The Apothecaries' Hall

Black Friars Lane
EC4V 6EJ

Friday 13 November 2015  Although it's not on our original list of Museums, the Apothecaries' Hall is pretty historic and full of interest, so I jumped a the chance to visit it. Our visit was one of the splendid series of outings organised for the Friends of the British Library.

We assembled in the courtyard, which has scaffolding because of the issues affecting all elderly buildings:  and this one, rebuilt in 1672 after the Great Fire of 1666, is no exception.  The pestle and mortar on the wall is of similar antiquity, and reminded us of the origins of this ancient Society.

The coat of arms above the door (and in many other places, stained glass, petit point, ceramic plates) boasts two unicorns and a rhinoceros, reminders that the horn of these supposedly mythical beasts  were thought to have medicinal properties.  By the way, the society strongly supports Save the Rhino these days, in expiation of former days. Meanwhile, the centrepiece of the shield is Apollo slaying the dragon of disease.

The motto comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and translates as 'I am spoken of all over the world as one who brings help.' 

Our guide was the Beadle, and he explained the history of the apothecaries. Initially, they were people who imported, stored and sold herbs and spices, and so counted, with the Pepperers and the Salters as part of the Grocers' Company. (Grocers being people who bought 'en grosse', something we hadn't known before)

The Society is celebrating the centenary of the Act which entitled them to practise medicine and to assess and licence practitioners. In the days when Physicians were expensive and elitist, apothecaries filled the role now occupied by GPs, and this continues to be true. The hallway was decorated with cases of pharmaceutical storage jars, as well as the ceramic plaques which marked the shops of members of the Worshipful Society.

We were taken upstairs to the parlour, where we saw a map of this area before the dissolution of the monasteries. Sandwiched between Bridewell Palace and Baynards Castle, the Dominican Blackfriars owned a huge swathe of land. The Apothecaries snapped up the land during the reign of Charles I. They had been recognised as a separate 'mystery' in 1617 by James I, who declared the Grocers to be 'mere merchants'.Their Hall did not last long, but was quickly rebuilt after the Great Fire. It had a lucky escape in the next 'great fire' of London, when a Luftwaffe 500lb bomb went down the chimney into the cellar and failed to explode. Not surprising, then, that the Apothecaries welcome bomb disposal and fire service workers warmly.

The parlour is lined with portraits of former Masters, not least Gideon de Laune, who was the driving force behind the recognition of the Society.

Our guide explained to us that, when searching for a crest for the coat of arms, the artist relied on Durer's armoured depiction rather than anything more accurate.  

We saw the paperwork for Elizabeth Garrett Anderson:  blocked from joining the Physicians, she obtained her licence from the apothecaries, mainly because she signed her papers with her initial not her forename. They are proud of her now, but the regulations were tightened for some decades after she slipped through

The great Hall was also lined with portraits, including one of the Queen, with the Apothecaries' roses behind her. The ceiling is rather fine as well.

Other wall embellishments include the banners that flew on the Society's barges. Dr Hans Sloane's Chelsea Physic Garden was run by and for the Apothecaries for many years, and the herbs were brought to the warehouses and workshops here by barge.


The most interesting fact about this handsome Hall is that it is now used for practical examinations: few hospitals can spare the beds to set up the cubicles in which actors test the skill and behaviour of medical students, and so this hall is used, not just for the Apothecaries' own examinations, but by several other institutions. We were shown the ancient chest which now contains prosaic blankets and cubicle curtains.

You can find out even more about this remarkable Society here.

The Crime Museum

at the Museum of London

150 London Wall

Barbican EC2Y 5HN

Wednesday 11 November 2015

When we compiled our list of Museums back in 2014, the so-called 'Black Museum' at Scotland Yard was firmly labelled 'no public access'. So when the Museum of London announced a temporary exhibition of some of the collection, we of course went along. Equally of course, we chose a Wednesday for our visit since that is the day it is cheaper.
No photography is allowed after the entrance, so here is the entrance.

There are a few more images here.
We began with a timeline of key developments: the 'Peelers' established in 1829 and the Detective Division in 1842 and so on through the formation of the Museum in1875 and the establishment of the fingerprint section in 1901. Items in the Museum come from the Prisoners Property Store, after all appeals are over: very few criminals returned to claim their property after they had completed their sentences, and of course in the days of capital punishment, many were not around to do so.

The first two rooms showcase some of the objects from the Museum as depicted in illustrations in the 1880s. Above us were the death masks of people hanged outside Newgate Prison (though executions ceased to be a public spectacle after 1868), and the walls were covered with courtroom illustrations. Among them was George Woolf, hanged at Newgate in 1902 for killing his girlfriend, as well as many others, the drawings sufficiently detailed to be turned into plates for printing in the Police Gazette and other publications. There was also the pistol with which Edward Oxford attempted to kill Queen Victoria. In the next room were ropes used to hang several criminals, for example the one which dealt with Amelia Dyer, hanged for killing a 2 month old baby at her 'baby farm'. On an adjoining wall was the business card of the executioner, William Marwood.

Poisoners, forgers, gamblers and housebreakers lined the walls, together with some of their 'kit'.  The Police Force used the Museum as a training aid to show new recruits the sort of thing they might expect; but there was also clearly a kind of ghoulish pride in what had been stopped or at least punished.

The exhibition then continued with a series of case histories:  some were significant milestones in detecting: the first fingerprint conviction; the first time bullets were matched to guns; the first time experiments were done to demonstrate that one could extract arsenic from fly papers, and so on. Some of the displays were of notorious murderers, like Crippen, Haigh and Christie. All these gave an opportunity to show developments in police methods such as the use of publicity, radio communications and careful forensic examination of crime scenes. On the other hand, this roll call of villains rather confirmed the fact that it is usually women who get murdered, and usually by men. Having said that, Ruth Ellis was here too: the last woman hanged in Britain (in 1955), after she had shot the man who brought on her miscarriage by punching her in the stomach. 

The rooms also contained themed cases, about forgery and counterfeiting, about the Cold War and spying, and about terrorism.There was a gruesome case of disguised weapons, such as binoculars from which sprang spikes to blind the user, and a shot gun umbrella.  But on the whole, the exhibition was more thought provoking than deliberately horrific. Events like the 7 July 2005 bombs, and the Iranian Embassy siege were put in the context of crime fighting rather than anything else.

Both the Museum of London and the Metropolitan Police have clearly thought  hard before embarking on this event. The last room has a range of talking heads explaining and discussing what the aims are, and the constraints, mainly connected with the needs of victims, which they imposed upon themselves.  Policing is a key part of life in London, which makes the Museum an appropriate venue.

As with all museums nowadays, they wanted the opinions of visitors. Linda and I gave our opinions to a Danish student who is doing some kind of paper based on the reactions of people leaving the exhibition.

We thought it was well worth the price, and hope that some at least of the extraordinary collection which is the Police Museum will continue to be available to the public even after this exhibition closes in the spring.

Museum of Childhood

Cambridge Heath Rd, London E2 9PA

Thursday  November 4^th 2015

This museum is an offshoot of the Victoria & Albert Museum, who, clearly  tired of storing  roomfuls of dolls houses,  moved them out here in 1974, when Roy Strong was still Director. The building had a makeover in 2006 and arguably it was the fabric that appealed to us most – Mary hazarded that it might have been a market with its wooden and marble floors,  wrought iron mezzanine gallery and barrel shaped roof.  Linda said it reminded her of an old fashioned department store or even GUM - the pride of Moscow (even when empty in Iron Curtain days – this image is from their website )

We were both wrong – it is in fact a purpose built museum, originally intended for South Kensington  but re-routed to give the people of Bethnal Green something of their own.

The lower ground floor is entirely given over to café and shop while the mezzanine and upper gallery are filled with innumerable identical glass cases in somewhat random order. The toys feel very locked away and there is no supporting displays to show how they were played with, by what age children or how some of the mechanical toys worked. It all looks very dated and in our view it is not a great destination for children – there are limited play areas (you would do as well in your local park or playgroup) with a sand tray and table of Lego. Presumably the booked parties and events offer a better experience for the younger visitors. The main body of the Museum was fairly deserted today except for the special exhibition which we greatly enjoyed, would certainly recommend and which was really well presented.

The exhibition tackles the theme of child migrants, that is the non-voluntary sending of unaccompanied children to ‘the Colonies’ mainly Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The policy is well explained and documented, and operated for a hundred years between 1869 and 1970. The UK children were sometimes orphans and already in institutions but more frequently their mothers had relinquished care because of poverty but nevertheless maintained contact with the children. The government thinking was that they would have a ‘better life’ overseas but in reality they were exporting poverty and the poor, minimising the cost of supporting families on welfare in the UK and helping the colonies expand their own population with 'white people' as per the policy. 

  The charities who ‘collected’ the children in the UK felt that the children’s opportunities might be increased by being away from the deprivation of the slums and in the fresh air… however, as the exhibition so clearly demonstrates the reality was very far from  this. On arrival in Australia most of the children were placed in large and ultimately abusive institutions (mainly church run it has to be said) and were expected to do heavy manual labour but without being taught real crafts. But the ultimate cruelty was the separation from family with really no chance, except for some of the later migrants, of any re-unification. The individual stories and the outcomes for the children are presented on large panels while the walls have posters, artefacts and some live interviews with ‘migrant survivors’ – there are also films of  groups of children being served 5 course meals on the cruise ships taking them to their destinations, probably the most positive memory many of them had.

Not until the pioneering and revealing work carried out by social worker Margaret Humphreys and the later establishment of the Child Migrant Trust in 1987 did many of these shameful truths come to light and some compensation offered.  The exhibition also informs that some similar policies were in operation within the United States where ‘surplus’ children from the poor of the East coast cities were sent out west to ‘help’ on remote farmlands with heartbreaking stories of families being split up.

Somewhat emotionally drained we headed out into the main body of the Museum – admittedly the special exhibition was presented as not suitable for children under a certain age but by the time we had finished with the endless identical glass containers we wondered what appeal there was in much of the substantive collection other than as a nostalgia outing for middle aged and beyond?

Each case seems to have a theme though at times difficult to see what, and the text is not at child height (We presume they are meant for children as they say things like ‘A wheel is a circular device that turns round an axle that passes through its centre which makes it possible for things to be moved as slowly or as quickly as you want.’!) and seem to blend an awkward combination of long words with ‘think about it children?’ tone. As for the caption telling us the slide projector was the modern equivalent of some older image making toys, it just made us laugh…

There are occasional play areas – one ‘seaside’ themed had plentiful displays of Punch & Judy booths and puppets and a small sandpit; near the dolls houses and toy shops there are a dresser and range oven (range oven?) and near the building toys we found a small selection of Lego – probably not more than in our local building society!

Talking of wheels we inserted 20p into the model railway layout – Hornby Dublo type with its Thirties style rural stations – only to watch a sole engine (what happened to carriages you might ask) fall off the track and its twin go in ever slower circuits. Jo complained at the desk and was offered her 20p back but that was not the point – if you wanted to offer visitors an interactive experience make it meaningful and entertaining, not drab and pointless.

Yes there is an amazing range of dolls houses, rare puppets and some acknowledgement of different cultures. Yes this is billed as a Museum of Childhood but one that felt the exhibits had been conserved and catalogued at the expense of looking at the context in which they had once been played with – were these objects mass produced and available to all?  I think not when many children until 100 years ago were expected to work for their living..  In a Museum of Toys we needed a better idea of how some of them worked.  As the special exhibition showed the Museum is able to demonstrate clearly and with empathy the childhood of the unfortunate migrant children so why not apply these skills elsewhere in their collection?  

Fulham Palace

Fulham Palace

Bishop’s Avenue

Fulham SW6 6EA

Thursday 28 October 2015

Linda and I approached the Bishop's Palace in Fulham via the Bishop's Park from Putney Bridge Station.  We knew we were in West London because of the relentless roar of aeroplanes overhead, but the Park was pleasant, and soon we came to the handsome wall which surrounds the Palace grounds.

The Palace is leased by the Church Commissioners to the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (more about this later) and they are gradually restoring the vegetable garden which used to help feed the Bishops of London.  They have a bit of  a way to go yet, and of course their brassicas had been ravaged by pigeons. On the other hand, the glasshouses are already producing tomatoes, cucumbers and the odd pepper, and we much admired the show of dahlias outside the glasshouses.  The knot garden is also being restored, and we very much liked the dark red sedums and grasses planted there.

But it was time to visit the Palace and so we headed towards it, realising that t was half term when we saw lots of families in the grassy surrounds of the building.

We were, however, still outside when we 'met' our first Bishop, carved at the top of the Bishop's Tree. This was Bishop Creighton, in charge in the latter part of the 19th century, and a keen gardener.

The way into the Palace is through the handsome courtyard, with fountain, and there we paused to answer some questions from a young volunteer, garnering information to help seal a Lottery bid for more improvements.

Eventually we were in the Palace, and started in the Great Hall, actually quite modest, and panelled in dark wood.  This week it is the scene of the dressing up opportunities so essential for historic buildings these days. It also had a fine gallery, and an attractively carved wooden fireplace surround. The light was not ideal for pictures, so there are some more here.

Here we learned that the Palace had been the home of the Bishops of London since the dawn of time (well, 704 AD, just as King Ethelred was abdicating) until 1973, when they moved to Dean's Court, convenient for St Paul's Cathedral.  But that time, Fulham Palace was not only decrepit (bomb damage and old age) but also unsuitable for the modern church. Much of it had been leased out to various individuals and organisations.  So the Church Commissioners allowed the Borough to take it over, and they are making a sound job of turning it into a community space.

In Bishop Sherlock's Room, added, apparently, in 1753, we saw a modest exhibition about what had happened to the Palace since 1973.  There was lots of information about the Volunteers, who are clearly crucial to the place, the renovation and planning that is going on, and the various activities which have taken place over the past 40 years.

As we moved on, we came to some very entertaining pictures of Bishops of London by a modern artist whose name we could not find.  There was Ridley, with the flames behind him.  Also Bishop Laud, the High Churchman who encouraged Charles I to go in for more 'bells and smells' that the ordinary people of the seventeenth century thought appropriate.

Then we went on to the main museum which is about the history of the diocese as well as the Palace.  This was of course a family home, once the reformation had allowed Bishops to marry;  bishops wives, of course, became homeless when their husbands died, though it seems that grace-and-favour homes at Hampton Court might be made available.  The Museum told us about food supplies, and entertaining, and also about the huge range of the duties of the Bishops of London, since they were responsible for parishes outside the UK.

For those of us who had come from the other end of London and were wondering what the bishops were doing all the way over here, the museum provided clear explanation. With the ford over the river here, this was a key commercial and strategic point, and of course access to London by River was always available.  So from pre-Roman times there had been people here, as archeologists have demonstrated.

A brief film made the useful point that, while this is not the 'finest' Tudor, or 18th century house, its various incarnations demonstrate continuous occupation.  We saw photographs of the Palace's use as a hospital in 1918 and 1919, and read about the fire watchers who saved St Paul's from destruction during the Blitz in 1940-41.

Finally, after a quick visit to the shop, housed in the library, we made our way to the Chapel, rather a depressing 19th century building;  the paintings on the brick walls were hard to see, though they look quite interesting on the website!

We enjoyed our visit, but would be lying if we said it was wonderful or amazing.  If the lottery application is successful, and we hope it is, it might well be worth visiting in future years to see the progress they are making.

Museum of London Docklands

No.1 Warehouse, West India Dock Rd,

London E14 4AL

Thursday October  22 2015

This museum is an offshoot of the Museum of London,  using the very generous space of the West India dock warehouse for its substantial display which effectively covers the history of London as a port.

The house style is very reminiscent of that of the Barbican site with a mixture of displayed historical objects/reproduced documents, some short audio-visual presentations and reconstructed room, or in this case street, displays so you wander over wooden and cobbled floors as appropriate. The Museum occupies four floors with the main displays on 3 & 2, admin and generous meeting venues on 1 and commercial and play opportunities on the Ground Floor. I will leave Jo to explain the many pleasures of the Mudlarks scheme to which she has often brought her grandchildren. This may be the most suitable destination for children as I bumped into several somewhat scared toddlers who described parts of the exhibitions as ‘dark and spooky’.

Great cities need rivers or bays (be they commercial or not), and London of course has both the river and a long history of thriving commerce and trade which passed through the variously situated London ports. With international trade comes settlers from overseas and the start of a diverse city population.

The entrance lobby by the lifts shows how the building used to be with a model of a rowing skiff – how imports/exports were taken up and down the river, as this building was used for both loading and unloading.  Being part of the Roman Empire until the fall of Rome to the Visigoths in 410 this part of the River Thames was where the Romans chose to build their port. The Saxons favoured further upstream – Aldwych/Strand way and not till 900 or so did trading return to this area. The Danes/Vikings were active sailors and traders but found it difficult to get their large ships under the one bridge built to cross the Thames.  By the time the Normans had been in London a 100 years or so they decided to import some smart Caen stone for a first stone bridge.  For me one of the star exhibits of the Docklands museum is a large scale reproduction of London Bridge, with the individual buildings identified one side for the 14^th century the other for a later period. It is atmospherically lit and conjures up the range of purposes the buildings on the bridge were used for. From the very beginning ships have always been charged to dock and unload and there have been  ‘inspectors’ of  said loads, otherwise known as customs officers – the Museum reminds us that Geoffrey Chaucer’s job was exactly that and  it must have been easy for him to conjure up the range of his ‘pilgrims’ from the types he met in his working life…  With the imports came the rats and with the rats the ‘Black Death’, which had already taken many lives in Europe, spread in London too.

The Trade Expansion gallery includes models of ships, which have a tendency to make me glaze over whereas small coins and finds of the era are more evocative...  Interestingly as early as 1393 the Lord

Mayor of London was given responsibility  for the Thames and managing the potential clashes between the need for food, conservation and trade.

Following the steady growth in enterprise and trading thanks to the opening up of new trade routes, the 16^th and 17^th centuries saw the growth of the major Merchant companies, including of course the East India Company, and the concomitant growth of the Insurance companies, such as Lloyds, famously founded in a Coffee house and reproduced here, both in models and re-enacted videos…   In many ways they had the monopoly on trade for nigh on 200 years and at some point their  ships became too large to dock so far in – hence the building of warehouses at this point of the river and the need for watermen to bring down the stock from where the ships actually berthed.

This building was used for trade with what used to be called the West Indies , that is the Caribbean, for which the main commodities were sugar and ‘slaves’. This section of the museum has been built up and the experiences of the enslaved peoples carefully explained and well documented in pictures, in testament from the period and most impressively in a ‘Sound & Light’ installation which runs every 20 minutes or so. The displays painstakingly follow the lives and experiences of the captured communities of West Africa and their journey to work on sugar plantations of the Caribbean … The numbers but of course not the names are there for all to see, and this was the main destination for several school parties. Marking the beginnings of the human rights movements there were some moving statements from the various debates around the Abolition of Slavery.

As trade increased there needed to be improvement in the port facilities – inevitably this lead to massive scale demolition of the houses and shops of those who worked along the river and for the port – the displacement of the poor and working classes to make way for commerce and larger more impressive buildings is of course a never ending story in London, and repeats itself through the centuries as with today’s shortage of affordable housing (by which I mean social housing not fancy rental).

By the time we reach the industrialisation of England building of all sorts is happening – above ground the bridges spanning the Thames proliferate (sending the bigger ships, now iron clad and steam and coal driven, eventually out to Tilbury) and underground Brunel’s tunnel at Rotherhithe (been there blogged that) and Bazelgette’s sewerage system to replace the open sewers and put an end to the ‘big stink’ and cholera outbreaks.   London called itself the warehouse of the world and most of the industry was located river or port side – the Third Floor recreates ‘Sailor Town’ with lodgings, chandlery, shopfronts for ‘letter writers’ and of course the taverns.

At this point you see how the warehouse might have been with weighing scales, piled up tools, cooperage (barrel making), wheelbarrows and porterage trolleys scattered near the huge doors , which presumably look out over the water of the dock. The tobacco trade was huge and wines and spirits one of the oldest businesses, doubtless all still in the hands of the same few families?!

The Docklands at War is what you might expect – the port was a major target for the Luftwaffe and while trade had been re-located to the Clyde for the duration the docks still suffered badly, as did the nearby residential areas, which for many years had received little attention with commerce taking priority. With fewer ships docked for commerce once the plans were in place the dockyard was used for building sections of the Mulberry harbours (portable ports so to speak) used with great success in the D-Day landings.

After the bustle and success of the previous centuries, the post-war decades were bleak. Labour relations between management and dockers deteriorated and a third of all warehousing had been damaged. The 1953 floods which led to loss of life downriver in Essex prompted those with foresight to build the Thames Barrier, (1974 completed 1982),  which while  saving London from flooding realistically  put paid to any heavy river traffic, as real port business moved to Tillbury and even Harwich. Things seemed so deserted that the media equivalent of squatters moved in – namely the various pirate radio ships. The Museum very aptly names these three decades post war as the ‘phoney development’ with slow progress on re-development –however come the LDDC (London Docklands Development Corporation)  and a very different new area emerges.  You may not be in agreement with the area becoming another financial district but it has  given renewed purpose to one of London’s oldest parts. With the regeneration came the transport and the now very familiar Docklands Light Railway, which to all intents and purposes runs ( and looks?)  like a Lego train – driverless.  It had been my intention to visit the Crossrail bit of Canary Wharf station which will come 2017 bring even more people to this part of London but so absorbing had been my visit that there was no time left . The lesson here is do not underestimate the time needed to absorb yourself in the story of London’s river and port and people  (to a lesser extent).