Lost London by Richard Guard Read Free Book Online Page A

the street in the arms of a lady of ill-repute was much bandied about and angry voices were raised in Parliament on the matter.
    Indeed, no doubt some illicit matches did take place, against the will of one or other of the parties. But judging from the number of unions made (estimated to be almost 250,000 in just sixty
years up to 1753), it seems more likely that the ability to marry without parental consent – thatis to say, to marry who you wanted, rather than who they wanted –
might well have been the commoner motivation. Records show that in the four months up to 12 February 1705 alone, almost 3,000 marriages took place.
    The Liberties of the Fleet in many ways resembled Las Vegas of today, a notorious area famed for debauchery and where the reach of the law was restricted. A campaign led by Lord Hardwicke
eventually resulted in the Marriage Act of 1753, which finally put an end to the practise in England and Wales.

Fleet Prison

    Blackfriars
    S TANDING ON THE EAST BANK OF THE F LEET River on the site of the current Blackfriars Railway Station, this prison was first
recorded in 1171. The office of Keeper was a hereditary post handed down through the Leveland family from 1197 to 1538.
    The job offered opportunity for hideous abuses, with the Keeper entitled to raise levies on prisoners for almost everything, from food and lodging to privileges. Inmates could
also pay to be released for short periods and many escaped.
    Very unpopular among the public, the prison was burnt down during both the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and the Gordon Riots of 1780. In between, it was ravaged by the 1666 Great Fire of
London. Although nominally a debtors’ prison, the Fleet was used in the 14th century to incarcerate those condemned by the King’s Council and the Court of Chancery, as well as those
convicted by the Court of the Star Chamber between Henry VIII ’s reign and 1641.
    In 1691 a prisoner named Moses Pitt wrote Cry of the Oppressed about his experiences at Fleet, in which he revealed the full extent of his degradations. Instead of the regulation 4s flat
fee, he was charged £2 4 S 6 D to be housed in the ‘gentleman’s side’ and paid a further 8s a week for his room. Having run out
of money after sixteen months, he was thrown in a dungeon to sleep on the floor with twenty-seven otherinmates ‘so lowsie, that as they either walked or sat down, you
might have pick’d lice off from their outward garments’.
    A Parliamentary inquiry in 1726 found the then Keeper, Thomas Bambridge, guilty ‘of great extortions, and the highest crimes and misdemeanours in the execution of his said office’,
treating prisoners ‘in a most barbarous and cruel manner’. New rules were imposed but in reality little changed for the unfortunates held at Fleet. Charles Dickens described in vivid
detail life within its walls in the 1830s in The Pickwick Papers. The prison was closed in 1842 and demolished four years later.
Fleet River

    A LTHOUGH THE F LEET R IVER HAS ENTIRELY disappeared from above ground, its source is still visible and,
    weather permitting, you may even swim in it still.
    It rises in Hampstead Heath and fills the ponds from Kenwood House down through the heath towards Kentish Town (a name possibly derived from ‘Ken Ditch Town’). The
Fleet’s upper reaches were long famed for their health-giving waters, though the same could not be said for its lower reaches.
    The river’s ancient valley followed the route of Kentish Town Road, then St Pancras Way, Kings Cross Road, Phoenix Place and Warner Street, before joining Farringdon Road and Farringdon
Street, then flowing into the Thames at Blackfriars. The Fleet marked the western limit of the Romancity boundaries and was deep enough for navigation as far as Holbourne
Bridge until the 1500s, when it fell foul of rapid urban expansion and a population explosion.
    The once-proud river turned into little more than a repellent ditch blocked with filth, offal and