Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
Fleet Street is a street in London, England, named after the River Fleet, a London stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s. Even though the last major British news office, Reuters, left in 2005, the street's name continues to be used as a metonym for the British national press.
- Farewell, Fleet Street. Bill Hagerty, BBC News Online. June 14, 2005.
- Fleet Street's finest. Christopher Hitchens, The Guardian Review. December 3, 2005.
- Drinking in the Street. SilkTork, RateBeer Article. January 19, 2006
- Fleet Street Band
- Fleet Street pubs and City of London pubs
[edit] Notes
- ^ Financial Times magazine
- ^ Heart of Fleet Street (St Bride's Church) accessed 5 June 2008
- ^ Attributed to Brian MacArthur, media correspondent of the Sunday Times. Such matters are tracked with care, a running nipple count being maintained by competing tabloids.
Coordinates: 51°30′51″N 0°06′32″W / 51.51417°N 0.10889°W / 51.51417; -0.10889
Annotations
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Fleet Street was named for the River Fleet and later became synonymous for the British Press itself. Even in Pepys day the area was a headquarters for some publishers.
http://www.plus44.com/london44/tour/fleetstr.html
The Fleet River itself has a storied history.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/lispring/sourcearchive/fs1/fs1cp1.htm
It joined the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge and the word itself derives from a nautical context.
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London ca. 1676 : The Fleet River
http://instruct.uwo.ca/english/234e/site/lndnmpfltrvr.html
A history of the river with a map
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James writes:
“Fleet Street was named for the River Fleet and later became synonymous for the British Press itself.”
Whence the muck-diving contest among the various scribblers in the *Dunciad*, some 2 generations after Sam began his diary, *Dunciad* II 271-364
(1728 edition).
To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,
The king of dikes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
‘Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,
Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,[326]
And who the most in love of dirt excel,
Or dark dexterity of groping well.
Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
The stream, be his the weekly journals bound; 280
A pig of lead to him who dives the best;
A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.’
I think in Pope’s day there may have been a rumor (or true tale) that pigs living in the Fleet-ditch muck (certainly there were later rumors of subterranean pigs living in the London sewers and emerging out of Fleet Ditch).
Whether Sam knew this rumor or has any observations about Fleet Ditch, I don’t know. -
Miniated Porcine Fabulation Misses Main Verb; Barges Bring Bituminous Booby-Prize?
Make that “a rumor… that pigs WERE
living in the Fleet-Ditch muck.”And the peck of coals that the Queen of Dullness offers for the losers is due probably to the fact that coal-barges came up the Fleet in Pope’s day, and folks went bobbing for clinkers in Fleet-Ditch.
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Well, this all started with the poster who mentioned that Fleet Ditch would stink up the area of Ludgate Hill Sam stopped at on April 9th.
Pedro’s citation of Mayhew and the “mud-larks” who dove for coal (and it would be fun if they were called this in Pepys’s or Pope’s time) reminds me
that I forgot that a “pig of lead” is literally an INGOT of lead—another item (like the coal) that might fall off a barge. -
The conduit in Fleet street:According to Eliza Picard “Elizabeths London” The Conduit here, was an elaborate one fed by water piped from Paddington via Tyburne and Marylebone. Quote a ‘fair tower of stone garnished with images of St Christopher on the top, and angels round about lower down, with sweet sounding bells before them’ … ‘it was rebuilt in 1582’.
She {EP] has a section on the water of London and she has spent much time researching. -
Fleet Street runs east from Temple Bar across this segment of the 1746 map. http://www.motco.com/map/81002/SeriesSearchPlatesFulla.asp?mode=query&title=Fleet+Street+in+Sheet+F1+&artist=384&other=316&x=11&y=11
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Fleet Street’s east end is the Fleet Bridge in this segment of the map. http://www.motco.com/map/81002/SeriesSearchPlatesFullb.asp?mode=query&artist=384&other=317&x=11&y=11
References in the diary
- 1660
-
Jan: 1, 2, 21
Feb: 8, 18, 28
Mar: 7
Sep: 22
Nov: 15
- 1661
-
Jan: 28
Mar: 19
Apr: 22
Jul: 30
Sep: 16
Oct: 24
Nov: 11
- 1662
-
Feb: 18
Aug: 20
Nov: 10, 23, 29
- 1663
-
Mar: 20, 27
May: 30
Oct: 26
Nov: 25
Dec: 18
- 1664
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Feb: 10, 29
Apr: 13
Jul: 14, 18, 23
Oct: 20
Dec: 2
- 1665
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Mar: 24
- 1666
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Feb: 15
Apr: 22
Jul: 4
Sep: 4, 7, 17