Lady Justice by Hibbert Binney can found on the skyline Where Piccadilly meets St James’s Street on a building put up in 1907-9 as the West End branch of the Norwich Union Life Insurance Society. (
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Lady Justice is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. Her attributes are a blindfold, a balance, and a sword.
Lady Justice originates from the personification of Justice in Ancient Roman art known as Iustitia or Justitia after Latin: Iustitia, who is equivalent to the Greek goddesses Themis and Dike.
Lady Justice is most often depicted with a set of scales typically suspended from her left hand, upon which she measures the strengths of a case's support and opposition. The depiction dates back to ancient Egypt, where the God Anubis was frequently depicted with a set of scales on which he weighed a deceased's heart against the Feather of Truth.
Since the 16th century, Lady Justice has often been depicted wearing a blindfold. The blindfold represents impartiality, the ideal that justice should be applied without regard to wealth, power, or other status. The earliest Roman coins depicted Justitia with the sword in one hand and the scale in the other, but with her eyes uncovered.
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The below is an extract the Knowledge of London website "Rooftop Statues page:
[Refering to the Statue on the corner of Piccadilly and St. James's Street] "It is said to be of Justice, and the scales support that idea. It looks to me more like the Grim Reaper, perhaps come to tell you that the time for your executors to draw your Norwich Union life insurance policy is approaching.
The crouching figures are said to symbolise Foresight and Prudence. Prudence seems to be regretting her décolleté look when Foresight’s interests lie so obviously elsewhere.
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The following is from the British History Online website:
"Nos. 162–165 (consec.) Piccadilly and No. 39 St. James's Street
The Norwich Union building at Nos. 162– 165 (consec.) Piccadilly and 39 St. James's Street was erected in 1907–9. The architects were Messrs. Ernest Runtz and Ford of Walbrook, and the builders Messrs. Patman and Fotheringham of Theobalds Road. (fn. 165) The building was to house the West End branch of the Norwich Union Life Insurance Society, but it was also designed to provide one or more sets of business premises on the ground floor and the seven upper floors were to be let as office or club accommodation.
Messrs. Runtz and Ford, who were associated with Norman Shaw over the Gaiety Theatre, seem to have produced in this building a design which completely travesties the late Baroque manner of that fine architect. The Piccadilly front has a wide central face slightly recessed between narrow, partly rusticated wings, and this arrangement is repeated towards St. James's Street where, however, there is only one wing and a portion of the centre. The angle of the building is splayed and the whole composition is divided into two lofty stages, the lower containing two storeys and the upper three. In addition there is an attic, and two tiers of dormers in the steeply pitched roof. The lower stage of the central face is filled with a vast metal-framed window of three bays, an unsubstantial support for the upper stage which is monumentally treated with an Ionic order of six three-quarter columns rising through the third and fourth storeys. This arrangement is echoed in the fifth storey by Doric pilasters, and in the attic by giant scroll-consoles. Each third-storey window has a segmental pediment broken by a keystone, and the oval windows in the fifth storey are adorned with festoons. A great round-arched opening forms the lower stage of each wing, and the main feature of the second stage is a three-light window in the third storey, dressed with Ionic columns and, above the middle light, a segmental pediment surmounted by cherubs and a cartouche. Another large arch frames a lunette window in the attic stage, rising from the main entablature which has a bold modillioned cornice. From the angle of the building projects a three-storey oriel window, its domed roof forming a pedestal for a large metal group—Justice with a man and woman crouching at her feet, perhaps symbolizing Foresight and Prudence."
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