The City of London in 1900: Cheapside

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Cheapside was the subject of this installment of Arthur H. Beavan's survey of the City of London in Imperial London, first published in 1901:

Connected with Cheapside are many interesting associations.

It was at No. 6, Frederick's Place, Old Jewry, that D'Israeli the younger was articled to a solicitor in 1821, "at an age when those who afterwards became his contemporaries in public life were matriculating at the Universities."

At this time, his father resided in Bloomsbury Square in a commodious house still (1901) standing at the corner of Hart Street.

Thus, in one respect, his son almost literally fulfilled the whimsical condition laid down by Charles Dickens, that "the very aristocrat of clerks - an attorney in perspective - should know a family in Gower Street and another in Tavistock Square."

In a queer little apartment, ten feet square, and at a table (religiously preserved) with its well-worn deal slope on which the initials "B. D." are neatly carved, doubtless by his own hand, young D'Israeli assiduously worked, chiefly under the direction of the late Mr. Thomas Maples, an old friend of his father and mother, and so much ability did he develop that the elder D'Israeli was advised to send him to the Bar.

However, this idea was followed up only to the extent of his becoming nominally a pupil of a relative (the eminent conveyancer, Mr. Nathaniel Basevi), and entering Lincoln's Inn as a student.

Until the beginning of 1825, he remained at Frederick's Place, where his strictly legal career may be said to have terminated.

Old Jewry must have brought to the young articled clerk many recollections of the times when "the ancient people," expelled from London by Edward I, and re-admitted by Cromwell, settled in Aldgate, or the New Jewry, as it was called in contradistinction to their original quarters there.

Interesting literary associations, moreover, surround this locality.

Thomas a Becket was born on the site of Mercers' Hall at the rear of Frederick's Place.

Richard Porson, the Greek scholar who could "drink all night and spout all day," acted as librarian to the London Institution, No. 8, Old Jewry, and died there in 1808.

Thomas Hood was born close by, in the Poultry; and in Frederick's Place, Horace Smith, one of the authors of Rejected Addresses, first saw the light of day.

Frederick's Place itself was named after Sir Christopher Frederick, serjeant-surgeon to James I, and his fine mansion occupied the entire site.

At one time it was used as the Excise Office, but at the commencement of the twentieth century it was pulled down and the present building erected.

During the Lord George Gordon Riots, the fighting at the corner of the Old Jewry and the Poultry was hot.

The troops firing down Old Jewry at some of the mob, accidentally shot an innocent clerk who was coming out of a counting-house; the ball passed through his heart, and he fell dead on the spot.

Another unfortunate man, who was crossing the street with a dish from a tavern, received from the same volley a musket-ball through the wrist.

Next: The City of London in 1900: The Royal Exchange