Chapter X: Dignities, Trades, and Professions (2)

In Jews’ Row, or Royal Hospital Row, Chelsea, there is a sign which greatly mystifies the maimed old heroes of the Peninsula and Waterloo, and many others besides; this is the SNOW-SHOES. It is the sign of a house of old standing, and was set up during the excitement of the American war of independence, when snow-shoes formed part of the equipment of the troops sent out to fight the battles of King George against “Mr Washington and his rebels.”

One of the low public-houses that stood on the outskirts of London, towards Hyde Park Corner, at the end of the last century, was called the TRIUMPHAL CAR. There were a great many other houses of the same description in that neighbourhood, viz., the Hercules Pillars, the Red Lion, the Swan, the Golden Lion, the Horse-shoe, the Running Horse, the Barleymow, the White Horse, and the Half-moon, which two last have given names to two streets in Piccadilly. The sign of the Triumphal Car was in all probability bestowed upon the house in honour of the soldiers who used to visit it.

“These public-houses, about the middle of last century, were much
visited on Sundays, but those contiguous to Hyde Park were chiefly
resorted to by soldiers, particularly on review days, when there were
long wooden seats fixed in the street before the houses for the
accommodation of six or seven barbers, who were employed on field days
in powdering those youths who were not adroit enough to dress each
other’s hair. Yet it was not unusual for twenty or thirty of the older
soldiers to bestride a form in the open air, where each combed,
soaped, powdered, and tied the hair of his comrade, and afterwards
underwent the same operation himself.”[479]

The grenadiers of Frederick the Great managed those things still better, for twenty or thirty of them used to sit in a circle, each dressing, plaiting, and powdering the pigtail of the man before him, so that all hands were employed at the same time, and none was lost in waiting. There is still a Triumphant Chariot public-house in Pembroke Mews, Chelsea, a house of more than fifty years’ standing.

The BOMBAY GRAB in High Street, Bow, belongs to military signs, as “Grab,” or “Crab,” is a slang expression for a foot soldier; perhaps the landlord at one time may have been in the Bombay army.

Objects relating to the navy, or rather to shipping, are still more common in this seafaring nation of ours than the attributes or emblems of any other trade or profession. Ned Ward describes Deptford in 1703 as every house being distinguished by either the sign of the Ship, the Anchor, the Three Mariners, Boatswain and Call, or something relating to the sea.

“For as I suppose [says he] if they should hang up any other, the
salt-water novices would be as much puzzled to know what the figure
represented as the Irishman was, when he called the Globe the Golden
Cabbage, and the Unicorn the White Horse with a barber’s pole in his
forehead.”[480]

There is scarcely a town in the kingdom that has not a SHIP inn, tavern, or public-house. Tokens exist of “the Ship without Templebar, 1649,” probably the inn granted in 1571 to Sir Christopher Hatton, along with some lands in Yorkshire and Dorsetshire, and the wardship of a minor.[481] William Faithorne the engraver (ob. 1691) seems to have occupied the same house afterwards, for Walpole informs us that--

“Faithorne now set up in a new shop at the sign of the SHIP, next to
the DRAKE, opposite to the Palsgrave Head, without Temple Bar, where
he not only followed his art, but sold Italian, Dutch, and English
prints, and worked for booksellers.”[482]

This sign of the _Ship_, next to the _Drake_, seems to have constituted a sort of a pun or a rebus on Admiral Drake, as observed by Mr Akerman. Among the trades tokens there was “Will Jonson at y^{e} DRAKE, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, 1667.” The _Drake_ stood next to the _Ship_. It was doubtless a rebus, and alluded to the Admiral, who was very popular in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the mint-mark of the martlet on her coins being termed by the vulgar a Drake. The situation of this sign near the Ship was appropriate enough. In the seventeenth century there was a sign of the Ship at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, (Netherlands,) with the following inscription:--

“Die in de ly, my vaart voorby
Zal hebben een Ryxdaalder en ’t gelach vry.”[483]

At the Ship tavern in the Old Bailey, kept by Mr Thomas Amps, on Tuesday the 14th of February 1654, a plot against Cromwell was discovered. Carlyle[484] forcibly pictures the conspirators as eleven truculent, rather threadbare persons, sitting over small drink there on that Tuesday night, considering how the Protector might be assassinated. Poor broken Royalist men, payless old captains, and such like, with their steeple hats worn very brown, and jackboots slit, projecting there what they could not execute. The poor knaves were found guilty, but not worth hanging, and got off with being sent to the Tower for a while to ponder over their wickedness.

Names of famous men-of-war are often found on the signboard, in seaports; either in honour of some brilliant feat performed by them, or simply in compliment to the crew, in the hopes of obtaining their liberal patronage. Thus the ALBION, the SAUCY AJAX, the CIRCE, and ARETHUSA, with innumerable others, may be met with in the vicinity of Plymouth, Portsmouth, and other seaports. The naming of signboards in this way was an old custom; as two examples among the London trades tokens very sufficiently prove. Thus, for instance, THE SPEAKER’S FRIGATE, the sign of a shop in Shadwell in the seventeenth century. The frigate had been named after Sir Richard Stainer, speaker in the House of Commons in the time of the Commonwealth, who had done good service under command of Admiral Blake, in some of the naval engagements with the Spaniards. In 1652, this ship was sent to “Argier in Turkey,” (Algiers,) under command of Captain Thorowgood, with the sum of £30,000 to redeem English captives from slavery. Upon this occasion the Puritan newspapers made the following punning prayer:--

“A prosperous gale attend his motion; and a Christian vote and
blessing be present, in all their debates and consultations, for
doubtless, ’tis a sacrifice pleasing both to God and man, and plainly
denotes unto the people of England, that our magistrates had rather
bring home exiles, than make more.”[485]

After the Restoration the name of this ship was changed into the ROYAL CHARLES, (which also occurs as a sign,) that ill-fated ship taken by the Dutch in 1667, when, under Admiral de Ruyter, they made their descent on Chatham and Sheerness, and burnt a part of our fleet. The Royal Charles was one of the ships they took away. Its stern is still kept as a trophy in Rotterdam.

Ships occur in various conditions, as the FULL SHIP, Hull; SHIP IN DOCK, Dartmouth; and the SHIP ON LAUNCH, in every ship-building locality. The SHIP IN FULL SAIL was the sign of the first shop of Murray the publisher, in Fleet Street--probably in opposition to Longman, who had the SHIP AT ANCHOR. THE SHIP IN DISTRESS is a touching appeal to the good-natured wayfarer to assist in keeping the pump going. At Brighton, there was such a sign in the last century, on which the poet had assisted the painter to invoke the sympathy of the thirsty public:--

“With sorrows I am compass’d round,
Pray lend a hand, my ship’s aground.”

The Ship is to be met with in innumerable combinations: the SHIP AND PILOT BOAT, Narrow Quay, Bristol; the SHIP AND ANCHOR is not uncommon, and in one place, at Chipping Norton, it is quaintly corrupted into the SHEEP AND ANCHOR;[486] the SHIP AND WHALE, in compliment to the Greenland Fishery, occurs at South Shields, and the SHIP AND NOTCHBLOCK is a sailor’s coffee-house in the Ratcliff Highway. All these explain themselves; most of the other combinations seem to result from the quartering of two signs, as the SHIP AND BELL, Horn Dean, Hants; the SHIP AND FOX, “next door but one to the FIVE BELLS tavern, near the Maypole in the Strand,” in 1711; the SHIP AND STAR on a trades token of Cornhill, may be the north star by which ancient mariners used to navigate; the SHIP AND RAINBOW is common to many places; the SHIP AND SHOVEL, Tooley Street; said to be a deterioration of the Sir Cloudesley Shovel, but more likely alluding to the _shovels_ used in taking out ballast, coal, corn, (when in bulk) and various other cargoes; the SHIP AND PLOUGH, Hull; the SHIP AND BLUE COAT BOY, Walworth Road, although susceptible of explanations, are doubtless only but quarterings. The SHIP AND CASTLE, though of common occurrence, seemed to puzzle the public already in the seventeenth century:--

“What resemblance the Ship and the Castle may bear
To ships floating on clouds, or to castles in air,
We know not; but this we are sure of, ’tis plain
Their clarets are perfectly Leger-de-Main.”

_Search after Claret_, 1691, canto I.

If not a combination of two signs, it may have some reference to our national defences. It was a sign in Cornhill as early as 1716, when, on November 9, the newspapers conveyed the following information to the metropolis:--

“We are informed that this day a fowl was roasted in a wonderful
sun-kitchen on the top of the Ship and Castle tavern, Cornhill, in
view of many gentlemen. The artist performer, who is a gentleman newly
come from France, proposes to roast and boil meat, bake bread, prepare
tea and coffee, and all kitchenwork done without common fire; some
particular thing to be seen every day that the sun shines out
brightly. ’Twas observable that when the fowl was dressed, it had the
same taste and smell as if done by a common fire. The machine is
composed of about a hundred small looking or convex-glasses.”

The scheme, seemingly, did not succeed in dethroning “old king coal,” for if we had to depend on the sun for our cookery, it is to be feared we would often have cold cheer.

Amongst all these ships, of course, Jack tar could not be forgot. The SHIP FRIENDS occur in Sunderland; the THREE MARINERS is an old sign, of which there are examples among the trades tokens, and which is still to be seen on two or three public-houses in London. There was formerly a tavern known by this sign in Vauxhall.

“On repairing it in 1752, in it was found a remarkably high-elbowed
chair covered with purple cloth, and ornamented with gilt nails. An
old fisherman told Mr Buckmaster that he had heard his grandfather
say, that King Charles II. disguised, used on his water tours with his
ladies to frequent the above tavern to play at chess, &c., and that
the chair found, was the same as the king sat in. The chair was
repaired and kept as a curiosity by the late John Dawson, Esq., but by
neglect was, at the pulling down of his old dwelling at Vauxhall in
1777, destroyed. Mr Buckmaster sat in the chair many times, but his
feet would not touch the ground. King Charles was very tall. No tavern
of this name is known to exist now in Lambeth, but there is one of the
sign of the THREE MERRY BOYS,[487] probably a corruption of the above
name.”[488]

In other places we meet with the THREE JOLLY SAILORS; at Castleford there used to be one representing the jolly sailors “with a sheet in the wind,” and under it the following professional invitation:--

“Coil up your ropes and anchor here,
Till better weather does appear.”

In North Street, Hull, there is a sign of JACK ON A CRUISE, not on board H.M. ship, but “out on” what the lands folk call “a spree;” the cruises, however, are generally confined to rather low latitudes. The BOATSWAIN appears to have been a public-house in Wapping in the reign of Charles II., for Wycherly in the “Plain Dealer,” 1676, makes Jerry Blackaire say:--“I should soon be picking up all our own mortgaged apostle spoons, bowls, and beakers, out of most of the ale-houses betwixt Hercules Pillars and the _Boatswain_ in Wapping.” The BOATSWAIN’S CALL is a public-house sign in Frederick Street, Portsea, whose invitation the sailors, no doubt, accept with much more pleasure than the boatswain’s call of “all hands on deck” on a frosty winter morning. It was the name of a patriotic sea song during one of the wars with France. RED, WHITE, AND BLUE, and its synonyme, the THREE ADMIRALS, both occur in more than one instance in Liverpool.

The ANCHOR was, perhaps, set up rather as an emblem than as referring to its use in shipping. It is frequently represented in the catacombs, typifying the words of St Paul, who calls hope “the anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.” St Ambrose says, “it is this which keeps the Christian from being carried away by the storm of life.” Other early writers use it as a symbol of true faith, and one of them has this beautiful idea:--

“As an anchor cast into the sand will keep the ship in safety, even so
hope, ever amidst poverty and tribulation, remains firm, and is
sufficient to sustain the soul; though, in the eyes of the world, it
may seem but a weak and frail support.”[489]

It was a favourite sign with the early printers, probably in imitation of Aldus.[490] Thus Thomas Vautrollier, a scholar and printer from Paris and Rouen, who came to England about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and established his printing-office in Blackfriars, had an anchor for his sign, with the motto, “_Anchora Spei_.” At West Bromwich there is an ale-house having the sign of the Anchor with the following inscription:--

“O sweet ale, how sweet art thou,
Thy chearing streams new life impart,
Esteemed by all extremely good,
To quench our thirst and do us good.”

Sometimes a female figure in flowing garments is represented holding the anchor, in which case it is called the HOPE AND ANCHOR. The BLUE ANCHOR was painted of that colour as a “difference” from other anchors; it is a common sign; it was the trade emblem of Henry Herringman, of the “New Exchange,” the principal London bookseller and publisher in the reign of King Charles II., the friend of Davenant, Dryden, and Cowley. The BLUE ANCHOR AND BALL was the sign of a mercer’s shop near the Conduit in Cheapside in 1707, the ball being the usual addition to intimate the sale of silks. Other distinctions are the SHEET ANCHOR, at Whitmore, in Staffordshire; the FOUL ANCHOR, a sign of two public-houses at Wisbeach, implying, no doubt, that the lotus-eaters, who anchor in that harbour, get so entangled in the luxurious weeds of pleasure, that it becomes impossible for them to leave; the RAFFLED ANCHOR, Swan’s Quay, North Shields; and the ROPE AND ANCHOR, which is very common, the anchor being generally represented with a piece of cable twined round the stem.

A few combinations also occur: the ANCHOR AND CAN, at Ross, and at Putson, Hereford, which seems to allude to the Anchor as a measure; the ANCHOR AND SHUTTLE, Luttendenfoot, Warley, Manchester, the shuttle being added in compliment to the weavers; the ANCHOR AND CASTLE, a quartering of two signs in Tooley Street, &c.

Sometimes instead of the ship, some peculiar vessel is chosen, as, for instance, the SLOOP, or the LEIGH HOY, a sort of smack, which occurs amongst the trades tokens as a sign near St Catherine’s Docks, and is still to be seen in Church Street, Mile End; the COBLE, a sort of fishing-boat, common in Northumberland; the TILTBOAT, Sommers Quay, Thames Street, in the XVIIth. century, and still at Billingsgate. This last was an open passenger boat for Greenwich, Woolwich, Gravesend, and other places down the river. It took twelve hours to perform the voyage to Gravesend, and much more if the wind was contrary, and the boat had not arrived before the tide turned. The tiltboats were superseded by steamers in 1815. The Dark House, Billingsgate, was their starting-place, and passengers would probably patronise the tavern with this name in the immediate neighbourhood, as they go now for a glass of ale and a sandwich to the RAILWAY, or STEAMBOAT INN, during the quarter of an hour preceding departure.

The FISHING SMACK was a public-house formerly standing near St Nicholas Church, Liverpool. The sign represented a man standing in a cart loaded with fish, and holding in his right hand what the artist intended to represent as a salmon. Underneath were the following lines:--

“This salmon has got a tail,
It’s very like a whale;
It’s a fish that’s very merry;
They say it’s catch’d at Derry;
It’s a fish that’s got a heart,
It’s catch’d and put in Dugdale’s cart.”

This truly classic production of the Muse of the Mersey continued for several years to adorn the host’s door, until a change in the occupant of the house induced a corresponding change of the sign, and the following lines took the place of the preceding:--

“The cart and salmon has stray’d away,
And left the fishing-boat to stay,
When boisterous winds do drive you back,
Come in and drink at the Fishing-Smack.”[491]

The OLD BARGE was a sign in Bucklersbury: “When Walbrooke did lye open, barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed up so farre; and therefore the place has ever since been called the Old Barge, of such a sign hanging out over the gate thereof.”[492] The Old Barge, or the OLD BOAT, is still frequently seen as a sign on the banks of some of the canals through which boats and barges are towed.

The BOAT, an isolated tavern in the open fields, at the back of the Foundling Hospital, was the head-quarters of the rioters and incendiaries, who, excited by the injudicious zeal of Lord George Gordon, set London in a blaze during the “No Popery” riots in 1780.

NEXT BOAT BY PAUL’S, in Upper Thames Street, may be seen on the trades token of an ale-house, evidently kept by a waterman, who used to ply with his boat near St Paul’s. The token of this house represents a boat containing three men, over it the legend, “_Next Boat_.” “Next Oars” was the cry of the watermen waiting for a fare. Tom Brown in his walk round London, says, “I steered him down Blackfryars towards the Thames side till coming near the stairs, up started such a noisy multitude of grizly old Tritons, hollowing and hooting out _Next Oars_ and scullers, &c. And with that I bawled out as loud as a speaking trumpet, ‘_Next Oars_,’ and away ran Captain Caron, and hollowed to his man Ben to bring the boat near.” “Next Boat,” was also the sign of a public-house of note adjoining Holland’s Leaguer in Blackfriars, where Holland Street is now.

The Law is very badly represented--the JUDGE’S HEAD seems to be the only sign in honour of this branch of the Commonwealth. It was the sign of Charles King, a bookseller in Westminster Hall in 1718,[493] and may be readily accounted for in that locality. It was also the first sign of Jacob Tonson, the well-known bookseller and secretary of the Kit-Kat Club, when he lived near Inner Temple gate, Fleet Street. In 1697 when he removed to Gray’s Inn gate, he adopted the SHAKESPEARE’S HEAD, under which he became famous. After 1712, he took a shop in the Strand, opposite Catherine Street, but without altering his sign, and there he died in March 1736 possessed of a splendid fortune. This was that famous Tonson who published the works of the most celebrated authors and poets of the day. Dryden was one of them. Liberality in those days was a word not to be found in the dictionary of a publisher, as Dryden often experienced; in one of his ill tempers, when Tonson had been putting on the screw rather too much, the incensed poet began a satire upon him:--

“With leering look, bullfac’d, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, with Judas-colour’d hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.”

These three lines he sent as a sample of his _savoir faire_ to the publisher, with the gentle addition: “Tell the dog that he who wrote this can write more.” Tonson did not wish to see more, however, and Dryden obtained what he desired. About the year 1720, Jacob Tonson left the business to his nephew, Jacob Tonson, jun., son of his brother Richard, who, through the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle, became stationer, bookbinder, and printer to the Public Board, and this lucrative appointment was enjoyed by the Tonson family, or their assignees, till the month of January 1800.

Lot Goodal, BEADLE of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in 1680, had, like other celebrities, taken his own goodly person for the sign of his house in Rupert Street, as appears from his advertisement, in which, like a true Dogberry, the public are informed that he had taken a silver watch with a studded case “in custody.” The BROWN BILL was another constable’s sign:--

“Which is the constable’s house
At the sign of the _Brown Bill_?”

_Blurt, Master Constable or the Spaniard’s Nightwalk._ Tho. Middleton.
1602.

This brown bill was a kind of battle-axe, or hatchet affixed to a long staff, used by constables. The name was transferred from the weapon to the men who carried it:--

“_Const._ Come, my _brown bills_, we’ll roar,
Bounce loud at the tavern door.”--_Ibid._

They were also called Billmen:--

“To us _billmen_ relate,
Why you stagger so late,
And how you came drunk so soon.”

_John Lilly’s Endymion._ 1591.

Lawyers are only commemorated in the _complimentary_ sign of the Good Lawyer,[494] and in the ROLLS, a tavern kept by Ralph Massie, in Chancery Lane, in the reign of Charles II. In various parts of the house, and particularly in the great room up stairs, the coats of arms of the Carew family spoke of its former possessors. Further back still, we have it as a timber tenement belonging to the knights of St John of Jerusalem, by whom it was sold to Cardinal Wolsey, who for a time inhabited it, before he had reached the summit of his pride and fame. Behind this building was the house and garden of Sir Walter Raleigh. But all these remnants of bygone glory were swept away in 1760, when the house was rebuilt, and the name changed into the CROWN AND ROLLS. The name of Rolls, it is needless to observe, was adopted from the neighbouring Rolls House, where the rolls and records of Chancery have been kept since the reign of Richard III.

The liberal arts are as badly represented on the signboard as the Bar. The POET’S HEAD was a sign in St James’s Street in the seventeenth century; who the poet was it is impossible to say now; perhaps it was Dryden, since the trades tokens represent a head crowned with bays. The same sign had been used during the Commonwealth by Taylor the Water poet, but in his case the poet was Taylor himself, (see p. 48.) The FIVE INKHORNS, we gather from the trades tokens, was the sign of Walter Haddon, in Grub Street, a very appropriate trade emblem in that scribbling locality. There was also a house with this sign in Petticoat Lane, opposite which Strype’s mother lived; letters of his are extant addressed:--

_These for his honoured Mother,_
_Mrs Hester Stryp, widow_
_dwelling in Petticoat Lane over_
_against the five Inkhorns, without_
_Bishopsgate_
_in London._

Petticoat Lane in that time was the great manufacturing place for inkhorns. The HAND AND PEN was a scrivener’s sign, which was adopted by Peter Bales, Queen Elizabeth’s celebrated penman. Hollinshed says[495] that

“He writ within the Compasse of a Penie in Latine, the Lord’s Prayer,
the Creed, the Ten Commandements, a praise to God, a Prayer for the
Queéne, his posie, his name, the daie of the month the yeare of our
Lord, and the reigne of the Queéne. And on the seuenteenth of August
next following, at Hampton Court, he presented the same to the Queenes
maiestie in the head of a ring of gold, couered with a christall, and
presented therewith an excellent spectacle, by him devised, for the
easier reading thereof; wherewith her maiestie read all that was
written therein with great admiration, and commended the same to the
Lords of the Councill and the ambassadors, and did weare the same
manie times vpon her finger.”

Bale was employed by Sir Francis Walsingham, and afterwards kept a writing school at the upper end of the Old Bailey. In 1595, when nearly fifty years old, he had a trial of skill with one Daniel Johnson, by which he was the winner of a golden pen, of a value of £20, which, in the pride of his victory, he set up as his sign. Upon this occasion, John Davis made the following epigram in his “Scourge of Folly:”--

“The _Hand_ and _Golden Pen_, Clophonion
Sets on his sign, to shew, O proud, poor soul,
Both where he wonnes, and how the same he won,
From writers fair, though he writ ever foul;
But by that Hand, that Pen so borne has been,
From Place to Place, that for the last half Yeare,
It scarce a sen’night at a place is seen.
That Hand so plies the Pen, though ne’er the neare,
For when Men seek it, elsewhere it is sent,
Or there shut up, as for the Plague or Rent,
Without which stay, it never still could stand,
Because the Pen is for a Running Hand.”[496]

The sign of the Hand and Pen was also used by the Fleet Street marriage-mongers, to denote “marriages performed without imposition.”

Music-shops always adhered to the primitive custom of using the instruments they sold as their signs; for instance, the HARP AND HAUTBOY, the sign of John Walsh, “servant to his Majesty,” in Catherine Street in the Strand, in 1700.[497] Other music-shops had the FRENCH HORN AND VIOLIN; the VIOLIN, HAUTBOY, AND GERMAN FLUTE; the HAUTBOY AND TWO FLUTES; all these instruments in the woodcut above the shopbill, which was a copy of the sign, are placed perpendicularly beside each other, without any attempt at grouping. The HAUTBOY was one of the most constant music-shop signs; it was formerly a favourite street instrument, and might be heard at the Christmas “waits,” and on occasions of popular rejoicing. Waits even are said to have derived their name from it, that, according to one authority, being the old English name of the hautboy.[498] This, however, we believe to be a mistake. The Waits were “watches”--_guêts_, who went round at certain hours of the night with music, to let it be known they were on the look-out, and make people feel secure.

Novello, the well-known music publisher, still adheres to the old tradition, and carries on business in the Poultry under the sign of the GOLDEN CROTCHET. Somewhat similar was the SOL LA, or the MERRY SONG (_le chant Gaillard_) of Guyot or Guy Marchant, a bookseller and printer in Paris _circa_ 1490. His colophon here represents the two notes _sol la_, surmounting two conjoined hands, in evident allusion to the words of the Pange Lingua “SOLA FIDES.” At the side are represented two merry cobblers, a class of mechanics, who, from time immemorial, have been noted above all others for merriment, and a habit of singing whilst at their work. It is a curious fact, that on the title-page of one of the books printed by Marchant, the “Epistola de Insulis de novo repertis,” his _chant_ Gaillard is translated into “_Campo_ Gaillardo,” which seems to lead to the inference that this work had been printed by some one who had heard of Marchant’s sign, but had never seen it, and merely adopted his name as being well known in the literary world,--a fraud frequently complained of by the old printers.

The FRENCH HORN was once a very common sign, and is still of frequent occurrence; thus, there is a FRENCH HORN AND ROSE in Wood Street, Cheapside; a FRENCH HORN AND HALF-MOON at Wandsworth; and a FRENCH HORN AND QUEEN’S HEAD in Smithfield. This last house was, for many years, kept by Peter Crawley, a noted member of the P. R., and there John Leech the artist, and a friend, used to study low life and boxiana under the tutelage of Black Sam. Finally, in the seventeenth century, there was a HORN AND THREE TUNS in Leadenhall Street. The trades tokens represent it as a French horn; but a drinking horn would certainly have been a more useful instrument in the company of three tuns. It was evidently a corruption of the Bottle-makers’ arms, which were argent on a chevron sable, three bugle-horns of the first between three leather-bottles of the second. These leather-bottles might easily be mistaken for tuns, and the bugle-horn be modernised into a musical instrument.

This frequency of the Horn rather jars with the unpleasant signification that instrument had in seventeenth century slang. Among the Roxburghe Ballads (ii. 138) there is one entitled “The Extravagant Youth, or an Emblem of Prodigality,” with a woodcut representing a youth jumping into the mouth of a large horn. On one side stands the father, seemingly in distress; on the other is a mad-house, with the sign of THE FOOL, two of the inmates looking out from behind the bars. The extravagant youth, after expatiating on his mad career, says:--

“But now all my glory is clearly decay’d,
And into the horn myself have betray’d.

* * * * *

All comforts now from us are flown,
My father in Bedlam makes his moan,
And I in the _counter_ a prisoner thrown,
This Horn is a figure by which it is known.”

The BUGLE HORN is fully as common; it occurs on a trades token of 1667 as the sign of a house in Aldersgate Street, and is still to be seen on many inns by the roadside, where the mail coach, in the good old coaching time, used to announce its arrival by a cheerful tune from the guard’s horn. Sometimes the HORN was used in a different sense. It was the sign and badge of the cattle doctor and village gelder, and came to be exhibited as such either from its use in drenching animals, or from the fact of such an instrument being blown by the doctor, to give notice to the villagers of his approach. At Messingham, Lincoln, the Horn Inn, a century ago, was kept by such a personage. Further on, at p. 369, this professional is mentioned in connexion with Tom of Bedlam.

The HARP, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, was the sign of a bird-fancier, “over against Somerset House in the Strand;”[499] and is still used as the sign of many public-houses, generally denoting an Irish origin. The JEW’S HARP (an instrument formerly called _jeu trompe_, Jew’s trump, _i.e._, toy trumpet) was in former times the sign of a house with bowery tea-gardens and thickly-foliated “snuggeries,” in what was once Marylebone Park, near the top of Portland Place, but removed on the laying out of Regent’s Park. Mr Onslow the Speaker used to go there in plain attire, and sitting in the chimney-corner, join in the humours of the customers, until, being recognised by the landlord one day, as he was riding in his golden coach to the House in state, he found, on going in the evening for his quiet pipe and glass, that his incognito was betrayed. This broke the charm, and like the fairies in the legend, he never more returned after that day. At the end of the last century there was another Jew’s Harp Tavern [and Tea-gardens] in Islington. It consisted of a large upper room, ascended by a staircase on the outside for the accommodation of the company on ball nights, and in this room large parties dined. Facing the south front of the premises was a large semicircular enclosure, with boxes for tea and ale drinkers, guarded by deal-board soldiers, between every box, painted in proper colours. In the centre of this opening were tables and seats placed for the smokers; a trap-ball ground was on the eastern side of the house, whilst the western side served for a tennis court; there were also public and private skittle-grounds. We find a clue to this rather odd sign in Ben Jonson’s play of the “Devil is an Ass,” Act i., scene 1, from which it appears that it was formerly a custom to keep a fool in a tavern, who, for the edification of the customers, used to play on a _Jew’s harp_, sitting on a joint-stool.

One of the signs originally used exclusively by apothecaries was the MORTAR AND PESTLE, their well-known implements for pounding drugs. Among the celebrities who sold medicines under this emblem was the noted John Moore, “author of the celebrated Worm Powder,” to whom Pope addressed some stanzas beginning:--

“How much, egregious Moore, are we
Deceived by shows and forms;
Whate’er we think, whate’er we see,
All human kind are worms.”

His shop was in St Lawrence Poultney Lane. Every week the newspapers contained advertisements proving, by the most wonderful cures, the efficacy of his powders.

In the sixteenth century a publican in Paris adopted the sign of the PESTLE, on account of his living in the Rue de la Mortellerie, (Mortar Street.) His house was in high repute amongst the gallants of the period, which procured him a visit from Master Villon, who thus describes it:--

“S’en vint en une hotellerie,
Rue de la Mortellerie.
Ou pend l’enseigne du _Pestel_,
A bon logis et bon hostel.”[500]

VILLON, _Franches Repues_.

The Apothecary leads us to the Barber, or rather Barber-Surgeon, and the BARBER’S POLE, which dates from the time when barbers practised phlebotomy: the patient undergoing this operation had to grasp the pole in order to make the blood flow more freely. This use of the pole is illustrated in more than one illuminated MS. As the pole was of course liable to be stained with blood, it was painted red; when not in use, barbers were in the habit of suspending it outside the door with the white linen swathing-bands twisted round it; this, in latter times, gave rise to the pole being painted red and white, or black and white, or even with red, white, and blue lines winding round it. It was stated by Lord Thurlow in the House of Peers, July 17, 1797, when he opposed the Surgeon’s Incorporation Bill, that, “by a statute still in force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers were to have theirs _blue_ and _white_ striped, with no other appendage, but the surgeons [which were the same in other respects] were to have a gallipot and a red flag in addition, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.”

Besides the well-known brass soap-basins appended to the pole, the barbers in former times used to have other and more repulsive signs of their profession:--

“His pole with pewter[501] basons hung,
Black, rotten teeth in order strung,
Rang’d cups that in the window stood,
Lined with red rags to look like blood,
Did well his threefold trade explain,
Who shaved, drew teeth, and breathed a vein.”

In Constantinople, where the barber still acts as surgeon and dentist, the teeth drawn by him are worked in ornamental patterns intermixed with blue beads, and hung as trophies in the window. Some of our London dentists even yet follow this disgusting custom, for in no less a thoroughfare than Sloane Street there is a certain chemist-dentist who exhibits in his window a whole bottleful of decayed teeth. Instead of cups “lined with red rags to look like blood,” the genuine article was formerly exhibited in the windows; but this was already prohibited at an early period, since the “Liber Albus” enjoins “that no barber be so bold or so daring as to put _blood in their windows_ openly or in view of folks; but let them have it carried privily unto the Thames, under pain of paying two shillings unto the use of the Sheriffs.”

As “a little learning is dangerous,” the barber of the olden times generally contrived to make himself more or less ridiculous. Steele says:--“The particularity of this man [Don Saltero, see p. 95] put me into a deep thought whence it should proceed that of all the lower orders barbers should go further in hitting the ridiculous than any other set of men. Watermen brawl, cobblers sing: but why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician?” This love of music was at all times an idiosyncrasy of the knights of the brass basin. Morley, in his “Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke,” says:--“It should seem you came lately from a barber’s shop, where you heard Gregory Walker or a Corranta plaide in the new proportions.” Henry Bold, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, speaks of ancient tunes “still sung to _Barbers’ citterns_”, viz., the “Lady’s Fall;” “John come kiss me now;” “Green Sleeves and Pudding Pies;” “The Punk’s Delight,” &c. And Tom Brown, in his “Amusements for the Meridian of London,” remarks:--

“In a Barber’s shop I saw a Beau so overladen with wig that there was
no difference between his head and the wooden one that stood in the
window. The fop it seems was newly come to his Estate, though not to
the years of Discretion, and was singing the Song: ‘Happy the child
whose father is gone to the Devil;’ and the Barber was all the while
keeping time on his Cittern, for, you know, a Cittern and a Barber is
as natural as milk to a calf, or the bears to be attended by a
Bagpiper.”

The cittern is also mentioned by Ned Ward:--“I would sooner hear an old barber sing ‘Whittington’s Bells’ upon a cittern.”

But enough of their musical parts; as for their learning no examples are wanting: Partridge, the classical scholar, in Fielding’s “Tom Jones;” Vossius’ barber, who used to comb his hair in iambics;[502] and Smollett’s Hugh Strap, are excellent specimens. This last one was sketched from life; his real name was Hugh Hughson; he died in the parish of St Martin’s-in-the-Field, at the advanced age of eighty-five, having kept a barber-shop in that locality upwards of forty years. His shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his customers the several scenes in “Roderick Random” pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not in the Doctor’s inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting at the barber-shop in Newcastle, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap’s friends, were all facts. He is said to have left behind him an interleaved copy of “Roderick Random,” showing how far we are indebted to the creative fancy of Doctor Smollett, and to what extent the incidents recorded were founded upon fact.

Not many years ago there was a hairdresser in the Rue Racine, who, probably on account of his proximity to the universities of the Collège de France and the Sorbonne, had this inscription on his window: “κειρω τακιστα και σιναω,” “I shear quickly and am silent.” This classical hairdresser was evidently acquainted with the answers given by Anaxagoras to a barber who asked him, “How do you wish to have your beard shaved?” and who received the laconic answer, “without talking.” The shutters and windows of our Parisian worthy were covered with inscriptions in foreign languages, the number of which was only surpassed by the Bible shop in Brompton, during the time of the International Exhibition in 1862.

An eccentric barber opened a shop under the walls of the King’s Bench Prison; the windows being broken when he entered the house, he mended them with paper, on which appeared, “Shave for a penny,” with the usual invitation to customers; whilst on his door was scrawled the following rhymes:--

“Here lives Jemmie Wright,
Shaves almost as well as any man in England,
Almost--not quite.”

Foote, who delighted in anything eccentric, saw this inscription, and hoping to extract some wit from the author, whom he justly concluded to be an odd character, he pulled off his hat, and thrusting his head through a paper pane into the shop, called out, “Is Jimmy Wright at home?” The barber immediately forced his own head through another pane into the street, and replied: “No, sir, he has just popt out.”

Numerous more or less witty barbers’ inscriptions are recorded; one of the best is that attributed to Dean Swift, penned by him for a barber, who at the same time kept a public-house:--

“Rove not from _pole_ to _pole_, but step in here,
Where nought excels the shaving but the beer.”

A variation often met is:--

“Rove not from pole to pole, but here turn in,
Where nought excels the shaving but the gin.”

Sir Walter Scott in his “Fortunes of Nigel,” vol ii., as a motto to chap. iv., gives the following version:--

“Rove not from pole to pole--the man lives here,
Whose razor’s only equall’d by his beer;
And where, in either sense, the Cockney-put,
May, if he pleases, get confounded cut.”

The amalgamation of the two trades has led to some other rhymes and jokes. A barber-publican in Dudley has the following _barbar_ous joke:--

“What do you think
I’ll shave you for nothing and give you some drink?”

The point of this joke lies in the punctuation, which the illiterate _shavers_ coming to the shop are sure to treat with supreme contempt; but a barber in Ratcliffe Highway, _circa_ 1825, had the following _bona fide_ invitation:--

“Hair cut with despatch,
Shave well in a minute,
And a glass in the bar--gain
With a thimbleful in it.”[503]

Another common inscription is the following:--“I tell U there is no shaving to X L----’s” (name of the barber.) The Parisian barbers are much on a par with their English colleagues in brilliancy of wit and inventive power: “Ici on rajeunit,”[504] used to be a frequent inscription with them; others have:--

“La nature donne barbe et cheveux,
Et moi je les coupe tous les deux.”

or--

“A toutes les figures dédiant mes rasoirs,
Je nargue la critique des fidèles mirroirs.”[505]

Tools belonging to various handicrafts are common public-house signs at the present day. The AXE is a very old sign; it was a well-known carriers’ inn in Aldermanbury in the seventeenth century, and was one of the places visited in 1634 by that thirsty tourist, Drunken Barnaby. From this inn, the first regular line of stage waggons from London to Liverpool was established towards the middle of the seventeenth century. There were constantly some of them on the road, for they left every Monday and Thursday, and it took them ten days in summer, and as many as twelve in winter to perform the journey.

In 1642 there appeared “A Petition from the Towne and County of Leicester unto the King’s most excellent Majestie,” which was “printed for William Gay, and to be sold at his shop in Hosier Lane, at the _signe of the Axe_, July 29, 1642.” When we consider that “the King’s most excellent Majestie,” was Charles I., we may come to the conclusion that there is something in a sign, as well as in a name; it was certainly an ominous and _bad sign_ for the king. The _Cross Axes_ is a sign at Preston, Bolton, &c. The axe is also found combined with various other carpenter’s tools, as the AXE AND SAW, Carlton, Newmarket; AXE AND COMPASSES in many places; AXE AND CLEAVER, in Boston, Yorkshire. Another sign, complimentary to the same class of workmen, was the TWO SAWYERS, which, at the end of the last century, was to be seen near the garden wall of the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth; not unlikely, this was the same house, of which trades tokens are extant from the time of Charles II., when it was kept by John Raines, and its locality is described as the “New Plantation, Narrow Wall, Lambeth.”

Signs referring to iron in its various states are very common on public-houses, as the smith is generally a good customer to them. Iron seems to have a dyspeptic effect even in the bowels of the earth, if we may judge from the quantity of MINERS’ ARMS in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and the black country, in which latitudes teetotalism evidently has made but little progress; the DAVY LAMP is another sign intended to court the custom of miners, but being almost exclusively for workmen in coal pits, it only occurs in Northumberland. The FORGE, or the THREE FORGES, is common in the Midland iron districts. The CINDER-OVEN occurs in Norwich. The ANVIL, the ANVIL AND BLACKSMITH, the ANVIL AND HAMMER, the SMITH AND SMITHY, &c., are all common about Sheffield. So are HAMMERS, combined with various instruments, as PINCERS, VICE, STITHY, &c. The TWO SMITHS was a sign in the Minories in 1655; the trades tokens of the house represent two men working at the anvil. HOBNAILS is a sign in Dudley, that town having been famous for the manufacture of nails of every description, even as early as the time of Henry VIII., for the nails used in building the hall at Hampton Court came from there, and the original accounts preserved in the Public Record Office state that there was “Payde to Raynalde _Warde_, of _Dudley_, for 7350 of dubbyll tenpenny nayles inglys at 11s. the 1000.”

The BAG OF NAILS was once a very common sign; there is one still remaining in Arabella Row, Pimlico. “About fifty years ago, the original sign might have been seen at the front of the house, which was a satyr of the woods, and a group of jolly dogs, ycleped Bacchanals. But the satyr having been painted with cloven feet, and painted black, it was by the common people called the DEVIL, while the Bacchanalians were transmuted by a comical process into a Bag of Nails.”[506] This was, however, only an old slang name for the house, for, in the trial of Catlin, Patterson, and others, for conspiracy, one of the witnesses describing the place where the conspirators used to meet, says: “He went into a public-house, the sign of the DEVIL AND BAG OF NAILS, for so that gentry called it amongst themselves, (though it was the BLACKMOOR’S HEAD AND WOOLPACK,) by Buckingham Gate.”[507]

A _bona fide_ representation of a bag of nails was also used as a sign, as may be seen on the trades token of Henry Hurdam in Tuttle (Tothill) Street, Westminster, 1663, where the bag of nails is combined with a hammer crowned. And as it would be difficult to guess what the bag contained, and nobody cares to buy “a pig in a poke,” the nails were sometimes represented protruding through it, as on the token of Samuel Hincks of Whitechapel, 1669. A somewhat similar sign is expressed in Rouen, Rue des Bons Enfans; it is carved in stone, and represents a bag, with smith’s tools protruding out of it.

Bakers and millers also are represented by a variety of signs. Beginning at the BUSHEL, a sign on the Bankside in the seventeenth century, and the SHOVEL AND SIEVE, the sign of a brush and turnery warehouse among the Bagford Bills, we next accompany the corn to the mill, where we meet the DUSTY MILLER, a favourite sign in some parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. A reminiscence of childhood may have suggested the epithet in this sign, for there is the well known nursery rhyme,

“Millery, Millery, Dusty poll,
How many sacks have you stole?”

The MILLSTONE may be seen at Stockport and Macclesfield.

The WINDMILL itself is a very old sign. It was a tavern in Lothbury, Old Jewry, frequented by fast men in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. Wellbred, in “Every Man in his Humour,” (a play by Ben Jonson,) dates his letter to Edward Knowell from this house:--

“Why, Ned, I beseech thee, hast thou forsworn all thy friends in the
Old Jewry, or doest thou think us all Jews that inhabit there,” &c.

It is named amongst the list of inns “viewed” previous to the visit of Charles V. in 1522.

“Hugh Clapton, Mercer, mayor, in 1492, dwelt in this house and kept
his Mayoralty there; it is now a tavern, and has to sign a Windmill.
And thus much for this house, sometime a Jew’s synagogue [in 1262,]
since a house of friars, [fratres de penitentia Jesu or de Sacca,
1275,] then a nobleman’s house, [Robert Fitz Walter, 1305,] after that
a merchant’s house, wherein Mayoralties have been kept, and now a wine
taverne.”--_Stow._

The PEEL, _i.e._, the wooden shovel with a long handle used by bakers to place bread in the oven, was the sign of John Alder, in Leadenhall Street, 1668. Next comes the basket or PANYER, to bring bread round, which gave its name to “a passage out of Paternoster Row--called of such a sign Panyer Alley.”[508] This is the highest spot in the City of London, as we are informed from an inscription under a stone figure of a boy sitting on a pannier, eating a very questionable bunch of grapes:

“When you have sought the City round,
Yet still this is the highest ground.

_Aug._ 26, 1688.”

The Pannier was not an uncommon trade emblem. The BAKER AND BASKET is the sign of a public-house in Leman Street, and another in Worship Street. The claims to superior usefulness of the BAKER AND BREWER are held forth triumphantly to the advantage of the latter in some signs of this name. One, in Wash Lane, Birmingham, gives a pictorial representation of it; the baker’s hand is resting on what is usually called the “Staff of Life,”--namely, a loaf of very respectable dimensions; the brewer exhibits “with artful pride,” a foaming tankard, when the following dialogue ensues:--

“The Baker says, I’ve the Staff of Life,
And you’re a silly elf;
The Brewer replied, with artful pride,
Why, _this is life itself_.”

The TWO BREWERS, or the TWO JOLLY BREWERS, used to be very common, but is now gradually becoming obsolete. It represented two brewers’ men carrying a barrel of beer slung between them on a pole; it was also frequently called the TWO DRAYMEN. In the bar of the QUEEN’S HEAD Tavern, Great Queen Street, is preserved a carved wooden sign, which formerly hung before this house, representing two men standing near a large tun. The DRAY AND HORSES, meaning of course the brewer’s dray, has now in some instances superseded the Two Jolly Brewers. The STILL, the chief implement in the manufacture of spirits, is very appropriate before the houses where the produce of the still is sold: frequently it is combined with other objects.

The BOY AND BARREL, to be seen in Dagger Lane, London, and in many country places, is all that remains of the little Bacchus on a tun, formerly in almost every ale-house:--

“A little Punch-
Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch,
Sits loftily enthron’d upon
What’s called (in Miniature) a Tun.”

_Compleat Vintner._ London, 1720, p. 86.

The BOY AND CUP at Norwich, in 1750, was a variation of this sign. Other brewers and distillers’ measures also are exhibited, as the BARREL; the PORTER BUTT, (three in Bath;) the BRANDY CASKS, (three in Bristol;) the RUM PUNCHEON, at Boston, Lincoln, and such like. Promises of fair dealing are held out in the sign of the FULL MEASURE, (four in Hull;) the GOLDEN MEASURE, Lowgate, Hull; and the FOAMING TANKARD; or, an appeal is made to public joviality by such a sign as the PARTING POT, at Stamford, Lincoln.

Shoemakers generally follow the advice of the proverb, _ne sutor ultra crepidam_, and confine themselves to the sign of the LAST, which, for variety’s sake, they paint red, blue, gold, &c. But since “cobblers and tinkers are the best ale drinkers,” many alehouses have adopted this sign also. A Crispin who keeps an ale-house near Liscard, Chester, has shown himself “true to the _last_,” by putting under his sign of a Wooden Shoe or Last:--

“All day long I have sought good beer,
And, _at the last_, I have found it here.”

The SHEARS was originally a tailor’s sign, though like most other trade emblems it had become common in the seventeenth century.

“Snip, snap, quoth the tailor’s shears;
Alas, poor Louse, beware thy ears.”

This elegant little verse is quoted by Randle Holme, and seems to have been thought such a good joke, that a canny Scotchman, buried in Paisley Abbey, had a pictorial representation of it on his headstone. Charles Mackie, who wrote the history of that Abbey, says it is an obliterated cross; more probably, however, it is a _fleur de luce_: this would also agree with the Scottish pronunciation of the name of the insect, which is exactly the same as the last part of that heraldic charge.

The HAND AND SHEARS, in Cloth Fair, Smithfield, played an important part at the opening of Bartholomew Fair. It was customary to make the proclamation for opening the fair late in the afternoon of August 23d, but the showmen and traders opened their booths early in the morning:--