One of the most cherished items in the collection is what is described as “Fagin’s Kitchen,” the interior of a thieves’ kitchen brought from an old house on Saffron Hill, pulled down some years ago. You are shown “the frying-pan in which Fagin cooked Oliver’s sausages,” and “Fagin’s Chair,” together with an undoubted “jemmy” found under the flooring, and not identified with any Old Master in the art of burglary.
Down in the Vale of Health, on Hampstead Heath, the pilgrim in search of cooling drinks on dry and dusty public holidays may find a public-house museum that cherishes “one of Dick Turpin’s pistols”; a pair of Dr. Nansen’s glasses; a stuffed civet-cat; the helmet of one of the Russian Imperial Guard, brought from the battlefields of the Crimea; and the skull of a donkey said to have belonged to Nell Gwynne: a fine confused assortment, surely!
More serious, and indeed, of some importance, is the collection of preserved birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, originally founded by the East London Entomological Society, shown at the “Bell and Mackerel” in Mile End Road. The exhibition numbers 20,000 specimens in 500 separate cases.
In the same road may be found the public-house called “The 101,” containing an oil-painting of three quaint-looking persons, inscribed, “These three men dranke in this house 101 pots of porter in one day, for a wager.” The work of art is displayed in the bar, as an inducement to others to follow the example set by those champions; but the age of heroes is past.
CHAPTER V
TAVERN RHYMES AND INSCRIPTIONS
Beer has inspired many poets, and “jolly good ale and old” is part of a rousing rhyme; but much of the verse associated with inns runs to the hateful burden of “No Trust.” Thus, along one of the backwaters in Norwich city there stands the “Gate House” inn, displaying the following:
The sun shone bright in the glorious sky,
When I found that my barrels were perfectly dry.
They were emptied by Trust; but he’s dead and gone home,
And I’ve used all my chalk to erect him a tomb.