a spear or a half pike, and a horn hung by his side from a broad leather belt or girdle cross his shoulders. Tom of Bedlam is in the same garb, with a long staff, and a Cow or Ox Horn by his side, but his cloathing is more fantastic or ridiculous, for being a mad man he is madly decked and dressed all over with Rubins, Feathers, cuttings of cloth and what not; to make him seem a madman or one distracted, when he is no other but a dissembling knave." "The Canting Academy," 1674, gives them a similar attire and character: "Abram-men, otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down a long stick, with ribands streaming and the like; yet for all their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go."* Aubrey says: "Before the Civil Warre, I remember Tom o' Bedlams went about a begging. They had been such as had been in Bedlam and there recovered and come to some degree of soberness, and when they were licensed to goe out they had on their left arme an armilla of tinne (printed) about three inches breadth, which was sodered on."+ This permission, if ever it was granted, was retracted after the Restoration, for in the year 1675 the London Gazette contained in several numbers the following advertisement : "WE - HEREAS several Vagrant Persons do wander about the city of London and countries, pretending themselves to be Lunaticks under cure in the Hospitall of Bethlem, commonly called Bedlam, with brass plates upon their arms and inscriptions thereon, These are to give notice that there is no such liberty given to any Patients kept in the Hospital for their cure, neither is any such plate as a distinction or mark put upon any Lunatick during their being there or when discharged thence. And that the same is a false pretence to colour their wandering and begging and deceive the people to the dishonour of the Government of that Hospital." Not only men but also women of a roving disposition, adopted poor Tom's horn, and went wandering, begging, and pilfering under the name of BESS OF BEDLAM, which is still seen as a sign in Oak Street, Norwich. Bess was an old companion of poor Tom, for in the play of King Lear, Tom sings a snatch of a song with the words, "Come over the bourn, Bessy, to me,” and in the *Canting Academy, second edition, 1674, as quoted in Malcolm's "Manners and Customs," vol. i., p. 22. Lansdowne MS., No. 231. "Remains of Judaisme and Gentilisme." jollities of Plough Monday the fool and Bessy are two of the principal personages.* * A third class of beggars called Mumpers, is also found on the signboard under the name of the THREE MUMPERS. Thus, after having gone through all ranks of society, from the palace to the cottage, and from the sceptre to Tom's staff with a fox-tail, we now come to the great leveller Death, who also was represented on the signboard. There were the THREE DEATH'SHEADS in Wapping, of which house trades tokens are extant; probably it was an apothecary's, though it was a ghastly sign for his customers. Undertakers were also strictly professional in their choice. In the eighteenth century there were the FOUR COFFINS over against Somerset House,t and another in Fleet Street, the sign of Stephen Roome, whose son was the unfortunate author whom Pope has "gibbeted" in the Dunciad, as afflicted with a "funereal frown." Savage, one of Pope's literary sicarii, calls Roome "a perfect town-author,"§ and has drawn his portrait in "An Author to be let, by Iscariot Hackney :" "Had it not been more laudable for Mr Roome, the son of an undertaker, to have borne a link and a mourning staff, in the long procession of a funeral or even been more decent in him to have sung psalms according to education, in an Anabaptist meeting, than to have been altering the Jovial Crew or Merry Beggars into a wicked imitation of the Beggars' Opera ?" Another undertaker, James Maddox, clerk and coffin-maker of St Olave's, had for a sign the SUGAR-LOAF AND THREE COFFINS. The addition of the sugar-loaf has, of course, nothing to do with his profession, for when death calls, the sweets of life are past. It was simply the sign of a former tenant, suspended in front or fixed in the wall of the house. Although the undertakers of the present day do not display signs as of old, they advertise their calling quite as effectually. The men who in their handbills solicit us to try their "economic funerals," or to test one of their "three guinea respectable interments,-one trial only asked," are There is a very unfavourable parallel between the Ladies and Besses of Bedlam in the Muse's Recreation, 1656, entitled:-"Upon the naked Bedlams and spotted Beasts we see in Covent Garden," beginning: "When Besse ! she ne're was half so vainly clad, Again, this raves with lust, for love Besse ranted, Advertisement in the original edition of the Spectator, No. clxxxvi. City Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade. November 4, 1675. London Gazette, May 30-June 3, 1681, where he gives a most dismal catalogue of what he could do. commercial with the rest of the age, although we might wish that they would force themselves a little less upon our attention. One undertaker recently hit upon what he deemed a brilliant method of advertising his cheap funerals. He selected some good names from the "Court Guide," and sent out hundreds of telegrams announcing the low prices at which a "body" could be interred. Some reached their destination just as the lady or gentleman "body" was sitting down to dinner, others as the "parties" were dressing, or in the act of leaving home; but although the scheme failed, the name of the undertaker and his prices were firmly fixed in people's memories, and he received, instead of orders, numerous cautions not to telegraph in that way again. An undertaker in Islington, some years ago, exhibited in his window some pleasing artistic efforts of his children, which must have greatly comforted the father. "Master A., aged 12 years,” had produced a grinning skeleton, garnished with worms and cross-bones; and "Miss B., aged 10," had painted in colours a section of a vault, with coffin heads, skulls, and sexton's tools, neatly arranged right and left. The drawings were tramed and glazed, and parental pride had placed them in the best spot in the windows. CHAPTER XI. THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE. INSTEAD of carved or painted signs hung above the doors, many shop and tavern keepers preferred to designate their houses after some external feature, such as the colour of the building-thus we find the Red house, the White house, the Blue house, the Dark house, &c. Others painted their door-posts a particular colour, whence the origin of the well-known BLUE POSTS. In still older times painted posts or poles in front of the houses seem occasionally to have served as signs; to some such distinction, at least Caxton's RED POLES, as mentioned in one of his advertisements, seems to refer : "Ef it please any man spirituel or temporel to bye our pyes of two or thre comemoracio's of salisburi use, emprynted after the form of this prese't letre whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come to Westmonester into the almonestrye at the REED PALE, and he shal have them good and chepe: Supplico stet cedula.” Even in the seventeenth century such a distinction was still occasionally used, as the GREEN PALES in Peter Street, Westminster ;* -and Stukeleyt speaks of Mr Brown's garden at the GREEN POLES, where an urn was dug up lined with lead and filled with earth and bones. In Etheredge's play "She Would if she could," the BLACK POSTS in James Street are named, (Act i., sc. 1, 1703;) whilst the newspapers in the beginning of the eighteenth century contain advertisements stating that the mineral water from Hampstead Wells might be obtained, at the rate of 3d. a flask, from the lessee of the wells, who lived at the BLACK POSTS in King Street, near Guildhall. GARDEN-HOUSES, or Summer-houses, attached to a building, were also used to designate shops and residences, as appears from a trades token "at the garden-house in Blackfriars," and also from a newspaper advertisement of 1679, where the gardenhouse in King Street, St Giles, is mentioned. Frequent allusions to these garden-houses are found in the old plays; they appear to have been similar in all intents and purposes to the London Gazette, August 28 to Sept. 1, 1679 petites maisons of the profligate French nobility in the times of the Régence. Stubbe, in his "Anatomy of Abuses," severely attacks them : "In the suburbes of the citie they have gardens either paled or walled round about very high, with their harbers and bowers fit for the purpose; and lest they might be espied in those open places, they have their banqueting houses, with galleries, turrets, and what not, therein sumptuously erected, wherein they may, and doubtless do, many of them, play the filthy persons." The young Rake in Shakespeare's spurious play of the "London Prodigal," (1604,) says to the lady : "Now, God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or a gardenhouse where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours to command in all sweet service." And Corisca in Massinger's "Bondsman," (Act i., sc. 3): "And if need be I have a couch and banqueting-house in my orchard, where many a man of honour has not scorned to spend an afternoon." He also alludes to it in the "City Madam." A remnant of this custom is still to be traced in a few country towns, (Sunderland for instance,) where the middle classes have little gardens, in the outskirts of the town, with bowers and wooden summer-houses for tea-drinkings. In Holland they still flourish; the family usually take tea in them, whilst paterfamilias placidly smokes his pipe and listens to the croaking of the frogs and the lowing of the cows in the flat meadows beyond. The WELL AND BUCKET is a sign in Shoreditch, not badly chosen, as it intimates an inexhaustible supply; it is of very old standing in London, for it is mentioned in the "Paston Letters" in the year 1472.* "I pray God send you all your desires and me my mewed goss-hawk in haste, or, rather than fail, a scar-hawk; there is a grocer dwelling right over - against the WELL WITH TWO BUCKETS, a little from St Helen's Church, hath ever hawks to sell." The anxiety about the bird, expressed in this letter, is most amusing:-"I ask no more good of you for all the services that I shall do you, while the world standeth, but a goss-hawk," is the commencement of the letter, which concludes : "Now, think on me, good lord, for if I have not an havk I shall wax fat for default of labour, and dead for default of company by my troth." In old times the ale-house windows were generally open, so that the company within might enjoy the fresh air, and see all * Letter of John Paston to Sir John Paston, Sept. 21, 1472 |