Towards a Brief History
of Cecil Court

A few notes by Tim Bryars.

Please email tim@timbryars.co.uk if you have any old photographs, memorabilia or recollections about Cecil Court which you would be happy to share, or if you spot any literary references to the street. Did Hogarth use the court as a shortcut on his way to St Martin’s Lane from his house in Leicester Square? Did the First World War poets take tea at number 24? We hope to put together a comprehensive history.

Early years: Stews in the Great Wen

Cecil Court was laid out in the late seventeenth century, when the open land between Leicester Square and St Martin’s Lane was filled in. It has always been owned by the Cecil family of Hatfield House (the naming of the nearby Salisbury pub is no coincidence). There is only one known illustration of Cecil Court before its reconstruction in 1894 – hardly surprising as there was little of merit to tempt a commercial engraver.

An eighteenth century advertisement for Kendrick’s bootmakers includes a woodcut depiction of the shop’s interior, accompanied by the legend: “There lives a man in Cecil Court / Where all the bucks and beaus resort / In Cordovian taste so neat / To grace their handsome legs and feet”. Goodwin’s Court on the opposite side of St Martin’s Lane, entered through a narrow passageway which is easily missed, is probably the best place for the modern observer to get a feel for Georgian and Victorian Cecil Court.

In the eighteenth century Cecil Court was not an especially salubrious address. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, fully searchable at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/, give an insight into life in the street at the time, whenever the inhabitants fell foul of the law. In 1735 Elizabeth Calloway, keeper of a Brandy Shop in Cecil Court where her clientele could be found “drinking, smoaking, and swearing, and running up and down Stairs till one or two in the Morning” seemingly over insured her goods and set the place alight. Her neighbours’ houses were also burned to the ground while she sat smoking her pipe and drinking good Sussex beer with friends a few streets away. Calloway’s poor lodgers - the widow Feltham, her daughter and young grandson who rented the cellar - fortunately escaped with their lives just as their ceiling collapsed (Calloway had offered to treat them, but they rejected this uncharacteristic offer). Various witnesses gave evidence that her storeroom was empty and, on rescuing barrels from the fire (presumably expecting them to be full of spirits) discovered that they were empty too. The blaze could have been started by the heat from the cook’s shop next door (kept by Eleanor Pickhaver, accused by Calloway of selling ‘sandy’ boiled beef), or the bundles of kindling purchased by Mrs Calloway a fortnight before the fire might have had a sinister purpose. The jury was inclined to acquit. Other residents of the Court went on a spree of looting under cover of the flames. Another cellar dweller, Mary Steward alias Young, ‘accidentally’ took in a bed and three pictures from one of the burning houses “in the hurry and fright she was in”, mistaking them for her own. The jury acquitted her too (perhaps because a conviction would have invoked the death penalty), and also one Eleanor Newby, who ‘assisted’ her former employer by removing six curtains and five China Dishes from his house during the fire, which were subsequently discovered at her lodgings; however, James Newby was transported for stealing iron bars and an iron pin from a press valued at 18d. The thieving didn’t stop with the fire itself. William Gordon and his wife were burnt out by the fire, and took lodgings in Cranbourn Alley, where they were robbed by their servant. Again, although the goods were found on her person she was acquitted.

Cecil Court crops up again and again in the trial records in alibis (I couldn’t possibly have been committing highway robbery your honour; I was drinking and conversing with some charming ladies in Cecil Court at the time – see the trial of Benjamin Jones in 1770, verdict death) and occasionally as the scene of the crime. The pick pocketing of a watch in 1779, in a house of ill repute known as the Ham, is fairly typical. William Stonehouse, apothecary, out for a night on the town with a gentleman friend and already “a little elevated” was accosted by two women who asked for wine and led them to the Ham in Cecil Court. In common with other public houses which crop up in the trial reports, there was a room for ‘company’ and several private rooms. They called for wine and water and Stonehouse’s friend retired briefly with one of the ladies. When he emerged he made his way home without further comment, leaving Stonehouse cosily flanked by ladies of doubtful virtue. After they departed in their turn the lady of the house immediately asked for payment, and Stonehouse discovered that he was missing his gold watch …

In February 1799 (just as Christopher Horwood was putting the finishing touches to his map of the area – see “Cecil Court on the map”) a side of bacon was stolen from Mr Crisp, cheesemonger, of 8 Cecil Court, by a fifteen year old boy called Edward Edwards. Richard Aldred, proprietor of the Bell, observed the theft and together the shopkeepers gave chase. The boy went on his knees in the snow and begged them not to call the watch as he had a bedridden father, but of course as one is reading a trial transcript the next step is predictable enough. Edwards was fined a shilling and confined two years in the House of Correction.

The popular image of Georgian justice is a harsh one, children sentenced to hang for stealing a pinchbeck buckle or a bun. The Westminster House of Correction was the notorious Bridewell, named for the Tudor Palace and illustrated by Hogarth in the Rake’s Progress. Edwards’ imprisonment seems harsh enough to modern eyes, but the jury had recommended mercy and the Houses of Correction were genuinely intended to inculcate reform through hard labour. One also feels for James Newby, transported to America with the prospect of approximately 14 years unpaid labour ahead of him. However, transportation was seen as a humane alternative to the death penalty. What is striking is not the harshness of the punishments but the number of acquittals. Although the number of capital offences rose dramatically during the eighteenth century through a series of so called Black Acts, with limited discretionary sentencing juries often proved reluctant to convict for minor offences even when the prisoners were palpably guilty – a factor seized on by early nineteenth-century reformers who were looking for practical reasons to cut the number of capital crimes beyond the purely humanitarian. And so, a stone’s throw from Seven Dials and the Rookeries of St Giles, the denizens of Cecil Court went about their murky business.

One of the Court’s most famous – albeit transient – residents was eight year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91), who visited London in 1764-5. During his stay in the city he met Karl Friedrich Abel and Johann Christian Bach and composed his first symphony. On arriving in London the Mozart family spent a single night at The White Bear in Piccadilly, but between April 24th and August 6th 1764 they lodged with barber John Couzin at 19 Cecil Court. The family later moved from their Cecil Court lodgings to 21 Frith Street, Soho (then 15 Thrift Street). According to the edition of Mozart’s letters edited by Hans Mersmann, Leopold Mozart was absent for part of this time, convalescing at Dr Randall’s in Fivefields (Lower Ebury Street) and Mr Williamson’s at 51 Frith Street. Evidently the family moved over to Frith Street to join him. (See also Otto Erich Deutsch: Mozart: A Documentary Biography. pp 32 and 34-36.) One can only speculate as to whether the sound of the child genius practising ever disturbed or delighted his decidedly motley assortment of neighbours, but we do know that on April 27th and May 19th Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl left the street to perform before King George III and Queen Charlotte.

In 1776 Abraham Raimbach the line engraver of "Village Politicians," "Blind Man's Buff" and others, after Sir David Wilkie, was born in Cecil Court. (see: Macmichael, J. Holden: The Story of Charing Cross and its Environs, 1906, p. 190.

Flicker Alley

Cecil Court was rebuilt at the peak of the political career of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the third Marquess of Salisbury, who was Prime Minister

1886-1892 and again from 1895 until 1902.

Steel fire door in the cellar of Greening Burland c. 1912

Doubtless he had plenty of other things on his mind and it is highly unlikely that he ever set foot in the street which bears his family name, but he probably saw the clearance of the old buildings as a great improvement and the shops and mansion flats which replaced them are attractively proportioned and sturdily built.

Amongst the first tenants were early film distributors, publishers of promotional material and trade journals such as the Bioscope Annual and suppliers of technical equipment. Cecil Court’s role in the burgeoning British film industry led to the nickname Flicker Alley. The searchable database produced by the London Project, a major study of the film business in London, 1894-1914, organised by the AHRB Centre for British Film and Television Studies, throws up over forty entries for Cecil Court. A forthcoming article in the journal Film Studies will be devoted to the street. The London Project can be consulted at http://londonfilm.bbk.ac.uk/

Once again we have no photographic record of the street at this time. The door in the basement of number 27 illustrated here is no ordinary door, but a solid steel fire door, a relic of the highly flammable early film stock and one of the last surviving physical links with the film trade. Number 27 was home to the Pioneer Film Company Ltd circa 1912-1915. A brass ash tray from the same period advertises them as “the house for up-to-date exclusive comedies”.

Booksellers’ Row

Booksellers and publishers had already moved into the street before the First World War. Watkins was among the first, and the Foyle brothers opened their original West End shop here at number 16 Cecil Court before moving to their more famous premises on Charing Cross Road.

Details from the Photographic News

The Camera Club had premises on the corner of the street at the Charing Cross Road end from 1891 (a meeting is illustrated in a November 1895 issue of the Graphic), and enthusiasts were catered for by the Photographic News, published at 9 Cecil Court in the early 1900s. Next door at number 7 a more varied literary selection was published at the Sign of the Unicorn, including the Dome, an illustrated periodical devoted to literature, music, architecture and the graphic arts. The Dome postcard shown here was illustrated by the famous wood-engraver Edward Gordon Craig.

The Dome postcard.

The book, Windjammers and Sea Tramps, by former merchant seaman and shipowner Walter Runciman, is illustrated as an example of Unicorn Press printing from 1902. The street was also home to publishers Greening Ltd.

Browsers outside the Stamp Shop at 6 Cecil Court in the 1940s.

Model railway enthusiasts may remember Hambling’s model shop, founded in the mid twenties, which came to specialize in miniature gauges. They manufactured their own range of kits and accessories as well as stocking famous brands.

Lawrence of Arabia made at least one brief foray into Cecil Court. In the mid thirties artist Frederick Carter exhibited his works at the Basilica Gallery at number 6, and his portrait of Lawrence (which serves as frontispiece of a bibliography of his minor works by T.I.F. Armstrong) is dated from Cecil Court, March 1934.

In the 1930s Cecil Court became a well known meeting place for Jewish refugees, which in 1983-4 inspired R.B. Kitaj to paint Cecil Court W.C.2. (The Refugees), a work now in the Tate Collection. An online image is available: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=8137 Cecil Court was one of Kitaj’s favourite haunts and the painting was born out of an increasing awareness of his own Jewish heritage. Kitaj himself is depicted reclining in the foreground, and to the left (holding flowers) is the Cecil Court refugee bookseller Mr Seligmann, for whom he was a regular customer.

A more unfortunate incident worthy of brief mention is the Cecil Court antique shop murder. In March 1961 Elsie Batten, a 59 year old assistant in Louis Meier’s antique shop at 23 Cecil Court, was stabbed to death. Her murderer, Edwin Bush, was identified and caught within days following the circulation of Identikit pictures - the first case to be solved in the UK using the Identikit System, a significant advance in crime detection. Full details are available on the Metropolitan Police website: http://www.met.police.uk/history/bush.htm.

The perspicacious reader will note that I have not written much about the booksellers who have made Cecil Court famous today. Names such as R.V. Tooley, H.M. Fletcher, Bob Chris and David Low are famous in the world of books and well within living memory. Please get in touch with your anecdotal evidence!