“Le cas advint au Plat d’etain
Emprès saint Pierre-des-Arsis.”[570]—Repues Franches.
Probably it was a very early sign for eating-houses.
The [Pump] is a common ale-house sign, and occurs as such on a token of Tooley Street, with the following lines:—
“The Pump runs cleer
Wh. Ale and Beer.”
which, as Mr Burn (Beaufoy Tokens) observes, may be a travesty of a verse in Histrio-Mastrix, 1610:—
“Yet a verse may run cleare,
That is tapt out of Beere.”
Another token belonging to Chick Lane, West Smithfield, represents a hand grasping the handle of a pump; and a publican in Old Swinford, who combines engineering with his trade, has a similar sign with the words, “Hands to the Pump.” In the reign of Charles I. there was a public-house, the Blue Pump, in Blackfriars, near the famous Hollands Leaguer. It represented a man, evidently a sailor, pumping with all his might, and the legend ran:—“Poor Tom’s last refuge.”[571] With the pump we may place the Bucket, which was the sign of a shop in Aldersgate Street, of which there are trades tokens extant, and the Tub, the name of a tavern in Jermyn Street, in the reign of Charles II., as appears from a letter sent, (not written, for she could not write,) by Nell Gwynn, from Windsor in 1684, to her milliner and factotum, addressed “To Madam Jennings, over against the Tub tavern in Jermyn Street, London.” Another utensil, the Dust-pan, is common with hardware shops. There is one in Islington, at a shop next to the house in which Charles Lamb lived; at night it is illuminated, and hence called the Illuminated Dust-pan. Lastly, there is the Hour-glass, a colossal specimen carved in wood, in Upper Thames Street, near All Hallows Church, and the Golden Jar, which was the sign of a china shop, as we see in the Country Journal, or Craftsman, for April 25, 1730, where Anne Cibber acquaints the public that she is removed from Charles Street to the Golden Jar in Tavistock Street, carrying on two trades which now are rarely associated in London, viz., “All sorts of chinaware, and the best teas, coffees, chocolate,” &c. Now-a-days the jars, painted red and green, are the usual oilman’s sign, representing those vessels in which oil is kept in Eastern countries, and in which Ali Baba’s forty thieves came to such an untimely end. Formerly oil used to be imported in this country in similar jars, hence their adoption as trade emblems.
We may close this chapter, not inappropriately with the Key, a sign once largely used, not only by locksmiths, as at present, but by all manners of shops; thus there was a celebrated tavern, at the corner of Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, circa 1690, and many others that could be mentioned. The Golden Key is named in an old advertisement, speaking of some sports and pastimes which many English gentlemen are now attempting to revive:—
“RICHARD FENNEY, Esquire of Alaxton in Leicestershire, about a forthnight since, lost a lanner from that place; she has neither Bells nor Varvels; she is a white Hawk, and her long feathers and sarcels are both in the blood. If any one give tidings thereof to Mr Lambert at the Golden Key, in Fleet Street, they shall have 40 shillings for their pains.”—Mercurius Publicus, August 30 to September 6, 1660.
The Lock and Key is a sign of a public-house in West Smithfield, and was, during the Commonwealth, that of a house in the parish of St Dunstan, belonging to Praise God Barebones, citizen and leather-seller of London. There is a MS. in the British Museum,[572] containing a petition of Barebones against Elisabeth and James Spight, the latter an infant under age, offered to the court of judicature for determination of differences touching houses burned or demolished by the fire of 1666. From that paper it appears that Elisabeth Spight paid £40 a year for the rent of the Lock and Key.