Duke's Head, St Martin's Lane

A report from Spy Powell on a LCS General Committee meeting on 24 September 1795 states: "A Society meeting at the Duke's Head St Martins Lane (to which a deputation was sent to hold a conference last week) sent a letter that they were willing to become a division of the London Corresponding Society. The Committee gave them the No 68 & appointed a deputation to open it."

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The area around St Martin's Lane appears to have operated as a radical stronghold in the late 1790s, and indeed for the early decades of the nineteenth century. Iain McCalman identifies the Angel in Cecil Court as one of the alehouses which became a focal point for resistance to the attempts by City magistrates to close down or frighten alehouses that hosted LCS divisions, and which "recurred as radical venues in later years" (Radical Underworld, 1988, p.115). The Duke's Head was located at number 37 St Martin's Lane, on the site which is currently occupied by Bertorelli, and Italian restaurant (unusually the house numbering appears unchanged since the 1790s). According to an anecdote in the Gentleman's Magazine for June 1795, this was next door to the "immortal mansion of the great Sir Issac Newton" which was later occupied by Dr Burney. The Duke's Head, the correspondent claimed, "was rebuilt some time ago, and between the wainscot and the old walls was found the remains of a cat in the act of devouring a huge rat."


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Deadpubs.co.uk has found listings for the Duke's Head in various directories and census data, starting in 1839, and continuing until 1899. Sun Fire Office Records held at the Guildhall Library confirm that the Duke's Head existed from at least 1791 (when it was insured to Thomas Underwood). In 1816 it was the site of a violent robbery, for which there was a trial at the Old Bailey.

Dog and Duck, Bond Street

According to the minutes of an LCS General Committee meeting on 13 August 1795, division 28 "Branches to Dog & Duck Bond St." The new branch was to be designated div. 49, and would meet on Wednesdays. The LCS minutes list "French, Gibbons, Read, Hewit" as member of the new division. A Report from Spy Powell from the meeting, however, lists a different set of names: "Willson, Constable, Pelton & Mc.Guire to open it" (Add MSS 27813 fos. 101v-7v; PC 1/23/A38; Thale 285-7).

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A well-known pub called the Dog and Duck that stood on St George's Fields in Southwark, but this was not the one used by the LCS. I have been unable to find a Dog and Duck in Bond Street, however a number of nearby streets including Ducking Pond Mews and Ducking Pond Row (now Grafton Street) refer to the popular sport of duck hunting, in which dogs were trained to catch ducks whose wings had been clipped and were compelled to dive underwater to avoid capture. This was apparently popular in Mayfair, and was presumably where the Dog and Duck got its name. Reginald Colby's Mayfair: A Town Within London, asserts that there was "an old half-timbered public house with a garden attached at the lower end of Hertford Street" called the Dog and Duck.

Writing in 1903 for Walter Besant's series on The Fascination of London, G.E. Mitton wrote that the Dog and Duck was on Carrington Street "behind which was a pond 200 feet square, where the sport of duck-hunting was pursued in the eighteenth century. The site is now marked by Ducking Pond Mews." Ducking Pond Mews no longer exists, but Carrington Street does. It is a small street leading to an NCP car park.


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Carrington Street today.

Crown and Thistle, Peter Street

According to a report from spy Kennedy from c. 20 November 1792, Division 4 met in the "Crown & Thistle Peter St Westr" (TS 11/959/3503; Thale 29). The report is brief, simply stating that the meeting was "Partly of the same Tenor" as the meeting of div. 3 (held on 14 Nov at the Green Dragon in King Street Golden Square). Kennedy's report from the div. 3 meeting states "Their principle conversation was respecting the reform & each firmly resolv'd to support each other in the business to see themselves righted but without any violence whatever."

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According to the Survey of London, Peter Street, which is a small passage west of Wardour Street in Soho, probably gets its name from a saltpetre house which was built in 1656. "In 1720 Peter Street was described as 'a Street not over well inhabited', and in the 1830's as 'a short dirty street, without any thoroughfare'. By the late nineteenth century the buildings had become 'wretched hovels, and a disgrace to humanity'."


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As befitting an area which is a disgrace to humanity I have been unable to locate further information about the Crown and Thistle, though Horwood's map shows that a large brewery belonging to Sturkey and Co occupied a large plot at the end of the Peter Street. Whether the Crown and Thistle had any connection with the brewery is unknown.

Crown, Newgate Street

In October 1792, the spy George Lynam joined Div. 12 of the LCS which met at the Crown in Newgate Street. His report of this meeting was brief: "Read the Copy of the Address to the French Convn. which was first proposed by the Meeting at the Unicorn and brought forward the 27 Septr. last" (TS 11/959/3505; Thale 25).

Lynam had in fact been partially responsible for the LCS meeting at the Crown, having warned the landlord of Mansion House -- the previous meeting place of division 12, about the unconstitutionality of the LCS (see ST vol 24, cols 763 & 805). This must have been on Oct 24 at the latest.

At Hardy's Trial Lynam mentioned that he was also present at a meeting of Div. 12 at the Crown on 31st of October. According to Lynam the Address to the French Convention was reported (ST vol 24 col 765)

On 14 November 1792 Lynam gave an account of a general meeting of the LCS at the Unicorn in Henrietta Street. At this meeting it was reported that a meeting had taken place on the same day at the Crown in Newgate Street (TS 11/959/3505; Thale 26-7). At Hardy's Trial Lynam revealed that he had also attended the meeting at the Crown, but that nothing material happened there (ST vol 24 col 766).

Spy Christopher Kennedy also reported that a meeting of Div. 12, consisting of about 40 people, met at the Crown on 14 Nov. 1792: "Heard the Society was to be remov'd to Finsbury Square on Tuesdays -- Also that Mr Erskine was to be council in behalf of Mr Paine." The delegate was reported as Freemantle (TS 11/959/3505; Thale 29).

Lynam was again present at a meeting of Div 12 at the Crown on 21 November 1792. A government paraphrase of his report state: "21 Novr. -- The Witness [Lynam] was present at the Meeting of Division No. 12 at the Crown in Newgate Street when the report was made from the Committee of Delegates of the Letter having been received from Norwich... enquiring whether the London Correspg Society ment to rest Satisfied with the Duke of Richmonds Plan only or whether it was their private intention to rip the Monarchy by the Roots & place Democracy in its sted, -- The Delegates suspected this might be some scheme to draw them into some unwarrantable expressions & declined answering" (TS 11/954/3498; Thale 31).

At Hardy's trial, Lynam claimed that Division 12 had branched off into Division 23 on 21st of November, and met at the Ship in Moorfields on 27th November, and that he was appointed delegate at the 27th November meeting. (ST vol 24. 767; TS 11/959/3505; Thale 31).

The final meeting at the Crown appears to have been in February 1793. On 21 February 1793 Lynam reported that "Field met Division No 12 at yd Crown Newgate Street. They where refused a room 2 Common Council being there saying they wo'd take away the licence if entertain'd --" (TS 11/958/3503; Thale 52).

The Crown was located near the corner of Newgate Street and Warwick Lane, just to the South of Crown Court. Floor plans from 1796 held at the London Metropolitan Archive, show a three rooms, labelled "Room," "Barr," and Tap Room." It was part of the Bridge House Estate.


The house measured approximately 20 feet by 50 feet. According to John Summerson's Georgian London the size and shape of London houses were determined by the need to get as many houses as possible onto one street. This resulted in a simple plan consisting of "one room at the back and one at the front on each floor with a passage and staircase at one side. On a site as narrow as twenty-four feet hardly any other arrangement is possible; in broader sites it is still a perfectly satisfactory and economical arrangement." Given the width of the plot of the Crown it is unsurprising that it adheres broadly to this plan -- known as the "standard" or "Summerson" plan. (See Neil Burton and Peter Guillery, Behind the Facade: London House Plans, 1660-1840. Reading: Spire Books, 2006, p. 14).

Floor plan of the Crown, along with a three room building stretching from Newgate Street to Crown Court. (London Metropolitan Archive COL/CCS/PL/01/202/61). Click to enlarge.

More recent studies have complicated the idea of the standard plan, and demonstrated the number of variations that existed on this basic design. The Crown modifies the standard plan by adding an extra room to the back, which provided another entrance to Crown Court. A substantial chimney with fireplaces in both the "Barr" and the back "Room" suggests that this back room was a feature of each of the floors and was not merely an extension on the ground floor.

It is not clear how many floors the house had, though the plans show two flights of stairs: one at the front of the house, on Warwick Lane, and one at the side of the second "bar" room.  It was common to have an uncovered staircase at the front of the house which would lead to the basement, but the floor plan suggests that the front stair case was covered -- the wall at the front of the stairs being more substantial that the thinner dividing wall that separates the Tap Room from the corridor containing the staircase. There also appears to be an entrance into the Crown from the narrow corridor (entrance could be gained by a door on Warwick Lane that took the patron along the passageway into the back of the Tap Room). It seems likely that these narrow, covered stairs would provide access to both the basement and to the upper rooms, and may well have functioned as an means of access for the landlord or for people living on other floors, so they didn't disturb patrons in the Crown by using the larger staircase behind the "barr".

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Unusually the house had no window on the Warwick Lane frontage. Instead light entered through windows on Crown Court, on which the main entrance was also located. The plan also shows a window at the back of the pub (on the South side of the "Room"). According to Horwood's map, this would have looked out onto the yard belonging to the Bell Inn. As an inn, the Bell would have had stables for horses and both horses and humans would have regularly passed the Crown's back window. The building that Horwood shows stretching back from Newgate Street into the open area shared by the Crown and the Bell was number 17 Newgate Street, better known as the Cat and Salutation. This was a favorite haunt of the twenty-two year old Coleridge, where he, Lamb and other Pantisocrats in  1794-6, indulged in "pipes, tobacco, Egghot, welch Rabbits, metaphysics and Poetry." (Letters of Charles and Marry Anne Lamb,  ed Edwin Marrs. Ithica and London, 1975-8, i. 65.)

One further point of interest regarding Horwood's map: Horwood's plan to number each of the houses on his map was not entirely successful, and Warwick Lane was one of the areas where his numbering system broke down. Part of the difficulty, it seems, was the problem of what constituted a "house." The Crown's three rooms are represented on Horwood's map separately, and it is not hard to imagine that, were they not used as a public house, each of the rooms could have been used separately as individual residences.

Presumably when Horwood conducted his surveys for his map he was only looking at outer walls, and had to guess how they were divided up internally. Horwood also marks four separate houses in the area going south from Newgate Street to Crown Court. On the floor plan in the London Metropolitan Archive this was a single, narrow building consisting of three rooms -- a "shop," a "parlor," and a "yard" (a window from the parlor to the yard indicates that the yard would have been a walled, enclosed but uncovered area). The building was 15.5 feet wide and 85 feet deep (including the yard). What Horwood shows as different houses might actually have been multiple rooms within the same house.

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Today on the site is a large office building. The Saint wine bar is within a few yards of the original site of the Crown, where the Cat and Salutation originally stood.

Crown, Air Street

Towards the beginning of the LCS's existence, on 20 November 1792 Christopher Kennedy, of Cross Court Long Acre, a carpenter and Bow Street constable, reported that Div 16 met on Wednesday at the Crown, Air Street, though he himself was not in attendance. (TS 11/959/3505; Thale 29).

On 7 February 1793 spy Lynam reported from a meeting of the LCS general committee that: "Division 28 met 11 in number last night Field deligate for 18 first meeting at yd Crown Air Stt Piccadiliy."

According to the Survey of London, vol 31:

'Aire Street' (which in its southern part follows the boundary of Swallow Close and Round Rundles) first appears in the ratebooks in 1658, its name being presumably derived from Thomas Ayres, brewer, who held leases in the neighbourhood. The northern part of the street formed the western boundary of the Sherard estate, and was sometimes referred to as Francis Street, probably after Francis Sherard. The St. Albans rent-roll of 1676 mentions twenty-three houses in the street.


According to John Feltham's The Picture of London for 1803 there was a dissenting meeting house in the street at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

This area was heavily rebuilt as part of Johh Nash's Regent Street and Piccadilly developments from 1811 to 1825. The Crown, however, seems to have survived these development and continued to exist until at least 1834, when the landlord Joseph Henry Winter insured it with the Sun Fire Office (see Guildhall Library MS 11936/544/1184257).

Air Street was severely damaged in the Blitz, as this photograph from Life shows, although whether the Crown had survived that long is highly doubtful.



In the words of the Survey of London "Air Street is now arched over at first-floor level by the buildings on the north and south sides of the Regent Street Quadrant, which cuts across the street near its southern end."


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Crooked Billet (2)

There were a number of other public houses called the Crooked Billet, aside from the one that the LCS met in. For example there was one on Tower Hill, which was, according to H.E. Popham, originally a Royal Palace that had been an inn since the days of Henry VIII. An underground passage apparently afforded communication with the Tower of London. Most of the rooms, Popham observed in 1927 when the Crooked Billet still stood, were wainscotted in oak, and many were provided with secret hiding places. Leopold Wagner, writing in 1924 described the inn's demise:

Until recently its internal embellishments comprised richly carved chimney-pieces, oak panellings, fine ceilings and freizes and representations appertaining to ancient music. Now everything detachable has of late been taken away, so that irrespective of its tavern equipment, naught but the shell remains to tell the tale of departed glory.

It was, however, still standing in 1936, when the photographer Bill Brandt took a series of images of the interior.

Bill Brandt, Barmaid at the Crooked Billet, Tower Hill, 1939

Bill Brandt, Customers at the Crooked Billet, Tower Hill, 1939

Another Crooked Billet was found on Crooked Lane in Eastcheap, which dated to the reign of James II.

The one which interests me most, however, was at the back of St Clement Danes near the Crown and Anchor. Writing in 1828 on the subject of songs sung about the street, Francis Place recalled this pub in connection with a pair of notorious drinking songs. The first was 'Sandman Joe,' (also known as 'The Sandman's Wedding') which was published in a cleaned up version by the Anacreontic Society which met at the Crown and Anchor. Place's version, however, includes a much more graphic verse that never made it into the printed text:

He star'd awhile, then turn'd his quid

Why, blast you, Sall, I loves you!

And for to prove what I have said,

This night I'll soundly fuck you.

Why then says Sall, my hearts at rest

If what you say you'll stand to;

His brawny hands, her bubbie prest

And roaring cried, white sand O

He concludes his transcription of the song with the following observation:

It was usually for a long time on saturday night sung in an open space at the back of St Clement in the Strand at the front of an alehouse door called the Crooked Billet by two women who used to sham dying away as they concluded the song amidst roars of laughter. (Add MSS 27825 ff. 154)

Elsewhere Place recalls another song sung by (presumably) the same two women:

Two women used to sing a song opposite a public house the sign of the Crooked Billet at the Back of St Clements Church in the Strand it was an open space between Holywell Street and Wych Street. The song was a description of a married man who had a lecherous wife, it described his being a pale fellow reduced by her to a skeleton. I can only remember the last two lines.

“And for which I’m sure she’d go to hell
For she makes me fuck her in church time.”

I remember these words in consequence of the shout which was always got up as the song closed with them. (Add MSS 27825 ff. 148)

This Crooked Billet was located at 37 Wych Street, but changed its name in around 1856 to The Rising Sun. The map below is John Rocque's map of 1746 (this area is awkwardly split between two sheets of Horwood's map of 1792-9). It shows Wych Street and Holywell street coming together to form "Back Side" just outside St Clement's opposite Arundel Street, where the Crown and Anchor was located.

A series of images shows the conjunction of Holywell Street and Wych Street head on, and reveals the Rising Sun alongside a variety of different businesses:

This image, by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd dates from 1855, and is held at the British Museum, as part of the Crace Collection. Here the Crooked Billet is shown as the "St Clements Stores," though it was registered as The Crooked Billet in the Post Office Directory as late as 1856. The sign above the door reveals it to be owned by "Charrington Head Co." This was the name the Charrinton Brewery traded under between 1833 and 1880. Thomas Hosmer Shepherd was employed by Frederick Crace who employed him to paint pictures of old buildings before they were demolished. In this case, however, it seems that the building was not demolished, as it is shown going strong in a second image, by John Crowther (1837-1902):

Crowther's image dates from 1881, and is in the Chadwyck-Healey Collection at the London Metropolitan Archives. It shows The Rising Sun on the left with a beer cart in front of the tavern.

This final image is taken from Frank L Emanuel's illustrations to Wilfred Witton's A Londoner's London (1912). The Rising Sun is no longer next to Dashwood's second hand clothes store as it was in Shepherds picture of 1855. Now it abuts a second hand book shop, which proudly announces that it purchases libraries. The Wych Street-Holywell Street area was demolished in around 1899 to make way for the building of Aldwych, and the Aldwych Theatre, so this illustration must have been drawn from an older painting, which I have been unable to locate.

In fact, this area was well know for its second hand clothes and cheap books. The London Metropolitan Archives holds a surprisingly large number of permit requests for printing presses in the 1820s and 1830s. Edward Walford observes of Wych Street in Old and new London: a narrative of its history, its people, and its places Vol 3 (1873):

Like Holywell Street, of late years this thoroughfare has gained a notoriety for the sale of books and prints of an immoral class, and at present the sale of them is only partially suppressed. In bygone days, however, it was tenanted by a very different class of persons; although in 1734, according to a statement quoted by Mr. Diprose, this street was "much taken up by upholsterers for the sale of bedding and second-hand household goods."

On September 5, 1874 the Builder published a letter from 'A Working Man.' In the letter the correspondent describes a legend belonging to these streets at the North of the Strand, which colorfully illustrates the condition of the streets around the Crooked Billet, before they were knocked down to build Aldwych:

the whole nest of streets and passages behind the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields requires re-arrangement and improvement. There is a legend hereabout that years ago a young man from the country, bearing a black bag, started one winter night from PortugalStreet to get into the Strand, and that he has been wandering round and about ever since, constantly returning with a disconsolate aspect to his original starting-point. On foggy nights his form may be descried in Clare Market. Anyhow, no one has yet heard that he ever reached the Strand.

What is perhaps most remarkable about these accounts of the street around the Strand is their proximity to the more respectable buildings that lined the streets of the Strand itself -- including the famous Crown and Anchor tavern. They create a sense of London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in which the legal world centered around the great inns of court must have constantly jostled with the inhabitants of the nest of streets in which men and women spilled out of the pubs singing lewd ballads and simulating orgasms.

Note: I owe a large debt of gratitude to the website arthurlloyd.co.uk whose pages relating to Wych Street have helped immeasurably with the history of the Crooked Billet.

Crooked Billet, Little Shire Lane

In April 1798 the entire general committee of the LCS were arrested. Binns, Bone, Col Despard, Hodgson, A. Galloway Lemaitre, and J. Moore, following the suspension of Habeus Corpus on 21 April, were held until 1801. Thomas Spence was bailed. This was the twilight of the LCS. On July 12 1799, it would be officially outlawed, having been one of the societies named in 39 Geo II, c 79, an Act "for the more effectual suppression of societies established for seditious and treasonable practices." By this point a number of its former leaders (Ashley, Place, Thelwall) had resigned from the society because they disagreed with the increasingly confrontational position the society had assumed. Place for example, claims to have resigned over the determination to hold a public meeting in a field near St. Pancras Church in July 1797. He claims that after his resignation the LCS "declined very rapidly and by the end of the year was in a very low state," by which he meant only the less "respectable" members (i.e. those with the most violent tendencies) remained.

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It was during this final phase of the the LCS's existence that meetings were held at the Crooked Billet, near Temple Bar (the other major meeting place at this time was the Unicorn in Shoreditch). Spy reports from William Gent, who was providing reports on both the LCS and the United Englishmen, which was training its members in the use of arms, suggest that the two societies had considerable overlap in terms of membership. In one report he describes a 31 August 1798 meeting:

I last night being Delegate joined the Committee of the London Corresponding Society at the Crooked Billet Shire Lane near Temple Bar, where Mr Eastbourne was Chosen their President and Mr Philips their secretary, but on their last meeting night there was some mistake concerning their future Meeting, some Persons came to the Crooked Billet on the night before, so there were only Ten that attended. All the Business that was done was the Regulating the Divisions and appointing the place of the next Meeting, which was agreed it should be at the same place on Thursday night next a 8 oClock. (PC 1/42/A144; Thale p438)

At a meeting of the 7 September, also held at the Crooked Billet, Gent reports that the LCS had received a Letter from the Friends of Liberty at Norwich, asking why they had not heard from them in such a long time. The LCS answered, urging the Norwich society to "hold on with the utmost vigor, and not to be timid in the least."

In October 1798 another spy report, this time from John Tunbridge, mentions the Crooked Billet as a place where the LCS leaders spent time. "Child enquired of Baxter where he was to meet the Committee. Baxter said he must go to Little Shire Lane Temple Bar to the crooked Billet next Thursday Evening into the back Room where Baxter would meet him and introduce him up Stairs" (PC 1/3119. fos 49-50; Thale p439). Typically alehouses would have a single downstairs room for the public, the landlord would live upstairs with his family. That the LCS had access to the little room at the back of the upstairs suggests both that the landlord was complicit in their activities, and that the LCS felt the need to continue their business with considerable discretion.

Mary Thale describes one of the meetings in the Crooked Billet in more detail:

The reformer- revolutionary George Blythe told Tunbridge that he had been attending a Sunday debating society whenever the question dealt with reform and that he had proposed the question to be debated next Sunday: 'what were the first duties of a Representative Government?' That Sunday Blythe led Tunbridge and three other reformers, none of whom knew their destination, to an upper room in a public house, the Crooked Billet in Shire Lane. (Blythe's circumspection was necessary- though futile on this occasion- even though the Two Acts had expired a month earlier and such a topic was, theoretically, no longer illegal. With habeascorpususpended, any political talk could lead to long imprisonment.) In the secluded room Tunbridge found seventeen or eighteen men 'all very genteely dressed', one of whom was reading aloud from a book by Paine. Before the debate broke up at 10.00p.m., fifty men were present, including several members of the revolutionary society of United Englishmen. In the debate the speakersall agreed with a Mr Proctor that the first duty of a representativegovernment would be 'for Men to be chosen to go and find out the Grievancesof the People and after that to establish Schools to enlighten their Minds and do away with Ignorance they are now too many of them possessedof'. Although the location had been secret, the fear of spies and prosecution retarded the discussion. Even so, a Mr Piercy said 'he hoped the present cursed infernal Constitution would be soon done away with'. Proctor instantly reproved him and told him 'he was liable to be called to account'. (Recall, for contrast, the 1795 debate which included hopes of seeing Pitt marched to the scaffold.) Proctor seems to have been the only cautious man there; he is the only one who objected to the topic proposed for the next debate: 'whether a Reformcan be obtained by Unity or by the Dint of Arms'. Piercy asserted that they could apply the question to another country. But Proctor 'thought their Friends were suffering in Prison for less Things than had been done that Evening. And that if they were apprehended and taken before the privy Council it would be told them it could not be thought they were debating about any other Country than this, particularly as they knew their Principles.' Proctor was outvoted, and the meeting ended with a dis- cussion of Proctor's proposal of a supper to celebrate 'the Anniversary of the King of France's Head being cut off'.

(Mary Thale, "London Debating Societies in the 1790s," The Historical Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), p81.

The Crooked Billet had been around since at least 1769, when it shows up on the historical record as the site of a robbery of a bundle of "four marine bed-curtains, a head cloth, tester and vallance, unmade, and two table-cloths, value 5 s. the property of John Webb."

Shire Lane was so named because it was the dividing line between Middlesex and the City of London. The Quarterly Review described it as "a vile, squalid place, noisy and noxious, nearly inaccessible to both light and air, and swarming with a population of a most disreputable character." (Written in 1843, but looking back on the 1820s). It was just one of thirty or so streets "all of them more or less dirty and overcrowded" according to Old and New London, that were cleared during the building of the law courts in the 1870s.