THE MERMAID, HACKNEY
A farthing token of the seventeenth century, issued ‘at the Maremaid Taverne in Hackeny,’ [46a] is a humble relic of the early days of this place, which stood on the west side of the High Street.
The assembly-room, connected with the tavern by a covered way, and the extensive grounds, were much frequented during the last century till the forties. The grounds consisted of an upper and lower bowling-green—one of them sometimes used for archery—and an umbrageous ‘dark walk’ encompassing the kitchen-garden, which was on the west side of the brook which divided the grounds.
Ballooning was for many years a feature of the place, especially in the thirties. [46b] In September, 1837, Mrs. Graham tried an experiment with two parachutes: one, a model of Garnerin’s, was found to oscillate greatly when released from the balloon; the other, Cocking’s parachute, descended slowly and steadily. A month earlier (August 9, 1837) Mrs. Graham had delighted the frequenters of the Mermaid Tea-Gardens by an ascent in the ‘Royal Victoria,’ accompanied by Mrs. W. H. Adams and Miss Dean. A lithograph of the time shows these ladies, ‘the only three female aeronauts that ever ascended alone,’ in their best dresses, cheerfully waving flags to the people below.
An ascent made by Sadler in his ‘G. P. W.’ (George, Prince of Wales) balloon on August 12, 1811, caused great local excitement. Crowds poured in from Greenwich, Deptford, and Woolwich, and the road became so blocked that even ‘families of distinction could not approach within a mile of the tavern.’ Some fortunate parishioners ascended the tower of the church, and a jolly tar got astride of the Mermaid sign. In front of the house an abnormal assemblage of fat men and still fatter women jostled and pushed and tumbled one over another in a way that delighted the coarse caricaturists of the period. Sadler’s companion was a naval officer, Lieutenant (or Captain) Paget, who paid a hundred guineas for his seat in the car. As the balloon rose, Mr. Paget was ‘for some minutes deprived of the power of expression and incapable of communicating his sensations’ to his fellow-traveller, but he did all that was necessary by keeping quiet and waving a flag to the spectators. An hour and a quarter passed, and a descent was then made near Tilbury Fort, and the travellers, who had started at a quarter to three, returned to Hackney at a few minutes after nine. [47]
The old tavern was pulled down at the end of the thirties, and several houses were built on its site. The assembly-room and gardens continued in existence for many years later, but are now also built over.
[Picture of London, 1802–1846; newspapers; Robinson’s Hackney (1842), i., p. 149 f.
There are several contemporary prints of Sadler’s ascent of August 12, 1811, one a coloured caricature published by Thomas Tegg, ‘Prime Bang-up at Hackney; or, A Peep at the Balloon.’ Rowlandson’s ‘Hackney Assembly, 1812 (1802)’ caricatures the dancing.]
THE ROSEMARY BRANCH, HOXTON
Early in the eighteenth century, in the days when the London archers shot at rovers [48a] in the Finsbury fields, there stood near Hoxton Bridge (at the meeting of the parishes of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, and St. Mary, Islington) an ‘honest ale-house’ named the Rosemary Branch, [48b] which was doubtless ofttimes visited by the thirsty archer for a mug of beer and a game of shovel-board. The place has no history for many years, though in 1764 it emerges for a moment in a newspaper paragraph: [48c] ‘On Sunday night [August 5], about eight o’clock, as a Butcher and another man were fighting near the Rosemary Branch, the Butcher received an unlucky blow on the side of his ribs, which killed him on the spot. The cause of the quarrel was this: Some boys having a skiff with which they were sailing in a pond near the aforesaid place, the Butcher endeavouring to take it from them, a well-dressed man that was passing expostulated with the man, and putting the question to him, how he should like to be served so if he was in the lads’ stead? On which the Butcher struck the gentleman, who defended himself, and gave the deceased a blow on the temple, and another under his heart, of which he died. His body was carried to Islington Churchyard for the Coroner to sit on it, and yesterday the said gentleman was examined before the sitting Justices at Hicks’s Hall touching the said affair, and admitted to bail.’