September 2023 Speaker
Our September meeting was attended by 35 people with another 10 joining on Zoom.
Apologies to those who turned up expecting to hear a talk entitled 'Skeletons in their Cupboards'. Unfortunately, our planned speaker Margaret Mills wasn’t able to attend at last minute, as she was stuck waiting for the RAC in Basildon after her car broke down. So Jean our Speaker Secretary gave a talk on 'The Secrets of Covent Garden' instead.
Today’s Covent Garden is a place to shop, drink, eat and see street performers. But it has a long and salubrious history.
Once known as the port of Lundenwic in Saxon times, it has had multiple incarnations through the centuries: from a garden plot for the monks of Westminster Abbey (originally known as Convent Garden, where planting was done on a Long Acre of land); a public fruit and vegetable market; a residential area for affluent Londoners in 1600s; a red-light district full of ladies of ill-repute; a seedy crime hot-spot; a flourishing flower market and the home of London’s West End theatre district. We heard how Moss Bros, the famous suit-hire business began, why a popular lunchtime meal was conceived and about a pub once named The Bucket of Blood. We heard about the first English performance of Punch and Judy outside the Actors Church, and how London’s very first police force, the Bow Street Runners came to be.
The Covent Garden area has many theatres, the most famous being the Royal Opera House which people refer to as Covent Garden, and the oldest which is the Theatre Royal, in nearby Drury Lane.
In Georgian times, London contained 50,000 ladies of the night, which was about one in 10 of the total female population. For the more distinguished gentlemen clients, Covent Garden theatres were built with 'retiring rooms' connected to the boxes for ‘extra entertainment’ whilst they enjoyed an evening out at the theatre.
A publication was produced entitled Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. The pocketbook was priced at 2/6d and included biographical details of each lady together with a description of their appearance, personality, their speciality and their charge. It sold a quarter of a million copies between 1757 and 1795. For those interested, the book is still available on Amazon and in all good bookshops, although sadly the price has gone up!
The talk also featured Rules restaurant, said to be the oldest in London and is still going strong. As well as serving top notch food, it was also where illicit candlelit liaisons took place between Edward VII and Lillie Langtry and more recently where scenes from James Bond 'Spectre’ and Downton Abbey were filmed. Boris Johnson is said to be a patron.
For those wishing to do the Covent Garden walk, there is a map showing the various places of interest that were in the talk.