London Urban Legends Read Online Free PDF Page A

London pub most closely associated with Dick Turpin is the Spaniards Inn, which once boasted knives and forks used by him, as well as a small window where the highwayman could be aided and abetted by pub staff who would pass him food, money and drink while he was still in his saddle. Old and New London describes the Coach and Horses pub in Hockley in the Hole, now Ray Street, where a valise marked ‘R. Turpin’ was found in the cellars along with blank keys used for lock-breaking. Also at the Coach and Horses, still on Ray Street and a backstreet, was said to be a passage from the pub cellar that lead out to the banks of the Fleet river which was used by highwaymen or, as the book calls them, ‘minions of the moon’. Turpin also left another unholy relic, a pistol engraved with ‘Dick’s Friend’ in the rafters of the Anchor Inn in Shepperton and another within the walls of Ye Old King’s Head in Chigwell.
Tunnel Visions
    There are countless pubs that claim a link to Dick Turpin, but the Dick they are referring to is the romantic, fictional figure and not the actual Richard Turpin, a thuggish burglar and thief. Like the Ellis shooting, the Old Red Lion pub on Whitechapel High Street has a plaque stating ‘This is the Old Red Lion where Dick Turpin shot Tom King’ after the murder committed here on 1 May 1737. Inside the pub was another plaque with the following inscription: ‘It was in the yard of this house that Dick Turpin shot Tom King. Turpin had been traced by the horse to this inn, together with Matthew and Robert King, birds of like feather, by the Bow Street Runners.’
    Antony Clayton in Folklore of London says of this plague: ‘Apart from the fact that it was Matthew King who was shot, that Matthew’s brother’s name was John and not Robert and that the Bow Street Runners were founded in 1750, after Turpin’s death, this sign was accurate.’
    Other London pubs claiming a link to Turpin include the Spotted Dog on Upton Lane, and the Black Lion on Plaistow High Street, with tunnels extending ‘over half a mile to emerge very close to Upton Park football ground’, which Turpin would scuttle down after stabling Black Bess. Chigwell’s Old King’s Head has a tunnel that Turpin used to escape from the cellars, presumably after stashing his guns in the wall (Turpin did foolishly risk incriminating himself by signing his equipment). Turpin hid in the Globe Tavern on Bow Street for three days, and the temptation of this legend couldn’t resist having him being pursued again by the non-existent Bow Street Runners.
    Tunnels for Turpin’s escape and stables for Black Bess’s rest multiply as often as someone thinks of Turpin or visits an old pub for a drink. There were many more criminals and gangsters in London than the Krays, Richardsons and Dick Turpin, but the further the past gets, and the more romanticised these criminals become, it will be the most famous names that will live on in legend. By 2113 there will pubs called ‘The Reggie Kray’ or ‘The Jack the Ripper’ in the East End that will show places these folk heroes killed, or hid, or escaped down a secret tunnel.
    Highwaymen are not the only historical celebrities to use secret tunnels, however. Royalty and aristocracy had the means to construct tunnels to cover their clandestine indulgences.
    Legends of tunnels and the famous are insistent things that cannot help but insinuate themselves into a discovery. The Argyll Arms on Argyll Street is named after the Duke of Argyll. ‘Rumour has it’, the pub’s website says, ‘that a secret tunnel once connected the pub to the duke’s mansion.’ When staff at Wimbledon Park Golf Club discovered a tunnel in February 2012 the newspaper headline was ‘Mysterious tunnels could link golf course with Henry VIII’s Wimbledon home’, though I think Henry was more a hunting, archery and