BISHOP BUTLER
At the "Trumpet" Steele also introduces us to a delightful club of old citizens that met every evening precisely at six. The humours of the fifteen Trumpeters are painted with the breadth and vigour of Hogarth's best manner. With a delightful humour Steele sketches Sir Geoffrey Notch, the president, who had spent all his money on horses, dogs, and gamecocks, and who looked on all thriving persons as pitiful upstarts. Then comes Major Matchlock, who thought nothing of any battle since Marston Moor, and who usually began his story of Naseby at three-quarters past six. Dick Reptile was a silent man, with a nephew whom he often reproved. The wit of the club, an old Temple bencher, never left the room till he had quoted ten distiches from "Hudibras" and told long stories of a certain extinct man about town named Jack Ogle. Old Reptile was extremely attentive to all that was said, though he had heard the same stories every night for twenty years, and upon all occasions winked oracularly to his nephew to particularly mind what passed. About ten the innocent twaddle closed by a man coming in with a lantern to light home old Bickerstaff. They were simple and happy times that Steele describes with such kindly humour; and the London of his days must have been full of such quiet, homely haunts.
Mr. R. Wells, of Colne Park, Halstead, kindly informs us that as late as the year 1765 there was a club that still kept up the name of Kit-Kat. The members in 1765 included, among others, Lord Sandwich (Jemmy Twitcher, as he was generally called), Mr. Beard, Lord Weymouth, Lord Bolingbroke, the Duke of Queensbury, Lord Caresford, Mr. Cadogan, the Marquis of Caracciollo, Mr. Seymour, and Sir George Armytage. One of the most active managers of the club was Richard Phelps (who, we believe, afterwards was secretary to Pitt). Among letters and receipts preserved by Mr. Wells, is one from Thomas Pingo, jeweller, of the "Golden Head," on the "Paved Stones," Gray's Inn Lane, for gold medals, probably to be worn by the members.
Even in the reign of James I. Shire Lane was christened Rogues' Lane, and, in spite of all the dukes and lords of the Kit-Kat, it never grew very respectable. In 1724 that incomparable young rascal, Jack Sheppard, used to frequent the "Bible" public-house—a printers' house of call—at No. 13. There was a trap in one of the rooms by which Jack could drop into a subterraneous passage leading to Bell Yard. Tyburn gibbet cured Jack of this trick. In 1738 the lane went on even worse, for there Thomas Carr (a low attorney, of Elm Court) and Elizabeth Adams robbed and murdered a gentleman named Quarrington at the "Angel and Crown" Tavern, and the miscreants were hung at Tyburn. Hogarth painted a portrait of the woman. One night, many years ago, a man was robbed, thrown downstairs, and killed, in one of the dens in Shire Lane. There was snow on the ground, and about two o'clock, when the watchmen grew drowsy and were a long while between their rounds, the frightened murderers carried the stiffened body up the lane and placed it bolt upright, near a dim oil lamp, at a neighbour's door. There the watchmen found it; but there was no clue to guide them, for nearly every house in the lane was infamous. Years after, two ruffianly fellows who were confined in the King's Bench were heard accusing each other of the murder in Shire Lane, and justice pounced upon her prey.
One thieves' house, known as the "Retreat," led, Mr. Diprose says, by a back way into Crown Court; and other dens had a passage into No. 242, Strand. Nos. 9, 10, and 11 were known as Cadgers' Hall, and were much frequented by beggars, and bushels of bread, thrown aside by the professional mendicants, were found there by the police.
The "Sun" Tavern, afterwards the "Temple Bar Stores," had been a great resort for the Tom and Jerry frolics of the Regency; and the "Anti-Gallican" Tavern was a haunt of low sporting men, being kept by Harry Lee, father of the first and original "tiger," invented and made fashionable by the notorious Lord Barrymore. During the Chartist times violent meetings were held at a club in Shire Lane. A good story is told of one of these. A detective in disguise attended an illegal meeting, leaving his comrades ready below. All at once a frantic hatter rose, denounced the detective as a spy, and proposed off-hand to pitch him out of window. Permitted by the more peaceable to depart, the policeman scuttled downstairs as fast as he could, and, not being recognised in his disguise, was instantly knocked down by his friends' prompt truncheons.
In Ship Yard, close to Shire Lane, once stood a block of disreputable, tumble-down houses, used by coiners, and known as the "Smashing Lumber." Every room had a secret trap, and from the workshop above a shaft reached the cellars to hurry away by means of a basket and pulley all the apparatus at the first alarm. The first man made his fortune, but the new police soon ransacked the den and broke up the business.
In August, 1823, Theodore Hook, the witty and the heartless, was brought to a sponging-house kept by a sheriff's officer named Hemp, at the upper end of Shire Lane, being under arrest for a Crown debt of £12,000, due to the Crown for defalcations during his careless consulship at the Mauritius. He was editor of John Bull at the time, and continued while in this horrid den to write his "Sayings and Doings," and to pour forth for royal pay his usual scurrilous lampoons at all who supported poor, persecuted Queen Caroline. Dr. Maginn, who had just come over from Cork to practise Toryism, was his constant visitor, and Hemp's barred door no doubt often shook at their reckless laughter. Hook at length left Shire Lane for the Rules of the Bench (Temple Place) in April, 1824. Previously to his arrest he had been living in retirement at lodgings, in Somer's Town, with a poor girl whom he had seduced. Here he renewed the mad scenes of his thoughtless youth with Terry, Matthews, and wonderful old Tom Hill; and here he resumed (but not at these revels) his former acquaintanceship with that mischievous obstructive, Wilson Croker. After he left Shire Lane and the Rules of the Bench he went to Putney.
In spite of all bad proclivities, Shire Lane had its fits of respectability. In 1603 there was living there Sir Arthur Atie, Knt., in early life secretary to the great Earl of Leicester, and afterwards attendant on his step-son, the luckless Earl of Essex. Elias Ashmole, the great antiquary and student in alchemy and astrology, also honoured this lane, but he gathered in the Temple those great collections of books and coins, some of which perished by fire, and some of which he afterwards gave to the University of Oxford, where they were placed in a building called, in memory of the illustrious collector, the Ashmolean Museum.