[12]Household Words, Christmas Number, 1852.
[13]“David Copperfield,” chap. iv.
[14]Ibid.
[15]“Great Expectations,” chap. xix.
[16]All the Year Round, June 30, 1860.
[17]Vide “St. Pancras, Past and Present,” by Frederick Muller, 1874.
[18]To Mr. R. B. Prosser (editor of St. Pancras Notes and Queries) I am indebted for much useful information respecting the early London homes of Charles Dickens. He has discovered that in the parish rate-book for October 8, 1823, the name of John Dickens appears as the tenant of No. 16, Bayham Street, and also at No. 18; in the next rate-book (January 21, 1824) No. 16 is marked “empty.” In 1866 the Metropolitan Board of Works renumbered Bayham Street (then consisting of about a hundred and fifty houses), incorporating therewith Bayham Street South and Fleming Place.
[19]The Fox-under-the-Hill stood at the foot of Ivy Bridge Lane, which formed a boundary between Westminster City and the Liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster (Savoy). Between Salisbury Stairs (adjoining the little tavern) and London Bridge there plied three halfpenny steamboats, named respectively the Ant, the Bee, and the Cricket, whereof the latter two came to an untimely end. The building of the Hotel Cecil has wiped out Cecil and Salisbury Streets, and entirely transformed this locality, including the destruction of the quaint ale-house itself.
[20]Possibly a mistake of the rate-collector. The name Roylance is not uncommon in the district.
[21]In 1820 Seymour Street, with the site of Euston Square Station, was a huge brick-field, with a solitary “wine vaults” stuck in the middle of it.