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METHOD THAT SOME POOR L ONDONERS used to earn money was the trick of ‘lurking’ or dog finding.
    Henry Mayhew interviewed one dog finder for his great work on London, a man named Chelsea George who had been educated as a gentlemen but had fallen on hard times.
    Chelsea George had a cunning technique. He would paint his hand with gelatine mixed with pulverized friedliver and then approach a dog that looked ‘a likely
spec’. Rubbing his hand on the animal’s nose, it soon became a willing captive. He would abduct the animal with a sack he carried for the purpose, then have flyers printed declaring
‘Dog Found’. He posted one at a local public house with a friendly landlord and the other he kept on his person.
    When the dog’s owner approached the publican, they were directed to George, who would produce the other flyer – saying he had come across it during the day – and return the dog
for a reward. Mayhew believed Chelsea George had run this trick for nearly fifteen years ‘without the slightest imputation on his character’, earning him an annual income of around
£150 (which in Victorian London put him on a par with a headmaster, and way above a labourer who could expect £25 per year).
Don Saltero’s Coffee House

    Chelsea
    A C HELSEA INSTITUTION FOR ALMOST 150 YEARS , Don Saltero’s was opened in 1695 by one James Salter, a barber and former
servant of Sir Hans Sloane.
    Originally on the corner of Lawrence Street, it moved first to Danvers Street and then in 1717 to Cheyne Walk This popular coffee house was packed with curiosities donated by
Sloane, whose collection of objects would later form the basis of the British Museum.

    Salter acquired his ‘Don’ nickname from Rear-Admiral Sir John Munden, a notorious lover of all things Spanish. Salter was an eccentric, not only serving his customers coffeebut also shaving them, pulling their teeth, reciting poetry and playing the violin. His fame reached its apogee in 1709 when an edition of the Tatler was dedicated to his shop
and its ‘ten thousand gimcracks’.
    After Salter’s death in 1728, the business passed to his daughter. A year later a catalogue of the items in the coffee house was published, and again in 1795. A good many of them were sold
off in 1799, raising £50 despite (or perhaps because of) including ‘a starved cat found between the walls of Westminster Abbey when repairing’. No 18 Cheyne Walk, built in 1867,
now sits on the site.
Durham House

    The Strand
    F OR 800 YEARS BEFORE THE E MBANKMENT WAS built, the Strand was the site of many of London’s finest
houses, offering both river views and close proximity to the City and Westminster.
    Durham House was originally built in the mid-14th century as the town house of the Bishop of Durham. The first officeholder to reside there was Richard Le Poor. Legend has it
that Henry III was once passing nearby during a thunderstorm when the then incumbent, Simon de Montfort, invited him in to take refuge. The king replied, ‘Thunder and
lightning I fear much, but by the head of God I fear thee more’.
    The house also served as home to both Cardinal Wolsey and Anne Boleyn, while Katherine of Aragon lodged here before her marriage to Henry VIII ’s
older brother, Arthur. Lady Jane Grey was wed here on 21 May 1553, shortly before her tragic nine days on the throne of England. By the time of Elizabeth I ’s reign,
the house was described as ‘stately and high, supported with lofty marble pillars. It standeth on the Thames very pleasantly.’ It eventually became the home ofSir
Walter Raleigh and while living there he was memorably drenched with beer by a servant who feared that his master had caught fire when he found him smoking.

    After Raleigh’s untimely eviction from the property when he fell from favour, James I used it mainly to house visiting ambassadors, although its gardens were
incorporated into neighbouring Cecil House. In Oliver Cromwell’s time it was used for