This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 13 January 1583: Eight people are killed when scaffold seating collapses at the Bear Garden - an arena for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports’ at Bankside.
- Tuesday – 14 January 1437: Another structural collapse: the 'Great Stone Gate' at the south side of London Bridge collapses, taking down two bridge arches and several houses with it.
- Wednesday – 15 January 1867: And yet another collapse: the ice on Regent’s Park Lake gives way while hundreds of people are skating on it. Dozens drown.
- Thursday – 16 January 1599: Poet Laureate Edmund Spenser is buried in Westminster. His coffin is borne by other poets of the time, who cast poetry and pens into the grave.
- Friday – 17 January 1997: At the Old Bailey, a jury decides that Szymon Serafinowicz, the first man to be charged under the 1991 War Crimes Act, is medically unfit to stand trial.
Random London Quote Of The Week
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air - or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 'A Study in Scarlet'
Photo by VictorianGent via the Londonist Flickr Pool.
