Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/231

 n s. i. MAR. 19, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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"THE FORTUNE OF WAR 5 ' AND "THE NAKED BOY."

ALTHOUGH these two signs distinguish the same tavern, No. 4, Giltspur Street, there is no necessary connexion between them other than that the latter became associated with the former, owing probably to the circumstance of a pensioned or retired soldier setting up the soldier's sign of "The Fortune of War' 2 when he became the landlord of the house. It had probably been known as ' ' The Naked Boy " even before the Great Fire, for the stories con- cerning its connexion with that disaster are twaddle.

The old tavern near Pie Corner is at last to be pulled down, and has in fact already closed its doors. It had the ghoulish reputa- tion of being the chief " house of call "~ for the " resurrectionists,'' or those who rifled graves for bodies to sell for dissection to the surgeons of "Bart's" close by. The room used to be shown, years ago, where, on benches round the walls, the bodies thus obtained by the snatchers were placed, duly labelled with their names, and awaiting the appraisement of the surgeons. And it was here that John Bishop met his accomplice Williams to plan the drowning of the Italian boy Ferrari in 1831, in order to dispose of his body for dissection whence to " bishop, 22 in criminal parlance, became synonymous for drowning a person.

An exquisite coloured Bunbury represents an elegant young officer attempting, with the aid of the drill-sergeant, but with ludicrous results, to get three very awkward recruits in line. This occurs outside a "Fortune of War 22 public -house ; but whether that in Giltspur Street is the one depicted is perhaps doubtful, although Pie Corner was probably a fine place for recruiting.

"The Naked Boy 22 and "The Naked were both signs suggesting the

Man

purchase of clothing, and there is sufficient evidence that when a clothier hung out the sign, he intended to intimate his readiness to provide with habiliments those in need <>t them. In the MS. memoranda of William Herbert, the typographical anti- quary, is the following :

I n member very well, when I was a lad, Being in Windmill Street, Moorfields, a taylor's So fickle is our English nation, 1 wou'd be clothed if I knew the fashion."
 * II:M. a naked boy with this couplet :

"A Book of the Introduction of Knowledge the whych doth teach a Man to speak Part of all Manner of Language,' by Andrew Borde.... Before that which treats of the English is a figure of a man naked, having a bundle of cloth under his arm, and a pair of shears in his hand. Below are some verses beginning thus :

I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, Musing in my mind what rayment I shall wear. Annotations of Ames's ' Typographical Antiquities.'

This being so, one can hardly think that the figure of a Naked Boy at Pie Corner, which was supposed by a Puritan minister to have represented the sin of gluttony, did anything of the kind. Mr. Wheatley inad- vertently fosters this notion when he* describes the boy as having ' ' his arms across- his stomach 22 (v. ' Pie Corner 2 in ' London Past and Present 2 ). The boy's arms, how- ever, are not across the stomach, but folded over the chest in the usual way. I have a copy, made from, I think, a drawing in the Archer Collection ; but at all events the same thing may be seen in Pennant's ' London 2 (? by J. T. Smith).

There was formerly a tradition in the gastronomic neighbourhood of Pie Corner that a mischievous boy living in Pudding Lane was refused a cake by his mother, whereupon he set fire to the house and ran away, the fire following him to Pie Corner, where he was overtaken by a citizen and thrown into the flames, thus atoning for the sin of gluttony. Although the Great Fire did in reality begin at Pudding Lane, this absurd tale must have been suggested by the names of the places where it began and ended, since Stow says that Pie Corner was a place so called of such a sign, some- time a fair inn for receipt of travellers, but in 1603 (over sixty years before the Fire) " divided into tenements. 22 And Lord Clarendon in his ' Autobiography 2 makes not the slightest allusion to any such bad boy, whose story is a trumped-up one, like that of the ' ' naughty boy who went for a row on Sunday and got drowned.' 2

More could be said about the Naked Boy, but space disallows (cf . * The Naked Boy and Coffin,* 10 S. iii. 67, 156). He was certainly adopted by other trades, albeit for different reasons, especially by the coachmakers, in allusion probably to the classic story of Phaeton and the chariot of the Sun, the crest of the Coachmakers' Company being the figure of Phcebus driving the chariot of the Sun or, drawn by four horses argent, harnessed, reined, and bridled of the second.

J, HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.