Benjamin Franklin, Journeyman Printer

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UK: 1896 Map, London Population Density. Hackney, etc
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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holborn, with a look at the time when Benjamin Franklin worked in Great Wild Street as a journeyman printer:

Great and Little Wild Streets are called respectively Old and New Weld Streets by Strype. Weld House stood on the site of the present Wild Court, and was during the reign of James II occupied by the Spanish Embassy.

In Great Wild Street Benjamin Franklin worked as a journeyman printer.

Kemble and Sardinia were formerly Prince's and Duke's Streets.

The latter contains some very old houses, and a chapel used by the Roman Catholics.

This is said to be the oldest foundation now in the hands of the Roman Catholics in London.

It was built in 1648, and was the object of virulent attack during the Gordon Riots; the exterior is singularly plain. Sardinia Street communicates with Lincoln's Inn Fields by a heavy and quaint archway.

Even in Strype's time Little Queen Street was "a place pestered with coaches," a reputation which, curiously enough, it still retains, the heavy traffic of the King's Cross omnibuses passing through it.

Trinity Church is in a late decorative style, with ornamental pinnacles, flying buttresses, and two deeply-recessed porches.

Within it is a very plain, roomlike structure. The church is on the site of a house in which lived the Lambs, and where Mary Lamb in a fit of insanity murdered her mother.

The Holborn Restaurant forms part of the side of this street; this is a very gorgeous building, and within is a very palace of modern luxury. It stands on the site formerly occupied by the Holborn Casino or Dancing Saloon.

Little Queen Street will be wiped out by the broad new thoroughfare from the Strand to Holborn to be called Kingsway.

Gate Street was formerly Little Princes Street. The present name is derived from the gate or carriage-entrance to Lincoln's Inn Fields.

In Strype's map half of Whetstone Park is called by its present title, and the western half is Phillips Rents. He mentions it as "once famous for its infamous and vicious inhabitants."

Great and Little Turnstile were so named from the turning stiles which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stood at their north ends to prevent the cattle straying from Lincoln's Inn Fields.

The Holborn Music-hall in Little Turnstile was originally a Nonconformist chapel. After 1840 it served as a hall, lectures, etc, being given by free-thinkers, and in 1857 was adapted to its present purpose.

Next: Holborn: Lincoln's Inn Fields: Executions