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writes it Blanchechapelton. In Strype's Map, 1720, it is given as Blanch Chaplin Court; the further corruption was into Blind Chapel Court, by which it appears to have been commonly known.1 The Common Council of London ordered, October 12, 1464, that “basket makers, gold wire-drawers, and other foreigners [i.e. persons not having the freedom of the City] using mysteries within the City, shall not henceforth hold shops within the liberty of the City, but only at Blanch Appulton, so as they might have sufficient dwelling there."

Blandford Court, PALL MALL. So called from the second title of the Marlborough family. No trace of it now remains.

Now to the serious business of life. Up a court (Blandford Court), in Pall Mall (exactly at the back of Marlborough House), with iron gate in the front, and containing two houses, at No. 2 did lately live Lewisham, my tailor. He is moved somewhere in the neighbourhood, devil knows where. Pray find him out.-Charles Lamb to E. Moxon.

Some then of the famous snuff-coloured suits of Elia were made in what is now a portion of the Court Yard of Marlborough House.

Blandford Place, REGENT'S PARK (by Dorset Square). Coleridge writes from here, March 1, 1821.

S. T.

Blandford Square, REGENT'S PARK (west of Dorset Square). G. H. Lewes and George Eliot lived at No 16. Here the latter wrote Romola and Felix Holt. Sir George Hayter, the painter, who died in the Marylebone Road in 1871, lived in this square for a time.

Blandford Street, PORTMAN SQUARE, runs from Baker Street to Manchester Square. Michael Faraday in 1804 was engaged as an errand boy by Mr. Riebau, bookseller, at No. 2 in this street, and after a year's trial was taken, October 1805, as an apprentice without premium for seven years, to learn the trade of bookbinder and stationer. The shop is still (1888) that of a "bookseller and binder."

Bleeding Heart Yard, familiar to the readers of Little Dorrit, is on the south side of CHARLES STREET, HATTON GARDEN. One of the Ingoldsby Legends, entitled "The House-Warming, a Legend of BleedingHeart Yard," relates how Lady Hatton, the wife of Sir Christopher Hatton, was carried away by the devil, with whom she was in league, and how her heart was found bleeding in the neighbourhood of Hatton House.

The last piece of advice which I'd have you regard
Is don't go of a night into Bleeding Heart Yard,
It's a dark, little, dirty, black, ill-looking square,
With queer people about, and unless you take care,

You may find when your pocket's clean'd out and left bare,
That the iron one is not the only pump there!

Blenheim Street, OXFORD STREET, runs out of Great Marlborough Street, and was so called in compliment to the great Duke of Marlborough, who was alive when it was built. Henry Cavendish, the

1 Hatton, 1708, so writes it in his list of streets.

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greatest of our early chemists and one of the founders of modern chemistry, lived here. His house was afterwards tenanted by Joshua Brookes, the distinguished anatomist, who here formed a museum second only to John Hunter's. The name was changed by the Metropolitan Board of Works to Ramilies Street in 1886.

Blind Chapel Court, MARK LANE, a corruption of Blanch Appleton Court (which see).

Blind, School for the Indigent, ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS, instituted 1799, "for the moral, mental, and industrial training of poor blind. children of both sexes over ten years of age," a Gothic building erected 1834-1838 from the designs of J. Newman, architect. A branch has recently been established at Wandsworth Common for children under ten. The children are admitted by election. There is room for 150 inmates at Southwark and 50 at the junior school. They may be seen at work between ten and twelve in the forenoon, and two and five in the afternoon on every day except Saturdays and Sundays.

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Blomfield Street, MOORFIELDS, runs from the north side of London Wall to Liverpool Street, and was so named after Lord Blomfield. West Side.-Finsbury Chambers; No. 5, office of the German Consulate; Finsbury Circus, at the south corner of which is Finsbury Chapel, where for a long series of years the Rev. Alexander Fletcher, a very popular preacher, was minister; at the opposite corner St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church: the Metropolitan District Railway passes in a tunnel midway between the two. Beyond are large Roman Catholic schools. East Side.-Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital; No. 14, London Missionary Society.

Bloody Bridge, CHELSEA, the bridge in the King's Road (directly east of Sloane Square) which spans the stream running from the Serpentine to the Thames, at one time known as the Ranelagh River.

August 30, 1742.-Mr. Smith, master of a victualling house at Chelsea, was robbed and murdered in the King's Road, by Bloody Bridge.-Gentleman's Magazine, August, 1742, p. 443.

August 12, 1748.-Four gentlemen coming from Chelsea, along the King's Road, in a coach, were attacked near Bloody Bridge by two highwaymen; but they all getting out of the coach, and drawing their swords, the highwaymen made off without their booty.-Fielding's Jacobite's Journal, August 20, 1748.

This bridge is still so named in Lambert's Map of 1806 and Smith's of 1811.

Bloomfield Road, MAIDA HILL. Captain Mayne Reid died at No. 12 in 1883.

Bloomsbury, a district so called which lies between the north side of New Oxford Street and High Holborn and the south of Euston Road. The name is a corruption of Blemundsbury, the manor of the De Blemontes, Blemunds or Blemmots. Blemund's Dyche, which was afterwards called Bloomsbury Great Ditch, and Southampton Sewer divided the two manors of St. Giles and Bloomsbury. The manor

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house of the Blemunds stood on the site of the present Bedford Place, and is described in the St. Giles's Hospital Grant as "the capital messuage of William Blemund." In a document belonging to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's (November 20, 1379) a footway of the width of 6 feet of the assize called Poulesfete, through the field called Blemundesbury, beginning at the western end of Holburn," is granted to William de Dighton.1 The manor passed through several hands before it came into the possession of Thomas Lord Wriothesley, who was created Earl of Southampton three days before the coronation of Edward VI. There is an absurd statement, taken from Stow's Survey, that the name of Bloomsbury was originally Lomsbery. This could only have occurred by a misprint, in which the B was inadvertently dropped. Bloomsbury Market, established in 1662, and at first called Southampton Market.

Bloomsbury Market is a long place with two Market houses, the one for flesh, the other for fish, but of small account, by reason the Market is of so little use and so ill served with provisions; insomuch that the inhabitants are served elsewhere.-Strype, B. iv. p. 84.

It never was well served, and was swept away about 1847, when New Oxford Street was formed, but Market Street still remains. Robert White, the engraver, lived in Bloomsbury Market as early as 1683, and died there suddenly in 1704.

Bloomsbury Place, BLOOMSBURY SQUARE, extends from the northeast corner of the square to Upper King Street (now Southampton Row), Holborn. In No. 4 died (1802) Thomas Cadell, the eminent publisher in the Strand. He was the apprentice and successor of Andrew Millar, and the publisher of the first edition, and of many consecutive editions, of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. At No. 6, in 1796, lived Vicary Gibbs, K.C., afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

Bloomsbury Square was first formed by Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, the son of Shakespeare's patron, and the father of Lady Rachel Russell. In a letter to her husband, October 2, 1681, Lady Rachel Russell calls it our square." It is said that the Duke of York (James II.) wished that the execution of Lord Russell should take place in Bloomsbury Square.2

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February 9, 1665.-Dined at my Lord Treasurer's, the Earle of Southampton, in Blomesbury, where he was building a noble Square or Piazza, a little towne; his owne house stands too low, some noble roomes, a pretty cedar chapell, a naked garden to the North, but good aire.-Evelyn.

In the London Gazette of September 8, 1666, the first issued after the Great Fire, is the following notification :—

The Grant Office for the Excise is now kept in Southampton Fields, near the house of the Right Honourable the Lord High Treasurer of England [Lord South

1 Maxwell Lyte's Report, Historical MSS. Comm., Appendix to Ninth Report, p. 36.

2 Miss Berry, p. 49.

ampton], and is every day open at the usual hours for receiving and performing all things relating to that affair."

A month later we read :—

Such as have settled in new habitations since the late Fire, and desire for the convenience of their correspondence to publish the present place of their abode, or to give notice of goods lost or found, may repair to the corner house in Bloomsbury, or on the east side of the great Square, before the house of the Right Honourable the Lord Treasurer, where there is care taken for the receipt and publication of such advertisements.-London Gazette, October 15, 1666.

The north side of the square was wholly occupied by Southampton The south side House [see Bedford House], demolished in 1804. was called Vernon Street (Vernon Place still remains); the east side Seymour Row; and the west Allington or Arlington Row. It was frequently called Southampton Square, and the adjoining fields Southampton Fields. As late as 1760 the centre of the square was surrounded by wooden posts and rails, and in front of Bedford House were large and clumsy stone obelisks surmounted by oil lamps.

Lost, from my Lady Baltinglasses house in the great square of Bloomsbury, the first of this instant December [1674], a great old Indian spaniel or mongrel, as big as a mastiff. . . . If any can bring news thereof, they shall have twenty shillings for their pains.-London Gazette, No. 946.

The Earl of Northampton died at his house in this square in 1727.
Pope alludes to this once fashionable quarter of the town.

In Palace Yard, at nine, you'll find me there;
At ten, for certain, Sir, in Bloomsbury Square.

August 20, 1701.

2d Epistle of 2d Book of Horace.

Eminent Inhabitants.—Sir Charles Sedley, wit and poet, died here, The Earl of Chesterfield of De Grammont's Lord Arlington, writing He died here in 1713. Memoirs, in 1681. would give you to Lord Chesterfield, October 20, 1681, says, "I wish me commission to lett your house in Southampton Square and hier you another near Whitehall; that I might with less trouble to you, enjoy the honour and satisfaction of a frequent conversation with you.2 Richard His wife died here on June 14, Baxter, the Nonconformist divine.

1681, in what he calls "this most pleasant and convenient house." Sir Hans Sloane, in 1696, "at the corner of Southampton Street next Bloomsbury Square," for in this way Ray, the naturalist, writes to him. Another correspondent, writing to him in 1704, directs in that year.

his letter to Sloane, at his house at the corner of Southampton Square, Dr. Radcliffe. He removed here from Bow Street at least Bloomsbury. It was in this house as early as July 1704, and at his death in 1714 was succeeded in the house by his old friend and protégé, Dr. Mead. that Dr. Radcliffe entertained Prince Eugene with a dinner of "barons of beef, juggets of mutton, and legs of pork for the first course," washed down with ale seven years in the cask.

1 Hatton, p. 69; Strype, B. iv. p. 84.

2 Chesterfield Letters, p. 216.

Dr. Radcliffe could never be brought to pay bills without much following and importunity; nor then, if there appeared any chance of [wearying them out. A paviour, after long and fruitless attempts, caught him just getting out of his chariot at his own door in Bloomsbury Square, and set upon him. "Why, you rascal !" said the Doctor, "do you pretend to be paid for such a piece of work? Why, you have spoiled my pavement, and then covered it over with earth, to hide your bad work." "Doctor!" said the paviour, mine is not the only bad work the earth hides." “You dog, you!" said the doctor, "are you a Wit? You must be poor; come in "—and paid him.-Dr. Mead in Richardsoniana, p. 317.

Sir Richard Steele took a house here in 1712. On July 15 he writes to his wife, "You cannot conceive how pleased I am that I shall have the prettiest house to receive the prettiest woman, who is the darling of RICHARD STEELE, He describes it as the "fifth door." His last letter dated from it is June 24, 1714. According to Thackeray this was the house in which the dinner party was given when the bailiffs were dressed as footmen, and waited on the guests. "Tis true, that Bloomsbury Square's a noble place."-Swift's Horace, B. i. Ep. v. (John Dennis's Invitation to Richard Steele). Charles Yorke was

residing here when, on Wednesday, January 17, 1770, in spite of his declared resolution, and against his own judgment, the King in a manner compelled him to accept the Great Seal. He was in weak health and his nerves gave way utterly from agitation and excitement. He died here on Saturday the 20th. His brother says, "The patent of peerage [as Baron Morden] had passed all the forms, except the Great Seal, and when my poor brother was asked if the Seal should be put to it, he waved it and said he hoped it was no longer in his custody.'” The great Lord Mansfield (at the north end of the east side of the square); his house and library were destroyed by fire in the riots of the year 1780. The few books that escaped are now at Caen Wood House, Hampstead (Lord Mansfield's seat), and still exhibit traces of the fiery ordeal they went through. Lord and Lady Mansfield made their escape in disguise by a back door a few minutes before the flames blazed out, and the rioters took possession of the premises. Three houses, Nos. 28 and 29 Bloomsbury Square, and No. 9 Bloomsbury Place, were built upon the site.

O'er Murray's loss the Muses wept,

They felt the rude alarm,

Yet bless'd the Guardian care that kept

His sacred head from harm.-COWPER.

Lord Mansfield told Single-speech Hamilton that "what he most regretted to have lost by the burning of his house was a speech that he had made on the question 'How far the privilege of Parliament extended': that it contained all the eloquence and all the law he was master of; that it was fairly written out; and that he had no other copy." 2 Chief-Justice Willes died here in 1761. Another eminent Lord Chief Justice of England, the "bold and strong-minded Ellen1 A story has been preserved of a chimneysweep having been seen dancing behind the burning books in one of Lady Mansfield's

hoops.-Delaney, vol. v. p. 533.
2 Prior's Life of Malone, p. 346.

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