by blowing up houses at the Temple Church, at Pie Corner, Smithfield (where the figure of a boy still stands to commemorate the fact), at Aldersgate, Cripplegate, and the upper part of Bishopsgate Street. It had consumed five-sixths of the City, together with a great piece beyond the western gates. It had covered an area of 436 acres, viz., 387 acres within the walls, and 73 without; it had destroyed 132,000 dwelling-houses, St. Paul's Cathedral, eighty-nine parish churches, four of the City gates, Sion College, the Royal Exchange, the old Grey Friars Church, the Chapel of St. Thomas of Acon, and an immense number of great houses, schools, prisons, and hospitals. The area covered, roughly speaking, an oblong nearly a mile and a half in length by half a mile in breadth. The value of the property destroyed was estimated at £10,000,000. There is no such fire of any great city on record, unless it is the burning of Rome under Nero. Their city being thus destroyed, the citizens lost no time, but set to work manfully to rebuild it. The rebuilding of London is a subject of some obscurity. One thing is quite certain: that as soon as the embers were cool enough to enable the people to walk among them, they returned, and began to find out the sites of their former houses. It is also certain that it took more than two years to clear away the tottering walls and the ruins. It was at first proposed to build again on a new plan; Sir Christopher Wren prepared one plan, and Sir John Evelyn another. Both plans were excellent, symmetrical and convenient. Had either been adopted, the City of London would have been as artificial and as regular as a new American town, or the City of Turin. Very happily, while the Lord Mayor and aldermen were considering the matter, the people had already begun to build. A most fortunate thing it was that the City rose again on its old lines, with its winding streets and narrow lanes. At first the houseless people, 200,000 in number, camped out in Moorfields, just north of the City. Very happily, these fields, which had long been a swamp or fen intersected by ditches, a place of pasture, kennels, and windmills, had been drained by the City in 1606, and were now laid out in pleasant walks, a place of resort for summer evenings, a wrestling and cudgel playing-ground, and a ground for the muster of the militia. Here they set up tents and cottages; here they presently began to build two-stories houses of brick. As they had no churches, they set up 'tabernacles,' whether on the site of the old churches or in Moorfields does not appear. As they had no Exchange, they used Gresham College for the purpose; the same place did duty for the Guildhall; the Excise Office was removed to Southampton Fields, near Bedford House; the General Postoffice was taken to Brydges Street, Covent Garden; the Customhouse to Mark Lane; Doctors' Commons to Exeter House, Strand. The part of the town wanted for the shipping and foreign trade was first put up. And thus the town, in broken-winged fashion, renewed its old life. On September 18th the Houses of Parliament created a Court of Judicature for settling the differences which were sure to arise between landlord and tenants, and between owners of land, as to boundaries and other things. The Justices of the Court of King's Bench and Common Pleas, with the Barons of the Exchequer, were the judges of the Court. So much satisfaction did they give that the grateful City caused their portraits to be placed in Guildhall. . . In order to enable the churches, prisons, and public buildings to be rebuilt, a duty was laid upon coals. This duty was also to enable the City to enlarge

the streets, take over ground for quays, and other useful purposes. Nothing, however, seems to have been granted for the rebuilding of private houses. The building of the churches took a long time to accomplish. The first to be completed was that of St. Dunstan's in the East, the tower of which is Sir Christopher Wren's; the body of the church, which has since been pulled down, was by another hand. That was built two years after the Fire. Six years after the Fire another church was finished; seven years after three more; eight years after three more; ten years after five, and so on, dragging along until the last two of those rebuilt for a great many were not put up again -were finished in the year 1697, thirty-one years after the Fire. Within four years the rebuilding of the City was nearly completed. Ten thousand houses were built, a great many companies' halls, and nearly twenty churches. One who writes in the year 1690 (Angliæ Metropolis, or, The Present State of London) says, 'As if the Fire had only purged the City, the buildings are infinitely more beautiful, more commodious, more solid (the three main virtues of all edifices) than before. They have made their streets much more large and straight, paved on each side with smooth hewn stone, and guarded the same with many mossy posts for the benefit of foot-passengers; and whereas before they dwelt in low, dark, wooden houses, they now live in lofty, lightsome, uniform, and very stately brick buildings.' This is great gain. And yet, looking at the houses outside Staple Inn and at the old pictures, at what loss of picturesqueness was this gain acquired? The records are nearly silent as to the way in which the people were affected by the Fire. It is certain, however, that where the Plague ruined hundreds of families, the Fire ruined thousands., Thirteen thousand houses were burned down; many of these were houses harboring two or three families, for 200,000 were rendered homeless. Some of them were families of the lower working class, the riverside laborers and watermen, who would suffer little more than temporary inconvenience, and the loss of their humble 'sticks.' But many of them were substantial merchants, their warehouses filled with wine, oil, stuffs, spices, and all kinds of merchandise; warehouses and contents all gone -swept clean away-and with them the whole fortune of the trader."-W. Besant, London, pp. 397-402.

ALSO IN: S. Pepys, Diary, Sept. 2-15, 1666, v. 4. -L. Phillimore, Sir Christopher Wren, ch. 6-7.W. G. Bell, Great fire of London in 1666.

1685.-Most populous capital in Europe.First lighting of streets.-"There is reason to believe that, in 1685, London had been, during about half a century, the most populous capital in Europe. The inhabitants, who are now [1848] at least 1,900,000, were then probably little more than half a million. London had in the world only one commercial rival, now long ago outstripped, the mighty and opulent Amsterdam. . . . There is, indeed, no doubt that the trade of the metropolis then bore a far greater proportion than at present to the whole trade of the country; yet to our generation the honest vaunting of our ancestors must appear almost ludicrous. The shipping which they thought incredibly great appears not to have exceeded 70,000 tons. This was, indeed, then more than a third of the whole tonnage of the kingdom. . . . It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of Charles II [1685], began a great change in the police of London, a change which has perhaps added as much to the happiness of the body of the people as revolu

tions of much greater fame. An ingenious projector, named Edward Heming, obtained letters patent conveying to him, for a term of years, the exclusive right of lighting up London. He undertook, for a moderate consideration, to place a fight before every tenth door, on moonless nights, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and from six to twelve of the clock."-Lord Macaulay, History of England, v. 1, ch. 3.

1688.-Irish night.-The ignominious flight of James II from his capital, on the morning of December 11, 1688, was followed by a wild outbreak of riot in London, which no effective authority existed to promptly repress. To the cry of "No Popery," Roman Catholic chapels and the residences of ambassadors of Roman Catholic states, were sacked and burned. "The morning of the 12th of December rose on a ghastly sight. The capital in many places presented the aspect of a city taken by storm. The Lords met at Whitehall, and exerted themselves to restore tranquillity. . . . In spite, however, of the well-meant efforts of the provisional government, the agitation grew hourly more formidable. Another day of agitation

and terror closed, and was followed by a night the strangest and most terrible that England had ever seen." Just before his flight, King James had sent an order for the disbanding of his army, which had been composed for the most part of troops brought over from Ireland. A terrifying rumor that this disbanded Irish soldiery was marching on London, and massacring men, women and children on the road, now spread through the city. "At one in the morning the drums of the militia beat to arms. Everywhere terrified women were weeping and wringing their hands, while their fathers and husbands were equipping themselves for fight. Before two the capital wore a face of stern preparedness which might well have daunted a real enemy, if such an enemy had been approaching. Candles were blazing at all the windows. The public places were as bright as at noonday. All the great avenues were barricaded. More than 20,000 pikes and muskets lined the streets. The late daybreak of the winter solstice found the whole City still in arms. During many years the Londoners retained a vivid recollection of what they called the Irish Night. . . . The panic had not been confined to London. The cry that disbanded Irish soldiers were coming to murder the Protestants had, with malignant ingenuity, been raised at once in many places widely distant from each other."-T. B. Macaulay, History of England, ch. 10.

LONDON, 1750-1830

they had to submit. In 1799 Parliament passed an Act which really begins the modern history of the Port of London. It tells us that 'the Port is so much crowded with shipping,' and that there was 'great crowding, confusion and damage' owing to the absence of accommodation. In fact, things were so bad that London was in danger of losing a large part of its trade. Antwerp and Rotterdam, etc., nearly beat London in the race for supremacy. This Act authorised the building of the canal across the Isle of Dogs from Limehouse to Barking, and this work was entrusted to the Court of Common Council. Further, the Act created the West India Dock Company, and gave it power to build cargo docks. So eager were the merchants to secure safety for their ships and cargoes that all around this West India Dock was built a high wall with a big ditch on the outside, and it was laid down that no houses were to be erected within a hundred yards of this wall. So London's first dock was surrounded by a veritable fortress. The wall still stands to-day. On July 12, 1800, William Pitt laid the first stone of the West India Dock. When it was opened, the City merchants soon saw its advantages, and then a number of other docks were built by other groups of merchants."C. Mullins, London's story, pp. 121-123.-"In 1803 the East India Dock Company obtained an Act authorizing the construction of docks at Blackwall, and thirty-five years later it amalgamated with the West India Dock Company; while the St. Katharine's Dock Company, established in 1825, similarly amalgamated in 1864 with the London Dock Company, and purchased the Victoria Dock constituted in 1850. This led to the construction, first, of the Albert Dock in 1875 by the London and St. Katharine's Dock Company, and then in 1882 of the still more expensive Tilbury Dock by the rival East and West India Dock Company; and finally, after six years of keen competition between them for trade, mitigated somewhat by a working agreement in 1888, the two companies amalgamated in 1901 into the London and India Dock Company, whose undertaking has just been purchased by the new Port Authority."U. A. Forbes, Port of London and the Conservancy of the Thames (London Quarterly Review, July, 1909).

1720. First trade unions. See LABOR ORGANIZATION: 1720-1800.

-

-

1750-1830.-Growth of the Georgian city.Suburbs. Streets paved. Fairs. Mail. Coaches. Newspapers. Expansion after Waterloo. "London in 1750 was spreading, but not yet rapidly. East and west it spread, not north and south. Eastward the city had thrown out a long arm by the riverside. St. Katherine's Precinct was crowded; streets, two or three deep, stretched along the river-bank as far as Limehouse, but no farther. . . . White-chapel was already a crowded suburb, filled with workingmen. ... Within its boundaries the city was well and carefully ordered. Unfortunately, this order did not extend beyond the walls. Outside there were no companies, no small parishes, nor rich merchants, no charities, schools, or endowments, and practically it was without churches. . . . The suburb of Bloomsbury was beginning. A crowded suburb had sprung up north of the Strand. Westminster was a great city by itself. Southwark, now a borough with half a million people, as great as Liverpool, occupied then a little strip of marshy land not half a mile broad at its widest. . . . The walls of the city were never formally pulled down. They disappeared bit by bit. Houses were built close to them and upon them: they were covered

1695-1901.-Development of docks.-"Until the end of the seventeenth century there were no proper docks in London at all. The first 'wet dock' (that is, a dock in our modern sense of the word) was the Howland or Greenland Dock at Rotherhithe. It was built by private persons in 1695. But it was only used for repairing and fitting ships, not for loading or unloading. Nearly a hundred years went by before cargo docks were built. In the meantime the trade of London was in great difficulties, because all the ships had to lie out in the open river, there subject to the attacks of thieves and the weather. As usual, people wanted a lot of stirring up. So did the City. Pamphlets were written, and all sorts of proposals were made. But nothing was done. The people who made money under the bad conditions then existing violently opposed all dock schemes. Those who owned the river-side quays, the wharfingers and lightermen and others, saw very clearly that their earnings would be affected if ships could be brought easily into safe docks. But in the end

LONDON, 1750-1830

up. Excavations constantly bring to light some of the foundations. . . . The gates still stood, and were closed at sunset, until the year 1760. Then they were all pulled down [because they obstructed traffic], and the materials sold. Temple Bar, which was never a City gate, properly speaking, remained until [1878]. . . . The only pavement both for the road and the footway consisted of large, round pebbles, over which the rolling of the vehicles made the most dreadful noise. In the year 1762, however, an improvement was introduced in Westminster, followed by the City of London in 1766. The roads were paved with squares of Scotch granite laid in gravel; the posts were removed; a curb was laid down; gutters provided, and the footway paved with flat stones. About the same time the corporation took down the overhanging signs, removed the City gates, covered over Fleet Ditch, and broadened numerous narrow passages.

The great merchants of the City still lived within the old boundaries: they had their countryhouses, but they spent most of their time in town, where their houses were stately and commodious, but no longer palaces like those of their predecessors. The Lord Mayor's Mansion, built in 1750, was the only palace unless we count Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, Gresham College, and the Halls of the Companies. But in every street except those given up entirely to trade, such as Cheapside, stood the substantial houses of the City Fathers. Never before had the City been so wealthy. . . . The London fairs-Bartholomew, Greenwich, Southwark, May Fair-no longer, of course, pretended to have anything to do with trade. They were simply occasions for holidaymaking and indulgence in undisguised license and profligacy. . . . May Fair was stopped in the year 1708, but was revived some years afterwards. Southwark Fair . . . was not suppressed till 1763. The only good thing it did was to collect money for the poor prisoners of Marshalsea Prison. Bartholomew and Greenwich Fair continued till [1855]. ... Mail-coaches started every night at eight o'clock with a guard. They were timed for seven miles an hour, and the fare for passengers was fourpence a mile. . . . The stage-coaches from different parts of London were innumerable, as were also the stage-wagons and the hoys. coaches charged the passengers threepence a mile. Hackney-coaches ran for shilling and eighteenpenny fares. . . . There were nine morning papers, of which the Morning Post still survives. They were all published at threepence. There were eight evening papers, which came out three times a week. And there were three or four weekly papers, intended chiefly for the country."-W. Besant, London, pp. 431-433, 444-445, 449-450, 456-457, 464-465.-See also PRINTING AND THE PRESS: 1785-1812.

The

"It was only in the nineteenth century that the capital was finally transformed from a national metropolis into a world's mammoth. The enlargement of the British Empire in the Napoleonic Wars increased its official population, and as a political and philanthropic centre it now accommodated a large floating element. . . . Long since a famous commercial mart, London now outstripped all its rivals and became the leading trade centre of Europe and beyond. . . . When these mercantile and financial enlargements took definite shape after Waterloo, the value of property rose enormously in the City, and the agents of these increasing activities, whose number was multiplying every day, could no longer live above their offices. A new suburban London then came into existence to accommodate their domestic needs, and

LONDON, 1837-1897

its area quickly extended as locomotion improved, until the process in time made the whole of the Home Counties tributary to the capital. Almost every farm from Aylesbury to Dover sent its produce to London; the nearer villages were swallowed wholesale by the insatiable appetite of the great monster, and prosperous stockbrokers and staid City merchants began to play the country gentleman, and introduce a new feudal system in rural Kent and Surrey."-A. W. Tilby, Growth of London (Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1921).

1759.-British Museum founded. See EDUCATION, ART: Modern: England.

1768.-Royal Academy founded. Sec EDUCATION, ART: Modern: England.

1780.-Gordon No-Popery riots. See ENGLAND: 1778-1780.

1837-1897.-Victorian period.-City area.-Beginning of expansion.—“The picture of London in 1837 is not easy to draw. In everything almost it was a different place from that which we now know. It was the City of London and the suburbs of the City of London; it was not, as it is now, the county of London, grown up from the area surrounding the ancient city bounds. . . . The present area of London was in 1837 only beginning to grow into shape, even if it had actually begun. The ancient site of the city was then, as now, covered with houses partly used for occupation, principally for commercial purposes. Within the city area there was a population of 123,000 persons, principally congregating in Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, Newgate, Smithfield, Holborn, Blackfriars, and St. Bride, all of them parishes on the boundary. This population had slightly decreased since the beginning of the century, owing to expansion from the centre, but the great exodus had not then begun. This, indeed, did not begin until 1861, and then it went on rapidly, the resident population of the city sinking down to 75,000 in 1871, and 31,000 in 1896. . . . The district which has now grown into the county of London outside the City bounds was in 1837 very sparsely covered with houses. The development had begun on the west, the Strand district, Westminster, St. Giles, and St. James's being very largely built over, while Holborn and Clerkenwell to the north, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and St. George's to the east, Southwark and North Lambeth to the south, were also nearly built over. Along the great roads, north, east, south, and west, residences were being built upon estates whose owners were only then obtaining acts of parliament to allow them to lease their lands. The map of London in 1837 is indeed more like a great octopus than anything else. . . . One feature of London has always distinguished it in modern times from other cities. This is the method of laying out building sites in squares. The large cluster of Bloomsbury squares, the famous Berkeley, Grosvenor, and Belgrave Squares, and the many other squares of lesser note have always elicited a chorus of eulogies from travellers. Von Raumer in 1835 styled them 'the great and peculiar beauty of London,' and this is not too much to say.... The population of the City of London in 1837 was 123,000, and of the immediate continuous occupied area 1,523,000, or together 1,646,If to this be added the population of the outer edge of London . . . namely about 300,000, we get a total of 2,000,000 to represent the population in 1837, compared with the 42 millions of 1896. Now this London population was practically a settled population."-G. L. Gomme, London in the reign of Victoria, pp. 1, 2-3, 6-7, 21-22, 30, 33-34.

1839. Police system changed. See MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Police defined.

1840. Anti-slavery congress. - Influence of women. See SUFFRAGE, WOMAN: United States: 1647-1848.

1844.-Origin of Young Men's Christian Association. See YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION: 1844-1851.

1848.-Last Chartist demonstration. See ENGLAND: 1848.

1851. Great exhibition. See ENGLAND: 1851. 1889.-Dockers' strike. See LABOR STRIKES AND BOYCOTTS: 1889.

1894.-Tower Bridge.-The Tower Bridge was formally opened on June 30, eight years after the beginning of the work. Its cost was £1,250,000.

1897. Great fire.-On November 19, 1897, occurred one of the largest fires in London since 1666. Beginning in Aldersgate, it spread over six acres of a densely populated quarter, destroying over 100 warehouses and buildings. The loss was estimated at £2,000,000.

1898. Zionist conference. See JEWS: Zionism: 1897-1918.

1908.-Port of London Act.-"The Port of London is still the largest in the world. The goods which come to or go out from it every year have a value of 400 millions sterling [written in 1909]. Through its gates pass one-third of the imports and one-fourth of the exports of the United Kingdom. Every day in the year nearly 1,000 vessels enter or leave it, and some 10,000 barges busy themselves in distributing the cargoes to wharves and warehouses. . . . The investigations of a Royal Commission appointed in 1900 placed it beyond doubt that London's harbour authority, the Thames Conservancy [organized in 1857], from lack of means, had failed to improve the channels of the tidal river to the extent rendered necessary by the increased size of vessels, and that further dock accommodation was required. The Commission, reporting in 1902, recommended that the Conservancy should be superseded by a Port Authority, that the Dock Companies should be bought out, and that seven millions should be expended in improving the river and the docks and in providing new docks. The first attempt on the part of Parliament to carry out these drastic recommendations, in 1903, was abortive, but in 1908 the measure which had been introduced by Mr. Lloyd George while he held the office of President of the Board of Trade went through. The new Port Authority, with the Right Hon. Sir Hudson Kearley, Bart., M. P. [Lord Devonport], as unpaid Chairman, held its first meeting.... on the 16th of March, 1909, and the transfer to it of the dock undertakings was effected on the last day of that month."-W. W. Hutchings, London town past and present, v. 2, Pp. 1092-1093.-"The Port of London Act, 1908

LONDON, 1914

panies... The new Authority has been invested with full powers for effecting the improvements necessary to enable the Port of London to maintain its present position. Amongst the powers and duties transferred to it from the late Conservators are the government of all vessels within the Port and the improvement and completion of the navigation of the river by means of dredging and removing obstructions and wrecks, &c., besides those of the appointment of harbour masters for the regulation of traffic in the river, the licensing of docks, piers and embankments, and the placing and maintenance of mooring chains and landing stages, &c., &c. It will now also exercise all the powers and duties formerly vested in the Watermen's Company, with respect to the registration and licensing of craft and boats, and the licensing, as well as the government regulation and control, of lightermen and watermen. . . . Lastly, its acquisition of the undertakings of the London and India, Surrey Commercial, and Millwall Dock Companies, while transferring to the Port Authority the income formerly derived by the companies from tonnage dues upon shipping entering the docks, dock dues upon goods landed upon or loaded from them, and from warehousing, will enable that body to effect improvements in the docks calculated to increase the value of others which are being simultaneously carried out in the waterway of the Thames-such as the construction and equipment of new docks, quays, wharves and railways, or the methods of imposing, levying and collecting dues, rates and tolls."-U. A. Forbes, Port of London and the conservancy of the Thames (London Quarterly Review, July, 1909).

1909.-Naval conference. See LONDON, DECLARATION OF (1909).

1911.-Railroad strike. See LABOR STRIKES AND

BOYCOTTS: 1911.

1912.-Armistice signed during First Balkan War. See BALKAN STATES: 1912-1913.

1913. Treaty signed ending First Balkan War. See BALKAN STATES: 1912-1913.

1914.-Building strike. See LABOR STRIKES AND

BOYCOTTS: 1900-1914.

1914.-Effect of outbreak of World War."Immediately war broke out, the City of London began to help the Allies to the limit of its strength and power. The Mansion House set itself to organise aid and relief, and the crypt of the Guildhall was handed over to the Red Cross. The Fishmongers' Company converted its fine hall overlooking the Thames by London Bridge into a hospital for wounded officers. The splendid banqueting chamber was split up into cubicles. The Company not only lent the hall, but provided a large part of the cost of transforming it into a hospital and of maintaining it. Others followed suit. The twelve great City Livery Companies suspended all their usual entertainments and devoted the money thus saved, and other available sums, to the relief of distress, and to the help of the wounded or of others suffering in the war. The example of the twelve great Companies in suspending banquets was followed by the other City Guilds. ... Even before the Government had called for fresh men for the Army, the City was rallying its sons to the defence of the Empire. The two special City regiments are the Hon. Artillery Company, founded in 1537, and the Royal Fusiliers, a direct descendant of the old trained bands of the City, established in the sixteenth century to prevent and suppress insurrection. Men flocked to these corps. So many applications were received by the Hon. Artillery Company that the War Office was asked to sanction the formation of a new company

has again divided the river into two distinct portions, the upper of which, governed by a new Board of seventeen conservators, extends from Cricklade to Teddington; and the lower-the whole of which now constitutes the Port of London under the control of a newly established 'Port Authority' -comprises the tideway from Teddington to a line between the pilot mark at the entrance of Havengore Creek, Essex, and the Land's End at Warden Point in the Isle of Sheppey. While the new Conservators exercise all the functions of their predecessors as far as Teddington, those of the latter relating to the tideway are now exercised by the new Port Authority, which, it is important to note, is also charged with the administration of the docks formerly vested in the Dock Com