The [Hole-in-the-Wall] is believed to have originated from the hole made in the wall of the debtors’ or other prison, through which the poor prisoners received the money, broken meat, or other donations of the charitably inclined. The old sign of the Hole-in-the-Wall (see our [illustrations]) shows such an opening in a square piece of brickwork. Generally, it is believed to refer to some snug corner, perhaps near the town walls; but at the old public-house in Chancery Lane the legend is as we have given it. Hard by, in Cursitor Street, prisoners for debt found a temporary lodging up to a very recent date. Trades tokens are extant of this house, which, about 1820, was kept by Jack Randall, alias Nonpareil, a famous member of the P.R.; on one occasion some verses were made containing the following lines:—
“Then blame me not, swells, kids, or lads of the fancy,
For opening a lush crib in Chancery Lane,
An appropriate spot ’tis, you doubtless all can see,
Since heads I’ve oft placed there, and let out again.”
The poet, Thomas Moore, in the fast days when George IV. was king, and when pugilism and gin drinking were fashionable accomplishments, used to visit Mr Randall’s parlour. It was here that he picked up his materials for those rhyming satires on the politics and general topics of his time:—“Tom Crib’s Memorials to Congress, by one of the Fancy;” “Randall’s Diary of Proceedings at the House of Call for Genius;” “A Few Selections from Jack Randall’s Scrap Book, with Poems on the late Fight for the Championship.”
At the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos Street, Claude Duval the highwayman was taken prisoner; whilst the Hole-in-the-Wall in Baldwin’s Gardens was the citadel in which Tom Brown used to intrench himself from duns and bailiffs, with Henry Purcell the musician, as his companion in revelry and merriment. Tom Brown’s introductory verses, prefixed to Playford’s “Musical Companion,” 1698, are dated “from Mr Stewart’s at the Hole-in-the-Wall, in Baldwin’s Gardens.” Another Hole-in-the-Wall still exists in Kirby Street, Hatton Garden. It is a curious fact that the refreshment-room, or liquor-bar, attached to the House of Representatives at Washington, is known to most thirsty American politicians as The Hole-in-the-Wall.
Anciently, instead of being a painted board, the object of the sign was carved and hung within a hoop, hence (as we had occasion to remark on a [former page]) nearly all the ancient signs are called the “—— ON THE HOOP.” In the Clause Roll, 43 Edward III., we find the George on the Hoop; 26 Henry VI., the Hart on the Hoop; 30 Henry VI., the Swan, the Cock, and the Hen on the Hoop. Besides these we find mentioned the Crown on the Hoop, the Bunch of Grapes on the Hoop, the Mitre on the Hoop, the Angel on the Hoop, the Falcon on the Hoop, &c. In 1795, two of these signs were still extant, for a periodical of the time says:—“A sign of this nature is still preserved in Newport Street, and is a carved representation of a Bunch of Grapes within a Hoop. The Cock on the Hoop may be seen also in Holborn, painted on a board, to which, perhaps, it was transferred on the removal of the sign-posts.”[710] These hoops seem to have originated in the highly ornamented bush or crown, which latterly was made of hoops, covered with evergreens. In France, the Hoop (le Cerceau) was used as a sign. Jacques Androuet, a celebrated architect, and author of a work entitled “Les plus excellents Batiments de France,” lived at the sign of the Hoop, whence he adopted the surnames of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau. In 1570 he published a book on metal-work, containing several designs for ornamental iron frames and posts to suspend signboards from. That names in this country also were occasionally derived from signboards, has been stated in our introduction. Of this practice, Sir Peter Lely, the portrait painter, was an illustrious example. He belonged to a Dutch family named Van der Vaas. His grandfather was a perfumer, and lived at the sign of the Lily, (perhaps a vase of lilies, with a pun on his name.) When his son entered the English army he discarded his Dutch name, and from the paternal sign, adopted the more euphonious one of Lilly or Lely; and this name he and his children afterwards retained. The famous Rothschild family is another case in point. From the Red Shield (the roth schild) above the door of an honest old Hebrew, in the Juden-gasse, (or Jews’ Alley,) at Frankfort, has been derived the name of the richest family in the world.
The Hoop and Bunch of Grapes was the sign of a public-house, in St Albans Street, (now part of Waterloo Place,) kept at the beginning of the present century, by the famous Matthew Skeggs, who obtained his renown from playing, in the character of Signor Bumbasto, a concerto on a broomstick, at the Haymarket Theatre, adjoining. His portrait was painted by King, a friend of Hogarth, engraved by Houston, and published by Skeggs himself. The Hoop and Griffin was a coffee-house in Leadenhall Street, circa 1700;[711] and the Hoop and Toy is a public-house in Thurloe Place, Brompton. Here the original meaning of the hoop seems entirely lost, as its combination with the toy seems to allude to the hoop trundled by children.
The Toy at Hampton used to be a favourite resort with the Londoners till 1857, when it was pulled down to make room for private houses. Trades tokens of this house of the seventeenth century are extant. “In the survey of 1653 (in the Augmentation office) mention is made of a piece of pasture ground near the river, called the Toying place, the site, probably, of a well-known inn near the bridge now called the Toy.”[712]
Cardmakers usually took a card for their sign, as the Queen of Hearts and King’s Arms, which was the sign of a cardmaker in Jermyn Street in 1803.[713] One of the Bagford Bills has: “At the Old Knave of Clubs at the Bridgefoot, in Southwark, liveth Edward Butling, who maketh and selleth all sorts of hangings for rooms,” &c.[714] Possibly he sold also playing-cards. These knaves, however, seem at one time to have been a badge, for at the creation of seventeen knights of the Bath by Richard III., the Duke of Buckingham was “richely appareled, and his horse trapped in blue velvet embroudered with the knaves of cartes burnyng of golde, which trapper was borne by foteman from the grounde.”[715] The Queen of Trumps is a public-house sign at West Walton, near Wisbeach.
The Heart and Trumpet is a somewhat curious sign at Pentre-wern near Oswestry, perhaps a corruption of Hearts and Trumps. Other games have produced the sign of the Golden Quoit, in Whitehaven, and the Corner Pin, which is so common that it figures in a Seven Dials ballad, a parody on the Low-back Car:—
“When first I saw Miss Bailey,
‘Twas on a Saturday,
At the Corner Pin she was drinking gin,
And smoking a yard of clay,” &c.