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Fleet Street runs east-west from Temple Bar to Fleet Hill or Ludgate Hill, and is named for the Fleet River. The road has existed since at least the
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Imagine you are a flaneur walking down early modern Fleetstreet, which climbs from the London Wall’s eastern end to Temple Bar: perhaps you are on your way to St Bride’s Church, St Dunstan’s in the West, or the Temple Church; or you might be seeking out a man of law in any of the four Inns of Court within easy distance (Bucholz and Ward 54). In any case, you would be aware that it is an important access route linking the jostling world of London commerce to the seat of power in Westminster.
The street takes its name from one of the largest a tidal inlet
(Wheatley 52). As an early modern flaneur, you would have
no illusions: the street was essentially an open sewer oozing along at the eastern end of the street by the
city wall. The [the river] carried the
savour of each [London] street, readily identifiable; it was full of dung and dead
things
(Ackroyd 567). Ackroyd echoes an idea found in
Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell What street they sail’d from, by their sight and smell. They, as each torrent drives with rapid force, From Smithfield, or St. ’Pulchre’s shape their course, And in huge cofluent join’d at Snow Hill ridge, Fall from the Conduit prone to Holborn-bridge. Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and blood, Drown’d puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood
In
This labour paſt, by Bridewell all deſcend (As morning prayer and flagellation end) To where Fleet Ditch with diſemboguing ſtreams, Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames.
As a traveller in this early modern street, you may be offered oysters gathered from the
waters as a cheap and popular snack (Wheatley 52).
But you might also feel a presence of death in the air. In
in its stinking lanes, there
died most in London
(Barton 107). Infection and contamination were still a
major problem in keeping of hogs and swine therein and elsewhere near it, the throwing in of offal and other garbage
by butchers
(Wheatley 52).
Your walk through early modern Fleet Street might begin
as you wander down from Ludgate onto
Fleetbridge, one of the four bridges over the
Fleet. Here in the
often tended by disreputable-looking vendors(Chalfant 80). You might want to linger in this vibrant place or feel forced to press onwards from the noxious smell of Fleet Ditch. In
but much mony being therein spent, y(Stow 1:13).ᵉ effect fayled, so that the brooke by meanes of continuall incrochments upon the banks getting over the water, and casting of soylage into the streame, is now become woorse cloyed and choken then ever it was before
On the south side of the street, through some iron gates, you might catch a glimpse of the mouldering
towers and battlements of Bridewell. Here
Go carry(Shakespeare 5.5.92). This prison also heldSir John Falstaff to the Fleet
An early modern account of these prisons complains how miserably they handle thy
bond-servants
(Chalfant 80).
The sounds of inmates would have been thick in the air around Bridewell too.
Later it was to become the original workhouse,
where the London indigent poor were allotted futile tasks and
punishment for their perceived idleness. As you walk by this area in early modern
London,
you might notice that many of the wooden buildings are ancient, while some have been built more
recently on land confiscated from the church during the
dissolution of the monasteries. One such place is Whitefriars,
close to Bridewell on the south side of the street. Once a Carmelite monastery, it was pulled down and transformed into the site of a playhouse for
a company of boy actors. It is here that such plays as
larger houses, abandoned to decay, were divided each into as many as twenty and thirty tenements, fulfilling their part in the medley of dirty lodgings, dram-shops, brothels which made [this district] all that was evil(Bell 152–153).
You hurry by the dingy rookeries and dens of thieves, pass Hanging Sword
Alley, Magpie Alley, and Primrose Hill—which
was the site of a grisly murder seized upon by anti-Catholic fear-mongers in
For treason and favouring foreign invasion.
Typically,
the placard was silent on the religious debate that would see the man hailed as a Catholic martyr after
his death (Wheatley 8).
By now you are emerging into the thick of Fleet Street and are
confronted with horses, carts, mud, pick-pockets, drunks, brawls, beggars, barrels being
rolled into taverns, porters bearing heavy loads, craftsmen working at their benches, criers and
urchins hawking everything from broadsides to brooms, and housewives standing arms akimbo on their
doorsteps judging—and sometimes insulting—all who [dare] to enter their neighbourhood
(Bucholz and Ward 53). Perhaps you might feel threatened
by swarming gangs of youths. When street-boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike to the right and
left unmercilessly without regard to person; and because they are the strongest one is obliged to put up with
the insult as well as the injury
(Bucholz and Ward 53).
Even if you manage to avoid the pickpockets you might, as receive a great jostle
from someone who might believe they have more right to take the wall
(Pepys) than you. The channel of waste lying in the middle of the street
is best avoided by keeping as close to the edge of the street as possible, and social hierarchies can be roughly
negotiated to determine who has the right to avoid the contamination. A gentleman might expect
to get the wall, but if it is night or he is obviously tipsy he might be shoved aside.
There were plenty of places to go for a drink or to dine. If you enter an early modern Fleet Street
Tavern for a porringer of soup, a goodly capon or loin of pork, or cates and lavish cupfuls of canary wine,
your nostrils might be intrigued by the whiff of tobacco recently introduced from Virginia (or else disgusted
at the spitting of it onto the reed-lined floor). they have hired a
chamber and all private to practice in the making of the Petun
(Jonson 281). Alternatively, you might talk of politics and find
yourself in the middle of a heated argument. In his diary entry on
a sot.
It
is not a thing to be said of any Soveraigne Prince, be his weaknesses what they will, to be called a sot.
(Pepys).
If you do not venture into the taverns, you might still be struck by their colourful signs creaking above the street.
There are fabulous monsters, a green dragon and a phoenix, metonymic headwear like the mitre and the crown,
and things celestial, a rainbow and a sun. At this last sign, close to St. Dunstan’s
Church and opposite the conduit, the first printing press was established in
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness(King James Bible, Ps. 91.5–91.6).
St. Dunstan’s was lucky to survive the fire of
London. According to Bucholz and Ward, the Dean of Westminster drafted the boys of
Westminster school to form a bucket brigade
(Bucholz and Ward 344). Most of Fleet
Street was not so lucky. It had survived large fires before in the
from Fleet Ditch
to Middle Temple Gate there was not a single wide side street
(Bell 177). Another reason was that since the season was over
at London, the lodgings of law students were empty, and many noblemen could
only wait helplessly in the country for news of their losses. Those who were there did not fare any better:
the poet