To draw this and similar groups from the life, Rowlandson had only to take a stroll from Soho to the corner where the Gray's Inn Road now stands. On the ground which Argyle Street, Liverpool Street, and Manchester Street at present occupy, in the caricaturist's day was spread 'that sublime, sifted wonder of cockneys, the cloud-kissing dust-heap, which sold for twenty thousand pounds.'
The sum quoted is apocryphal; but it is known that, by some chance, Russia heard of these famous accumulations of dust and cinders—said to have been existing on the same spot since the Great Fire of London—and, as the fallen city of Moscow required rebuilding after Napoleon's famous Russian campaign, the government of the Czar purchased the vast piles and shipped them to Moscow.
This estate—the site of the ground on which the dust-heap stood—was purchased by the 'Pandemonium Company' in 1826, for fifteen thousand pounds. The Liverpool Street Theatre was erected, and the surrounding grounds subsequently let on building leases. Beyond the Gray's Inn Road heap—when the Caledonian Road was a rural thoroughfare—was the Battle-Bridge Estate of some twenty acres, described in the 'New Monthly Magazine' (1833) as 'the grand centre of dustmen, scavengers, horse and dog dealers, knackermen, brickmakers, and other low but necessary professionalists.' As Mr. T. C. Noble—the descendant of the original lucky speculator who secured the dustheap, and sixteen dilapidated tenements, as he relates, for about 500l.—communicated to Pink's History of Clerkenwell, 'the site of the mountain of cinders is now covered by the houses of Derby Street; the names of the thoroughfares erected on this estate were derived from the popular ministers of that day.'
LUXURY AND DESIRE.
November 28, 1788. [Luxury and Desire]. Published by W. Rowlandson, 49 Broad Street, Bloomsbury.—A battered old hulk—a regular ancient commodore—is forcing a well-filled purse on the acceptance of a graceful and well-favoured maiden.
LUST AND AVARICE.