Alfred T. Camden Pratt, Unknown London; its romance and tragedy

Table of Contents

Go to

Unknown London; its romance and tragedy

These articles are now reprinted with the kind permission of the Editors of the Globe and St. James' Gazette. [p. 1]

A Haunt of Highwaymen.

When the region around Clare Market was the extreme west-end of London, and all beyond was rusticity; when, as Thackeray wrote, the Edgware Road was a road with tinkling waggons passing now and then between fragrant walls of snowy hawthorn blossoms; when the ploughman whistled over what are now busy thoroughfares and the merry milkmaid led the lowing kine amid green fields and sweet air- then the `Old Black Jack,' in Portsmouth Street was a roadside Inn far removed from any other habitation. It requires a great stretch of imagination to picture the grimy region about Clare Market as a rural neighbourhood, yet there is undoubted proof that it was so, even within the history of this old house, which will soon be razed to the ground.

A curious history it is which attaches to it-or rather it has had a curious series of historical associations. After highwaymen had ceased to use it as their head-quarters it became a resort of gay gallants as the district became more and more `the west-end' of the town, socially as well as geographically. As the aristocracy migrated still further west, tile Inn became the resort of medical students and foreigners `down on their luck'-notable among whom was Prince Louis Napoleon, who was actually arrested for debt within its walls. Since then the whole neighbourhood has been on the down grade. The grounds [p. 2] surrounding the old Palaces and Mansions were cut up into alleys on the most intricate and tortuous principle. The lanes and thoroughfares were of the narrowest, and the houses which were built had many of them projecting upper stories, such as are to be seen in old prints, through which people could shake hands. Its reputation grew to be of the worst possible character. Thieves made it their sanctuary, and the police were chary of tracking them to their lairs. Within a stone's throw of the Old Black Jack was that most ill-conditioned of all London places, Chapel Court, which for years rejoiced in the name of `Murder Alley,' so evil was its reputation. The changes that have followed since the building of the New Law Courts was begun, have done away with this and many other places of little better repute. But even now much remains to show how intricate these passages were, while the legend is still extant that the ghost of a young man from the country is to be met on foggy nights wandering about in a vain search for the Strand.

At the recent sale of effects of the Inn there were sold relics both of Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard, sufficiently well attested to fetch prices far above their intrinsic value. They included a whip of the one and a cast shoe of the horse of the other, the shoe being the one alleged to have been cast on the journey to York. But Harrison Ainsworth surrounded the career of Turpin with so many mythical circumstances-the ride to York was borrowed from the life of a knight of the road of lesser repute-that one is sceptical as to the relics; at all events, as far as he is concerned. It may, however, be accepted as [p. 3] beyond dispute that about the year 1731 Dick Turpin-whose real name, by the bye, was Jack Palmer-was a regular customer at the Black Jack, though his chief rendezvous was at a tavern in Drury Lane, believed to be the Cock and Pye. His habit was to hire a horse-Black Bess was evidently a phantom steed-at the Old Leaping Bar in High Holborn, and ride out to Oxford Road (now Oxford Street), then a lonely and desolate region, and there waylay his victims, almost under the very shadow of the triple gallows at Tyburn. Among other relics sold at the same time were the table at which Louis Napoleon (who subsequently became Napoleon III). sat when served with a writ for debt, and the chair on which. he sat. There was also the chair on which Joe Miller sat night after night, to be the butt of the jokes of the real author of the Joe Millerisms handed down to prosterity as emanating from him; the ascribing of them to this dull, witless fellow, who sat there night after night without opening his mouth, having been designedly the biggest joke of all. There is a tradition that Charles II., in his tavern frequenting days, was also a constant visitor of mine host at the Black Jack ; but, unfortunately for the relic-hunters, there was no piece of furniture connected with his visits.

Jack Sheppard is associated with the place by an event which caused a temporary change of the name of the Inn. This was when in 1741 Sheppard, on his marvellous escape from the condemned cell at Newgate, having got rid of his fetters in a private house in Holborn, first visited the Cock and Pye in Drury Lane, and not finding any of his associates [p. 4] there, went on to the Black Jack. He had not been there long, and was in the act of drinking his first glass of ale at the bar, when the word was passed that Jonathan Wild and his men were at the door. Dashing upstairs with the runners after him, Sheppard burst open the door of the front room on the first floor, banged it to in the faces of his pursuers, opened, the window, and leaping into the street, bounded away, unhurt, across country and escaped for the time. In consequence of this the place was known as the Jump, and it was not until years afterwards that it reverted to its original title. Though he got free at the time, Sheppard could not keep away from his old haunts; and Wild being laid up by the effects of a savage attack made on him in the Old Bailey by a prisoner in the dock, in presence of judge and jury, he visited the Jump, with impunity. One night, however, when he was there with two women, he sent for his mother, and together they drank so much brandy that by twelve o'clock Sheppard was helpless. Wild, leaving his sick bed on obtaining information of the whereabouts of the notorious criminal, easily effected his capture and took him back to Newgate,where the enormously heavy fetters, still perserved there as Jack Sheppard's were fastened on him, leaving him no chance of again breaking out. Sixteen days afterwards he was hanged at Tyburn.

As to the attempt which has been made to connect the Old Black Jack with the Magpie and Stump, which Mr. Pickwick visited when in search of Mr. Perker's clerk, it is unnecessary to say much Dickens was undoubtedly acquainted with the place, and the late landlord remembered his frequent visits. But [p. 5] there is another house in the neighbourhood which is considered to answer the description better. This is the George the Fourth, in Portugal Street, and those who favour this. as the original of the Magpie and Stump point to the fact that, as the house is a very old one, it must have had another name before the time of the last of the Georges. Why, they ask triumphantly, should it not have been the Magpie and Stump? If this is not conclusive, at least no one has yet been discovered who knows to the contrary. [p. 6]

This text is based on the following book(s):
Unknown London; its romance and tragedy. Pratt, Alfred T. Camden. London. Neville Beeman Limited. 1896.

This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.