Both in town and country.”
St. George’s Hospital and the Original “Tattersall’s” at Hyde Park Corner.
From Print in the Crace Collection, British Museum.
When, in 1733, a “difference of doctors” arose at Westminster Hospital, the dissenting physicians purchased Lanesborough House, and founded St. George’s Hospital.
Lord Chesterfield, writing to Mr. Dayrolles in 1748, evidently thought little of the new quarter. “As my new house is situated among a parcel of thieves and murderers, I shall have occasion for a house-dog,” is the best he can say. Chesterfield House was within a stone’s-throw of Hill Street, where the famous Mrs. Montagu resided for a time. It was not the spick-and-span locality of the present day, but was unpaved and ill-kept, the road being in a fearful condition, and Mrs. Montagu, the originator of the “blue stocking” assemblies, gives a wonderful description of it in her Lady of the Last Century.
“The ‘thieves and murderers’ were among the butchers of Mayfair and Sheppard’s Market—not then cleared out for such streets as have since been erected on the site. Park Lane was then Tyburn Lane, and what with the Fair of six weeks’ duration (with blackguardism and incidents of horror that will not bear repeating) and the monthly hangings at Tyburn, from which half the drunken and yelling spectators poured through Mayfair, Hill Street, and adjacent outlets on their way to home and fresh scenes of riot. Between the fair, the gallows, and the neighbouring rascalry, the district was not to be entered after dark without risk of the wayfarer being stripped by robbers. Footpads were as common between Hay Hill and Park Lane as highwaymen between Hounslow and Bagshot.”
The leaders of Society living near by found it easier to come frequently into Hyde Park; it was so much a matter of routine that even those voluminous letters of the period speak as if that part of the day’s amusement was as necessary as their dinner. Instead of driving some distance to the Park, they were now quite close; while their shopping was a much more serious affair, for until the end of the century the best shops were still in Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. This may account for the fashionable ladies visiting Newgate so often, for they passed it on their shopping expeditions, and probably in the absence of organised charity they felt that they were doing a kindness in taking gifts to the condemned criminals.
Four years later, the Duke of Rutland moved to a country residence he had built on the site of the present Rutland Gate, known in those days as “Well-fields,” and for which he paid a rental of thirty pounds per annum—the area being seven acres. To him was granted the privilege of a private gate into Hyde Park, and this was the origin of the small gate still in existence on that spot.
Near at hand stood Kingston House, erected by the beautiful Miss Chudleigh and the Duke of Kingston, and there it was that the lady gave those wonderful masquerades and fêtes described by Horace Walpole, to celebrate the royal birthdays, at which the fireworks were so extensive that stands were put up in Hyde Park for onlookers anxious to witness the display.