Courage, Crime & Charity In The City Of London

December 17, 2024

by John Gillman

Author of the SIGNS & SECRETS blog, and alumnus of my writing course, John Gillman introduces his personal pocket-sized City of London guidebook Courage, Crime & Charity in the City of London.

My little book is a guide for curious visitors and Londoners alike who want to explore the City off the beaten track.

Most of the memorials it will lead them to are no more than a ten-minute walk apart, but the people and stories it will introduce them to cover hundreds of years of a diverse and rich history.

My book reveals the stories and tales that lie behind these memorials – of gruesome murders and executions, of great bravery and terrible tragedies, of boundless generosity and intriguing curiosities.

It was in the City of London that I started my first job many years ago. As time went on I got to know the place well and I realised that much of the past had not disappeared at all in this part of London and that it spoke to me in numerous ways. For example, before it became a rank unpleasant sewer that was eventually covered up, the Fleet River was an important thoroughfare delivering coal from the North East to the centre of the City.

I smiled at the evidence of this when I came across a lane which, once upon a time, if you mistakenly followed it, you found it led to the Fleet and you could go no further. Hence its name – Turnagain Lane.

Nearby Seacoal Lane referenced the cargoes that were formerly unloaded there. Once, you could buy milk in Milk Street, corn in Cornhill and, of course, honey in Honey Lane. But it is easy to be mistaken.

Cannons were not manufactured in Cannon Street, it is an abbreviation of Candlewick. And you would not go to Cloak Lane for your new cloak – it derives from the Latin word cloaca and was an open sewer. I will let you use your imagination when it comes to what was on sale in Love Lane.

Until the seventies you could smell the past too, if you headed south from Fenchurch St via St Katherine’s Row. Embedded in the walls of the adjacent warehouses were the odours of spices – cardamom, nutmeg, cloves and others, the trade which helped make London the wealthiest city in the world.

And then there were the memorials – some modest, some spectacular, they all acknowledged people who had long vanished from this earth along with the friends, relatives and compatriots who strove to maintain their memory. Some spoke of bravery and self-sacrifice, some merely reported an unfortunate event, others were evidence of generosity, philanthropy and care for fellow human beings.

I marvelled at John Donne’s memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral modelled by him personally, it bizarrely shows him embraced by his death shroud. But what was particularly interesting to me was that you could still see the scorch marks on it from the Great Fire of 1666. His was the only memorial that survived that conflagration – a spooky acknowledgment of his time as one of the Cathedral’s most famous Deans.

My curiosity was initially prompted when I came across an inscription on a mysterious gravestone. It spoke of the murder of a young man and the death of his poor father who died of a broken heart. I had to find out more and bring the young man and his dad back to life. Their story recalls a time when London almost descended into civil war. You can read the results of my research in the first story in this book. And the tombstone is still there for you to visit, in the churchyard of St Botolph without Aldgate.

The more I walked around, the more I noticed and learned – about people I would never have heard of otherwise, but who seemed to demand my attention.

In Postman’s Park near St Paul’s Cathedral, you can read about young Alice Ayres, who gave no thought to her own safety when she rescued three young children from a burning building, sacrificing her own life in the process.

And what about brave Dr Hodges, who stayed in the City to administer to his patients throughout the terrible plague of 1665 only to eventually die in poverty and debt? You will find a fitting memorial to him in St Stephen Walbrook, one of the many beautiful churches in the City of London.

My list of memorials is by no means complete, there are literally hundreds of them all over the City and I selected only the ones that I found particularly interesting, moving or thought-provoking. I hope the stories they tell will lead you to make your own discoveries along the way.

Click here to buy a copy of ‘Courage, Crime & Charity in the City of London’ from Daunt Books

Effigy of John Donne, Poet & Dean of St Paul’s (1572-1631), monument by Nicholas Stone

The gravestone of Thomas Ebrall at St Botolph Without Aldgate, recording the murder of a young man and the death of his poor father who died of a broken heart.

Thomas Ebrall was killed in the riots following the arrest of Francis Burdett in 1810 known for his demands for electoral reform.