FLEET STREET IN OLDEN TIMES.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12497, 25 March 1909, Page 3

FLEET STREET IN OLDEN TIMES.

It is difficult to realise that Fleet Street — to-day the home of the journalist, the author, and the printer, Aras once a place of shows and mir- ! acles too literally beggar description. .In the reign of Queen Anne, the wonders of Fleet Stret were at their height, and the result was a collection of curiosities similar to those which, in later days, gained temporary notoriety at Olympia. At the "Eagle arid Child," a grocer's shop near Shoe-lane, was to be seen a child fourten years of age, eighteen inches high, without .thighs or legs. Daily also, were exhibited at Fleet bridge, "two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous creatures, an old she dromedary, seven feet high, and ten feet long, lately arrived from Tartary, with her young one, ' being the greatest wonders ever seen in the kingdom. • In 1710 there came to London a contortionist, who for a time drew crowds to witness his performances. He established, himself at the. "Duke of Marlborough's Head," as the greatest posture-master in Europe. He made his hips and shoulders meet together, laid his head upon the ground and turned his body round twice or thrice . without stirring his; feet from I the spot, and stood upon one leg and extended the other' in a perpendicular line half a ward above his head, besides many other postures. ! At the sign of "The Globe" there I was exhibited a German dwarf, who ' had no hands, legs, feet, or thighs. He was, however*, a man of many ac-. complishments. He could thead a needle,' shuffle, a pack of cards, play skittles, and write. How he achieved the latter was never known; but a well-authenticated specimen of his caligraphy is preserved among the Harleian MSS. -..-..- Apart. from these curiosities, the street was picturesque on accouiit qt its gabled houses, carved with quaint and grotesque patterns. Heraldry, in fact, . exhausted all its ingenuity to furnish emblems for the different trades. Lions, falcons, dragons, of. all sorts and colours, alternated with heads of John the Baptist, flying pigs, and hogs in armour. .