Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/467

 12 s. ii. DEC. 9, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

461

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1916.

CONTENTS.-No. 50.

NOTES : Eighteenth-Century Fires in Cornhill, 461 Peel's Authorship of ' Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany,' 464 William King, LL.D., President of St. Mary Hall, Oxford Richardson Correspondence Anachronism in ' The Newcomes,' 467 St. Hilda Colds Transparent Bee-hives, 468.

QUERIES : An Artist's Signature : Thackeray and 'Punch ' Dick England Kanyette'468 Ibsen's ' Ghosts' and the Lord Chamberlain Rev. James Cbelsum Sir Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange Napoleon and Nicholas Girod Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries - Scotch Universities A Tartar's Bow, 469 Sargent: Duncan To Play " Crookern "Payne Family Verdigris Snakes and Music George Turberville, :470 Authors of Quota- tions Wanted, 471.

REPLIES : Mrs. Anne Dutton, 471 An English Army List, of 1740, 473 Author and Title Wanted Lost Poem by Kipling Marat : Henry Kingsley Col. J. S. William- son, 475 Edward Hayes George IV. and the Prerogative of Mercy 'Some Fruits of Solitude' Monastic Choir- Stalls, 476 Sheppard Family ' The London Magazine' Price : Heraldic Query Author Wanted Prize at Trinity College, Dublin, 477 Names of the Moon Bible and Salt Coloured Book- Wrappers " Yorker " Mayoral Trappings, 47S.

UOTES ON BOOKS :' Great Victorians: Memories and Personalities 'Reviews and Magazines.

Notices to Correspondents.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IN CORNHILL.

FIRES

FITZSTEPHEN, who wrote in Henry II. 's reign a eulogy of London, describes as its only pests " immodica (immoderata) stul- torum potatio et frequens incendium," and whilst a history of the frequent fires in London must be postponed to more spacious times, some brief notes as to the fires in Cornhill previous to 1800 may be of interest to the readers of ' N. & Q.'

Whether the fire of 1136, which started

in the house of one Alewarde, near London

Stone, and spread westwards to St. Paul's

and eastwards to Aldgate and old London

Bridge, damaged Cornhill or not, Stowe does

not relate ; but there is no doubt as to what

befell Cornhill in 1666. On Sept. 5 Pepys

walked into the City, and found Fenchurch

Street, Gracechurch Street, and Lombard

Street all in dust, and nothing left of the

Exchange but Sir Thomas Gresham's statue.

Evelyn records clambering through Cornhill

-with extraordinary difficulty over heaps of

yet smoking rubbish, and frequently mis- taking where he was. His Diary vividly portrays the awfulness of the catastrophe, which he likens to the destruction of Sodom, or the Day of Judgment.

Cornhill rose from its ashes, and seems for some eighty years to have enjoyed com- parative immunity from fires. In 1748 1765, and 1788, however, there were three disastrous outbreaks, and it is more especially to these that the present notes refer.

In the eighteenth century Cornhill pro- bably resembled the High and Market Streets which we still find in the smaller boroughs. It consisted almost entirely of shops (whose tenants lived over their premises), taverns, and coffee-houses, whilst the cross lanes were similarly occupied. It has always been one of the most important streets in the City ; near the east end of the Royal Exchange was the Conduit also used as a prison called the Tun. the site of which is marked by the present pump, to the cost of which the Sun, London, Royal Exchange, and Phoenix Fire Offices con- tributed; and at Cornhill's eastern end stood the famous Standard Conduit.

The fire of March 25, 1748, commenced at Eldridge's, a peruke - maker in Exchange Alley. It destroyed the south side of CoTnhill from where the Commercial Union now stands to St. Michael's Alley, and also all the property at rear thereof (Exchange Alley, Birchin Lane, Castle Court, and the west side of St. Michael's Alley and George Yard) to the back of the houses in Lombard Street. Notwithstanding the width of Corn- hill, some of the buildings on its other side were badly scorched, and the house on the east side of Finch Lane twice took fire. The offices of the London Assurance in Castle Court were burnt, though most of the records appear to have been saved ; and according to the plan three other insurance offices King's Insurance Office in Change Alley, and Fletcher's and Deacon's Insurance Offices in Birchin Lane were also burnt, but I can find no reference to these in Mr. Relton's book on ' Fire Insurance Com- panies ' or in Walford's ' Cyclopaedia.' Other notable properties destroyed were the Swan, Fleece, and the Three Tuns Taverns, and the following famous coffee- 1 ouses Toms', the Rainbow, Garraway's, Jonathan's, and the Jerusalem. No. 41 Cornhill, now the Union Discount Company's < ffices, the birthplace and property of the poet Gray, was included in the conflagration. It was insured for 500?., and Gray writes that he received indemnity in full, subject to a then