Radical inns, taverns, alehouses, coffee houses, homes, houses, chapels,
Institutes, debating clubs and Spencean ‘free and easies’
Derived from a reading of Radical Underworld by Ian McCalman,
Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance 1790-1820
by David Worrall,
William Cuffay The Life & Times of a Chartist Leader by Martin Hoyles,
The Spirit of Despotism by John Barrell,
Ian Newman http://www.1790salehouse.com/
and Francis Boorman’s thesis on Chancery Lane
https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5797/1/Francis_Boorman_- The_Political_space_of_Chancery_Lane_c._1760-1815.pdf
First up, the Bell in Exeter Street, where the LCS was formed in 1791,
To hear Thomas Hardy, founder of the LCS:
‘The Rights of Man’ ‘are not confined to this small island
But are extended to the whole human race, black or white,
High or low, rich or poor’;
Then to the Globe Tavern, corner of the Strand and Craven Street,
Where LCS divisions met in 1794:
‘We must have redress from our own laws and not from the laws
of our plunderers, enemies and oppressors’
Next, to Soho for the Panton Street Debating Club of 1795,
And the London Corresponding Society, once more:
“If the King … dare attempt to trample upon the Liberties of the People,
I hope they will trample upon his head”;
Other LCS pubs: The Friend at Hand, Little North Street,
The French Horn, Lambeth Walk,
The Queen’s Arms, Kennington Lane,
The Fox and Hounds, Sydenham,
But we’re off to Lunan’s public house,
Academy Court, Chancery Lane,
With Jacobins and spies in Bell’s Yard, too:
‘He talked of killing the King with blow-pipe
and poisoned arrow’;
Then to Furnival’s Inn cellar in the Strand:
‘The very general resort of the most Jacobinical politics in London’,
Another haunt of the London Corresponding Society,
And the United Englishmen, too;
The George alehouse in Clerkenwell next,
At the junction of Compton Street and St John Street,
Where the United Englishmen debated arming for a coup d’etat –
1799 saw raids on the Royal Oak in Red Lion Passage,
And the Nag’s Head in St John Street;
After that, the Green Dragon in Fore Street (Moorfields)
Became a new radical port of call,
While the Ham and Windmill Tavern in Windmill Street,
Saw spies reporting on Colonel Despard :
“May the wings of Liberty never lose a feather” –
Then in 1802, Colonel Despard was caught in a raid
On the Oakley Arms in Lambeth – and would lose his head …
At his trial in 1803, a soldier spoke of the Ham and Windmill
And how he had been asked to be ‘sworn in’, to ‘a free and easy society’ –
‘Free and Easies’:
Political sing songs, debates, discussions and readings:
‘A free and easy society
To overthrow the Government,
And have our nation the same as the French’;
Next: the Cock on the corner of Lumber Court and Grafton Street, Soho,
Where the Polemic Club met,
And Thomas Spence in his free and easy style, too;
And then, after his death:
The Society of Spencean Philanthropists, founded in October 1814,
By Thomas Evans,
Where numbers grew from around sixty before the end of the French Wars,
To two to three hundred in the febrile days of 1815 to 1820,
With sometimes 2 – 3, 000 regular attenders at political meetings;
Now on to Thomas Evans’ house in Fetter Lane near Fleet Street;
And the Seven Stars in Bethnal Green
Where the United Irishmen practised drilling in the garden in 1798;
Other Spencean meeting places and ‘free and easies’ included
The Swan in New Street Square
(Where Spence held his free and easies from 1803 onwards),
And the Fleece in Windmill Street;
Next up:
’Doctor’ Watson of the Cato St Conspiracy and his surgeon-apothecary shops,
In the Strand at 5 Newcastle Street and 6 Catherine Street,
And later out at Somers Town, in Clarendon Place,
Next, what became the chief Spencean watering-hole:
The Mulberry Tree in Moorfields
(Mary Johnson, wife of the publican, was interrogated as a Spencean in 1798);
Now, for other public houses with a radical reputation:
The Green Dragon in Fore Street and the Ben Jonson’s Head in Red Lion Street
(United Englishmen ports of call in 1798; Spencean after that);
The Baptist’s Head in St John’s Lane,
The Old Paul’s Head Tavern, 5 Cateaton Street,
The Crescent in Jewin Street, Cripplegate,
The Mermaid Tavern – meeting place of the Socratic Club;
Other Spencean ‘free and easies’: the Nag’s Head, Carnaby Market,
The Northumberland Arms, Bethnal Green,
The Waterman’s Arms, Castle Street, Bethnal Green
(‘May the Skin of the tyrants be burnt into Parchment
and the Rights of Man be written on it’),
The King’s Head in St Luke’s,
The Red Lion, Spitalfields,
The Spotted Dog, Clement Lane, Spitalfields,
And the Golden Key in Spitalfields;
A spy reported on Thomas Preston, shoemaker and author,
At the Red Hart in Shoe Lane,
“He usually asked, in the Tap-room he visited, if there were any Men out of Work; if there were, he immediately sent for Bread, Cheese & Beer, saying, ‘It is the Duty of every one not to see any one in distress, but to divide all equally.’”
Now for some Spencean debating clubs and taverns:
The Commercial Rooms in Whitechapel,
The George, East Harding Street, and the Cecil in St Martin’s Lane;
Spencean Thomas Wedderburn shook his fist at Robert Owen
In the City of London tavern;
He, along with fellow Ultras,
Also frequented (in addition to all those named above)
His new chapel at the corner of Hopkins St and Brewer St, Soho,
The Falcon in Fetter Lane, the White Horse Tavern,
The Borough Road Chapel, in High Holborn,
Archer Street Chapel (number six),
The ‘New Assembly Room’ for ‘Christian Diabolists’
At 12 White’s Alley, Chancery Lane;
Now to the Saracen’s Head
(Where Samuel Waddington practised comic, burlesque Spenceanism),
And the Scotch Arms in New Round Court –
Waddington also entertained at trades’ alehouses
In Goswell Street and the Barbican;
There was a radical printing works at 21 Clerkenwell Green;
The ‘Society of Infidel Publicists’
Met at the Patriot Coffee House, Soho,
And at the apothecary-pressman Griffin’s place in Holborn.
The First London Cooperative Manufacturing Society
Was established at the Spencean
Charles Jennison’s shoemaking place in Old Street,
Before moving to be closer to Robert Owen’s Grays Inn Road Exchange,
Where Owenite festivals were held –
Allen Davenport’s play about ‘Co-operation’, The Social Age,
Attracted an audience of some 300 at the Charlotte Street Exchange,
He lived by Goswell Street, frequenting, with fellow Radicals,
The Cornish Coffee House, Bunhill Row, and the Hope Coffee House –
As president of the Tower Street Mutual Instruction Society,
And the Gould Square Mechanics’ Institute,
Honorary member of the Finsbury Mutual Instruction Society, in Bunhill,
And of William Lovett’s somewhat Dickensian-sounding
National Association for Promoting Social and Political Improvement;
The Cato Street conspirators met beneath a portrait
of executed Arthur Thistlewood
At Walker’s Coffee House, Union Street, Spitalfields,
While other Ultras, apart from James Walker,
Opened coffee houses as way of avoiding too much surveillance:
For example, James Whittaker, Thomas Evans
And James Ings, who was, of course, beheaded
With Thistlewood at Newgate, after Cato Street –
The spy, Shegog (nom de guerre?) faithfully delivered reports
On these coffee houses, as well as the Patriot in Soho,
The Chapter and the Sun in the Barbican,
And Williams’ Coffee House in St Martin Le Grand
(Shegog: “the most successful auxiliary the seditious and corrupt press have”);
Just around the corner from Walker’s was
Sampson Elliot’s Coffee Shop in Old Street,
And close by in these radical coffee shop environs:
The Phoenix in Grub Street, The Cambridge in Shoreditch,
And the Albion Coffee House in Lantern Wall, Shoreditch;
The British Forum republican anti-slavery debating club,
With its practice of discussion, readings, debates and singing,
Met five times in the week at Lunts Coffee House, Clerkenwell Green,
While Spencean free and easy traditions
Were perpetuated into the 1820s and 30s
At the Mercer’s Arms, Longacre,
The Cheshire Cheese became the haunt of radical shoemakers
And some who had been on the fringes of the Cato Street Conspiracy;
The shoemaker’s union and sundry Spenceans
Also met at the York Arms, Holborn,
Members of groups pivotal to the formation of metropolitan Chartism –
From organisations such as the 1830 Metropolitan Political Union,
The National Union of the Working Classes,
The Finsbury Forum of 1834-35,
The East London Democratic Association
(Became the LDA) 1833-34) –
Veteran Spenceans and Ultras such as Davenport, the Neesoms and Waddington
Met regularly at old favourites such as Lunts, the Albion,
And Benbow’s Commercial Coffee House at Temple Bar;
The blasphemous chapels were favourites too:
The Philadelphia Chapel in Windmill Street,
The Old Borough Chapel in Chapel Court,
Benbow’s Chapel at 8 Theobald’s Road,
The Bowling Square Chapel, Bethnal Green;
And then, old pubs were remembered too:
The Green Dragon in Fore Street,
The Spotted Cow in the Old Kent Road,
And the Standard of Liberty in Brick Lane,
(Spies wrote of Benbow meeting in Hoxteth alehouses,
In 1834, discussing assassination plans),
While eleven years later, close by the Mulberry Tree,
Elizabeth and Charles Neesom, at 5 Moor Lane,
Would nurse Allen Davenport as he declined towards death;
Over in Pentonville, when Davenport was younger,
Shegog the spy reported that
‘many of the Spencean’, ‘And other seditious characters’
Were congregating in ‘some of the Publick Houses’
‘In the neighbourhood’ of the Belvidere Tavern, Pentonville Road,
Where some Ultras were optimistic that
‘some enthusiastic characters may be worked upon to commit Assassination’;
Thomas Preston was one of those involved in the planning
Of the aborted uprising at Bartholomew’s Fair in 1817,
But when he went to the Broad Arrow Tavern in Grub Street,
‘One of his Daughters … implored him not to begin on account of the soldiers’ –
But Shegog reported that the Revolutionaries
‘Are very busy in getting Arms and Ammunition & Cutlasses’ …
He attended the meeting held at the Duke’s Arms, Upper Marsh, Lambeth,
‘There were about 40 or 50 of the Chief leaders present,
Some from Bethnalgreen, Spittalfields, Bermondsey, the Borough and Lambeth,
Men of the worst description, ready for any desperate enterprize’;
Thomas Preston exclaimed that ‘if 25,000 men would join him
He would give Liberty to the world’;
The future Cato Street Conspirators embarked
on a ‘desperate enterprize’, of course,
And they met regularly at the White Lion in Wych Street:
“a Little man in a black Coat & White Apron a large Pistol in a Black belt the rest to the amount of 40 all armed & loaded …
Thislewood came in & inspected them …”;
They also met at the White Lion in Turnmill Street,
Pledging to attend a meeting in Covent Garden ‘armed …with Flags’,
They also frequented Pitts Place, Drury Lane,
And the Rose in Wild Street, Drury Lane;
In the wake of Peterloo, in August 1819,
Two hundred heard John Gast read the news
at the George in East Harding Street,
Nearly three hundred met in sombre mood at the Jacob’s Well
Almost a week after Peterloo, on August 22nd 1819;
A spy reported on ‘monies being expended on ammunition’
At the Red Cross in Fore Street, Cripplegate,
While a report from the Crown & Anchor at Seven Dials,
Mentioned that ‘several’ were ‘armed with Pistols & spring Bayonets’ …
In conclusion, we remember the Fox and Goose in Pooley Street,
And the Salmon and Ball, Bethnal Green Road:
‘Sing and meet and meet and sing,
And your Chains will drop off like burnt thread’,
While we walk, talk and map the streets and palimpsests
Of radical London pubs, coffee house, chapels, institutes and meeting places,
c. 1790-1850,
On Thomas Spence’s birthday, June 21st,
Focusing upon Islington, Hackney, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Finsbury, Spitalfields, Holborn, Marylebone, Soho,
& South of the river:
Lambeth and Southwark,
Not forgetting the site of Thomas Spence’s bookshop,
The Hive of Liberty in Little Turnstile, High Holborn;
And Spa Fields, Clerkenwell,
The Globe, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street
(A postal collection point in 1830,
For the Metropolitan Political Union),
Cold Bath Fields Prison, Clerkenwell,
The Reformers’ Memorial in Kensal Green,
And remembering Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt’s triumphal entry into London,
On his way to stand trial, less than a month after the Manchester tragedy,
And there, the ghosts of the future Cato Street conspirators,
There, in the ‘tens of thousands’,
Together with the ghost of John Keats:
“It would take me a whole day and a quire of paper
to give you any thing like detail…
The whole distance from the Angel Islington to the
Crown and anchor” in the Strand “was lined with multitudes” …
Within a week, he would pen lines that could speak to Spenceans,
And their dream of common ownership of land:
‘To Autumn’ …
‘… Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor …
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours…’