About fifty years ago it was the custom of those persons who let lodgings in St. Giles’s, above the Two-penny admission, where sheets were afforded at sixpence the night, to stamp their linen with sticks of marking stones of ruddle, with the words “Stop Thief,” so that, if stolen, the thief should at once be detected and detained. For this, and many other curious particulars respecting the lowest classes of the inhabitants of St. Giles in the Fields, the writer is much indebted to his truly respectable friend, the late William Packer, Esq. of Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, and afterwards of Great Baddow, in Essex, who was born, and resided for the great part of his life, upon the spot. For the honour of this gentleman’s family, it may be here acknowledged that his father, who was also a truly respectable man, was one of the promoters of the building of Middlesex Hospital, which, before the erection of the present building, was an establishment held in Windmill Street, leading from Tottenham Court Road to Percy Chapel, in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place. The house which the Hospital occupied, standing on the South side of the street, has since been made use of as a French charity school.
BUY A BRUSH, OR A TABLE BOOK.
Plate XI.
The Engraving from which the accompanying Plate was copied was one of a set published by Overton, but without date. Judging from the dress, it must have been made either in the reign of King James the First or in that of the succeeding monarch. The inscription over the figure is, “Buy a Brush or a Table Book.” The floors were not wetted, but rubbed dry, even until they bore a very high polish, particularly when it was the fashion to inlay staircases and floors of rooms with yellow, black, and brown woods. On the landing places of the great staircase in the house built by Lord Orford, now the Grand Hotel, at the end of King Street in Covent Garden, such inlaid specimens are still remaining, in a beautiful state of preservation. There are many houses of the nobility where the floors consist of small pieces of oak arranged in tessellated forms. The room now occupied by the servants in waiting, and that part of the house formerly a portion of the old gallery, at Cleveland House, St. James’s; the floors of the state rooms of Montagu House, now the British Museum; and the floor of the Library in St. Paul’s Cathedral, all retain their tessellated forms. These floors were rubbed by the servants, who wore brushes on their feet, and they were, and indeed are, so highly polished, in some of the country mansions, that in some instances they are dangerous to walk upon. This mode of dry-rubbing rooms by affixing the brush to the feet, is still practised in France, chiefly by men-servants.
The Table Book is of very ancient use. Shakspeare thus notices it in his play of Hamlet:
Ham. My tables: meet it is
I set it down.
It was a book consisting of several small pieces of slate set in frames of wood, fastened together with hinges, and closed, as a book for the pocket: for a representation of one, with a pencil attached to a string, as used in 1565, see Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Manners,” vol. II. p. 227. It was taken, says that writer, from Gesner’s Treatise De rerum fossilium figuris, &c. Tigur. 1565. The Almanacs of that time likewise contained tables of a composition like asses skin. One of these was in the possession of Mr. Douce.