature, the like of whom, to his imagination, he never had in his whole life time beheld.” Lovely, eh? She explains that this is how she really is, and he’s got a choice. She can either appear to him like this, “young, faire, and lovely in your bed”, but all day long be a pig. Or lovely during the daytime for his friends to see, and at night with him, dreadful.

Torn, he says at last that the decision must be hers. “I give you full power to make election of which you best please.” And of course, the spell is broken. “Now, sir, you have given me that which all women desire, my will and sovereignty...” Breaking the spell depended on her finding someone who cared enough to do that. And although it’s a shame her transformation had to be granted by a husband, it’s a decent allegory—that happiness comes from equality, when a husband gives his wife her own agency. It’s also a bit similar to Shrek, where Princess Fiona can choose but prefers to stay an ogre, and to Shrek that’s beautiful, because it was her choice and that’s her real self.

This kind of stuff was so appealing that people wanted to believe it was true, but nastiness got the better of them. All through the 18th century, stories of pig-faced women were reported as fact. In 1814, reports erupted that a lady with the head of a pig was living in fashionable Manchester Square, the young daughter of a noblewoman. According to gossip, she’d sometimes leave her home in a carriage, wearing a heavy veil. Letters sent to newspapers reported seeing a snout poking out of a window at home, or a silhouetted pig’s head as the carriage passed.

And then portraits of her began to appear. In 1815, an illustrated pamphlet published by John Fairburn, along with a description, explained that the lady was unmarried, and about 20 years old (the picture shows a slim girl languidly reclining in a pale regency dress. Serrated teeth, pretty ears, though big). It explained that her attendant had left due to fear, and reprinted an ad from The Times from a “young gentlewoman”, offering her services to this lady who is so “heavily afflicted in the face”, and willing to do all she can to “render her life most comfortable”.

Soon, the woman became the talk of the city. Thousands accepted her as real, and tried to catch a glimpse of her. An advert rejected by The Times appeared in the London Morning Herald from a gentleman of 31, appearing to offer himself as a suitor.

Why didn’t The Times run his ad?

Because the editor decided things had gone far enough. “Yesterday morning, a fellow (with a calf’s head, we suppose) transmitted to us an advertisement offering himself to be this lady’s husband. We have put his offer in the fire... Our rural friends hardly know what idiots London contains.” All very level-headed, but it didn’t halt the madness. During the illuminations to celebrate the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a massive crowd gathered in Piccadilly. A carriage was observed and inside it, a magnificently dressed female with a bonnet and pig’s snout. As the carriage was mauled, the coachman got the landau away at speed.

More illustrations appeared. In a coloured print by Cruikshank, the girl sits veiled and playing the piano, lost in thought. Another drawing shows the hunchbacked Sholto Henry Maclellan, 9th Lord Kirkcudbright, dancing with her.

God knows what became of this woman. If she did exist and had some facial disfigurement, it’s possible that, though it wouldn’t go away as it did in the fairy story, a man who cared for her could help her accept the way she looked. And it would have to be someone who really did love her. At any rate, she vanished.

In her wake, pig-faced women became popular at fairs, where the interest the woman from Marylebone had whipped up could be sated. And how did they obtain these women?

Well, they got performing bears drunk, shaved them, put them in a dress and a wig and tied them to a chair. That’s what they did. The crowd would be invited to ask the bear questions, and a hidden boy would prod the poor animal so that it grunted in response. If only it had mauled the lot of them.

The myth slowly faded, though there were still stories of wealthy, pigfaced women in Ireland and France.

But I’d like to think that the pig-faced girl of Manchester Square did strike up a relationship of some kind, left the country, and found happiness, seclusion and peace. It’s quite possible, since no one saw her again.

28. Sea words

SEA WORDS

The remarkable life of Frederick Marryat, who saw wild adventure and indelible horrors at sea before, as a popular novelist, drawing on his violent past to bring thrills to generations of readers WORDS: GLYN BROWN ILLUSTRATIONS: MATTHEW HANCOCK

29. Sea words

30. Sea words

31. Sea words

In the first three years of his life at sea, Marryat took part in 50 fights. It was a rebellious boy’s dream. It got into his blood.

He loved ‘the rapidity of the frigate’s movements, night and day; the hasty sleep, snatched at all hours; the beautiful precision of our fire’

Three Spanish Place is a handsome, narrow, five-storey townhouse, not big by Marylebone standards.

Today, it’s home to several health professionals, including a physiotherapist offering acupuncture and massage. That’s something one of the building’s most illustrious past-owners could probably have done with.

Intrepid naval officer, traveller, hero of the Napoleonic wars, and a writer whose adventure novels made him so popular that he ranked alongside Joseph Conrad in importance—Conrad himself, with Virginia Woolf and Herman Melville, were fans, while Ford Madox Ford called him “the greatest of English novelists”—Frederick Marryat spent the happiest years of his life here.

It was his sanctuary, where his busy mind could be stimulated by the bohemians and wits who lived close by and where, at a bachelor-style remove from the children he loved and missed and the estranged wife he didn’t, he could be himself.

It’s tempting to imagine him surveying the London rooftops through a telescope from the highest room, commanding the house like a ship: “Carriages at four o’clock! Man the tea urn!” But this makes Marryat sound charmingly eccentric, and he wasn’t that at all. Someone for whom the term ‘swashbuckling’ could have been invented, he was obsessed with exploration, marked by the life he’d had at sea, clever and witty, and occasionally violent and unbalanced.

His writing (he was a caricaturist too)

poured from a brain that needed occupation to calm it. He had various homes but couldn’t settle. He was urbane but would brawl in the streets.

A restless, sometimes self-destructive ball of energy. Massage might’ve been just the thing.

Marryat was born in 1792 at Tower Hill, above the Pool of London with its crowded ships, his father in maritime insurance, his mother a celebrated American beauty. The trouble began when he was sent to a boarding school in Enfield run by a brutal headmaster.

“Being of a genial temperament, he preferred play to lessons, and was constantly flogged for inattention.”

Not just that. Frederick was intelligent, strong, self-assertive and cheeky—and he had a lisp, causing endless punchups while he fought off bullies. A natural rebel, he became difficult.

His closest friend was Charles Babbage, who would become a great mathematician and a neighbour of Marryat’s in Marylebone. Babbage, a studious boy, would get up before dawn to creep downstairs and go over his work. Marryat begged to join him—and when Babbage agreed, Marryat brought his mates and started setting off fireworks. Just the kind of pal you want.

Hating school and saying he wanted to go to sea, Marryat repeatedly ran away. Finally, in 1806, when he was 14 and totally out of control, his father sent him into the Royal Navy. His rank was first-class volunteer on the 38-gun Impérieuse, commanded by the most famous fighting captain of the time, Lord Cochrane. So began a frantic and spectacularly brutal period in his life, beginning with the vessel’s very first departure, as his diaries recall. “The Impérieuse sailed; the admiral of the port was one who would be obeyed, but would not listen to reason or common sense. The signal for sailing was enforced by gun after gun; the anchor was hove up and, with all her stores still on deck, her guns not even mounted, in a state of confusion unparalleled from her being obliged to hoist faster than it was possible she could stow away, she was driven out of harbour to encounter a heavy gale.”

Macho madness on the part of the admiral, and there was much, much more of that to come. If that’s leaving the harbour, it’s amazing any English ships were left to fight the French.

But there were, and the Impérieuse took centre stage. In the first three years of his life at sea, Marryat took part in 50 fights. It was a rebellious boy’s dream, if he could stay alive. It got into his blood, and he loved “the rapidity of the frigate’s movements, night and day; the hasty sleep, snatched at all hours; the beautiful precision of our fire”.

Survival meant getting even tougher. There were public school

32. Sea words

The scenes in Burma feel like something from Apocalypse Now: the bodies of captured British troops “crucified on rafts, were floated down among the English boats...”

bullies onboard too, and he started to meet violence with violence. At the age of 18 he was already a man, seasoned by years of war. He’d be written about like one of his own heroes: five feet 10, “upright and broad-shouldered… firm, decisive mouth, forehead redeemed from heaviness by the humorous light that twinkled in his deep-set grey eyes.”

The Kirk Douglas-style dimple in his chin made the fact he had to shave twice a day a pain.

He served on many ships and took part in campaigns across the world.

There were insane, power-mad commanders, and Marryat, as a subordinate, helplessly watched sadistic floggings or often fatal keelhaulings. As he grew, his sympathy for younger sailors or those press-ganged—there were bakers, hatters and violinists enduring this life—increased, and he would later campaign not just against the press-gangs, but more widely for the disenfranchised and the poor.

Meanwhile, he did what he could.

A strong swimmer, he jumped into the sea repeatedly to save drowning comrades and even those who’d bullied him, causing himself future problems with haemoptysis, or bleeding from the lungs. But for now, there was much more to do.

Briefly back on land, ladies’ man Marryat out of the blue married Catherine Shairp. He was a goodlooking, sociable naval hero; she was plain, prim and close to silent— perhaps, he was hoping, a genteel foil

for him. Hmm. Almost immediately he was back at sea, now a senior naval officer on the huge ship the Larne in Burma and Rangoon, coping with fighting crews laid low by dysentery, malaria, cholera and scurvy— sometimes, with deaths and illnesses, there were only three officers and 12 men out of 200 left standing onboard.

The scenes in Burma feel like something from Apocalypse Now: the bodies of captured British troops “crucified on rafts, were floated down among the English boats...”

In 1830, at the age of 38, he retired, having reached a captain’s rank. By now, Marryat had swapped, over a bottle of champagne, the large family home he’d had in London for a Norfolk estate. At first, he loved the acres of farmland and the rambling house, but soon he was frustrated by its remoteness. He installed his family in his elderly parents’ home in Wimbledon while he roamed from home to home in London, beginning to write, and editing the Metropolitan arts magazine. His naval temper still to the fore, he reminded one contributor about copy and finished, “Mind you don’t forget, or I’ll thump you when I meet you.” Lovely.

His debut novel, The Naval Officer, or Scenes in the Life and

Adventures of Frank Mildmay, was heavily autobiographical. It did well, despite the savagery and general nastiness of its protagonist. Marryat gave up the Metropolitan, travelled through the USA and Canada and then, having officially separated from his wife and with his family now living in Paris, he settled in London, finally finding the home that fitted him best, the relatively modest Spanish Place. Here, he installed a few of the things he’d collected: weapons, a Burmese shrine, the tusks of a sacred elephant. There were stuffed animals and prairie curiosities, bear, buffalo and opossum skins. None had been properly cleaned; some were riddled with fleas. As his daughter Florence later wrote, “Many literary ladies honoured his rooms, stroked the panther, went into ecstasies over the great black bear and fell in love with the blue fox. But somehow, after the inspection, they all felt—how can their feelings be expressed?— irritated...”

In Marylebone, Marryat was right in the middle of convivial company.

There was the eccentric, bibulous George Cruikshank, who engraved his caricatures; painter Edwin Landseer; composer Theodore Hook, with his jokes and conjuring tricks; artist Clarkson Stanfield.

“It was here,” wrote Florence, “in the tiniest of houses, furnished according to his taste, a very gem in point of its adornments—rich in pictures and objets d’art, clothed in velvet and decorated with hothouse flowers—he received visitors and

33. Sea words

Dickens didn’t see Marryat as a writing rival, but as someone who could present the reality of a life at sea in all its pain and humour, something he himself could only imagine

made the little rooms brilliant with their conversation and their wit.”

The man he wanted most to meet was his neighbour Charles Dickens, then 27 and living with his family on Devonshire Terrace, and when they met, they took to each other at once. Dickens didn’t see Marryat as a writing rival, but as someone who could present the reality of a life at sea in all its pain and humour, something he could only imagine.

After reading Marryat’s latest book, he wrote, “I have been chuckling and grinning, and clenching my fists and becoming warlike for three whole days.” Other visitors sometimes flinched at Marryat’s temper and towering physical presence, which often had a hint of lurking violence.

Then there remained the lisp, which no man dared mock. Apart from the unruffled Dickens, who, writing to a friend about a religious fresco he’d seen, observed, “I can make out a virgin with a mildewed glory round her head and... what Marryat would call the arthe of a cherub.”

By now, Marryat was an old hand at the adventure story, and his hugely successful novels included Mr Midshipman Easy (years later filmed

by Carol Reed), The King’s Own and

The Phantom Ship, based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman. In his heyday, it was said that “his books are read with breathless curiosity in the most refined circles”. Their lucid, pacey style was revered by the likes of Coleridge, Thackeray and Ruskin.

At the time, the navy was still an emblem of power, full of romance, bloodshed and glory. Others tried to novelise the drama, but Marryat was one of the few writers who’d lived it.

But times change. Later, Virginia Woolf would ruefully analyse why Marryat’s fame wouldn’t endure.

First, she observes, the themes are repetitive. There are terrific battles, awful deaths. And then more of those. But also, “some of the elements that go to make character are lacking.” She explains: “The intenser emotions of the human race are kept out. Love is banished; and when love is banished, other valuable emotions that are allied to her are apt to go too.” She thought now he was prudish, and he was. It’s was all about facts—“facts about yawls, and jolly boats and how boats going into action are ‘fitted to pull with grummets upon iron thole pins’.”

Blokey, with no light and shade.

Marryat went on to write several books for children, including the still-read The Children of the New Forest. But Dickens had displaced him as the most successful British novelist. In 1843, at the age of 51, he retired to Norfolk. It wasn’t sad. His children came to live there, and he revelled in their company. He had a tubby piebald pony called Dumpling

and a greyhound, Juno, “who would leap upon the author’s table and indulge in a wild scamper over his papers and, when rebuked, creep under his coat and lie there blissfully contented.” He grew his grey hair long and began to relax. When asked how he could exist so far from the excitement of the city, he said, “Ah, you see, but this is such a lovely time of year. It is sufficient for me to walk along the lanes and watch the green buds coming out.”

But he had internal haemorrhages, caused by those efforts at saving men overboard, and when his beloved son Frederick died at sea, he went downhill. He was laid on a mattress where he could see the garden, and pinks and moss roses were brought to his room. On 8th August 1848, at only 56, he dictated his diary. “’Tis a lovely day and Augusta has just brought me three pinks and three roses. I have opened the window and the air is delightful. I am lying on a bed in a place called Langham, on the Norfolk coast two miles from the sea. I am happy.” He was found dead at dawn the next day. The bunch of pinks and roses was found pressed between his body and the mattress.

Love and intense emotion? There all the time, it seems.

34. Swimming against the tide

In October 1927, a Harley Street doctor smashed the women’s record for swimming the Channel and became an international sensation. But all was not quite as it seemed WORDS: TOM HUGHES

35. Swimming against the tide

36. Swimming against the tide

Carey and a few others were sitting around discussing the complete lack of any rules or governing body to authenticate a Channel swim.

Anyone could wade into La Manche then bob up in old Blighty and claim a new record

In the early years of the 20th century, female physicians in Britain were not exactly thick on the ground, but their number was rising, with more than 100 practicing in London. For some reason, in Marylebone, twice as many of these professional women chose to buff up their brass plates on Wimpole Street rather than Harley Street, the parallel “gloomy but fashionable thoroughfares” that have long been home to prominent members of the medical community.

But at 39 Harley Street, female patients could consult Dr Dorothy Cochrane Logan, who practiced in general obscurity until October 1927 when her name became known worldwide overnight.

On the evening of 10th October, Dr Logan walked into the waters of the English Channel at Cap Griz Nez, near Calais, wearing nothing but her goggles; her female form was coated with the recommended black axle grease. Just before nine the following morning, beside the seaside in Folkestone, early beachgoers were startled to see a woman swimming toward shore. From an escort boat, great cheers were heard. Herbert Carey, Dr Logan’s trainer, leapt from the boat carrying a waterproof mac—for modesty’s sake—as the weary swimmer emerged and waded the last few steps to the sand. Carey proclaimed that a new women’s record had just been established, shattering the mark set

by Gertrude Ederle, the American who had recently been the first of her sex to make the swim.

Dr Logan had previously swum under the name of ‘Mona McLellan’, wishing to keep her professional and natatorial lives separate. She had tried the crossing twice before, but failed. Curiously, her third effort had not been publicly announced.

Carey said it had been a lastminute decision taken because the conditions were just too good. The waters were smooth and warm, and overhead hung a splendid moon.

Through the night, pausing only for some beef tea, Dorothy swam magnificently, mostly employing the backstroke, her favourite. When the sun rose, and helped by a powerful tide, she made excellent progress and climbed out of the waters near Shakespeare’s Cliff at 8:50 in the morning. Ederle’s mark had been broken by an impressive one hour and 13 minutes. Onlookers surged to the scene, reporters arrived. Finally, the doctor shouted to Carey, “Oh, drive them away.” In London, her mother, the self-declared “proudest mother in England”, said: “It’s just like Dorothy not to make a big deal, as she hates publicity.”

This was, obviously, big news.

The News of the World summoned Dr Logan to London the following day to present her with a cheque for £1,000. The paper’s owner, Lord Riddell, had put up the sum

for any British woman who could better Ederle’s time. An affidavit was placed before the new record holder: “I, Dorothy Cochrane Logan of Harley Street, in the county of London, do, at the office of The News of the World to claim their £1,000 prize, solemnly and sincerely declare...” to whit, that she swam the whole way, that she never left the water, that she had no physical assistance, and that she hadn’t been towed in any way. She signed it and walked out with the money, and the newspaper wired its exclusive to the world.

In London, Dr Logan was the lion of the season, feted at a grand dinner by the British Medical Association. As ever, there were doubters. Her rival swimmers had thought that Dorothy was in over her head, as a distance swimmer. “If she can do it in 13 hours, Gertrude could do it in six,” said one.

As for Miss Ederle, she sportingly wired her congratulations from the States but withheld comment. In France, of course, what would you expect?

“C’est incroyable.” This despite several confirmed reports that Dr Logan was seen beginning her swim that Monday evening.

The following Monday, 17th October, Dr Logan called upon Sir Emsley Carr, editor of the News of the World. “Sir Emsley,” she asked, “do you believe I swam the Channel?” The editor nodded.

37. Swimming against the tide

On the evening of 10th October, Dr Logan walked into the waters of the English Channel at Cap Griz Nez, near Calais, wearing nothing but her goggles, her female form coated with the recommended black axle grease

Dr Logan walked out with the money, and the newspaper wired its exclusive to the world

“Well, I did nothing of the kind and I want you to tell the world.”

What was quickly labeled ‘the Hoax of the Century’ all began as some good-natured chaff. Channel swims were ‘the thing’ that year. In good weather, there might be a half dozen swimmers in the water at any time.

So many, apparently, that a ‘hazard to navigation’ warning was issued in the Dover Strait.

Dr Logan admitted that she, Carey and a few others were sitting around in Hythe discussing the complete lack of any rules or governing body to authenticate a Channel swim.

Why, anyone with a swimming costume could wade into La Manche then bob up in old Blighty and

claim a new record. “Let’s do this,” someone said, as someone always will. Before the fact, Dorothy wrote her “manifesto”: “I intend to get across somehow with the purpose of proving the necessity of independent umpires to prevent possible abuses.”

She mailed one copy to her office in Harley Street and the other went into the hotel safe in Hythe.

Carey had kept a private, detailed chronology of the crossing.

Dr Logan had, in fact, entered the water, fully greased, at 7:40 on Monday evening. What was not previously acknowledged was that, two hours later, at 9:30, Carey “took swimmer out of the water”. Dorothy, who was a much better swimmer than a sailor, then spent several seasick hours, wrapped in a rug in a little cabin below deck with “a vile and wicked stove”. Then, at 6:20 in the morning, the diary laconically reveals, “swimmer re-greased & entered water three miles s-e from S Foreland Lighthouse”. It was broad daylight but they were unobserved.

So strong was the tide and the current that Dr Logan had to tread water so as not to arrive too soon and spoil the hoax.

The news was stunning. “The mysterious medico” went into hiding, insisting that her object had been achieved. Until the Channel Swimming Association set procedures and authentication standards, no records can have any

validity. “I am sure the end will justify the means,” said Dorothy. To her credit, she’d never cashed the cheque for £1,000 but took it to her bank in Harley Street and signed it back to the account of the newspaper.

Whether or not the means were justified, it was certainly not the end.

Dorothy Logan was fined £100 for swearing to a false affidavit, “treating with contempt and ridicule an important part of our legal system”.

The BMA. went from honouring her at dinner to making a bid to strike her off the rolls. At her hearing, she told her fellow physicians: “I am sorry I was such an idiot.” They did not expel her but censured her, declaring that she “imperfectly realises the importance of a doctor’s signature”.

The Great Channel Swim Hoax is still numbered among the great English hoaxes, together with Mother Shipton and the Piltdown man. As for Dorothy Cochrane Logan, she never tried another Channel swim. She remained briefly in Marylebone, moving to Cavendish Place. The story has a (brief) romantic twist. It was later revealed that she and Carey had been secretly married. Alas, that too ended in murky waters. At their divorce, Carey described his estranged wife as “a freakish frump and a dirty, filthy, contemptible old minkpot, a lazy, scheming old reptile”.

Different strokes.

38. Beatles for sale

BEATLES FORSALE The story of how the world’s biggest band came to open a psychedelic clothes shop in the middle of Marylebone—and managed to make a complete pig’s ear of the entire venture WORDS: JEAN-PAUL AUBIN-PARVU

39. Beatles for sale The Fool design team, creators of the Apple boutique’s distinctive aesthetic

40. Beatles for sale These days, to be considered truly successful, every pop megastar, from Beyoncé to Jay-Z to Kanye West (and even former One Directioner Zayn Malik) needs their own branded line of clothing. But pop icons dabbling in the rag trade is nothing new. Fifty years ago this month, a popular beat combo began selling a range of clothing and accessories from their own shop, right in the heart of Marylebone: the Apple boutique on Baker Street.

This venture was bound to succeed.

In 1967, the Beatles were at the height of their powers. The biggest band on the planet, their album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

On 25th June, they performed All You Need Is Love to an estimated 350 million viewers on Our World, the first live global television link. No wonder they fancied their chances of flogging a few frocks and jackets.

London, although hardly San Francisco, was witnessing the shoots of a psychedelic revolution. Hippies were starting to appear, along with the whiff of pot. As Pink Floyd took up residency at the UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road, boutiques such as Granny Takes A Trip sprang up along the King’s Road. Karma was in, colour matching was out.

The stated aim of the Apple boutique was to create “a beautiful place where beautiful people can buy beautiful things”. The Beatles had the keys to 94 Baker Street, a fourstorey Georgian townhouse and an unquestionably beautiful place. Now all they needed were the beautiful things for the beautiful people to buy.

The band turned to The Fool, a hugely influential design collective, comprising of Dutch artists and designers Simon Posthuma, Marijke Koeger, and Josje Leeger, along with Englishman Barry Finch. Though best known for their collaborations with the Beatles, The Fool also designed stage clothes and album covers for the likes of Cream, the Move and Incredible String Band, plus lavish clothes and interiors for films and theatre productions.

Illustrations created for the Saville Theatre, which was being leased by

Beatles manager Brian Epstein, first brought The Fool to the attention of the band, who were soon gadding about in their colourful designs, such as the psychedelic tunics worn for the recording of All You Need Is Love.

In September 1967, The Fool received £100,000 (around £1.7 million in 2017) and the mission to design and stock the Apple shop. Armed with a tonne of cash and total artistic freedom, they set to work during the autumn and early winter.

Simon Posthuma described his vision for Apple to the Sunday Times: “It will have an image of nature, like a paradise with plants and animals painted on the walls. The floor will be imitation grass and the staircase like an Arab tent. In the windows will be seven figures representing the seven races of the world. There will be exotic lighting and we will make it more like a market than a boutique.”

Pete Shotton, childhood friend of John Lennon and former washboard player for the Quarrymen (the precursor to the Beatles), was appointed shop manager. Shotton had been running a Hayling Island supermarket jointly owned by Lennon and George Harrison, and for a short time his retail team at Apple would include the model Jenny Boyd, younger sister of George’s wife Pattie.

With their designs for the clothing, The Fool delivered with interest.

41. Beatles for sale The great giveaway gets underway at the Apple boutique, causing chaos

42. Beatles for sale

A stream of complaints about the shop’s mural had been made to Westminster City Council. Yes, the Beatles might very well be “more popular than Jesus”, but even the Messiah would have needed permission to paint that four-storey psychedelic cosmos, and no one at Apple had bothered to apply

No clash of colour was judged too extreme and when it came to fabrics their weapons of choice included lavish silks, tapestry and velvet—lots and lots of velvet. A mandarincollared, forest green velvet jacket that flared at the waist and boasted puffy bell sleeves risked fading into the background next to lurid gypsy dresses and capes adorned with brightly coloured stars. Jenny Boyd and Beatles’ wives Pattie Harrison, Cynthia Lennon and Maureen Starr had no problem dressing up like Van Gogh’s easel, happily modelling The Fool’s creations for a photo shoot.

But the outlandish threads were nothing compared to what the design collective had in mind for the shop’s exterior. And in November Marylebone held its breath as the gang got busy with pot and brush.

The scaffolding tower was finally removed to reveal a gigantic, fourstorey psychedelic mural depicting an Indian goddess surrounded by swirling images of outer space.

Even the chimney pots received the full cosmic treatment. The mural contrasted sharply with the grey facades of the adjoining buildings.

Monotone this most certainly wasn’t.

A grand launch party was planned for the evening of 5th December.

The invitations to the in-crowd read: “Come at 7:46. Fashion show at 8:16.”

The public lined the pavement outside the shop clamouring for a glimpse of the Fab Four and their celebrity

chums. The bruiser of a clown who juggled apples for their amusement was simply getting in the way.

A British Movietone News crew was hot on the scene. “To mark the opening the proud owners gave an apple juice party,” reported the narrator in a clipped tone. “John Lennon and George Harrison were the hosts. The other two Beatles were out of town. Paul’s in Liverpool and Ringo’s in Rome.”

British Pathé also made it along to “a hippy happening in the psychedelic social structure”. The narrator sounds almost mocking.

“And the beautiful people of London made their flower way to Beatles George and John’s with-it Aladdin’s cave, only they call it Apple. It’s a new kind of boutique in Baker Street catering for specialised tastes.”

And smells, as Pattie Boyd, then Mrs Harrison, later told BBC Newsnight: “There was sort of a combination of a smell of patchouli oil and incense that was burning everywhere. So it was immediately exotic as you walked in.”

But there wasn’t a whiff of booze.

The shop had no alcohol license, so guests were served apple juice— a huge shock to the system of Keith Moon, who attended along with Eric Clapton, Twiggy, Cilla Black, Kenneth Tynan, DJ Alan Freeman, Cream bassist Jack Bruce and Richard Lester, the director of the Beatles’ films.

Ever versatile, The Fool provided the musical entertainment. On cue they burst into the shop dressed like the cast from a panto. Simon Posthuma played Arabic music on a flute while Barry Finch kept the beat on an ethnic drum as Josje Leeger clanged tiny finger cymbals. This was world music as nobody wanted to imagine it.

Apple opened to the public two days later. In terms of footfall, the shop was an instant success, but when it came to actual sales the enterprise was a disaster from the off. As the months rolled by it became clear that Londoners were treating Apple as a tourist attraction, but had no intention of dipping their hands into their pockets.

This had everything to do with the price of the clothes. The Fool had used the most expensive fabrics available and insisted on having silk labels in every piece of clothing.

When Pete Shotton pointed out to John Lennon the problem with pricing these garments, he received the following piece of commercial wisdom: “We’re not business freaks, we’re artists.”

The stock might not have been selling, but it was certainly disappearing. In the days before security cameras, shoplifting became the number one pastime at Apple. But in an era of peace and love nobody wanted to make any accusations.

43. Beatles for sale

In terms of footfall, the shop was an instant success, but when it came to actual sales the enterprise was a disaster from the off. As the months rolled by it became clear that Londoners were treating Apple as a tourist attraction, but had no intention of dipping their hands into their pockets

Instead there was a reshuffle.

The running of the shop changed hands from Shotton to former theatrical director John Lyndon, who himself was soon replaced by Caleb Ashburton-Dunning. The latest manager surely knew his tenure would be brief, given he was also employed as the in-house astrologer at Apple Corps, which operated from the same building.

Not even an appearance in 1968 MGM caper Hot Millions could turn the shop’s fortunes around. But worse was to come. A stream of complaints about the shop’s mural had been made to Westminster City Council.

Yes, the Beatles might very well be “more popular than Jesus”, but even

the Messiah would have needed permission to paint a four-storey psychedelic cosmos, and no one at Apple had bothered to apply. The council finally acted, issuing Apple with an enforcement notice to paint over the mural.

“We were absolutely furious about it and couldn’t understand their reasoning at all,” recalled Pattie Boyd. “It seemed, as far as we were concerned, to brighten up the whole street. It brought an awful lot of tourists, who were fascinated, and endless photographs were taken of it.

And it was just a fun thing.”

In May 1968 the shop’s exterior was duly whitewashed, with the word ‘Apple’ painted on each fascia in cursive script. “Once we were told we had to get rid of the painting, the whole thing started to lose its appeal,” said George Harrison in an interview conducted for The Beatles Anthology. The Beatles decided to pull the plug and announced that they would by shutting the shop and giving away the remaining stock.

The enterprise had lost an absolute fortune. “Our course just isn’t shopkeeping,” explained George Harrison with delicious understatement. “It’s not really a mistake. The only mistake that anyone ever made was getting born.

All the rest is life.” George was presumably twanging his sitar as he launched that spiritual javelin.

Paul McCartney explained his band’s motives in a press release.

“Apple is mainly concerned with fun, not with frocks. We want to devote all our energies to records, film and our electronics adventures. We had to refocus. We had to zoom in on what we really enjoy, and we enjoy being alive, and we enjoy being Beatles.”

They also enjoyed helping themselves to the stock. “We went in the night before and took everything we wanted,” Ringo Starr later recalled.

The great giveaway at Apple began on 30th July 1968 and lasted two days. BBC footage shows crowds jostling for prime position outside the shop, few if any resembling flower children. Looting was a polite affair back then and there’s little

pushing and shoving as the police try to handle the bargain hunters.

Though several youngsters tumble as they squeeze through the door, they do at least remember to smile up at the camera. A pretty Canadian lass looks faintly aroused as she tells the reporter how shaken up she is, while others rush about filling bags with garments, many still on their hanger.

The management request of only one item per person is universally flouted.

Apple closed its doors for the final time on 31st July 1968. But the drama of the ill-fated fashion boutique didn’t end there. Paul McCartney, perhaps disgruntled at the demise of the mural, decided to leave his own mark on the building. On 7th August, McCartney drove new girlfriend Francie Schwartz and assistant Alistair Taylor to the shop and daubed the words “Hey Jude” on the now whitewashed windows. The following day a Jewish passerby, not realising this was a reference to the Beatles forthcoming single, mistook the graffiti for an act of anti-Semitism.

“He suddenly saw back to the Nazi regime from the Second World War, when they used to put signs on Jewish owned shops in Berlin,” recounted Alistair Taylor. “He jumped out of the car and threw this soda siphon straight through the window. Paul and I had never even given this a thought.

Naturally, we didn’t press charges.”

There ended The Beatles’ brief foray into the rag trade. The Georgian townhouse at 94 Baker Street was demolished and rebuilt in 1974. A Heritage Foundation plaque now hangs from the wall in honour of John Lennon and George Harrison, who, it says, both “worked here”. One can hardly imagine them manning the tills, dealing with customers or running around in the stock room. But they did, at least for a few short months, bring a splash of psychedelic colour to Marylebone.

Their shop may have been a commercial flop, but it shows just how far ahead of the game the Beatles were in attempting to market their name—a name as big now as it was half a century ago. The Beatles remain the best selling band in history. Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Zayn Malik: you’ve a long way to go.

WORDS: GLYN BROWN ILLUSTRATIONS: MATTHEW HANCOCK

The strange story of John Elwes, a man whose vast wealth funded the building of much of Marylebone, but whose extreme miserliness trapped him in a life of dressing in rags and eating roadkill

GILDED CAGE

44. Gilded cage

45. Gilded cage

46. Gilded cage You think money’s going to make you happy, don’t you? But maybe what you actually need is just enough. Fiction and fact alike are stuffed with stories of wealthy misers who have let cash mess with their heads, because money can be a mistress with a liking for S&M. There’s a lot of money in this particular story, but little happiness.

And the worst of it is, the man in question had such potential for joy.

Our anti-hero is John Elwes, the tightwad on whom, it has been suggested, Charles Dickens may have based Ebeneezer Scrooge. He was worth millions, but lived on roadkill and borrowed clothes from tramps.

He built much of today’s Marylebone, but crawled about homeless between the stunning Georgian houses he owned, dossing in the cold on any empty floor. But he was also kind to people. With friends in need, he was ridiculously generous, and too much of a gentleman to remind them that loans are usually repaid. It was himself he was hardest on. You look at his face as time passes. The marks of anxiety appear. Furrowed brow and worry.

As he ages and resignation sets in, those lines become rigid. Soon he does look monstrous, furious.

An example of how not to live.

Most of what we know about him comes from a long out-of-print book

by Edward Topham, a flamboyant, elegant man, a journalist and playwright and friend of Elwes, though they couldn’t have been more different. You see a portrait of Topham—soigné, solid, pen in hand. Elwes, meanwhile, racked and cadaverous. Topham, who made a pile from this biography, wanted to show the best of Elwes, who could so easily have lived Topham’s happy life, and what exactly can go wrong.

Our boy is born John Meggot, on 7th April 1714 in St James’s, growing up in Southwark. His father Robert is a brewer but a wealthy one; John’s grandfather Sir George Meggot was MP for Southwark. Robert dies when John is four. John’s mother is Amy Elwes, granddaughter of Sir Gervase Elwes, a baronet and MP for Suffolk.

Money all over the place. But Amy’s mother, Lady Isabella Hervey, was a well-known miser. I’ve hunted to see

He loves French food and wines, but only if other people pay. He’s obsessed with his only love; he gets up in the night to count an amount of five guineas, which he wraps in paper and hides in his desk. He’s become Gollum—the emaciated body, the sad, wracked face

where this accusation comes from and it’s mentioned in the notes for the diary of her brother, John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol. The evidence if any, I suppose, comes in the fact that Isabella had four children; two died fairly young and the remaining two were Hervey Elwes, a miser of dastardly proportions, and Amy. It seems there’s a neurotic, even paranoid gene running rampant here because, her brewer husband dying, Amy reverts to what her mother perhaps told her was right, refusing to pay for food, and starves herself to death, leaving two small children, John and his sister (never named).

Amy had just inherited £100,000 (roughly £8 million now) from Robert. John Meggot, now five or six, is left all that money, plus the family estate, which includes Marcham Park, a manor house in Berkshire.

John is sent to Westminster School.

A good classical scholar, he loves books—but, already touched by self-denial, once he leaves school, he never reads again. But it’s early yet and he’s still relatively normal. He’s bad at maths and his friends (such as the young Lord Mansfield) borrow from him remorselessly. He doesn’t mind.

From Westminster, he moves to Geneva, where he concentrates on his horsemanship and becomes one of the best riders in Europe. He meets Voltaire, and many think he looks a bit like the poet and philosopher: pale and fine featured, good-natured and

smiling. But Voltaire’s enlightened attitude doesn’t touch him. According to Edward Topham, “the horses in the riding school he remembered much longer”.

Back in England, John at last meets his uncle, Sir Hervey Elwes, who lives, in his massive home in Suffolk, like an animal. John is going to be his heir, since Hervey has no children.

Aged about 19 at this point, John “dressed like other people”. This is not acceptable to Hervery, so John learns to stop at an inn on the way and change into the ragged stockings and tattered waistcoat his uncle prefers.

They sit in the freezing, echoing drawing room, watching a single stick of firewood burn, sharing a glass of wine—a sip for you, a sip for me. People are disgusting, Hervey insists, for wasting things. Aren’t they?

The boy nods. You don’t want much to eat, do you? Jack shakes his head.

Hervey was consumptive as a child; hidden away, he made no friends, became timid and shy, then became a hermit, scared of people; according to Topham, he was “vegetation in a human shape”. Funny but dreadful.

Jack spends year after year with this man, visiting regularly. Hervey asks him to change his name to Elwes, and dies in 1763, leaving all he’s got, worth more than £250,000 (about £18 million now), to his nephew.

John Elwes walks into the big Suffolk house he now owns. The

47. Gilded cage antique furniture is riddled with woodworm. Windows are cracked and papered over. Rain patters through the roof onto the floor. He’s 49 and is now seriously wealthly. Life has not been bad: John has lived in London, gambled with friends at his clubs.

Topham describes his manners: “They were such, so gentle, so attentive, so gentlemanly and so engaging, that rudeness could not ruffle them, nor ingratitude break their observance.”

Elwes has a “gallant disregard for his own person”. Even as an old man, apparently, he still “wished no one to assist him—he could walk, he could ride, he could dance, and he hoped he should not give trouble.” In fact, he’s out hunting with Topham in his 70s when a companion, useless at shooting, accidentally fires two pellets into his cheek. Blood everywhere. The companion is distraught, but Elwes, in pain but gritting his teeth, shrugs, “My dear sir, I give you joy on your improvement. I knew you would hit something by and by.”

So, what goes wrong? One, his friends have taken advantage, never paying back the money they owe him, so he starts to distrust people. Two, he’s spent too long sitting with Uncle Hervey. And three, he’s inherited treacherous genes. He begins to watch what he spends, and that habit slowly takes control. Soon, he’s travelling on horseback, never in a carriage.

Overnight journey? He puts two hardboiled eggs in his coat pocket and any bits of bread he can find, and at night sleeps under a hedge.

No one quite realises what’s happening. But then his nephew, his sister’s son, comes to stay at Stoke.

The nephew wakes in the night to find he’s getting rained on. He moves the bed again and again, finally finds an intact patch of ceiling and falls asleep exhausted. At breakfast, he tells his uncle. Says Elwes, “I don’t mind being wet myself, but for those who do, that’s a nice corner, isn’t it?”

There’s an Addams Family feel to this. Elwes offers a hungry friend a piece of crushed pancake that’s been in his pocket for two months.

By now, he has two sons by Elizabeth Moren, his Berkshire housekeeper. He loves John and

George, but won’t let them be educated—that would put “ideas in their heads”. Often, he walks home in the rain, then sits in wet clothes because a fire to dry them costs money. He starts to eat putrid meat.

He finds a wig in a bush, dropped by a beggar, and wears it. People laugh.

Meanwhile, he ponders London, where he can still sometimes be happy. He gets in touch with visionary architects the Adam brothers, and finances Robert Adam to begin building Portland Place, constructed speculatively in the hope of attracting buyers. They decide on a slimmed down version of the aristocratic style used in grand houses. Portman Square is erected, along with the riding-houses and stables for the Life Guards, at the time headquartered both in Knightsbridge and here. The project becomes huge. It’s likely Elwes is also the source of the money behind the building of Devonshire Street, Weymouth Street, Quebec Street, parts of Harley Street, and Baker Street. Without Elwes, it’s uncertain the Marylebone we know would exist.

And when he visits London now, he simply kips in whichever of his properties is empty. Really empty: each has a few chairs, sometimes a table. He’ll sit in a new mansion on Great Marlborough Street, make a fire with woodchips left by the carpenters, stick oiled paper in the windows, sleep on a pallet of straw. At dusk, he’ll go to bed—that saves a candle.

And then something happens to occupy his mind. At 60, Elwes is elected as an independent MP for Berkshire. It’s a halcyon 15 years, when somehow the weight of money is pushed back. He’s utterly upright, accepting no backhanders, refusing a peerage, taking no income. He still dresses like a tramp—people give him money in the street thinking he is one.

But he attends meetings, sits in clubs discussing affairs of government, makes wise decisions. He absolutely reeks, but he smiles and seems happy.

The moment he’s retired from politics, though, he begins to starve himself and sit in the dark again.

When parliamentary friends invite him to the Mount Coffeehouse in

London, he blossoms pathetically— stretches his hands toward the fire, squints like an owl in the glowing candlelight. He has a cultured palate, loves French food and wines, but only if other people pay for them. Otherwise he just gazes, watching them eat. Sketches of him in parliament show a handsome man, but now his appearance goes downhill. In Suffolk, he snatches half a moorhen off a rat and chomps it; he eats a half-digested pike he finds by the river. His servants are ashamed and embarrassed. He’s more and more obsessed with his only love; he begins to get up in the night and count an amount of five guineas, which he wraps in paper and hides in his desk.

He’s become Gollum—the emaciated body, the sad, wracked face.

When he becomes briefly ill, Topham gets him to write a will, leaving everything to his two illegitimate sons. A doctor is astonished; Elwes is strong because he walks everywhere, and with no excess weight he has no gout. If his mind wasn’t broken, he could live into his nineties. But it is. Within months, he’s lost the last of his marbles. He sleeps in his coat, shoes and old torn hat, with his walking stick. On 26th November 1789, at 75, he asks his son if he has “left him what he wished”. And then he dies.

I’m looking up the psychology of the miser. A person trapped in a cage of fear who can’t give money or deep love, and is terrified of loss of control.

Superficial, but that could be a boy who loses a genial father at four, and a mad, broken mother at six.

I don’t care. Having got this far, I’ve lost patience with him. It’s not as if he’d once been poor and been thrifty out of necessity. I look at that parliament illustration of him again, that handsome face, and want to slap it. The point of money, once you have enough, is surely to try to do good with it. Elwes did construct exquisite buildings, though only for investment.

But what I think we should all do now is take a walk down Welbeck Street, think of him, then go and buy ourselves or someone else something silly, just for the hell of it. Doesn’t have to be big. But it has to be done.

48. Handsome devil

49. Handsome devil

The terrifying story of John St John Long, a self-styled doctor who, long before Harley Street became synonymous with high quality medicine, used his good looks and charm to gull patients into believing in a wildly dangerous ‘miracle cure’ WORDS: SASHA GARWOOD ILLUSTRATION: MATTHEW HANCOCK

HANDSOME DEVIL

50. Handsome devil

51. Handsome devil

Catherine Cashin wasn’t the only healthy patient within whom Long suggested he could see hidden disease. Moving in increasingly high-class circles, he claimed to be able to diagnose “seeds of illness” simply by looking at someone

In the summer of 1830, 24-year-old Catherine Cashin came to London from her home in Dublin, together with her mother and her 16-yearold sister, Ellen. Ellen was suffering from tuberculosis, so while in the city Mrs Cashin sought treatment from fashionable Harley Street physician John St John Long.

The Harley Street of the 1830s was very different from that of today. Doctors only began arriving in any great numbers in the second half of the century, and the street’s townhouses—modest in style and scale compared with those on many of the nearby streets and squares— were as likely to house artists as they were medical men, JMW Turner being one notable early-19th century resident. In fact, the entire field of medicine was, like Harley Street, standing on the cusp of a significant change, with many doctors still clinging on to medieval assumptions about the human body, despite the era’s rapid advances in science. Long, whose clients included politicians, generals and members of the aristocracy, seemed on the surface to be the very model of the modern physician. He proved to be nothing of the sort.

Upon seeing the Cashin sisters together, Long pronounced that not only did Ellen have terminal tuberculosis, but the apparently hale and hearty Catherine carried within her “the seeds of consumption”.

He insisted that Catherine begin a course of his patented treatment: the inhalation of a mystery substance, accompanied by his female assistants rubbing an equally mysterious lotion into her chest.

Harmless enough, one might think, but the rubbing was deemed insufficient unless it produced a running, weeping sore, which Long claimed would enable the disease to leave the body. In Catherine’s case, this wound became so obviously infected that Mrs Roddis, the Cashins’ landlady, wrote to Long and “humanely urged that danger might arise from symptoms which appeared so violent”. Long, however, “laughed at her apprehension, declared that the wound was going on remarkably well, and that he would give a hundred guineas if he could produce similar favourable signs in some other of his patients”.

Even as Catherine began to vomit constantly, Long declared that the sore was “in a beautiful state” and that Catherine’s “recovery” was proceeding just as it should. Mrs Cashin begged him for “a composing draught” to help her daughter’s sickness, but Long declared that he hated “physic” and recommended a tumbler of mulled wine instead, which (like everything else) Catherine failed to retain.

The Newgate Calendar for 1831 tells us that, as “every day brought new symptoms”, a respected doctor,

Mr (later Sir) Brodie, eventually came to see the patient. This eminent surgeon “took every step possible for Miss Cashin, but all his efforts were useless”—after what Mrs Roddis later described as “a terrible night”, the landlady found her charge dying. She tried to administer brandy, but “her jaws were quite set and [Catherine] was dead”.

The Cashin family, understandably appalled at the callous destruction of their healthy daughter, asked the surgeon, founding editor of The Lancet and future MP Thomas Wakley to represent them at the inquest.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this concluded that Long had been responsible for Catherine’s death, and brought a criminal charge of manslaughter against him. Several eminent medical practitioners testified at the trial. These included: “Dr Alexander Thompson, who had examined the body of the deceased, Mr Thomas King, surgeon, Mr Wildgoose, surgeon, Dr John Hogg, Dr Thomas Goodeve, Dr James Johnson, Mr John Maclean and Mr Thomas Evans.” All had been present at the post-mortem examination, and all concurred that Catherine had been “a perfectly healthful subject, beautiful in form, and free from all disease, save that occasioned by the wound in the back”. They declared that “few people would have recovered after such a local injury, which appeared to them perfectly unjustifiable”.

Long was tried and convicted— much to the foot-stamping joy of many doctors crowded into the courtroom—but sentenced only to pay a fine of £250. This he promptly did, then walked free to treat (and torment) further patients.

How did a working-class artist with no medical training and fewer scruples end up a doctor to the great and the good? By 1830, Long’s social capital was considerable: those testifying to the coroner and court on his behalf included “the Countess of Buckinghamshire, Mr Prendergast, MP, and Mr Higgs, the brewer”, all of whom “spoke in high

52. Handsome devil

The 19th century would see the medical sciences take several giant leaps forward, but Long managed to thrive at the tailend of an era in which faith and folklore had yet to be demolished by evidence and empiricism

terms of Mr Long’s treatment, and of the virtues of his lotion for curing various complaints”. He is also known to have treated Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Anglesey, and the Marchioness of Ormond.

This was a far cry from his rural Irish childhood. Born the son of a basket-weaver in 1798 in Newcastle, in the west of County Limerick, the young John St John Long showed considerable artistic talent in childhood—so much so that friends, neighbours and local gentry clubbed together to pay for him to go to Dublin Academy to study fine art. Upon completing his studies, Long supported himself by teaching, before moving to London in 1822. Here, he studied with John Martin, painter of several Last Judgement canvases. Long produced his own selection of mostly religious artworks, including a version of The Temptation in the Wilderness that remains in the collection of Tate Britain, and exhibited at the Society of British Artists and the British Institution. To make ends meet, he also assisted other artists and collectors, like Sir Thomas Lawrence and William Young Ottley, but struggled to keep himself in the style to which he very much wished to become accustomed.

Instead, by utilising the traditional artist’s training in anatomy with his undoubted good looks and personal charm, he decided to strike out in a

Long’s lotion to produce the sores that Long claimed allowed disease to leave the body. The idea was that after five to 10 days of running with pus, the wound would be covered with cabbage leaves and allowed to heal, and the patient would be pronounced cured.

new direction. At first, he advertised his services as a chiropodist, but in 1826 he found a new niche, announcing that he had found a cure for consumption.

This was the patented process through which Catherine Cashin met her death. One visitor described the scene at Long’s treatment rooms: “When I went into the room there appeared to me to be two cabinet pianos. Each lady took a pipe about a yard and a half long, put it into an orifice in the machine and put the other end into her mouth. I should think there were eight or 10 ladies in the room.” While the ladies inhaled, their backs or chests were scrubbed with sponges soaked in

Catherine Cashin wasn’t the only apparently healthy patient within whom Long suggested he could see hidden disease. Moving in increasingly high-class circles, he claimed to be able to diagnose “seeds of illness” simply by looking at someone, and frequently did so at parties, obviously proceeding to invite the concerned subject to his consulting rooms for treatment.

By 1830, Long’s extensive patient list included those suffering from disorders such as pulmonary disease, debility, swelling of the glands, gout, rheumatism, cancer, smallpox, measles, and various mental illnesses.

Long’s followers believed him a persecuted martyr, attacked by a medical profession that resented his evident genius, and pointed to old medical wisdom about counterirritation to justify his treatment.

This principle—of creating irritation in one location on the body to lessen it in another—was usually applied through poultices or blisters.

But as the medics testifying at the Catherine Cashin trial pointed out, its application in a healthy patient

53. Handsome devil

was entirely contraindicated even by its most devoted adherents.

Nevertheless, lengthy defences, including one written by “a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and member of the Middle Temple”, represented Long as a pioneer, unfairly maligned out of jealousy.

A death and a guilty verdict did nothing to chasten Long. On Wednesday 10th November 1830, two months after his conviction for the death of Catherine Cashin, a highly respectable coroner’s jury led

by JH Gell assembled at the Wilton Arms in Knightsbridge. They were there to inquire into the death of Mrs Colin Campbell Lloyd, aged 48, the wife of Edward Lloyd, a captain in the Royal Navy. This worthy lady had consulted Long about a sporadic cough, and she too underwent the patented treatment that had proved fatal to Catherine. Within days, she developed violent burning pains in the wound in her chest, accompanied by shivering, thirst and nausea. Her husband testified that the sore induced by Long had been “discharging a dirty, white-ish, thick kind of substance”. Discolouration and inflammation spread down her arms. When consulted, Long (as with Catherine) declared Mrs Lloyd’s state to be absolutely normal, recommending no medications save “brandy and water” and suggesting only that she put her head under the bedclothes. After two days of

increasing agony, Long was banned from seeing the patient and other doctors were called in, again including eminent figures like Sir Benjamin Brodie, but it was too late.

Three painful weeks later, she died.

The coroner’s jury were staunch in their attribution of blame. After only half an hour, the foreman declared that “having attentively and deliberately considered their verdict, [the jury] can come to no other verdict than manslaughter against John St John Long… on the ground of gross ignorance, and on other considerations”. Long was tried for manslaughter a second time at the Old Bailey on the 19th February 1831, with several “elegantly dressed ladies” accompanying him in the dock. Again, the question of counterirritation was brought up. Brodie, on the stand, was asked, “Wasn’t it true in orthodox medicine that the same counter-irritant might benefit one patient but harm another?” and responded with impressive restraint that although orthodox medical practitioners may sometimes misjudge the degree of counterirritation, he couldn’t recall a case where the result had been death.

The jury, however, perhaps overawed

by Long’s client list and smart feminine escort, returned a verdict of not guilty.

Perhaps fortunately for the population at large, Long himself died aged 35, only three years after being acquitted of the death of Mrs Lloyd. Rumour has it that he died of consumption, refusing his own treatments to the last, although the Lancet suggests that it was a rather more prosaic riding accident.

He is buried in Kensal Green cemetery, beneath an elaborate and defensively adulatory monument funded by his former patients, and in the illustrious (and probably contemptuous) company of medical pioneers such as Richard Bright (physician-extraordinary to Queen Victoria, for whom Bright’s disease was named); Sir Anthony Carlisle; Sir James McGrigor (Wellington’s chief of medical staff); and Dr Thomas Wakley, he who had testified against Long at the Cashin trial. Long’s

famous liniment, the formula to which was bought by an Irishman for an immense sum at his death, was tested many years later and found to consist of turpentine, egg yolk and vinegar—although in 1831 a Dr James McCabe speculated, probably accurately, about the regular addition of quicklime to produce the corrosive effects crucial to Long’s treatment.

The case of John St John Long echoes through medical history, testifying to the enormous power of faith (some would say gullibility) in medicine, the powerlessness of humanity before illness for much of our history, and also, more prosaically, the importance of medicine’s professional bodies.

Regulation of medical practice would begin just a couple of decades after Long’s demise, with the establishment of the British Medical Association in 1856 and the General Medical Council in 1858.

Why was Long acquitted after the death of Mrs Lloyd? Partly his popularity and social status, undoubtedly, but also the general helplessness of most doctors before illness in an age before vaccinations, disinfectants, antibiotics or anaesthetics. The 19th century would see the medical sciences take several giant leaps forward, but Long managed to thrive at the tail-end of an era in which faith and folklore had yet to be demolished by evidence and empiricism.

His confidence and seemingly efficacious treatments—producing as they did visible, tangible effects, however unpleasant—were probably reassuring to those who felt helpless before encroaching death. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that many women— and it was mostly women—to whom he had offered a glimpse of hope defended him vigorously against charges of quackery. But reading the trial transcripts of those who died so horribly at the hands of somebody who professed the knowledge to heal is a resounding argument in favour of medical training, regulation and the miraculous technologies of modern medicine.

54. Falling at the first

55. Falling at the first

FA AT LLI NG TH FIR E ST

H co ow a me nvin n att at ce em WO me th pt RD t w e Br at S: TO ith iti Th MH UG a d sh o e L HE ete f t ang S rm he ha ine me m h d ‘ rits ot na of el t y’ ho o rse

56. Falling at the first

When The Langham hotel opened on Portland Place in 1865, it was proclaimed to be the largest and most modern establishment in London, offering luxuries previously unheard of. For more than a century and a half since, The Langham, London has remained one of the city’s truly iconic grand hotels, with names on its register ranging from King Edward VII to Princess Diana, Churchill to De Gaulle, Oscar Wilde to Noel Coward.

One of the more memorable evenings in the annals of The Langham was certainly 6th February 1868, when a select group of gentlemen sat down to the Banquet Hippophagique or, what the cynics insisted on calling the Great Horse Dinner. England had just come through another of those periodic outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, similar to that of 2001, and the beef industry had been badly affected.

The wealthy were always able to find safe viands for their table but the supply of edible and affordable beef for the poor had nearly disappeared.

This gave rise to a campaign for the English to set aside their prejudices and eat horse meat. What better way to educate the English palate to the delights of hippophagy than to put

Th ho e m ro rse ain a B om w meat cour th eef ith , we ses, his e Ro eater grea re ca all p co ast (ir t so rri ack rn Be on le ed ed et ef ic mn in w of ally it to ith Ol ) p y a the d E la s ng yed lan on a grand meal in the finest dining do room in London? n The Langham’s spectacular Salle à Manger was some 140 feet long by 40 feet wide, beneath a 24 foot ceiling, supported by faux Carrara marble columns that lined the room.

The kitchen staff below moved plates to the dining room via a small tram that served several small lifts.

The workings of The Langham of the Persian Empire. The point of kitchen produced “expressions of the banquet was to make clear that wonderment” to all who had the horse meat tastes good and, at less chance to visit. On this occasion, the than three pence a pound, was quite noble room above was set for 150; affordable. the cost of the meal was a guinea and a half. The guests included Enough talk; the diners were numerous MPs—they would need to chomping at the bit. The menus be persuaded to change abattoir laws were handed out. They’d been to allow the slaughter of horses— written almost entirely in French, leading medical men, scientists and so it helped to know that the French journalists (who, of course, will never word for horse is ‘cheval’. There were to be 10 courses in total, with look a gift horse in the mouth).

The ‘horse-play’, if you will, several options available for each enlivened the evening. When all course. The soup was “le consommé had been seated, Algernon Sidney du cheval”. The hors d’oeuvres Bicknell, the principle organiser, included “les saucisses de cheval cheerfully acknowledged the wags aux pistaches Syriaques”. The main and punsters who were present. He courses were carried into the room had heard all the jokes before, he with great solemnity as a Beefeater warned them, “straight from the (ironically) played the Roast Beef of horse’s mouth”. But Bicknell asserted Old England on his cornet. Placed there was a serious purpose for the before the multitude were “le filet gathering, albeit accompanied by an de Pegase roti aux pomme de terre excellent meal. With so much poverty a la crème”, “la culotte de cheval and hunger in London, Bicknell draisee aux chevaux-des-frise” and, argued that it was simply wrong that lastly, “kromeskya a la Gladiateur”.

75,000 horses a year were knackered (The latter was a croquette of horse and all that good meat wasted. meat that had been named for the Prejudices were to blame. Pigs were reigning turf champion of the day. vile creatures and England loved its Happily for Gladiateur himself, the pork. Horses, on the other hoof, were steed was still running at the time quite fastidious eaters. People had and later lived out a long and happy been eating horses since the days life in stud.) Those diners who had an

57. Falling at the first

Buckland’s father had fed the children battered mice and squirrel, and from those beginnings Frank had set out to eat the entire animal kingdom. In his home, he set up a test kitchen to feed his wary guests anything from eland to stewed mole

appetite for afters were then tempted with such delights as “la gelee de pieds de cheval au marasquin” or “les zephirs sautes a l’huile chevaleresque”.

Mr Bicknell graciously conceded that anything would taste good when prepared in a fine kitchen, served well-sauced and accompanied by excellent wines. But to prove that horse meat was also an affordable and practical meal for the poor, the gentlemen were urged to sample the buffet, where cheaper cuts of horse meat had been prepared without any fussy Gallic cooking techniques.

There was plainly no need to Frenchify the buffet for the masses: the selection was limited to “collared horse head, a roast of baron, and boiled withers”.

You could not have held such a meal in London without the presence of Frank Buckland. One of those true Victorian oddballs, Buckland was trained as a doctor, but became England’s foremost naturalist. Today, he would most likely be starring in some kind of animal-based reality show on Channel 4. He was also a zoöphagist—an eater of exotic animals. His father, a country cleric, had fed the children battered mice and squirrel, and from those culinary beginnings Frank had set out to eat the entire animal kingdom. In his home near Regent’s Park, he set up a test kitchen to feed his wary guests anything from eland to stewed mole.

Plainly, Buckland’s verdict on horse meat was going to be vital to the effort and the hippophagists waited with as much trepidation as modern

restaurateurs cross their ladles in the hope of a kind word from Jay Rayner or Fay Maschler. Alas, Buckland crushed them. Perhaps once you have enjoyed the ambrosia of a stewed mole, horse flesh seems rather a step down. But Buckland insisted that he had sampled everything on the menu and, with no offense meant to the efforts of The Langham’s excellent kitchen, he couldn’t abide any of it. “The meat is nasty,” he wrote in a public letter, with “an unwanted and peculiar taste that could be disagreeably recognised.”

The whole room smelled, he said, of a hard-ridden horse put up in a stall.

During the dinner, he stood up to look around at his fellow diners. He thought most of them seemed to take their fork in hand with a shudder. Each bite was quickly washed down with a quaff of the plentiful champagne kindly made available by The Langham. Buckland noted that while all the bottles went back empty, very few of the plates were similarly clean. He declared that horse meat should be left for starving travellers, hunters, and “cavalry troops separated from their commissariat”.

Buckland was not alone. A writer who attended on behalf of an American publication disclosed that the after-effects of the dinner were most unpleasant: “I confess that I

suffered tortures over which I will draw a veil.” But, generally speaking, the reviews were at least polite. The reporter from the Penny Illustrated Paper informed his readers: “It is quite possible to dine off horse, even your first meal, without nausea.”

The attendee from the Medical Times found everything served at the main table to be quite palatable.

However, he sampled a cut of the “roast of baron” off the buffet and found that it “left a pungency on the palate that is not agreeable and stays with the diner for some time”.

Such naysayers, if you’ll pardon the expression, did not ruin the evening.

The organisers had done their own sampling of opinions among the tables and boasted that the far more widely held opinion was that horseflesh is “fine in texture, tender in quality and unimpeachable in flavour”.

The Hippophagic enthusiasm was soon an all but forgotten dietary crank. The English just never could get the taste for it. Some blamed the proponents for over-selling their case—they perhaps ought to have set out to prove only that horse meat is better than no meat at all, not that it rivals beef or pork. Horse meat found its way to very few English sideboards—knowingly, at least. Less scrupulous butchers were always out there and customers were warned to be wary of “sausage makers of hippophagic tendencies”.

From that day forth, any peckish traveller who stepped into the hotel’s restaurant to announce “I could eat a horse” would find nothing more equine than horseradish on offer.

58. The king of Marylebone Plains

THE KING OF MARYLEBONE PLAINS The colourful, violent tale of James Figg, a fighter without equal in early Georgian London, who from his Marylebone amphitheatre punched, cudgelled and hacked his way to national celebrity WORDS: MARK RIDDAWAY ILLUSTRATIONS: MATTHEW HANCOCK

59. The king of Marylebone Plains

60. The king of Marylebone Plains

61. The king of Marylebone Plains

Nobody really knows exactly when James Figg was born. Being from a poor, illiterate agricultural family in the small Oxfordshire town of Thame, his birth wasn’t notable enough to be properly recorded. It was probably 1695, maybe earlier.

But by the time of his death in 1734, and his burial in the grounds of the St Marylebone parish church, Figg had managed to batter his way firmly into the national consciousness as the most brutal and successful prize fighter in Britain.

Details of his early life are scarce, but it seems that Figg initially made a living fighting for money at local fairs, before his growing reputation and the diminishing ranks of local lads stupid enough to share a ring with him forced the young bruiser to head for London. The first mention of his exploits in the capital comes from an advert in the Daily Courant from June 1714, which suggests that he was a pupil of one Timothy Buck of Clare Market, off The Strand.

Around the same time, he appeared, muscles rippling, in a sketch by the portrait artist Jonathan Richardson.

Figg soon caught the eye of the Earl of Peterborough, under whose patronage he was able to open an arena in Marylebone Fields, just north of Oxford Street. The arena, known as either Figg’s Amphitheatre or the Boarded House, became home to an academy at which Figg taught other young fighters. In the centre

was a ring—demarcated with wooden boards rather than ropes—in which Figg fought regular bouts in front of large, noisy, blood-thirsty, drunken crowds.

During the 1720s Figg became a celebrity of huge public standing.

This was the result partly of the savage beatings he handed out to most of his opponents, and partly of his publicity material being produced by the great painter, engraver and satirist William Hogarth. Hogarth not only designed Figg’s flyers (“James Figg—Master of the Noble Science of Defence”) but also managed to sneak Figg’s likeness into some of his most famous works of art. There he is in the second plate of A Rake’s Progress, holding a pair of quarterstaffs and looking distinctly menacing. And there he is again in Southwark Fair—a depiction of the annual festival in Borough at which Figg would earn easy money by offering to fight any member of the public cocky enough and drunk enough to want to take him on. In Hogarth’s painting Figg can be seen wielding a sword while sitting on a horse, waiting patiently for a challenge.

Figg was a big man with a shaven head and an imposingly muscular physique. Pierce Egan, one of the first historians of pugilism, described the fighter in his 1812 Boxiana as being “more indebted to strength and courage for his success in the battlefield than to the effects of genius”. At a time when prize fights often consisted of a round of sword fighting, a round of cudgels and a round of boxing, Figg was far more technically accomplished with weaponry than he was with his fists. Captain John Godfrey, who was taught to fight by Figg and was himself a talented swordsman, wrote of his mentor: “Figg was the Atlas of the sword, and may he remain the gladiating statue!

In him, strength, resolution and unparalleled judgement conspired to form a matchless master.” He heaped praise upon Figg’s use of “time and measure” and described his way with a sword as “charming”.

According to Egan, Figg’s way with his fists was far less elegant: “If his methods of fighting were subject to the criticism of the present day, he would be denominated more of a slaughterer than a neat and finished pugilist.” But early 18th century boxing wasn’t the subtle chess match of gloved fists and tight defences that characterise the modern sport.

Instead it was a brutal bare-knuckle brawl in which fighters were expected to use their elbows and fingers, throw their opponents to the floor and land punches and kicks even after their opponents were down and out.

This was a form of boxing in which blood and broken bones were accepted, even demanded.

Godfrey, in his book A Treatise Upon the Useful Science of Defence, recommended that boxers aim their punches between the eyebrows as this causes the eyelids to swell, obstructing the sight. “The man thus indecently treated and artfully hoodwinked,” he wrote, “is then beat about at his adversary’s discretion.” He also advised that blows to the stomach “may be attended with a vomiting of blood”. Queensbury Rules this wasn’t.

Back-sword fighting was a brutal pursuit which made bare knuckle brawling look like a bit of a picnic.

The back-sword was a small onesided blade designed for slashing and cutting, far removed from the elegant movements associated with fencing. Fighters wore no protective clothing, with the result that Figg’s body was a web of scar tissue. Godfrey recounts a back-sword bout between William Gill—one of Figg’s pupils— and an Irishman named Butler.

Gill was renowned for aiming at his opponents’ legs, and on this occasion he wounded the Irishman with a cut “more severe and deep” than Godfrey had ever seen before. “His leg was laid quite open, his calf falling down to his ankle.” Butler was stitched up but surgeons who operated on lowly brawlers weren’t up to much.

The wound became infected and after a botched amputation the Irishman “soon expired”. In such circumstances, the fact that Figg retired with all his limbs in place was proof of his considerable skill.

62. The king of Marylebone Plains

Figg’s fighters weren’t always men.

Fights between women were a huge draw, with the most famous female brawler being Mrs Stokes, the self-proclaimed ‘Invincible City Championess’

The most famous of Figg’s hundreds of fights were with Ned Sutton, a pipe maker from Gravesend—“a resolute, pushing, awkward swordsman,” according to Godfrey. Figg vs Sutton was the Ali vs Frazier of its day. The first time they fought, Sutton won—the only recorded instance of Figg ever losing a fight. A rematch was arranged in which Figg exacted his revenge, setting up a third bout in 1725, to be held at the Boarded House.

The fight was attended by John Byrom, a well-known poet whose works were often published in the Spectator. According to Byrom, in a poem published soon afterwards and reprinted in the London Journal in 1727 to mark yet another epic rematch, the bout started with a round of the back-sword, during which Figg—after breaking his own sword with a stroke so brutal it would have “discarded” Sutton’s head had it not been deflected—soon found himself wounded in the side, an injury he treated with “sullen disdain” and some smart-mouthed banter with the crowd. After breaking for a quick dram of strong booze, the fighters resumed, with Sutton taking a cut on the arm. Following a further break, they returned with cudgels. Finally, after a punishing exchange of blows, Figg made the breakthrough: “So Jove told the gods he had made a decree, / That Figg should hit Sutton a stroke on the knee. / Tho’ Sutton, disabled

as soon as he hit him, / Would still have fought on, but Jove would not permit him; / ‘Twas his fate, not his fault, that constrain’d him to yield, / And thus the great Figg became lord of the field.”

Figg retired from fighting in 1730, after which he devoted his time to passing on some of his skills to the students who flooded to his academy. Godfrey rated him as the best teacher around: “I chose to go mostly to Figg partly as I knew him to be the ablest master and partly as he was of a rugged temper and would spare no man, high or low, who took up stick against him.” It was a painful experience: “I purchased my knowledge with many a broken head and bruise in every part of me.”

As well as being a fighter, teacher and national celebrity, Figg was also a bit of a promoter—an early Don King, but with far less hair. One of the most famous fights of the era was arranged

by Figg in 1725—an epic scrap between a boxer from Venice known imaginatively as Gondolier and a grazier named Bob Whitaker. The fight came about through a wager made at Slaughter’s coffee house between a foreigner, who was talking up the Venetian, and an English gentleman who thought this a slight on Blighty.

The Englishman “sent for Figg to procure a proper man for him”.

On arriving at the coffee shop, Figg

was warned that the Venetian was a “man of extraordinary strength and famous for breaking the jaw-bone in boxing”. His response was almost King-like in its sass: “I do not know, master, but he may break one of his own countrymen’s jawbones with his fist; but I will bring him a man and he shall not break his jaw-bone with a sledge-hammer in his hand.”

Figg chose Whitaker—“a hardy fellow and would bear a deal of beating”. According to the London Journal, Whitaker was “entertained at Mr Figg’s house for instruction and proper diet till the day of battle”. The fight caught the public imagination, and thousands of pounds were wagered: “In a word, the public daily enter into this affair with so much passion for the event, and gentlemen are so warm on both sides, that it looks like a national concern.”

On the night of the fight, Figg’s Amphitheatre was filled to the brim with what Godfrey called “a splendid company, the politest house of that kind I ever saw”. The high class of the crowd at first worked painfully to Whitaker’s disadvantage. Early in the fight the muscular Italian struck the Englishman so hard that he was knocked off the stage. “Whitaker’s misfortune,” wrote Godfrey, “was then the grandeur of the company, on which account they suffered no common people in, that usually sit on the ground and line the stage

63. The king of Marylebone Plains

Today, a pub debate would result in a few spilled pints and an agreement to disagree. In 18th century London it led instead to the procuring of a panther (god knows where from), the hiring of an arena and the collection of a £300 purse

round. It was then all clear and Whitaker had nothing to stop him but the bottom.”

After scrambling back into the ring the Englishman soon twigged that Gondolier’s superior reach was causing him trouble, so he moved inside to fight up close. “He, with a little stoop, ran boldly in beyond the heavy mallet, and with one English peg in the stomach (quite a new thing to foreigners) brought him on his breech.” The Italian decided that “the blow carried too much of the English rudeness for him to bear”, and the yellow-bellied foreigner threw in the towel.

Figg’s fighters weren’t always men. Fights between women were a huge draw, with the most famous female brawler being Mrs Stokes, the self-proclaimed ‘Invincible City Championess’. In 1725, Figg hosted a battle between Mrs Stokes and an Irish boxer. An advertisement in Mist’s Journal ramped up the excitement: “The gentlemen of Ireland have been long picking out an Hibernian heroine to match Mrs Stokes; there is now one arrived here, who, by her make and stature, seems mighty enough to eat her up.”

It was expected to be a well-attended fight: “This being like to prove a notable and diverting engagement, it’s not doubted but abundance of gentlemen will crowd to Mr Figg’s Amphitheatre.”

Boxing wasn’t the only show on the bill at Figg’s place. Paying customers were also entertained by extraordinary displays of barbarity against animals. An advertisement in a 1721 edition of the Weekly News—a journal specialising in foreign affairs coverage—promises a mind boggling spectacle: “At the Boarded House in Marybone-Fields on Monday 24 of this infant July will be a match fought between the wild and savage panther and 12 English dogs.” The ad goes on to explain that this bout resulted from the boasts of an unnamed foreigner who had been putting it about around London that a panther could easily take on any number of British dogs.

Stung by this insult to his country’s canine stock, an English gentleman

strongly objected. Today, this kind of pub debate would result in a few spilled pints and an agreement to disagree. In 18th century London it led instead to the procuring of a panther (god knows where from), the hiring of an arena and the collection of a £300 purse.

The advertisement then spirals off into a tragicomic list of the other entertainments on offer in the arena on the same evening. “NB, also a bear to be baited and a mad green bull to be turn’d loose in the gaming place with fireworks all over him and bull dogs after him, a dog to be drawn up with fireworks in the middle of the yard and an ass to be baited on the same stage.” Let me run that by you again: after watching a panther fight 12 dogs, the crowd would be entertained by a bear being attacked, a bull being killed by dogs, and then a dog being blown apart with fireworks. And finally, for a nice gentle coda, a donkey would be slaughtered. Happy days.

All this violence did have its critics and there were frequent bouts of moral panic played out in London’s burgeoning new journals and newspapers. In 1724 the Daily Journal attacked the boxing arenas “for calling raw tradesmen out of their shops, students from their books, apprentices and hired servants, and even his Majesty’s soldiers from their duty, to attend at the rude and savage diversions, where prophaneness reigns triumphantly, vollies of the most dreadful oaths being pour’d out incessantly, and picking of pockets practic’d openly with impunity”.

The Journal’s solution to this growing social problem was a novel one, and one that was never likely to succeed: “Mr Jones, the famous High-Constable of Holborn, in whose division this nuisance chiefly lies, will speedily be commission’d to take one single bout at staff with this terrible Mr Figg, he being as well vers’d in the true exercise of that weapon as Mr Figg, or any of his fraternity.” But Mr Jones and his moral crusaders had about as much chance of success in Mr Figg’s notorious arena as that poor donkey.

10 64. Ten

FICTIONAL MARYLEBONE RESIDENTS

1

5

CRUELLA DE VIL IN THE DEARLYS’ HOUSE

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes famously resided at 221B Baker Street.

He was often found in deep thought sitting in a wicker chair in a cluttered sittingroom, amid chaotic piles of papers, drawing on his pipe, musing on a mystery or occasionally crouched

on the divan searching for a vein to drive home a syringe of cocaine. In Conan Doyle’s day, the address didn’t exist, but then Baker Street was extended and Abbey National moved into premises at 219-229.

The building society ended up employing a full-time secretary to answer mail addressed to the detective, sent by fans from around the world.

8 Brooksmith No one describes the former roughness of some parts of Marylebone better than Henry James in his story about Brooksmith, a resident of the area.

Written in 1891, his is an accurate description of the seamier side of the area:

“I went the next day—his messenger had given me a new address—and found my friend lodged in a short sordid street in Marylebone, one of those corners of London that wear the last expression of sickly meanness. The room into which I was shown was above the small establishment of a dyer and cleaner who had inflated kid gloves and discoloured

2 Richard Hannay First published as a serial adventure story in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps was written by John Buchan—who at the time worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau— at his home on The Dearlys A respectable middle class family, the Dearlys live in a nice, big house on Dorset Square, Marylebone.

The Dearlys are a happy bunch, awfully fond of dalmatians—of which they have rather a lot. One hundred and one, in fact.

Unfortunately for them, Cruella de Vil is also fond of dalmatian puppies: their soft fur makes a perfect coat! shawls in his shop-front.

There was a great deal of grimy infant life up and down the place, and there was a hot moist smell within, as of the ‘boiling’ of dirty linen... Several times the door of the room opened and mysterious old women peeped in and shuffled back again... poor Brooksmith seemed encompassed with vague prying beery females.”

Portland Place, between 1913 and 1919. In the story, protagonist and antihero Richard Hannay also lives there. Walking home one dark night, Hannay chances upon a desperate but seemingly sincere man, who convinces him that German spies are trying to steal British plans for an outbreak of war. The next day, he finds the man dead in his Marylebone flat.

The Dearlys are a happy bunch, awfully fond of dalmatians—of which they have rather a lot. One hundred and one, in fact

9 Eliza Doolittle Eliza Doolittle paid “four and six a week for a room that wasn’t fit for a pig to live in” in the then distinctly down-at-heel Lisson Grove. This was before she was noticed by Professor Henry Higgins, while selling flowers at

6 Henry Perowne Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon, lives in Marylebone with his successful wife and talented blues musician son, awaiting the return of his beautiful, talented and also successful daughter.

Success so permeates the the market. She went on to become his obsession and creature, and the talk of polite society. These characters, from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, are best known to modern audiences from the play My Fair Lady. Inspiration came from the 1885 case of 13-year-old Eliza Armstrong, who was sold to a brothel keeper for £5, causing public outcry.

4

Stella Rodney Marylebone suffered greatly at the hands of the Luftwaffe during the London Blitz. In Elizabeth Bowen’s Heat of the Day, protagonist Stella Rodney, who lives in the area, describes the “tired physical smell” of London, the total darkness of the blackout and the lighthearted relief people felt during daylight hours.

Danger Mouse Marylebone has long been a popular base for crime fighters, foremost among whom is undoubtedly Danger Mouse, the world’s greatest secret agent.

Danger Mouse has his headquarters beneath Baker Street, accessed

7

Perowne family that you just know that the deeply smug Henry is going to get his comeuppance one day. While researching his novel Saturday, in which Henry’s story is told, Ian McEwan spent two years work-shadowing Neil Kitchen, a neurosurgeon at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square.

Wilkins Micawber Charles Dickins had a house on Welbeck Street and based the character Wilkins Micawber on his father, who he lived with.

Micawber is known for asserting his faith that “something will turn up” and his name has

10

ELIZA DOOLITTLE

3

DANGER MOUSE AND PENFOLD

65. Ten

Dr Hastie Lanyon Dr Lanyon plays a minor role in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, but his home in Cavendish Square is the setting of one of the most significant parts of the plot. An old friend of Dr Jekyll and a scientist

through a small (mouse sized) secret entrance in a pillarbox on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road.

Danger Mouse is the most accomplished and skilled of all secret agents, born half way up Mount Everest (he summited a few hours later).

He knows several martial arts and can speak virtually all known languages— more than Sherlock. become synonymous with someone who lives in hopeful expectation.

This has formed the basis for the Micawber Principle, based upon his observation: “Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 19 pounds 19 and six, result happiness.

Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 20 pounds nought and six, result misery.” himself, Lanyon is entirely dismissive of Jekyll’s claim to have mastered metamorphosis, deeming it “scientific balderdash”.

That is, until he—the only character to do so in the novel—witnesses Jekyll’s transformation into the evil Mr Hyde upon a visit to his Marylebone home.

So shaken is he by the event, he immediately falls mortally ill.

66. Street stories

STREET STORIES W1 The history behind some of Marylebone’s defining streetscapes WORDS:MARK RIDDAWAY

67. Street stories

MANSFIELD STREET

Running the short stretch between Queen Anne Street and New Cavendish Street, Mansfield Street may lack the long, sweeping grandiosity of Portland Place or the sexy curves of Park Crescent, but this quiet stretch of terracing would still figure prominently in any list of Marylebone’s most attractive streets.

Mansfield Street was built as a speculative venture by the Adam brothers, Robert and John: the hugely influential Scottish architects and designers whose elegant neoclassical style did much to define the look and feel of Marylebone. It was named after Viscount Mansfield, one of the great aristocratic forebears of the Portland family who owned the area.

When the brothers started work on the project

in 1770, Marylebone was entering the most frantic stage of its Georgian development, with the construction of new streets pushing rapidly north from Cavendish Square. Hoping to cash in on the demand for new housing on this suddenly fashionable and breathlessly evolving frontier of London, the brothers took over a patch of land that had previously been home to a water company’s reservoir and began building two terraces of grand, fourstorey, four-bay properties.

At the time, the brothers were up to their necks in the chaotic and punishingly expensive construction of the Adelphi Hotel, so Mansfield Street provided some light relief: a relatively simple and, more importantly, instantly profitable scheme. Like most of their projects, the brothers were as involved with the interiors as they were with the fabric of the buildings, ensuring an exceptional consistency and clarity of design.

The street is still bursting with beautiful fireplaces, staircases and doors, making these some of the most sought after properties in the area.

Two of the nation’s greatest ever architects, Sir

Blue plaques Sir Edward Landseer Lutyens (architect) John Loughborough Pearson (architect) Sir Robert Mayer (philanthropist) Charles Stanhope (inventor and politician) Landmark building The understated beauty of the Adam brothers’ style means that on first look the more opulent 2-4 Mansfield Street, dating from the 1920s, catches the eye

Edward Landseer Lutyens and John Loughborough Pearson, both lived for a while at 13 Mansfield Street: a ringing endorsement of the Adam brothers’ vision.

Even those houses not designed by the Adam brothers are pretty notable. Numbers 2-4 were built in the 1920s

by Wills and Kaula, the architectural team responsible for a number of Marylebone’s large interwar developments. Their Beaux-Arts style, heavy on the Portland stone, is almost as recognisable as that of their Scottish forebears.

In total, 11 of Mansfield Street’s townhouses are listed by English Heritage, as are the two New Cavendish Street addresses that sit as gatehouses to its northerly junction: a remarkably high number for such a short street.

68. Street stories

HARLEY STREET

Harley Street began, as the name suggests, with a man called Harley, Edward Harley. He was a man of means, having married Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter of the late Duke of Newcastle and heiress to an estate that included Marylebone, then a small village on the banks of the river Tyburn. In 1719, the couple decided to spend their fortune on turning this land into a grand grid of buildings, including a north-south street that would carry their name.

Edward, who died in 1741, didn’t live to see much progress made on Harley Street. Work eventually began at the southern end, with the street first rated in 1753, and the opening of Marylebone Road in 1756 provided impetus to its steady progress north. By the time Richard Horwood completed his map of London in the 1790s, Harley Street (or Upper Harley Street, as the top section was once designated) fell just tantalisingly short of Marylebone Road. It was completed in the 1820s.

While beautifully proportioned, Harley Street lacked the grandeur of some other parts of the estate, and its modest townhouses attracted

Blue plaques Dr Grantley Dick-Read (gynaecologist) William Gladstone (politician) Charles Lyell (geologist) Florence Nightingale (nurse) Arthur Wing Pinero (playwright) Landmark building Harley Street has no shortage of architectural gems, including 18 Grade II* Listed buildings and dozens more with a Grade II ranking. The most significant buildings are the Georgian townhouses, but while charming, their individual significance can escape the untrained eye.

Amid such understated beauty, the Victorian and Edwardian infills stand out like the loud kids in a classroom of studious high achievers. 37 Harley Street, designed in 1899

by Arthur Beresford Pite, with its fancy slate roof and sandy-coloured stone is the true class clown, with its Baroque details and showy use of sculpture.

professionals rather than aristocrats—scientists, politicians, military officers, artists. Medical men began arriving in the mid-19th century. By the 1860s there were a dozen or so doctors.

By 1873 there were 36. After that, the numbers increased rapidly. The building stock was ideal—attractive but affordable, with space for a consulting room on the ground floor and a spacious family home upstairs.

In the early years of the 20th century, as Marylebone became more urbanised and transport links more efficient, doctors chose to live in the leafier parts of town rather than setting up home above the surgery. This led to the development of multiple tenancies, with entire buildings being converted into consulting rooms.

The north end of the street remains almost entirely Georgian in character, its narrow, elegant townhouses blessed with beautiful detailing: cast iron balconies, arched doorways, vast first-floor windows. The southern half is dotted with more flamboyant Victorian and Edwardian styles— notably the Tudor gothic of number 51, dating from 1894, and the beaux arts stylings of number 37—as well as a few unloved 1970s constructions.

The street remains inextricably linked to the high quality private medicine of the Harley Street Medical Area.

Its character presents a unique challenge to the landlord, the Howard de Walden Estate, which is tasked with providing 21st century medical facilities in period buildings, most of which are listed.

CHRIS REDGRAVE

69. Street stories

70. Street stories

PORTMAN SQUARE

Portman Square was where The Portman Estate began to take shape: the main focus of the development work carried out in the 18th century by Henry William Portman, scion of the prominent Somerset family which had since 1532 owned what was then a collection of meadows to the west of the River Tyburn.

Starting in 1764, the square evolved slowly and

speculatively, starting with the south side and followed by the west and east, with most of the houses built

by Abraham and Samuel Adams. It was the north side, though, where the confusingly similarly named but considerably more famous Adam brothers made their mark.

20 Portman Square— Home House—was built between 1773 and 1776 by Robert Adam for Elizabeth, Countess of Home: one of Marylebone’s finest buildings, beautifully proportioned and boasting breathtaking interiors. The stairwell, set behind the entrance hall and top-lit by a dome, is a work of art, pure and simple.

Next door is another Grade I listed building, designed by James Adam, which shares a similar composition. Home House’s

Blue plaques Perhaps surprisingly, none. Its residents tended to be aristocrats with impressive titles and even more impressive whiskers, but whose personal achievements were more modest. Most notable were Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, who threw his energies into fighting Catholic emancipation and opposing electoral reform, and Alexander Hamilton, a rather preposterous dandy who supported Napoleon and had himself mummified after death.

Landmark building Home House: understated on the outside, absolutely stunning on the inside.

other neighbour is none too shabby either: an 18th century house with mid19th century alterations.

All three are occupied by the Home House private members club.

Built in that same Georgian development spree and designed by the neo-classical pioneer James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, Montagu House once dominated the northwest corner of the square, between Gloucester Place and Upper Berkeley Street, but it was tragically destroyed—together with several other buildings— by an air raid in 1941.

The award-winning garden square in the centre of these grand residences was laid out around 1780, and it remains a lovely space, notable for its magnificent London plane trees.

The distinctive drinking fountain, which is currently being restored, was installed in 1878 by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.

Portman Square changed substantially in the 20th century. Orchard Court and Portman Court (43-45), were built in the late 1920s as part of a programme of slum clearance. Designed by the architectural firm Messrs Joseph these brick-faced mansion blocks, decorated with giant classical columns and pilasters, introduced an imposing new scale to the square, with subsequent post-war buildings following their lead—some more successfully than others.

Hyatt Regency—The Churchill, which opened in 1970, dominates the western aspect of the square. The south is mainly offices. For a sense of the square’s gilded architectural history, the advice is simple: look north.

71. Street stories

MANCHESTER SQUARE

A proposal for building a square on the eastern side of the Portman family’s London Estate was first explored during the reign of Queen Anne, but failed to come to fruition. In the 1770s, Henry William Portman revived the idea and started to sell ground leases for the site.

In 1771, the speculative builder Samuel Adams bought the leaseholds of

eight plots of land on the north side of the planned square but cashed out in 1776 when the 4th Duke of Manchester decided that a Marylebone home would be an ideal base for his pastime of choice: duck hunting. His grand new mansion, designed by the architect Joshua Brown and completed in 1778, was named Manchester House and the square itself also took his name.

By the end of the 1780s, smaller (but still fairly impressive) homes had sprung up all around the square, constructed by builders such as the Adam brothers, John Dalrymple, John Pearson and Godfrey Wilson. The majority of these are still intact: the east, north and lower western sides retain the original terraced properties which together form an important

Blue plaques Henry Charlton Bastian (physiologist and neurologist) Sir Julius Benedict (composer) John Hughlings Jackson (surgeon and neurologist) Lord Alfred Milner (colonial administrator) Landmark building Hertford House, home to the Wallace Collection— a stunning building that provides the perfect domicile for a collection of fine and decorative art.

Recent interventions— including the installation of educational facilities, the construction of a glass roof over the courtyard and the refurbishment of the Great Gallery—have been carried off with thought and sensitivity.

Georgian ensemble and make Manchester Square one of the area’s most attractive, coherent spaces.

At the square’s centre is a private garden, oval in shape, simple in layout and notable for its mature plane trees. It retains much of its original character, despite the intervention of World War II, when trenches were dug, tanks for emergency water erected, the railings removed and a small Luftwaffe bomb dropped.

Manchester House was renamed Hertford House after its purchase in 1797 by the 2nd Marquess of Hertford. Between 1872 and 1882, the building was considerably redeveloped by the 4th Marquess’s illegitimate son, Richard Wallace, to house the family’s increasingly impressive collection of art, furniture, arms and armour. The Wallace Collection, which was bequeathed to the nation in 1897, remains one of London’s best-loved galleries.

Between 1960 and 1999, the record company EMI based its headquarters in a sleek modernist block at 20 Manchester Square. It was here, hanging over the rails of the stairwell, that the Beatles were photographed

by Angus McBean for the cover of their debut album Please Please Me (1963). They returned to recreate the pose six years later, far more hairy and haggard, for an image that would later appear on the front of their 1967-1970 compilation LP. When EMI moved to Hammersmith at the turn of the millennium, the building was completely demolished, but its iconic staircase was reinstalled at the company’s new HQ.

72. Street stories

BRYANSTON SQUARE

Before it was Bryanston Square, it was Apple Village, which—while it sounds like the name of a giant corporate campus in Cupertino, California—was barely even really a village, more of a large pond with a few small houses dotted around it. As the development programme instigated by The Portman Estate in the second half of the 18th century pushed

northwards from Portman Square, Apple Village and the neighbouring Ward’s Field became the site for a matching pair of new residential squares— although ‘rectangles’ would be a more accurate description.

Named after the Portman family’s home village of Bryanston in Dorset, Bryanston Square was built in tandem with the even narrower but otherwise similar Montagu Square, which sits one block to the east. Both squares were set out in 1811 by James Thompson Parkinson, the Estate’s go-to architect for much of its early-19th century residential development work. Bryanston Square’s houses and garden were completed by 1821.

One 19th century critic wrote cuttingly of both

Blue plaques Mustafa Resid Pasha (Turkish statesman and reformer) Landmark building The large corner houses with their grand columns and white facades were the showiest part of JT Parkinson’s development.

Number 28 is wellpreserved, with only its partly-altered pedimented attic diverting from the architect’s original vision.

Number 21, part of the Swiss Embassy, looks just as impressive but is actually a post-war reproduction of the original.

squares: “They are mere oblong slips with houses built in dreary uniformity; they are fortunately out of the way, and few people see them.” But one man’s dreariness is another man’s attractive modesty.

Bryanston Square may not be Marylebone’s most exquisite showcase of Georgian architecture, but nor does it want for style and charm.

Each side of Bryanston Square was built as a complete terrace. The end units, designed to provide a touch of razzledazzle, were dressed up with white plastered facades and Greek Doric columns. The western terrace was substantially rebuilt after the war, but the eastern side remains largely unchanged. Its four or five storey houses are constructed from London stock brick, with stucco at the ground floor level, recessed timber sash windows, and a balcony with cast iron railings at the first floor. While consistent in style, subtle differences in colour and detailing provide a richness of texture around the square.

The long rectangular garden contains several immense London plane trees and two Grade II listed objects: an early-19th century cast iron water pump and an elaborate drinking fountain erected in 1862 in memory of the journalist William Pitt Byrne. The latter includes a plaque with a testament to Pitt Byrne’s qualities so wordy and breathless (“noble disinterestedness ... forgiving temper ... unobtrusive piety”) that it now feels ever so slightly embarrassing.

73. Street stories

PORTLAND PLACE

Portland Place may sit on the same grid as the rest of Marylebone, but it feels completely unique. It is more institutional than the rest of the area, less compact and residential; home to embassies, professional bodies and company headquarters. Its rather imposing sense of grandeur comes in part from the quality of its townhouses (many of them built by the famous Adam brothers) but also from the unusual expanse of the street itself —almost 40m wide.

Its breadth was no accident. In the mid-18th century, Lord Foley, a cousin of Edward Harley, had built himself a massive mansion, facing north towards the fields that would later become Regent’s Park. Concerned by the rush of property development then

taking place all around Marylebone, Foley used his political influence to secure an act of parliament banning any developer from obstructing his view.

When Robert Adam drew up his plans for Portland Place, he complied with the letter of the law by designing the street to be the same width as Foley House. When it was first laid out in the 1770s, the development took the form of a piazza, enclosed at the bottom end. But then John Nash was commissioned by the Prince Regent to create a grand processional route from Regent’s Park to St James’s Park. Lord Foley managed to conveniently bankrupt himself, Foley House was demolished, and Portland Place became a thoroughfare.

The street was a speculative venture on the

Blue plaques Henry Brooks Adams (historian) Frances Hodgson Burnett (novelist) Thomas Gage (soldier) Frederick Sleigh Roberts (another soldier) Landmark building Hard to choose. In total, as many as 40 different properties on Portland Place have a Grade 2* listing from English Heritage, with several more listed as Grade 2, and the genius of the Adam brothers looms large. But with its Portland stone façade and extraordinary bronze doors, framed by free standing statues, the RIBA building certainly makes its presence felt.

part of the Adam brothers, and one that paid off—its meticulously designed, palace-fronted townhouses proving hugely popular with the gentry. Given the almost unbelievable tastefulness of their interiors, it’s easy to see why.

Those Adam buildings still define Portland Place’s streetscape, but they are not its only highlights. Several of the later infills added real variety and texture: the imposing 1920s beauxarts buildings of Wills & Kaula, G Val Myer’s iconic Broadcasting House from 1932, and the headquarters of RIBA, designed by George Grey Wornum and opened in 1934. The only real turkey is Ambika House, an uncompromising 1960s office development that looks like it should be in Bracknell town centre, not Marylebone.

Portland Place