Johnson's Court a blind alley off Fleet Street was not named for Dr. Samuel Johnson although many persons believe so because Dr. Johnson lived here for a time on the site where No. 7 is now. The old "Monthly Magazine" had offices here in 1833, when Charles Dickens came and through the oaken doorway with uncertain hand dropped his first manuscript into the yawning opening of the letter box, that might or might not bring back good news.
At the head of Crane Court which opens out of Fleet Street is the spot selected by Sir Isaac Newton as "the middle of town and out of noise." Newton was president of the Royal Society and that body occupied the house from 1710 to 1762. The old house was burned in 1877 and a modern structure erected.
Fetter Lane evidently had an ill start taking its name from its early inhabitants the "Faitours" or beggars.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-West with its wondrous tower of fretwork is in Fleet Street close by Chancery Lane and is a restoration of 1831.
In Fleet Street opposite the gateway to the Temple once stood the old Cock Tavern which was swept away when Temple Bar was removed, and now exists in modern form close by on the south side. A cock is still the sign of the place, said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons. It is this tavern that Tennyson speaks of in his "Will Waterproof's Lyric":
Oh plump head waiter at The Cock
To which I most resort.
Samuel Pepys went often to the Cock Tavern, once with the elegant Mrs. Knipp and has left the record that they ate a lobster, sang and made merry until midnight—at which Mrs. Pepys was much annoyed.
Child's Bank close by the Temple Bar Griffin on the south side of Fleet Street, is the oldest of England's banking houses dating from the time of Charles I. when the first Francis Child, an apprentice to William Wheeler the goldsmith, married his master's daughter and by thrift and industry founded the fortunes of the great institution. The present bank stands on the site of the old Devil Tavern that for two hundred years was the haunt of men of letters. Here Ben Jonson had his social headquarters gathering around him in the famous Apollo Room wits of all degree.