Tour guide for London past

11 April 2012

These are interesting times for London. Despite its position as one of the world's great cities, visitors still complain about the extortionate prices and lack of friendliness, not to mention the filth everywhere. It seems those subcontracted to keep the capital clean are naturally more vigilant in the wealthy parts of town, leaving poorer areas to cope with rubbish in the streets.

Hospital waiting lists continue to grow while the poorest struggle to get the medical care they need. Then there's the Lottery - which seems to have replaced government spending when it comes to projects such as new bridges. And let's not even speak of the weather; as one writer observes of his fellow Londoners, "They cry, 'This is a bad summer!' as if we ever had any other."

But this is not 2001; we're talking about 1768 and the writer in question is Horace Walpole. All of the above social issues, and many more besides too numerous to mention, have been carefully compiled by Liza Picard in her marvellous study of eighteenth century life in the capital, Dr Johnson's London.

Those who churlishly carp about the selective nature of material chosen for inclusion are rather missing the point. This is not an academic, dull but worthy textbook dryly recording the minutiae of life like a cantankerous clerk but rather a vibrant, gossipy explosion of a book that tries to give the flavours and smells of Johnson's London.

Indeed, it is better to think of it as a guidebook than a history. Peter Ackroyd sums it up best, describing it as 'a Baedeker of the past.' And Picard rather disarmingly heads her critics off at the pass, telling me ever so modestly, "Of course, I'm not a proper historian. I'm just someone who likes fiddling about with old papers for fun - and if I examine my conscience, it's all rather skewed as I select the things that interest me and ignore the rest." So there.

What is very appealing about Picard as we talk - and it comes across superbly in the book - is the feeling that she almost lived through the period, often using the present tense when discussing events and anecdotes more than two centuries old.

Picard drops little nuggets of information into conversation as asides creating a constant flow of revelation and detail. So, while discussing sanitation in the city, she mentions in passing the resentment against animals being walked through the streets en route for market. "So they built a sort of M25 for animals, where the Ring Road is now - along Marylebone Road, Euston Road and down Pentonville Road. Of course, the drovers got wise and found rat runs through squares...", she sighs, like a lady who lunches discussing the increase of graffiti on the Tube.

Listening to her describe the comparisons between London then and now, it is clear just how much she enjoys her subject. "Well this terrible foot and mouth business is nothing new, I'm afraid; back then, they had what they called 'cattle plague'; all movement of animals was banned and infected carcasses were piled up and burned. Every periodical paper of the time that one picked up would report the awful progress of this dreadful thing."

Talking of the recent wall-to-wall coverage of the expected release of the Bulger killers, she tells of a case in 1748; a ten-year-old, William York, had murdered a five-year-old girl and hidden her body in a dungheap. "And this of course got the most publicity. The judges held a special court and they said that you couldn't possibly let him off just because he was a child - 'it would be a very dangerous consequence to have it thought that children may commit such atrocious crimes with impunity' - so he was sentenced to death. However, after sufficient time to do all the paperwork and let all the fuss die down, he was quietly sent off into the Navy instead."

The fuss over New Labour's habit of announcing cash for the Health Service, and then announcing the same cash some months later, isn't the first time that people have argued over healthcare in the capital. Complaints were common over waiting lists and the amount of time one had to wait for any care. "Somebody spoke up on behalf of the poor, and said, 'Look, this isn't fair, all these people waiting for treatment.' And there was a lovely reply in one of the newspapers, saying, 'There aren't any waiting lists, it's all imagination, and in any case there are large fires in the waiting rooms so what are you complaining about?'"

And what about London's reputation as one the world's leading cities for entertainment and culture? A rather recent development, it appears... "there was always bull-baiting and bear-baiting which sound remarkably dull and nasty and bloody. There were theatres, of course - one Frenchman describes going to the theatre one night and seeing the actresses with these enormous trains on the dresses which would sweep around the stage as they turned to embrace their lover or whatever. And the size of the train would of course vary, depending upon the fame and beauty of the actress. And there would be a little eight-year-old boy whose sole job was to go haring around after this train, trying to keep it straight, a look of absolute concentration on his face.

"And you would always know when there was going to be a death because they would lay down carpet on the stage for the body to fall on so they could cart it off as you couldn't have a body blocking the trapdoor or whatever. So it rather gave away the plot when you saw them come in with the carpet - although at least you knew where you were, I suppose."

It may feel as though Richard Branson has been attacking Camelot for the last two centuries but of course, our National Lottery is not even a decade old. And those who complain about how Lottery money is spent will not be surprised to learn that there is nothing new under the sun.

"They used it to build bridges - Westminster, for example - and other public undertakings that wouldn't otherwise have been built - and of course, great prizes. There were first prizes of £20,000 which is rather more than a million, I imagine."

Irredemably good-natured, with an infectious enthusiasm for her subject, it's hard to get Picard to be particularly negative about life in eighteenth century London. She even manages to make wading through filth on the streets while having a generously-filled chamber pot emptied on your head sound as though it would be a jolly old jape.

Still, when pressed, she does point to the desperate levels of alcoholism prevalent among the lowest classes of the time. "I was beginning to wonder whether you could draw a parallel between the prevalence of gin among the unemployable classes and drugs nowadays. Unfortunately I don't know enough about drugs and I rather suspect their use is far more widespread throughout the classes these days but certainly there was the most appalling intake of absolute gutrot - 'drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence.'

"When you look at the woman throwing away her baby in Hogarth's Gin Lane, too drunk to notice or care, and you think of these poor babies being born now horribly addicted to drugs, it's not terribly difficult to draw a comparison."

Let Liza Picard take you by the hand and show you through the streets of Dr Johnson's London; you won't find a more informative, entertaining or knowledgeable guide.

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