Georgian London: Into the Streets

by Lucy Inglis

  … put her arms about my neck and wept without speaking a word. I hoped to return in a week at farthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night from that, and every night afterwards, she would wait for me at six o’clock near the bottom of Great Titchfield Street, which had been our customary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great Mediterranean of Oxford Street.

  And yet, Thomas had forgotten to ask Ann her last name. On his return to London, he searched but never found her.

  LEICESTER SQUARE

  Leicester Square smells bad. This may be a drains issue, or just something in the air. It is dedicated to ephemeral entertainments, continuing a theme established in the eighteenth century, and it is named for Robert Sidney, the 2nd Earl of Leicester, who built Leicester House at the top of St Martin’s Field, in 1635.

  The open ground of what is now Leicester Square was known as Leicester Fields until the second half of the Georgian period. Leicester House became the hub of the set surrounding Frederick, Prince of Wales, when he fell out with his father, George II. He was a dedicated supporter of the arts – in particular, the rococo style. Many of the best of Soho’s artists and artisans worked hard to gain his patronage. Both Hogarth and Reynolds lived in the square for a time and are commemorated by statues there today. The Prince of Wales loved cricket; he was an avid supporter, and sometimes player. His death, in 1751 – apparently from a lung abscess sustained from being smacked in the chest by a cricket ball – was a great loss to London’s artistic community, and to those in Soho in particular.

  After the premature departure of the Prince of Wales, Leicester Square became a place for public entertainments. Leicester House, by now getting somewhat dilapidated, was occupied from 1775 by the Holophusikon, a natural history collection, containing items from around the world. Its owner, Ashton Lever, had accumulated pieces fiercely but with care, and the collection even contained objects from Captain Cook’s voyages. Soon, the rent on Leicester House became too much and the Leverian Museum, as it was now called, moved south of the river.

  In 1783, surgeon John Hunter’s collection of human abnormalities moved to the square, and he began to display his teaching collection.

  In Panton Street, just off the square, James Graham, sexologist, provided rooms for ladies to take nude mud baths under his close personal supervision. These were supposed to promote sexual health. Portrait painter Robert Barker arrived in the square soon afterwards, displaying his ‘Panorama’ of London. It was a huge success, and for the first time gave Londoners an opportunity to see how large their city had become.

  Then, in ‘the Large House, fronting Leicester Street, Leicester Square’, Philip James de Loutherberg opened his Eidophusikon, in 1781, showing a moving panorama of various cityscapes and ships at sea, created using painted scenery, mirrors and special effects, such as smoke. The scenes included ‘the Port of Tangier in Africa’, the sunset in Naples, moonlight on the Mediterranean, as well as the action scenes of ‘a Conversation of Sailors of different Nations’, ‘a Wood-cutter attacked by Wolves’ and a ‘Summer Evening, with Cattle and Figures’. The finale was ‘a STORM and SHIPWRECK’. It ran for several seasons, with changing scenes, until Loutherberg sold it, whereupon it toured the provinces. The Eidophusikon is recognized as the first attempt at early ‘cinema’, and it is very fitting that Leicester Square is now synonymous with film.

  LES RÉFUGIÉS: THE FRENCH QUARTER OF ST ANNE’S

  The diversity of Soho was not only religious and social but also ethnic. In 1685, just as the foundations for the first Soho squares were being laid, something momentous happened in Europe: Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. The Protestant Huguenots of France were no longer able to worship in peace. Louis ordered them to convert, or to leave France. If they did leave, they were not allowed to remove any of their money or possessions. They fled in huge numbers: up to 700,000 left France in the years between 1685 and 1688, of whom 40,000 arrived in London. They called their flight Le Refuge, and themselves réfugiés.

  They arrived in motley groups: a fourteen-year-old boy in charge of three siblings, including a baby too young to walk; a seventeen-year-old girl who had stayed behind to ensure her family had escaped without detection, then disguised herself as a man and walked half the length of France to board a ship for England’s South Coast. They walked through the mountains into Germany, entrusting their lives to Huguenot guides, some of whom were later executed. Two teenage boys made it out of France using scrawled safe routes pressed into their hands by fellow Huguenots and Catholic sympathizers. Babies, children and pregnant wives were entrusted to other members of the Huguenot faith, often complete strangers who had managed to get passage on a ship.

  The French Church on Threadneedle Street, around which most of London’s Protestant French lived, set up a relief fund for those fleeing the persecution. The Threadneedle Street Church was also the hub of a social network. Notices were posted seeking information about family members, jobs and accommodation. Detailed ledgers on the distribution of aid were kept, and these offer a fascinating insight into the situations and attitudes of the people, recording their desperate situations, such as ‘big with child’ and ‘without shoes’. The Threadneedle Church was a powerful organization, but it had made mistakes. Its congregation had split down the middle when some declared for Cromwell during the Civil War. The Royalist half of the church left, forced to find somewhere else to worship. Some Huguenot booksellers had already set up in the Strand, selling bibles and religious texts. Someone with sharp eyes spied the disused chapel in the old Savoy Palace and there, amongst scaffolding, broken buckets and detritus, they began to meet. The palace itself had been made over for a hospital by Henry VII, but was largely abandoned by 1702 – apart from a makeshift prison, and a few ‘small dwelling houses’ and gardens. Soon, the Huguenots were joined by the Lutherans; by 1736, the French Church was occupying its own building in the eastern part of the Savoy precinct. The Savoy Chapel is all that remains of the old palace today and still holds Sunday services, using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the King James Bible. The Savoy Hotel and the Savoy Theatre now occupy some of the old palace grounds.

  The Huguenots had pitched up in the heart of a chaotic and changing London. Soho was becoming rapidly built up. In 1686, the new parish church of St Anne’s, between Dean Street and Wardour Street, was consecrated by Bishop Compton in order to accommodate a growing population. Many Huguenots assimilated readily into their new communities, and St Anne’s was a focus for those keen to fit in. Soon, William Maitland said of St Anne’s: ‘Many parts of this parish so greatly abound with French that it is an easy matter for a stranger to imagine himself in France.’ By 1700, there were 23 Huguenot churches in London, with 14 in the West End and 9 around the eastern edge of the City. In 1711, the vestry of St Anne’s in Soho reckoned the population of 8,133 to be 40 per cent French. The Huguenots are defined by their religion, but their faith is only the smallest part of what made them a force to be reckoned with: they were soldiers, artists, thinkers, writers, artisans and craftsmen, and women. Britain owes a great, but barely acknowledged, debt to the Huguenots, particularly in the fields of art, science and industry, optometry and dentistry: John Dollond of the high-street chain of opticians Dollond & Aitchison was a Huguenot who was the first to patent the achromatic lens, in 1759; and the Pilleau family made London’s finest dentures.

  The Huguenot Pezé Pilleau’s trade card, promoting his gold and silver ware and his denture-fitting service, 1720

  Teeth were a problem in Georgian England. There would have been more crooked teeth, as there were no braces to straighten them, but the image of Georgian Londoners with black, gappy mouths is incorrect. People knew sugar caused tooth decay, and they were also very conscious of plaque build-up, hence the many toothpicks and home-scaling sets in shagreen cases. To have ‘scales’ or ‘scurf’ on the teeth was frowned upon, and to pick one’s teeth at the table was deemed vulgar. Good or part
icularly white teeth are mentioned regularly in personal correspondence, and people did take time and care over their dental hygiene. Toothbrushes were imported from France and Turkey. Toothpaste was available and usually contained a ground abrasive, such as cuttlefish bone, coral or alabaster, as well as sweetening agents, such as rose or orange-flower water. It could be bought as a powder and mixed to a paste, as required, or bought as little rolls known as ‘dentifrice’, which were chewed and used with the brush.

  The biggest problem with teeth in Georgian England was what happened when they fell out. Barber-surgeons and dentists were known to transplant teeth, but with what measure of success is unknown. French dentists were usually considered the best. In February 1696, The Postman reported: ‘Mr Pilleau as French Goldsmith does give Notice that by Experience of 18 Years he has found out a way to make and set Artificial Teeth in so firm a manner that one may chew with them.’ This was the Holy Grail of denture manufacture. False teeth had been made for a long time, from bone, precious metals and ivory. Hippo tusk was preferred because it remained white, whereas elephant tusk was known to yellow in the mouth. Until now, false teeth were useless for eating, rather limiting one’s ability to dine out.

  In January 1719, The Postman reported: ‘Mr Pilleau continueth to make and set Artificial Teeth and whole Jaws or Rows with the utmost nicety.’ The Pilleau here is Pezé Junior. It was usual for a son to issue a new trade card when he inherited the business, and the younger Pilleau’s speciality was clearly advertised as ‘ye Art of Making and Setting Artificial Teeth No ways discernable from Natural ones’.

  AT THE SIGN OF THE GOLDEN BALL: HUGUENOT SILVERSMITH PAUL DE LAMERIE

  Paul de Lamerie was born on 9 April 1688 in ’s-Hertogenbosch, in the Netherlands. His father, Paul Souchay de la Merie, was a minor French nobleman, a soldier and a Huguenot, and had taken service with William III after the Revocation in 1685. They came to London and took up residence in Berwick Street, Soho. How they survived is a mystery, as Paul Souchay had no profession, nor any money. In Pall Mall ‘over by the Duke of Schomberg’, lived a Huguenot goldsmith named Pierre Platel. Silversmiths were, at the time, routinely called goldsmiths, as they would often work in both materials and the word goldsmith was more appropriate for the profession’s position at the top of London’s artisan hierarchy. Platel was a shrewd and cautious man, active within the Huguenot community. He apprenticed only four boys during his working life. Somehow, in 1703, he agreed to take on fifteen-year-old Paul.

  In July 1703, Souchay applied to the Huguenot charity for the £6 premium Platel demanded for taking Paul on (which is about £1,000 now). By 1711, the young man had served his time. He disappeared for almost two years, selling large and expensive silver items to the nobility. He had, after all, served in Platel’s shop, establishing his reputation and making excellent contacts in Pall Mall and St James’s. In Goldsmiths’ Hall, in 1713, Paul enters his first maker’s mark in the official ledger there, giving his address as ‘in Windmill Street near the Haymarket’.

  By 1714, what was plain was that Paul had an utter disregard for authority. He was up before the private court at Goldsmiths’ Hall for failing to have his work hallmarked. Many pieces by him are not marked, other than with his own maker’s mark, proving he was dodging the duty levied on finished silver, and selling to people who trusted him to provide them with objects of superior quality. The court fined him £20 (equivalent to over £3,000 now). It was a sharp and rather spiteful rap, considering the court failed to prove the extent of his crime. Lamerie pushed back almost immediately by presenting large quantities of basic domestic silver for testing at the hall – a procedure known as ‘assay’. He didn’t make the silver himself; he took in work from anonymous French smiths working in the back streets of London and had it hallmarked as his own. He was soon back up before the court, accused of having bought ‘Foreigners work and got ye same toucht at ye Hall’.

  By 1717, in what was becoming an annual event, Lamerie was charged with ‘making and selling Great quantities of Large Plate which he doth not bring to Goldsmiths’ Hall to be mark’t according to Law’. However, the hall realized they had to admit defeat: Lamerie was simply becoming too big a player to be ignored. Shortly after the court appearance, he was summoned to Goldsmiths’ Hall and ‘discoursed with by ye Wardens about his admission into the Livery and he accepted thereof’. The livery is the first stage of the upper hierarchy of the company. He probably thought he’d been summoned to explain why he’d changed his maker’s mark illegally the year before.

  In 1722, the silver and jewellery shop in Windmill Street was doing well, and the insurance policies were becoming much larger. In the same year, a unique case appears in the King’s Bench Court Reports: Lamerie vs Armory. Armory, the plaintiff, was

  … a chimney sweeper’s boy [who] found a jewel and carried it to the defendant’s shop (who was a goldsmith) to know what it was, and delivered it into the hands of the apprentice, who under pretence of weighing it, took out the stones, and calling to the master to let him know it came to three halfpence, the master offered the boy the money, who refused to take it, and insisted to have the thing again; whereupon the apprentice delivered him back the socket without the stones.

  Lamerie was found guilty of trying to cheat the boy and was ordered to pay the sweep compensation to the order of a ‘diamond of the finest and first water’ of a size to fit into the setting. It is the first known pro bono work in Britain, and gives us the law we now refer to as ‘Finders, Keepers’.

  Not content with building a serious London-based business, Lamerie expanded into the export trade. Robert Dingley was a goldsmith on Cornhill who had connections to the Russian court. He took orders for certain items and had them made by Huguenot craftsmen, but he wasn’t in the habit of paying the tax on them before they were exported. In August 1726, officials tried to seize the cargo as it lay aboard ship near Customs House. Dingley, who had been tipped off, was waiting for the officials and took them to the Vine Tavern in Thames Street, just around the corner from the ship’s mooring, to discuss the matter. As soon as they were inside the inn, the ship slipped its mooring and sailed for Russia. Dingley was brought before Guildhall Court, where he testified that the 18,000 ounces of the Tsarina’s purchases had all been properly hallmarked. The vast majority of the Tsarina’s collection, now in the Hermitage, is not hallmarked. More than half of it bears only the maker’s mark of Paul de Lamerie.

  However, in December 1737, the poacher turned gamekeeper when Paul de Lamerie was appointed to a Parliamentary Committee to prevent fraud in gold and silver work. The committee intended to restore the Goldsmiths’ Company’s medieval right to search the premises of goldsmiths. This was the year Paul de Lamerie sold a large duty-dodging ewer to Lord Hardwicke. Unsurprisingly, he insisted the clause be ‘entirely left out of the new intended bill’ and then failed to turn up for the subsequent meetings.

  He died in 1751, from a ‘long and tedious illness’, and was interred in St Anne’s Church, Soho. The General Advertiser reported that: ‘His corpse was followed to the grave by real Mourners, for he was a good man, and his Behaviour in and out of Business gain’d him Friends.’ His tomb was destroyed in 1939, when the church suffered significant damage during an air raid.

  It would be easy to cast Paul de Lamerie in the mould of villain: cheating the system, swindling a chimney sweep and lying to anyone in authority. Yet a document pertaining to the French Hospital for Huguenots ties Paul de Lamerie to an act of decency, and one typical of the close-knit French community in Georgian London. James Ray was a gilder. The heated mercury used in the gilding process often sent workers mad and, in 1734, Ray began ‘running about the streets like a madman, forsaking his business and crying “oranges and lemons”’. Before admitting a violently ‘distracted soul’ to any hospital, it was customary to find a member of the community who would pay for damage caused by the patient. The signature on James Ray’s bond is that of Paul de Lamerie.

 
‘ALL ENGLISHMEN ARE GREAT NEWSMONGERS’: ST MARTIN’S LANE AND OLD SLAUGHTER’S COFFEE HOUSE

  Close to the French parish of St Anne’s was St Martin’s Lane, full of creative types and pioneers. Here, treatises on fireworks and the first English pamphlet on figure-skating were written by Robert Jones, who would later be condemned to death for abusing a twelve-year-old boy in his lodgings. Many engravers, painters and intellectuals lived on or close to the street, and they all congregated in Old Slaughter’s Coffee House.

  Over the years, Old Slaughter’s played host to William Hogarth, William Kent, the engraver Hubert Gravelot, the sculptors Henry Cheere and François Roubiliac, the writer Henry Fielding, the artists Francis Hayman, Thomas Gainsborough and George Moser, and the Huguenot mathematician Abraham de Moivre. When money was tight, de Moivre gave maths lessons here. Isaac Newton lived nearby, and the two were friendly. Theirs was far from a serious society, yet the coffee house was not a frivolous place of entertainment. The inhabitants of these quasi-public spaces were not only thinkers, writers and artists but also ordinary men. ‘All Englishmen are great newsmongers,’ the visitor César de Saussure was to remark. In 1730, he wrote that they ‘habitually begin the day by going to the coffee rooms to read the latest news’. Just as City coffee houses catered for remarkable and specialist cabals in stocks, banking and insurance, Old Slaughter’s catered for a band of artists known as the St Martin’s Lane Group.