At the sale of the building materials some Jews were observed to be very eager to acquire the figure of the lion that adorned one of the walls. There were various causes assigned for this eagerness. Some said that a Jew named Lyons had originally founded the inn; others declared that the lion was considered to be an emblem of the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Directly the auctioneer knocked it down the Jewish purchaser drew a knife, mounted the ladder, and struck his weapon into the lion. “S’help me, Bob!” said he, in a tone of disgust, “if they didn’t tell me it was lead, and it’s only stone arter all!” Gay, who speaks of the dangers of “mazy Drury Lane,” gives Catherine Street a very bad character. He describes the courtesans, with their new-scoured manteaus and riding-hoods or muffled pinners, standing near the tavern doors, or carrying empty bandboxes, and feigning errands to the Change.[306] The street is now almost entirely occupied by newspaper publishers. The _Morning Herald_, the _Court Journal_, the _Naval and Military Gazette_, the _Gardener’s Gazette_, the _Builder_, the _Weekly Register_, and the _Court Gazette_, all either are or have been published in Catherine Street. Scott’s Sanspareil Theatre was opened here about 1810 for the performance of operettas, dancing, and pantomimes.[307] In September 1741 a man named James Hall was executed at the end of Catherine Street. The Maypole close to St. Mary’s Church is said to have been the first place in London where hackney coaches were allowed to stand. Coaches were first introduced into England from Hungary in 1580 by Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; but for a time they were thought effeminate. The Thames watermen especially railed against them, as might be expected. In the year 1634, a Captain Baily who had accompanied Raleigh in his famous expedition to Guiana, started four hackney coaches, with drivers in liveries, at the Maypole; but as, in the year 1613, sixty hackney coaches from London[308] plied at Stourbridge fair, perhaps there had been coach-stands in the streets before Baily’s time. In 1625 there were only twenty coaches in London; in 1666, under Charles II., the number had so increased that the king issued a proclamation complaining of the coaches blocking up the narrow streets and breaking up the pavement, and forbade coach-stands altogether. Peter Molyn Tempest, the engraver of “The Cries of London,” published at the end of King William’s reign, lived in the Strand opposite Somerset House. “The Cries” were designed by Marcellus Laroon, a Dutch painter (1653-1702), who painted draperies for Kneller.[309] He was celebrated for his conversation pieces and his knack of imitating the old masters. Tempest’s quaint advertisement of the “Cries” in the _London Gazette_, May 28 and 31, 1688, runs thus:--