Charles Bardsley - The Romance of the London Directory

There are endless allusions to the signs of old London in the comic or semi-comic rhymes of the period. Thomas Heywood, early in the seventeenth century, says: —

There is a capital collection of these names in a ballad of the Restoration, which is far too long to quote in full, but of which the following is a specimen: —

Again, Pasquin, in his “Night-cap,” says: —

Another jingling rhyme began: —

These double signs were very common, and are easily explained. Now-a-days a man who has taken the goodwill of a well-established shop paints over the door “Snooks, late Jopson, Chemist.” The apprentice in old days added his own badge to that of his late master, and the signboard displayed perhaps the “Mermaid and Gridiron,” or the “Leg and Crow,” the old sign being linked to the new.

The reader may think I have dwelt somewhat long upon this matter; but I am writing about localization, and these signboards in their day were the only means of identifying the London tradesman. Names and numbers were practically useless. How small a proportion of the London population could read even two hundred years ago! Mr. Baxter might have “Baxter” in the largest gilt characters over his front; he might further add that he made and sold that newly-discovered luxury tobacco on the counter within, – but how many of the passers-by would be any the wiser! But if he had a large swinging board at the end of a pole, facing the wayfarers, with a huge Turk’s head with a pipe in its mouth, there was none but could tell his occupation. Sometimes the real article was exhibited. The hosier would dangle a pair of stockings from his pole. Thus it was that every shopkeeper was known by his sign. The housewife would send little Tom to the “Cock,” or the “Three Cranes,” or the “Ark,” or the “Hand-in-hand” for her little domestic wants, where now she would bid him run to “Tomkins’,” or “Sawyer’s,” or “Robinson’s.” In course of time the sign did not always harmonize with the articles sold within, but it was quite enough for the neighbours dwelling around. What an array of creaking posts and grotesque frames must there not have been along the leading thoroughfares, such as Cheapside, and old London Bridge! and leaving out the question of discomfort, and the perils of a broken head if you drove on a coach, what a picturesque scene it must have been!

I dare not say what a large proportion of names in the London Directory that look like nicknames must be set down as the result of this old-fashioned custom. The fourteenth century saw London streets looking as if hung with bannerets, so crowded were they with signs. That was a period when half of the lower middle class were still without an hereditary surname. The consequence is, we find such entries as “Hugh atte Cokke,” or “Thomas atte Ram,” or “Thomas del Hat,” or “Margery de Styrop.” The reader must see at a glance that we have here the origination of half our “Cocks” and “Coxes,” “Rams,” “Roebucks,” “Tubbs,” “Bells,” “Crows.” There are three “Hatts” to forty-one “Heads,” three “Pates” and two “Crowns” in the London Directory, not to mention three “Harrows,” two “Plows,” four “Boots,” and ten “Pattens.” All these, and a hundred other names that appear difficult of origination, are easily explained when we recall this faded custom of a few centuries ago.

The plan of having numbered doors came into use but very recently. The signboards were disused in many parts of London before numerals were instituted. The addresses on letters appeared very strange as a consequence.

John Byrom, the great epigrammatist, writing to his wife from Cambridge in 1727, addresses his letter to “Mistress Eliz. Byrom, near the old Church, in Manchester.” That was the ordinary method, to choose some big well-known building, and state your friends’ position to it by the compass. The first Directory ever published, of any pretensions, was Kent’s, in 1736. “The Directory,” it is called, “sold by Henry Kent, in Finch Lane, near the Royal Exchange.” It contains about 1200 names, all the tradesmen and merchants of London. There are such entries as “Samuel Wilson, hardwareman, in Cannon Street, the corner of Crooked Lane,” or “John Bradshaw, opposite the Monument, at a barber’s.”

Manifestly this could not go on. In the edition for 1770 occurs the following: “The Directory.. with the numbers as they are affixed to their houses, agreeable to the late Acts of Parliament.” The Legislature had had to take the matter into hand. London was getting far too big for indistinct addresses such as these. The first street in the metropolis to possess numbered doors was New Burlington Street. This was accomplished in June 1764. Other important throughfares followed suit, and before ten years had gone by, we find the Directory particularizing as follows: “John Trelawney, haberdasher, No. 22, Nightingale Lane,” or “Hamnett Townley, hop merchant, No. 69, Great Tower Street.” Occasionally a “Vincent Trehearn, hatmaker, behind St. Thomas’s,” comes, but rarely; and by-and-by such entries disappear altogether. Manchester began the same practice in 1772, at the request of the borough reeve and constable, and was the second town in the kingdom to adopt the practice.

It was reserved for the year 1877 to put a climax, I think, to ingenuity of this kind. In Manchester, probably in London also, there are lamp-post Directories. You cannot always have a Directory at your elbow. Even this difficulty is remedied by the lamp-post Directory. The names of all shopkeepers in that particular street wherein the lamp-post stands are printed alphabetically on a circular tablet, which revolves round the post. You turn it round till you find the name you want.