Post under construction.
St Martin's Round House, on The West Side of St Martin's Lane.
In 1697–8 the parish authorities obtained from the Crown a grant of a small piece of ground, part of the Kings Mews fronting St Martin's Lane which had previously been used for the storage of coals, on which to build a parish watch house or round house. The ground was only 16 feet by 17 feet in extent and the building must have been very small.
It was the scene of a horrible incident in July, 1742, when the
parish constables having got drunk took up some five and twenty women and
thrust them into the round house for the night. According to one account six of
the women were stifled to death. For details see below.
The Engraving by Henry Fletcher (1710 -1750).
July 1742.
For Henry Fletcher and Furber's Twelve Months of the Year of 1732 see -
https://www.artic.edu/artists/34495/henry-fletcher
For his Furber's fruits engraved by Sam Smith see -
https://emuseum.history.org/objects/13305/october
For Fletcher's Rococo engravings probably the earliest engraved in England - Sixty Different Sorts of Ornaments invented by Gaetano Brunetti, Italian painter, very useful to painters, sculptors, stone-carvers, wood-carvers, silversmiths etc. - [London]: June ye 25. 1736.
see
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/henry-fletcher
The roundhouse was on St Martin’s Lane just south of Duke’s Court and opposite the parish church. It was made up of three floors, and a set of stocks, capped by an ornate wooden carving depicting one man flogging another, stood in the street outside.
The lower ground floor contained two cells, one each for men and women. The women’s cell, or hole, was ‘about six Foot six Inches in Length, six Foot three or four Inches in Breadth’.
In 16 July 1742 a tragedy helped expose the failings of both the
parishes and the magistrates who oversaw them, prompting a direct response from
plebeian London.
For an horrifying account of what happened and the death of Mary Maurice see
https://www.londonlives.org/browse.jsp?div=t17420909-37&terms=Mews#highlight
Churchman. I am a Carpenter; I was sent for to measure it;
you go up four Stone Steps into the Round-House, and this Place is below these
Steps: The Height of it is six Foot two Inches; the Length and Breadth six Foot
six, by six Foot two; the Window is two Foot six, by one Foot six; there are
some Iron Bars, but no Glass, there is a Shurter which puts up with three
Slits, about a Quarter of an Inch wide, and about 18 Inches long (but I never
measured it); there is a Door to the Passage leading to the Hole, and opens
into the Hole, two Foot wide, the Door does not go up to the Top by nine Inches
or there abouts, and there is another Room for the Men which is eight Foot
five, by six Foot three, and there is a Passage nine Foot three by four Foot
ten, which leads from the Women's Hole to the Men's Hole; and there is a Door
at the Head of the Stairs. - If the Hole had been left open the Prisoners would
have been secure by the Door at the Top of the Stairs, but then the Men and the
Women might have gone to o another , which is not customary.
William Bird, keeper of St Martin in the Fields roundhouse,
whom the vestry had unsuccessfully attempted to dismiss for his failure to
collect the watch rate in 1740, continued in place. While he was not ‘properly
a constable’, he was ‘deemed the officer’ responsible for the roundhouse by
other parish employees.
On the evening of 15 July 1742,
Bird, as usual, was sitting at a long table next to the constable of the night,
overseeing the work of the parish’s forty-three watchmen.
On this particular hot Thursday, the roundhouse also hosted
the constables of St Paul Covent Garden and the High Constable of Westminster,
Booker Holden .
They were there to check in before setting out on a
‘midnight reformation’, which had been authorised by a warrant signed by
Justices Thomas De Veil and John Bromfield to arrest ‘vagabonds, pickpockets,
and other dissolute and disorderly persons’.
Holden and his assistants targeted a range of houses and
streets. Sarah Bland and Mary Maurice were picked up in the street ‘just by the
round-house’. Elizabeth Amey , a prostitute who had previously worked at a
notorious brothel, The Rose in Oxenden Street just west of Leicester Fields,
was arrested in a cook shop.
Ann Norton was ‘taken
out of … Bed from my Husband and carried to the Watchhouse’.In total,
twenty-six women and nine men were arrested that evening.
The roundhouse was on St Martin’s Lane just south of Duke’s
Court and opposite the parish church.88 It was made up of three floors, and a
set of stocks, capped by an ornate wooden carving depicting one man flogging
another, stood in the street outside.89 The lower ground floor contained two
cells, one each for men and women. The women’s cell, or hole, was ‘about six
Foot six Inches in Length, six Foot three or four Inches in Breadth’.90
By one o’clock in the morning, with almost twenty people in
the women’s cell, the heat was intense, and the drunken camaraderie which had
earlier greeted the women as they came down the stairs was gradually
transformed into desperation. Stripped down to their shifts or completely
naked, they began to struggle for breath, while their clothes became soaked in
sweat. Mary Cosier later testified that her handkerchief was as ‘stiff as
Buckram, with Sweat from the Heat of the Place’.91 They beat on the low ceiling
of the cell with their shoes trying to attract attention and cried out that one
of them was in labour and needed relief. But mainly they cried out for water:
‘for Christ’s Sake let us have Water; for the Lord’s Sake a little Water’.92
The next morning, when the cell door was opened William Anderson found the
place ‘very nauseous, and the smell so strong, that I thought it would have
struck me down’.93 At least four people lay dead or dying.
De Veil, who had signed off on the original warrant, was
also responsible for examining the survivors, and gradually realising the
seriousness of the situation, he dismissed all the prisoners.94 However, by the
evening a crowd began to gather in St Martin’s Lane. Stones and bricks were
thrown at the house and by midnight a riot was in full progress. It took
Justice James Frazier at least two hours to restore order.95
The situation for De Veil, the most prominent signatory of
the warrant, was a delicate one, and he was ‘greatly scared’ by the likely
popular reaction to the disaster. A coroner’s inquest convened the following
day brought in a verdict of wilful murder against William Bird for the
suffocation of Mary Maurice and three others.97 De Veil attempted to deflect
public outrage away from himself and the select vestries by publishing his own
version of events early the next week. In his account, Booker Holden was named
as the moving spirit behind the warrant, and De Veil went on to blame the
constables (all appointees of the Court of Burgesses) for having ‘greatly
misbehaved’ themselves, before offering up William Bird as a possible
scapegoat.No mention was made of the legion of parish employees who had
participated in the arrests that night.
Bird eventually stood trial at the Old Bailey on a charge of
murder two months later. Counsel were just beginning to participate in trials,
and four experienced attorneys were commissioned to make up the prosecution
team. Bird’s attempt to find a barrister to represent him, however, met a wall
of indifference. By the day of his first trial in mid-September, Bird had
failed to locate anyone willing to act – two claimed to be out of town, two
others ‘desired to be excused’, while a fifth simply returned the brief without
explanation. Bird, whom the trial records describe as a ‘labourer’, was forced
to defend himself.100 He was found guilty at his second trial and sentenced to
hang.101
In the months after the disaster, the parish rebuilt the
roundhouse at a cost of £83 15s., adding piped water and a new set of iron
palings, five feet, eight inches high.102 But the roundhouse continued to be a
target of regular popular attacks. The following year St Martin ’s spent a
further £8 19s. repairing damage done to the house by a population that saw in
it a continuing symbol of oppression, and in each succeeding year for the next
decade a similar sum was spent on repairs.103 This was no doubt one reason why
the parish strengthened its watch and revised its Watch Act.104 In addition,
the role of the beadles was regularised, and they were given new uniforms at
the cost of £36 17s.105 Despite all the Watch Acts, the denigration of the
Court of Burgesses and the newly powerful position of the select vestries,
magistrates and vestrymen found it impossible to secure more than the grudging
consent of the wider population to their policies and were continually forced
onto the defensive.
Horace Walpole to Horace Mann in Italy.
1742.—There has lately been the most horrible scene of
murder imaginable; a parcel of drunken constables took it into their heads to
put the laws in execution against disorderly persons, and so took up every
woman they met, until they had collected five or six and twenty, all of whom
they thrust into St. Martin's Roundhouse, where they kept them all night, with
doors and windows closed. The poor creatures, who could not stir or breathe,
screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for water; one
poor wretch said she was worth eighteen-pence, and would gladly give it for a
draught of water, but in vain! So well did they keep them there that in the
morning four were found stifled to death, two died soon after, and a dozen more
are in a shocking way. In short it is horrid to think what the poor creatures
suffered: several of them were beggars, who from having no lodging, were
necessarily found in the street, and others honest labouring women. One of the
dead was a poor washerwoman, big with child, who was returning home late from
washing. One of the constables is taken, and others absconded; but I question
if any of them will suffer death.—H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann (Letters, vol.
i. p. 191).
....................
William Shenstone to Mr. —— (Works, 1769, vol. iii. p. 49).
The suppression of the —— and the suffocation of four in the round-house by the stupidity of the keeper engrosses the talk of the town. The said house is rebuilding every day (for the mob on Sunday night demolished it) and redemolished every night. The Duke of M——gh, J—— S——, his brother. Lord C—— G——, were taken into the round-house, and confined from eleven at night till eleven next day.—
Horace Walpole says that the three young noblemen thus consigned to
the Round House were "Jack Spencer [brother of the Duke of Marlborough],
Mr. Stewart, and Lord George Graham," youngest son of the Duke of
Montrose, and that they were taken the same night as the unfortunate women,
"by the same men, who broke into a bagnio in Covent Garden," and
found them there.
Image from British Museum.
For an excellent post on the Roundhouse and law and order in Westminster in the 18th Century etc. see -
https://www.londonlives.org/book/chapter4.html#c-4-8
Note the stocks and the date 1692 above the Parish stocks.
For more on the St Martin's Workhouse see -
https://www.workhouses.org.uk/StMartins/
.................................
The West side of St Martins Lane in 1825.
George Scharf.
No 1. The Barn public house.
Referring to his father, Nathaniel Smith an apprentice assistant to the sculptor Roubiliac JT Smith in Nollekens and his Times states
"The Dons at the Barn,
a public-house then so called, in St. Martin's-lane, nearly opposite to the
church, invited him to become a member ; but all these temptations he withstood
for the Arts, which he then studied with avidity. . The Barn for many years, was
frequented by all the noted players of chess and draughts, and it was there
that they often decided games of the first importance, played between persons
of the highest rank living in different parts of the world.
The Society of College Youths - Bellringers - The Society practices appear to have centred on St Brides, Fleet Street in the early half of the 18th century. An influx of new members led by Benjamin Annable caused tensions in the Society though, with the older members appearing to be more interested in the social and ordinary ringing activities of the Society rather than peal ringing. This inevitably led to the first split in the Society in 1756 with the older contingent moving to St Martin-in-the-Fields. From 1776, and probably much earlier, they met at the house of Mr Hill, The Barn in St Martin's Lane on Thursday evenings between 7pm and 8pm before ringing at St Martins.
Drawing of the West side of the lower part of St Martin's Lane by George Scharf, dated 1825 with a man entering the alleyway into Duke's Court.
No. 6 is the Old St Martins Watch or Round House, with a man and child peering through the window.
There doesn't appear to be any access to the buildings illustrated above from St Martin's Lane.
Buildings 1 to 6 in Scharf's drawing were all accessed from the Royal Mews behind.
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An Excellent Survey - Plan of the Royal Mews and the West Side Southern End of St Martin's Lane - 1790's
Image from the British Library.
The resolution isn't great but is good enough for our purposes.
St Martin's Watch House /Round House is coloured pink on the plan showing a width of 17'6"
Plan cropped from a survey of the Kings Mews.
Drawn by Thomas Chawner of Guildford Street, 15 June 1796.
At this period The Barn Alehouse in the possession of Robt Atkinson - four doors down - could only be accessed from the Mews.
..........................
Horwood's Revised Map of 1819 showing the projected demolitions and improvements, around The Royal Mews and St Martin in the Field.
We must be thankful to George Scharf for recording some of the buildings before the destructions.
Drawings in the British Museum.
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