Old and New London, Volume I / A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places

by Walter Thornbury

The bas-relief on the pediment of the Monument was carved by a Danish sculptor, Caius Gabriel Cibber, the father of the celebrated comedian and comedy writer Colley Cibber; the four dragons at the four angles are by Edward Pierce. The Latin inscriptions were written by Dr. Gale, Dean of York, and the whole structure was erected in six years, for the sum of £13,700. The paragraphs denouncing Popish incendiaries were not written by Gale, but were added in 1681, during the madness of the Popish plot. They were obliterated by James II., but cut again deeper than before in the reign of William III., and finally erased in 1831, to the great credit of the Common Council.

Wren at first intended to have had flames of gilt brass coming out of every loophole of the Monument, and on the top a phœnix rising from the flames, also in brass gilt. He eventually abandoned this idea, partly on account of the expense, and also because the spread wings of the phœnix would present too much resistance to the wind. Moreover, the fabulous bird at that height would not have been understood. Charles II. preferred a gilt ball, and the present vase of flames was then decided on. Defoe compares the Monument to a lighted candle.

The Monument is loftier than the pillars of Trajan and Antoninus, at Rome, or that of Theodosius at Constantinople; and it is not only the loftiest, but also the finest isolated column in the world.

It was at first used by the members of the Royal Society for astronomical purposes, but was abandoned on account of its vibration being too great for the nicety required in their observations. Hence the report that the Monument is unsafe, which has been revived in our time; "but," says Elwes, "its scientific construction may bid defiance to the attacks of all but earthquakes for centuries to come."

A large print of the Monument represents the statue of Charles placed, for comparative effect, beside a sectional view of the apex, as constructed. Wren's autograph report on the designs for the summit were added to the MSS. in the British Museum in 1852. A model, scale one-eighth of an inch to the foot, of the scaffolding used in building the Monument is preserved. It formerly belonged to Sir William Chambers, and was presented by Heathcote Russell, C.E., to the late Sir Isambard Brunel, who left it to his son, Mr. I.K. Brunel. The ladders were of the rude construction of Wren's time—two uprights, with treads or rounds nailed on the face.

On June 15, 1825, the Monument was illuminated with portable gas, in commemoration of laying the first stone of New London Bridge. A lamp was placed at each of the loopholes of the column, to give the idea of its being wreathed with flame; whilst two other series were placed on the edges of the gallery, to which the public were admitted during the evening.

Certain spots in London have become popular with suicides, yet apparently without any special reason, except that even suicides are vain and like to die with éclat. Waterloo Bridge is chosen for its privacy; the Monument used to be chosen, we presume, for its height and quietude. Five persons have destroyed themselves by leaps from the Monument. The first of these unhappy creatures was William Green, a weaver, in 1750. On June 25 this man, wearing a green apron, the sign of his craft, came to the Monument door, and left his watch with the doorkeeper. A few minutes after he was heard to fall. Eighteen guineas were found in his pocket. The next man who fell from the Monument was Thomas Craddock, a baker. He was not a suicide; but, in reaching over to see an eagle which was hung in a cage from the bars, he overbalanced himself, and was killed. The next victim was Lyon Levi, a Jew diamond merchant in embarrassed circumstances, who destroyed himself on the 18th of January, 1810. The third suicide (September 11, 1839) was a young woman named Margaret Meyer. This poor girl was the daughter of a baker in Hemming's Row, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Her mother was dead, her father bed-ridden, and there being a large family, it had become necessary for her to go out to service, which preyed upon her mind. The October following, a boy named Hawes, who had been that morning discharged by his master, a surgeon, threw himself from the same place. He was of unsound mind, and his father had killed himself. The last suicide was in August, 1842, when a servant-girl from Hoxton, named Jane Cooper, while the watchman had his head turned, nimbly climbed over the iron railing, tucked her clothes tight between her knees, and dived head-fore-most downwards. In her fall she struck the griffin on the right side of the base of the Monument, and, rebounding into the road, cleared a cart in the fall. The cause of this act was not discovered. Suicides being now fashionable here, the City of London (not a moment too soon) caged in the top of the Monument in the present ugly way.

The Rev. Samuel Rolle, writing of the Great Fire in 1667, says—"If London its self be not the doleful monument of its own destruction, by always lying in ashes (which God forbid it should), it is provided for by Act of Parliament, that after its restauration, a pillar, either of brass or stone, should be erected, in perpetual memory of its late most dismall conflagration."

"Where the fire began, there, or as near as may be to that place, must the pillar be erected (if ever there be any such). If we commemorate the places where our miseries began, surely the causes whence they sprang (the meritorious causes, or sins, are those I now intend) should be thought of much more. If such a Lane burnt London, sin first burnt that Lane; causa, causa est causa causatio; affliction springs not out of the dust; not but that it may spring thence immediately (as if the dust of the earth should be turned into lice), but primarily and originally it springs up elsewhere.

"As for the inscription that ought to be upon that pillar (whether of brass or stone), I must leave it to their piety and prudence, to whom the wisdom of the Parliament hath left it; only three things I both wish and hope concerning it. The first is, that it may be very humble, giving God the glory of his righteous judgments, and taking to ourselves the shame of our great demerits. Secondly, that the confession which shall be there engraven may be as impartial as the judgement itself was; not charging the guilt for which that fire came upon a few only, but acknowledging that all have sinned, as all have been punished. Far be it from any man to say that his sins did not help to burn London, that cannot say also (and who that is I know not) that neither he nor any of his either is, or are ever like to be, anything the worse for that dreadful fire. Lastly, whereas some of the same religion with those that did hatch the Powder-Plot are, and have been, vehemently suspected to have been the incendiaries, by whose means London was burned, I earnestly desire that if time and further discovery be able to acquit them from any such guilt, that pillar may record their innocency, and may make themselves as an iron pillar or brazen wall (as I may allude to Jer. i. 18) against all the accusations of those that suspect them; but if, in deed and in truth, that fire either came or was carried on and continued by their treachery, that the inscription of the pillar may consigne over their names to perpetual hatred and infamy."