Review : The Stories Behind London's Streets.

One of the goals I had set myself this year was to read more. I initially didn’t want to put down a target but eventually decided to try for at least one book per month. Two weeks after starting my first book, I have completed The Stories Behind London’s Streets by Peter Thurgood.  

I purchased this book a few years ago and have referenced it in previous blog posts about Secret London but had not previously read it from cover to cover.

As the title suggests, the book tells the stories behind some of London’s most famous streets, the buildings on the streets and the people who lived and worked there, including Charles Dickens and Samuel Johnson.

Having grown up in London and visited many of the streets mentioned, I found this book fascinating. Many of the names and the stories featured were familiar, but the details added, enriched what I already knew and made me want to visit these places again to see them with new eyes and understanding.

The first newspaper to set up business in Fleet Street was The Daily Courant which started in March 1702. It consisted of news articles copied and pasted from European publications with a few items of local news. In 1785 it decided to spice things up a bit by reporting the murder of a young man who had become involved in another argument with a man on Fleet Street. The young man died after the other man slit his throat from ear to ear, almost taking off his head in the process.

Murder was not uncommon at that time, but serial killings were unheard of. However, what was to start became the stuff that books, films and musicals were based on. Not long after that murder, a young apprentice of 14yrs old was found dead at the back of St. Dunstan’s Church, his throat had also been slashed. Three days later, a second victim was found, murdered in the same way and in the following two weeks, three more bodies were found, all had been murdered and their throats slashed.

Around the same time that these murders were occurring, a young man opened a shop at 186 Fleet Street next door to St. Dunstan’s Church. No sooner had the man moved into the street, than the murders stopped – or at least no further bodies were found.

On the other side of St. Dunstan’s church there was another shop, the owner was a woman in her thirties who was forever looking out of the windows in the hope of catching some passing trade. Business was not doing well and she feared she would have to close if things didn’t improve.

The young man was having similar problems as he wasn’t getting the customers he had expected. Six weeks later however, both businesses were thriving. It seems the two had met by chance and entered into a partnership of crime together.

Their crimes were discovered when people at St. Dunstan’s church started complaining about awful smells which seemed to be coming from under the floors. The churchwarden contacted a friend who was a Bow Street Runner and together they entered the catacombs to investigate the smell. They eventually discovered a passageway with a number of rooms coming from it. 

The rooms were piled high with bodies - some of which were just skeletons, others were in various states of decomposition, but many with slices of flesh removed. Leaving the rooms they went back up the passageway and discovered that another passageway lead to both the young man’s shop and the woman’s shop.

The gruesome pair was none other than Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Margery Lovett whose shop was doing a roaring trade in meat pies made from the flesh of Todd’s victims, both were arrested and Sweeney Todd was taken from Newgate Prison and hung from a portable scaffold in front of thousands of people. Mrs Lovett escaped the gallows by killed herself by poisoning.

This was perhaps one of the more chilling stories in the book but it was also filled with a lot of historical information around various buildings that were destroyed during the Great Fire of London or the Blitz. It mentions what remains of various buildings and streets and so, when you are next in London, be sure to look out for them.

Next book: Alchemy, The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense by Rory Sutherland.