St Martins pub history index
Hartshorn lane, Charing Cross in 1746 -
John Rocque map
Charing Cross, with the growth of its importance, naturally became a haunt of the vicious and the reprobate.
The horrors of the " Night Cellars " were too repulsive, even for the anything but prudish news-sheets of the time, to particularise, and "Craiggs-Court " inhabitants, used as they were to scenes of violence and dissipation, did not cry out before they were hurt in making an initiatory move in the direction of improvement.
They complained and gave information upon oath against a man and his wife for keeping a very disorderly Night Cellar, and their harbouring "reputed Thieves, Pickpockets, and other dissolute and wicked Persons, whereby they are frequently disturbed in the Night-time by Noises, Outcries of Murder, &c A warrant was granted against the man and his wife by Justice Railton and six other of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for Westminster. And the said justices committed to Tothill-Fields Bridewell a woman for keeping a disorderly Night-house in Hart Street, Covent Garden, to the great annoyance and disturbance of that neighboiurhood. And "several idle and disorderly Fellows and reputed Thieves and Pickpockets, who nightly infest the Streets about Charing Cross, Temple Bar, and the Strand, were also by the said Justices committed to Tothill-Fields Bridewell to hard Labour, several of whom were taken about One o'Qock on Saturday Morning, quarrelling in a Brandy-Shop by Mermaid Court, near Charing Cross, amongst whom was a noted Irish Bagpiper, and Midnight Bully."
The neighbourhood also had a notorious and scandalous reputation for its gaming-houses, one of which was the Peacock Tavern at Charing Cross, where one night in May 1756, in consequence of information sent to the magistrates, John Fielding and Saunders Welch, an assembly of gamblers were apprehended by "Mr. Barnes, High Constable of Westminster, and brought before Mr. Fielding, who, in the course of their examination, obtained sufficient evidence to prosecute three other keepers of gaming-houses at the next Westminster Sessions."
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