Dirty Dicks - Bishopsgate, London, UK
N 51° 31.085 W 000° 04.777
30U E 702611 N 5711483
Dirty Dicks is a publich house on the east side of Bishopsgate at the junction with Middlesex Street (Pettycoat Lane).
Waymark Code: WMJGH9
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 11/16/2013
Views: 6
The pub sign hangs from the front of the building and depicts a head and
shoulders shot Dickensian type character with a sinister shadow. The name, Dirty
Dicks, runs across the bottom of the sign.
The pub's website tells
us of the history and background of Dirty Dick:
Opposite Liverpool Street Station, on Bishopsgate, is
Dirty Dicks, a historic City pub, which takes its name from the dirty
warehouse on Leadenhall Street.
Before the beginning of the 19th century, the pub was called The Old
Jerusalem, but the owners transferred the name and the story from the
warehouse because it was too good and too famous a name to let die.
The original Dirty Dick, was Richard, or some say Nathanial, Bentley, a
prosperous city merchant living in the middle of the 18th century, who owned
a hardware shop and warehouse, and it said to be the inspiration for Miss
Havisham in Dickens' Great Expectations.
Bentley had been quite a dandy in his youth, but following the death of is
fiancée, he refused to clear up or clean anything.
His house, shop and warehouse became so filthy that he became a celebrity of
dirt. Any letter addressed to The Dirty Warehouse, London, would be
delivered to Bentley. He stopped trading in 1804 and died in 1809. The
warehouse was later demolished.
The pub that perpetuates the name and legend was described thus in 1866:
"A small public house or rather a tap of a wholesale wine and spirit
business"..."a warehouse or barn without floorboards; a low ceiling, with
cobwebs festoons dangling from the black rafters; a pewter, bar battered and
dirty, floating with beer, numberless gas pipes tied anyhow along the struts
and posts to conduct the spirits from the barrels to the taps; sample phials
and labelled bottles of wine and spirits on shelves- everything covered with
virgin dust and cobwebs."
It seems that successive owners of the Bishopsgate Distillery and its tap
capitalised on the legend. By the end of the 19th century, its owner, a
public house company called William Barker's (D.D) Ltd, was producing
commemorative booklets and promotional material to advertise the pub.
For years it kept the cobwebs, dead cats and other disgusting things in the
cellar bar, but these have now been tidied a to a glass display case.
Back in the 1970s, when the pub was still pretty dirty, I used to meet up
with my brother at this pub when he was in town. An abiding memory and one that
caused much amusement at the time was the gentleman that used to collect the
empties. Any contents that had not been drained from the glasses by the
customers was devoured by him before the then empty glasses made their way back
to the bar.
Another item of much amusement to us "locals" was a stuffed cat that was
fixed to a wall. Unsuspecting tourists used to approach the cat to have a closer
look unaware that the bar man had a button behind the bar. When the unsuspecting
victim was in stroking distance the button got pressed and the cat reacted as if
it had received an electric shock with all its legs and tail shooting out.
Strange how the screams od the female tourists caused us so much amusement!