Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 2
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter XXXIII: Coldbath Fields and Spa Fields.
Chapter XXXIII: Coldbath Fields and Spa Fields.
The original here was built in the reign of James I., the city being then no longer large enough to hold the teeming vagabonds of London. | |
The oldest portion of the [extra_illustrations.2.298.1] now standing was built on a swamp, in , at an expense of , and large additions have from time to time been made. For a long time after it was rebuilt, Coldbath Fields had a reputation for severity. In Gilbert Wakefield, the classic, expressed a morbid horror of it; and Coleridge and Southey, many years later, in published their opinion that it exceeded hell itself, as a place of punishment:--
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In Thistlewood and the other Cato Street conspirators were lodged here, before being sent to the Tower. At present the prison has proper accommodation for about prisoners, though many more are sometimes thrust into it, causing great confusion. | |
The prison, built on [extra_illustrations.2.299.1] of the benevolent Howard's, soon became a scene of great abuses. Men, women, and boys were herded together in this chief county prison, and smoking and drinking were permitted. The governor of the day strove vigorously to reform the hydra abuses, and especially the tyranny and greediness of the turnkeys. years later he introduced stern silence into his domain.
says. Mr. Pinks,
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This desolate prison has made a solitude of the immediate neighbourhood, but not far off brassfounders, grocers' canister makers, and such like abound. | |
The dismal Bastille has frequently been enlarged. In a vagrants' ward for prisoners was added, and shortly afterwards a female ward for inmates. Coldbath Fields is now devoted to male prisoners alone, the females having been removed from it to Prison in . The treadmill finds labour for prisoners at a time and grinds flour. The ordinary annual charge for each prisoner is estimated at The Report of the Inspector of Prisons for speaks of the Coldbath Fields cells as too crowded and badly ventilated, the prisoners being sometimes or in excess of the number of cells, and sleeping either in hammocks slung too close together in dormitories, or, still worse, on the floors of workshops, only a short time before emptied of the working inmates. | |
John Hunt, Leigh Hunt's brother, was imprisoned here for a libel, in the , on the Prince Regent, the afterwards George IV. Mr. Cyrus Redding, Campbell's friend, used to come and chat and play chess with him. He had a lofty and comfortable, though small apartment at the top of the prison. Townsend, the old runner, the terror of highwaymen, was the governor at the time. Hunt had the privilege from the kind, shrewd old officer, of walking for a couple of hours daily in the governor's gardens. | |
says Mr. Dixon, writing about this prison in , | |
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derives its chief name, says Mr. Pinks, from a celebrated cold bath, the best known in London, fed by a spring which was discovered by a Mr. Baynes, in . The active discoverer declared the water had great power in nervous diseases, and equalled those of St. Magnus and St. Winnifred. In Mr. Baynes's advertisement in the he asserts that his cold bath The bath is described as The bathing-hours were from a.m. to , the charge , unless the visitor was so infirm as to need to be let down into this Cockney Pool of Bethesda in a chair. Mr. Baynes died in , and was buried in the old church of St. James's. He was originally a student of the Middle Temple, and was for years treasurer of St. James's Charity School. The old bath-house was a building with gables, and had a large garden with turret summer-houses. In the trustees of the London bought | |
p.300 | the property for , but, being driven away by the frightened inhabitants, the ground was sold for building, the bath remaining. |
In , near the Cold Bath, Eustace Budgell, a relation of Addison, resided in . [extra_illustrations.2.300.1] , who wrote many articles in the was pushed into good Government work by his kinsman, Addison, but eventually ruined himself by the South Sea Bubble and litigation. Budgell having helped Dr. Tindal in the publication of of his infidel works, was in consequence left by the doctor . There arose, however, a suspicion of fraud, and the will was set aside. Pope did not forget the scandal, in attacking his enemies- This disgrace seems to have turned Budgell's brain. He took a boat, -day, at Somerset Stairs, having filled his pockets with stones, and vainly tried to decoy his little daughter with him. While the boat was shooting Budgell leaped out, and was drowned. Budgell's best epigram was on some persons who danced detestably to good music- | |
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In this same square, for monotonous years, also lived [extra_illustrations.2.301.1] , as she was generally called, who died in , aged, as was asserted, years. She seldom went out, and still more seldom saw visitors. In changeless stagnant stream her wretched life flowed on. says Mr. Pinks,
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says Mr. Pinks, | |
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About -- Spa Fields seems to have been much infected by sneaking footpads, who knocked down pedestrians passing to and from London, and despoiled them of hats, wigs, silver buckles, and money. It was about this dangerous time that link-boys were in constant attendance at the door of Sadler's Wells, to light persons home returning by the lonely fields to the streets of , Clerkenwell, or . The lessees of the theatre constantly put at the foot of their bills, as a special inducement to timid people. Mr. Britton says, in his autobiography,
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At Whitsuntide there was annually held in these fields a fair generally known in London as or A field on which the south side of is built was from this reason distinguished in old maps as The grand course for horse and donkey racing was where and are now built. The fair is mentioned as early as , about which time it was removed to Barnet. | |
In appeared in the the following notice of sports which took place in Spa Fieds :-- | |
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The Ducking-pond Fields, Clerkenwell Fields, Spa Fields, and Pipe Fields, were and the same place, under different names. The oldest of these names was. the , which applied especially to the district surrounding Spa Fields Chapel, and extending to the northward. The Pipe Fields were so called from the wooden pipes (merely elm-trees perforated) of the Company mentioned by Britton about the close of last century. | |
The building, afterwards [extra_illustrations.2.303.1] , on the south side of , was originally opened in , as a place of public amusement. The as it was called, soon became disreputable. It is described by a contemporary as a large round building crowned by a statue of Fame. In the inside were galleries. There was a garden with fancy walks, classical statues, and boxes for tea-parties, wine-drinkers, and negussippers. The company, as might be supposed, consisted chiefly of small tradesmen, apprentices, dressmakers, servant-girls, and disreputable women. This building had been preceded by a small country inn, with swinging sign, and a long railed--in pond, where citizens used to come and send in their water-dogs to chase ducks. In this ducking-pond children were drowned in , while playing on the ice. The Spa Fields Pantheon proprietor became bankrupt in , and the house and gardens, which had cost the speculator , were sold. | |
In [extra_illustrations.2.303.2] , consulted Toplady as to purchasing the Pantheon for a chapel, but was dissuaded from the attempt. It was then taken by a company, and opened as a Church of England chapel, in , but the Rev. William Sellon, incumbent of St. James's, Clerkenwell, being refused the pew-rents, compelled the proprietors to close it. Eventually the Countess of Huntingdon purchased it, but Mr. Sellon again obtained a verdict in a law-court, and stopped all further services. The countess then turned it into a Dissenting chapel, and of her curates seceded from the Established Church, and took the oath of allegiance as Dissenting ministers. The Gordon rioters of threatened to destroy it, but did not, when they heard it belonged to the good countess. Shrubsole, the organist in the Spa Fields Chapel, was the composer of that beautiful hymn, The Rev. T. E. Thoresby accepted the pastorate in . The fine building will hold more than persons, and was for many years of the wealthiest and most influential Dissenting chapels in London. | |
The Spa Fields Charity School was established in by the good countess before mentioned, and new school-rooms were built in on the site of the countess's garden. | |
The Countess of Huntingdon herself lived in a large house covered with jasmine, once a part of the old Pantheon tea-gardens, and standing on the east side of the chapel. This lady, who did so much to benefit a godless age, was born in (Queen Anne), and died in (George III.) She married the Earl of Huntingdon in . Both by birth and marriage she was connected, says her chaplain, Dr. Haweis, with English kings. Her profound impressions of religion seem to have commenced in early infancy, at the funeral of a child of her own age. A severe illness in later life, and conversation with her sister-in-law, Lady Margaret Hastings, a convert to Methodism, still more affected her. She went to court, but soon married a serious nobleman, and devoted herself to her true profession--not the mere encouragement of milliners, but the study of doing good. | |
says Mr. Pinks,
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The countess having opened her house in for religious services, [extra_illustrations.2.304.1] and Romaine preached in her drawing-room to the great and fashionable. She began to build chapels at Brighton, Bath, Tunbridge Wells, and elsewhere, and also established a training-college in South Wales. Altogether, she either built or helped to build chapels, and is supposed to have expended in charity, though for many years she lived on a small jointure of a year. The countess seems to have been a truly excellent and sensible woman, but with a warmtempered prejudice, and with a true aristocratic dislike to opposition. says her chaplain,
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Great , Coldbath Fields, where Topham, the Strong Man of , exhibited his feats of strength in , was built about . On the sale of the Jervoise estate, in , this property was sold for . At No. in this street that extraordinary man of science and dreamer, Emanuel Swedenborg, resided towards the end of his life, and died there in . A short sketch of this philosopher will not be uninteresting, as his works are still read but by few. | |
This great was the son of a Swedish bishop, and was born in . As a child his thoughts turned chiefly on religion. At the University of Upsala the lad steadily studied the classical languages, mathematics and natural philosophy, and at the age of took his degree as a doctor of philosophy, and published his essay. In the young student came to London, when the plague prevailed in. Sweden, and narrowly escaped being hung for breaking the quarantine laws. He spent some time at Oxford, and then went abroad for years, living chiefly in Utrecht, Paris, and Griefswalde. He returned to Sweden in through Stralsund, which that valiant madman, Charles XII., was just then besieging. Introduced to the chivalrous king in , he was made Assessor to the Board of Mines. During the siege of Frederickshall Swedenborg He now devoted years to the production of works on mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and mineralogy. He retired from his office of assessor in , and probably then returned to his theological contemplations, and became again a Spiritualistic dreamer. He came from Amsterdam to London in , and resided at Shearsmith's, a peruke-maker's, No. , Great , Coldbath Fields, where he finished his Towards the end of the year Dr. Hartley and Mr. Cookworthy visited him in Clerkenwell. says Mr. Pinks, | |
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Swedenborg professed to the last the entire truth of all his strange revelations of heaven and hell, and died on the day he had predicted to Wesley. | |
p.305 | After lying in state for several days at the undertaker's, he was buried in the Lutheran Chapel, , , and his coffin lies by the side of that of Captain Cook's friend, Dr. Solander, the naturalist. |
says Mr. Pinks,
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Soon after Spa Fields Chapel was opened, in , some speculators leased of the Marquis of Northampton the acres of ground in the rear of the building, and converted it into a general burying-ground. The new cemetery, embedded among houses, was intended to bring in a pretty penny, as it was calculated to have room for adults, but it soon began to fill at the rate of bodies annually, there being sometimes burials a day. In years it was carefully computed that interments had taken place in this pestilential graveyard! in some terrible disclosures began to ooze out, proving the shameless greediness of the human ghouls who farmed the Spa Fields burial-ground. It was found that it was now the nightly custom to exhume bodies and burn the coffins, to make room for fresh arrivals. To make the new grave or bodies were actually chopped up, and corpses recently interred were frequently dragged up by ropes, so that the coffin might be removed and split up for struts to prop up the new-made graves. Bodies were sometimes destroyed after only days' burial. A grave-digger who, being discharged, insisted on removing the body of his child, which had been recently interred, declared that he and his mates had buried as many as bodies in day, besides still-borns. In year they had had funerals, and the stones of families who had purchased graves in perpetuity were frequently displaced and destroyed. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood then petitioned Parliament, complaining of the infectious smells from the burialground, and of the shameful scandal generally. | |
says the historian of Clerkenwell,
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was erected, says Mr. Pinks, in , and was famous for its old public-house, the at the south-east corner. It was a favourite resort of prisoners discharged from the neighbouring , Topham, the Strong Man, already mentioned by us in our chapter on , once kept the The favourite tap-room joke was, that the bell-pulls were handcuffs; and when a guest wished a friend to ring the bell for the barman, he shouted,
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Crawford's Passage, or Pickled Egg Walk, is a small lane, leading from into , rejoicing in certainly a very eccentric name. Half-way up stands a small public-house known as the from a Dorsetshire or Hampshire man, who here introduced to his customers a local delicacy. It is said that Charles I., during of his suburban journeys, once stopped here to taste a pickled egg, which is said to be a good companion to cold meat. There was a wellknown cockpit here in . There were kinds of this ancient but cruel amusement, which is now only carried on by thieves and low sporting men in sly nooks of London; was called the and the other the In the former a certain number of cocks were let loose to fight, the survivor of the contest being accounted the victor, and obtaining the prize; in the latter, which was more cruel, the conquerors fought again and again, till there was only survivor, and he became or pet of the pit. | |
p.306 | |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.2.298.1] Coldbath Fields Prison [extra_illustrations.2.299.1] a plan [extra_illustrations.2.300.1] Budgell [extra_illustrations.2.301.1] Mrs. Lewson, or Lady Lewson [extra_illustrations.2.303.1] Spa Fields Chapel [extra_illustrations.2.303.2] Selina, the zealous Countess of Huntingdon [extra_illustrations.2.304.1] Whitefield |