Garrick

BOSWELL: "Would not you, Sir, start as Mr. Garrick does, if you saw a Ghost?"

JOHNSON: "I hope not. If I did, I should frighten the Ghost!"

The Criterion by which I judge an Actor...

... is the degree of power he has of making me forget that he is one. This Mrs. Cibber possessed in a greater degree than any one I ever saw. I have often thought her actually mad; -- and when she breathed the soft and distressful accents of unhappy love; -- she occupied my whole heart, and so fascinated my eyes, that I always imagined myself in the scene, and viewing the very spot where the poet had placed her.

I have felt the highest admiration when I have seen you in your capital parts: but it has been only admiration. Nothing but nature could well exceed many of your imitations; -- and Mrs. Cibber was nature.

She felt the passions in the highest degree; they tuned her voice and shaped her countenance. You model yours by an art; but you do so like an able artist. Hence the difference in the universality of your talents. She entered only on those parts for which nature had formed her; and expressed the passions which she felt.

Your heart was very differently formed: you had no passions which could restrain your imitative faculty: nature had given you a good voice; features which you could throw into various forms; and an eye which, especially at a distance, you could manage to vast advantage. Like a capital artist, you could imitate all around you; and the imitations were often truly wonderful: -- but you could not actually express what you never felt; and Mrs. Cibber saying from her heart,

'Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?'

was, to a person of real sensibility, worth all the happy grimace which was ever made by man.

You may now doubt your diligence in injuring the memory of this excellent Actress. I suspect you have been thus employed; for it has some time been the language of those wits who take their sentiments from you, 'Mrs. Cibber had great powers but she whined at last; and she walked with her elbows stuck to her sides.' -- She might have tied her hands behind her, as boys do in engagements at schools, and yet excelled all the world.

A Letter to David Garrick, Efq.

on his Conduct as Principal Manager and Actor at Drury Lane (1772)

Strowlers

STROWLERS, Vagabonds, Itinerants, Men of no settled Abode, of a precarious Life, Wanderers of Fortune, such as Gypsies, Beggars, Peddlers, Hawkers, Mountebanks, Fiddlers, Country-Players, Rope-dancers, Jugglers, Tumblers, Shewers of Tricks, and Raree-show-men.

RAREE-SHOW-Men, poor Savoyards strolling up and down with portable Boxes of Puppet-shows at their Backs; Pedlars of Puppets.

Drury Lane

Noisy brawls and dark deeds were common in Drury Lane. It was the haunt of such quarrelsome persons as that Captain Fantom, who, coming out of the Horseshoe Tavern late one night, was offended by the loud jingling spurs of a lieutenant he met, and forthwith challenged him to a duel and killed him.

And the tavern-keepers of Drury Lane were not always model citizens. There was that Jack Grimes, for example, whose death in Holland in 1769 recalled the circumstance that he was known as 'Lawyer Grimes,' and formerly kept the Nag's Head Tavern in Princes' Street, Drury Lane, "and was transported several years ago for fourteen years, for receiving fish, knowing them to be stolen."

Henry C. Shelley

Inns and Taverns of Old London, 1909

At Covent Garden

If you manage to shoulder your way through the Hordes of Covent Garden Nymphs, who tramp the Road and will happily resign their engaging Persons to your Honour for a Pint of Wine and a Shilling in an upstairs Room or upright in an Alley; you will at last reach the Theatre.

Perhaps you might expect mighty matters from the Playhouse. There you will find some clapping and stamping, some hissing and scoffing: some Cockhorse on the Seats damning and confounding the Play and Players, they know not why; others throwing about their Wigs, blinding you with fulsome Powders from them, or tormenting you with noisome Scents; others prating with Orange Wenches and bantering with Whores.

If that is not Entertainment enough, on the Stage might be a new Play, a Shakespeare or an Opera; though you are just as likely to find a veritable Inundation of French Dancers, Italian Singers, Rope Walkers and Vaulters on Horseback; a Man mimicking the Harmony of Essex Lions, Mr. Clinch of Barnet with his Kit-Organ, and a hundred other notable Curiosities.

A wild Stab in the Dark

Folding knives - also known as jack-knives, flick-knives or pocket knives - originated in the middle ages. Cutlery was a luxury back then, so as soon as there were pockets (pouches which you hung from your belt) small knives were developed which could be carried in them. The 108 useful attachments (including that little pick for cleaning horses' feet) came much, much later.

This knife has a single steel blade set in an engraved horn pistol-grip handle, and was made in Sheffield in the 18th century. The knife handle would not have totally encased the blade - the nail nick we are so familiar with today was not introduced until the late 18th century.

When you are researching a detective novel, you spend quite a lot of time working out how to commit a crime. You have to enter the hearts and heads of people you wouldn't wish to meet on any dark night. And so I have started to think about flick-knives.

It began for me when I picked up Lt-General Adam Williamson's diary of 1722-1747. Williamson was a Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower of London, one of the chief officers in one of the city's principal prisons.

Among the injunctions that the Earl of Lincoln, Constable of the Tower, put in place in Williamson's time was that:

"No wine [was] to be admitted to any close Prisoner in flasks, unless the covering of the Flask be taken off, and the bottle look'd through by holding a lighted Candle behinde it... no Liquor likewise to be admitted in stone Bottles, but the Liquor first to be poured out and the Bottles very carefully examin'd."

This got me thinking: rules tell you about what is happening that should not be. You don't order something to be done that everyone does as a matter of course: you make orders to correct faulty behaviour. If the officers in the prison are being told to examine bottles of drink sent in for prisoners, this is a sign that contraband has been smuggled in that way and has got past because of the guards' inattention.

And what is small, but deadly; might be wrapped in straw or a rag to stop it clinking; and might cause a terrible chaos were it to find its way into a prisoner's hand? A flick-knife.

And were they around in the 18th century, and small enough to fit in the bottle? Yes.

It is moments like this that start the brain ticking over as a story takes shape...

A Fair Cop

"In London there are a great number of minor magistrates. When a crime or robbery has been committed, the relations of the murdered person or of those who have been robbed, or in their stead the attorney for the Crown, declare the fact to the magistrate and accuse the persons whom they suspect. They must give bail or appear in court whenever the case comes on. The magistrate then gives out a warrant or order to take the accused person prisoner. The constable or officers of police do this latter work.

As soon as the guilty man is discovered they exhibit their warrant and their staff or mark of office, on which are painted the arms of the King. If the accused threatens them and refuses to allow himself to be made prisoner, all those persons who by chance are present are obliged, if the constables desire it, to come to their aid. When the criminal is secured he is taken to Newgate, one of the big gates of London, near which the prison is situated."

Cesar de Saussure
Letters from London, 1725-1730

The Art of Detection...

... lies in looking, not merely seeing:

"There is no Man who works at any particular Trade, but you may know him from his Appearance to do so. One part or the other of his Body being more used than the rest, he is in some degree deformed."

Dr. Samuel Johnson

"By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuff - By each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. "

Mr. Sherlock Holmes

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackning Church appals,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the newborn Infant's tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

WILLIAM BLAKE