The Days of Footpads

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Days of Footpads

I There is some talk of the last of the 'little houses in Kniglitsbridgo going I tinder and more new and, of course, "palatial", flats arising in their stead, gays a writer in the Evening News, London. ! Happily this, as I understand, is hut an affair of propositions, and for some months at any-rate there may still be enough of antiquity left to remind us of what must have been formerly q"i te ono of tlie most u sly (as it was, perhaps, the most romantic) •of London's outliers. As far as history tells us, Kniglitsbridgo seems to have been famous originally chiefly for its rowdy inns and its footpads. The place began, thev say, with a "shindy" between two knights, who tried to cross tho stone bridge where now is tho Albert Gate, and mutually declined to say: "After you, sir." One knight, indeed, grabbed the other by tho cloak; and then the pair of them fell to and cut each other's throats. So they called it Knight's Bridge and dragged the warrior's bodies from tho river Wcstbourne, which flowed below it, just as though they had been dead cats drowned by • village urchins. Quagmire Road That was tho beginning of quite a i j 0 t of throat-cutting in far from pleasant surroundings. For centuries that little river valley had led to a very oasis upon the muddy road to Kensington. Even in 1780 a writer could complain that thero was not a house between Hyde Park Corner and Sloano Street, and the roadway itself remained a quagmire throughout tho reign of ihe Georges. Did not Lord Hervev write to his mother ia 1736 and declare that between Kingsington and London there was a great gulf fixed, so that peoplo living beyond Knightsbridge might as veil have been marooned upon some ■desolate rock of the Ocean? And oven William HI. himself could hardly drive Tupon the "King's Road" from Kensington to St. James' without getting lis mouth full of mud. Naturally, this hollow with the pitiSnl village beyond it quickly attracted tha gangsters of the seventeenth and «ghteentK 'centuries. The neighbour-

4ng cemeteries must have been full of their bones. In 1687 Thomas Ridge, of Portsmouth, was killed by "Jobbers" tight at the heart of Knightsbridge. John Evelyn, in 1699, tells us that there were many lights between London and Kensington,, but, nevertheless, "that robberies were of frequent occurrence while the people looked on, just as some do to-day when "smash and grabbers" throw motor-tyres through ahop windows. In 1740 the Bristol Mail was robbed a little beyond the famous bridge by a cool fellow, who did not hurry about "the business, but rode away on a postilion's horse when ho had mad© an •end of it. - The obverse of the medal shows us a capital picture of one of London's lAldermen being .attacked by a footpad jand promptly drawing his sword and •sticking his assailant in the ribs. Posiibly he said, "That's the stuff to give 'em"; and stuff it was, for they threw the footpad's body into the common sewer without any further ceremony whatever. These diversions were not the only amusement of tho mild inhabitants of (that village of sin. The inns, particularly tho Swan, appear to have had a reputation. Thero was no Tadio to help -tho outraged parent of (those days, and all ho could do was to lisend round tho Town Crier to mako (inquires for wayward children. "The Genial Mr. Grant" So bad was tho talk about tho village that Otway had it in his comedy "Tho Soldier's Fortune," where Sir Davy Dunce had missed tho angel of hia house and thinks sho might bo Away to Knightsbridge with somo iraseal or tho other: " 'Tis a bad houso ihat Swan —the Swan at Knightsbridge Js a confounded liquso."

Later on in tho nineteenth century, tfe find Knightsbridge exporting other footpads; but they dealt on the Stock ■Exchango, and one of them, tho genial •Mr. Grant, was made a Baron. The Stock Exchange, wo remember, was delighted by. this honour conferred Bpon one bt its members,, and some >ag celebrated it in verse.

"Kings can titles give, but honour ||p' can't. Ifei' A titlo without honour is a Baron (Grant."

LONDON'S "GANGSTER" VILLAGE

This fellow went an awful smash, of course, and he never lived at the great house ho built on the outskirts of Kensington. The place stood almost exactly opposite the entrance to Kensington Palace, and when it was demolished Madame Tussaud's bought the famous marblo staircase supported by Caryatides. Destructive Fire I went a little way up that staircase the day after the fire at Tussaud's, and it was still covered in tho wax which had flowed down it in streams when that lamentablo blaze destroyed the whole building above and with it Napolean relics that were priceless. The second footpad lived some 30 years or more before this Man of Honour, and was a far better fellow. Hudson tho " Railway King," they called him, and he certainly made the railways hum for a decade or more. There is a picturo of him in all his glory showing Her Majesty Queen Victoria into a railway carriage at the time that peoplo said it was dreadfully dangerous to travel by rail. Hudson was then at tho top of his form, dealing in millions and covering the whole country with railways—on paper. Part of his fortune he spent on a huge house standing where the great Thames Yacht Club stands now.

They had opened tho Albert Gate by that time and decided that the Westbourne was not a sylvan stream that would have moved Wordsworth to tears. So .they fished out the dead dogs and lpado the thing a sewer—as it is today, though its exit from the Serpentine is pretty enough. Shelley's First Wife

Shelley's first wife, as we all know, drowned herself in the Serpentine. She was a pretty little thing, and if she had not too much virtue, neither had he. Her body must have been carried over one of the two bridges which then spanned! the Westbourne and taken to another of Knightsbrid£e's old inns, the Foj: and Bull, which stood a little way up the road toward Kensington. The Royal Humane Society then used that inn for its dead, and there was no George Lansbury to tell you the depth of the " Great Water." In consequence, many people must have

been carried to the Fox and Bull, where the only artificial respiration known was that of the watermen's gasps between their draughts of ale. Generally speaking, Knightsbridge appears to have retained its rural aspect long after Kensington had parted with some of its solitudes. Cabbages seem to have been the chief ornament of wide acres from the Brompton Road all the way to Hammersmith. Perhaps the coming of Tattersall's in 1863 first really roused the villagers from their torpor. All sorts of ordinary things had happened by that time. There were shops most of the way from Hyde Park Corner to tho villago green, and you could no longer get married while you waited at the chapel halfway down the hill. The Old Tattemll's But Tattersall's was another affair altogether.' It was moved to its present abiding plact> in 1865, coming from Grosvenor Place and bringing with it the pump with the fox's head and the bust of' George IV., who, they tell us, used to visit the old Tattersall's almost every day. . Perhaps that great and noble sportsman was looking for the kind of tipster who has " nevot- told you a lie I met one at Ascot the last time I was there and he was most affronted when I doubted his veracity. But, by all accounts, they put a good many wrong 'uns on to George Rex—though do not let us forget that he beat the Royal record to Brighton, according to hia own account —and not a policeman on the route to take his name and number! A last memory of this odd little place concerns the sagacity of women in Georgian dayp. They always put their money and their watches and purses into their stockings before descending the hill of Knightsbridgo and crossing its catty river. This would seem to say that their jewels wcro more genuine than their hearts; or it may have been merely womanly prudenco in a day when it was difficult to insure your " almostpearls." '