The first notice which the writer has been able to obtain of the introduction of the New River water into public buildings in London, he found in the Archives of Old Bethlem, in which it appears, that “on the 26th of February, 1626, Mr. Middleton conveyed water into Bethlem.” This must have been, according to its date, the old Bethlem Hospital that stood in Bishopsgate-street, near St. Botolph’s Church, on the site of the streets which are at this time under the denomination of Old Bethlem; as the building lately taken down in London Wall, Moorfields, was begun in April 1675, and finished in July 1676. It should seem therefore that this magnificent building, which had more the appearance of a palace than a place of confinement, most substantially built with a centre and two wings, extending in length to upwards of 700 feet, was only one year in building; a most extraordinary instance of manual application.
In 1698, when Cheapside Conduit was no longer used for its original purpose, it became the place of call for chimney-sweepers, who hung up their brooms and shovels against it, and there waited for hire.
It appears that even in 1711 the New River water was not generally let into houses; for in Laroon’s Cries of London, which were published at that time, there is a man with two tubs suspended across his shoulders, according to the present mode of carrying milk, at the foot of which plate is engraved “Any New River Water, water here.”[11]
CORPS-BEARER.
Plate V.
Of all the calamities with which a great city is infested, there can be none so truly awful as that of a plague, when the street-doors of the houses that were visited with the dreadful pest were padlocked up, and only accessible to the surgeons and medical men, whose melancholy duty frequently exposed them even to death itself; and when the fronts of the houses were pasted over with large bills exhibiting red crosses, to denote that in such houses the pestilence was raging, and requesting the solitary passenger to pray that the Lord might have mercy upon those who were confined within. Of these bills there are many extant in the libraries of the curious, some of which have borders engraved on wood, printed in black, displaying figures of skeletons, bones, and coffins. They also contain various recipes for the cure of the distemper. The Lady Arundell, and other persons of distinction, published their methods for making what was then called plague-water, and which are to be found in many of the rare books on cookery of the time; but happily for London, it has not been visited by this affliction since 1665, a circumstance owing probably to the Great Fire in the succeeding year, which consumed so many old and deplorable buildings, then standing in narrow streets and places so confined that it was hardly possible to know where any pest would stop.
Every one who inspects Aggas’s Plan of London, engraved in the reign of Elizabeth, as well as those published subsequently to the rebuilding of the City after the fire, must acknowledge the great improvements as to the houses, the widening of the streets, and the free admission of fresh air. It is to be hoped, and indeed we may conclude from the very great and daily improvements on that most excellent plan of widening streets, that this great City will never again witness such visitations.
