The removal to the present well-known red building was made in July, 1884, and the change took about a week, during which the staff put in very long hours. So strenuous a time was it that some of them could hardly keep their eyes open towards the end of this transition period.
There were considerably more than four hundred figures, not to mention countless other things, to transfer; and the models were cloaked for conveyance, as the idea could not be entertained of portraits of royalties, celebrities, and notorieties being carried uncovered and exposed to the vulgar gaze.
The wrapping of the images in sheets led to an amusing incident after they had been removed. Before they could be properly arranged and a fitting place assigned to each, the exhibits were placed in their coverings on the floor. This fact, it appeared, suggested to tired members of the staff a way by which they might be able to snatch a little rest.
Missing some of the men, my suspicions were directed to the prostrate exhibits, and I proceeded to prod the sheeted figures, with the result that here and there my attentions called forth manifestations of life. The weary helpers had laid themselves down to sleep among the models, hoping not to be disturbed. Although time was pressing, they were permitted to continue a few hours’ well-earned rest with their pack-sheet cloaks around them.
Few of our visitors on the closing night were aware of the forthcoming change-over, and it was only when the band, after playing the last bar of the National Anthem, struck up “Auld Lang Syne” that the visitors realised what it all signified. There was a touch of pathos in the farewell scenes, and for the next week Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition was not included among the sights of London.
When the old rooms in Baker Street were taken over for hospital uses in the war, my mind reverted to an historic coincidence of considerable military interest.
More than a hundred years ago what is now the Baker Street Carriage Bazaar formed the barracks and stabling of the Royal Life Guards. The place was then known as the King Street Barracks. Old inhabitants of the neighbourhood used to tell me that a regiment of the Guards marched from these quarters on their way to the field of Waterloo.
A little way off was the Portman Street Barracks, from which Captain Fitzclarence set out to arrest Arthur Thistlewood and his confederates in connection with the Cato Street Conspiracy—one of the most desperate and foolhardy episodes in modern English history.