Dirty Dicks - Bishopsgate, London, UK - Pictorial Pub Signs on Waymarking.com

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!