The Bath Road: History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old HighwayHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Bath Road: History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old Highway
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Bath Road (England); England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
underneath the swinging sign, was like a picture of Morland's come to
life, and agreeably leavened that general air of fried-fish, drink, and
dissipation which lingers in the memory as the most characteristic
features of modern Hammersmith.
[Illustration: THE "RED COW," HAMMERSMITH. DEMOLISHED 1897.]
The travellers who were whirled through this place in the Augustan age of
coaching were soon in the country again, on the way to Turnham Green,
along the Chiswick High Road. That fine broad thoroughfare is now bordered
by an almost continuous row of modern shops, erected, many of them, where
barns and ricks stood less than ten years ago. Such was the appearance of
"Young's Corner," indeed, until quite recently. That corner, let it be
said for the information of those not well acquainted with the topography
of the western suburbs, is the spot where the road from Shepherd's Bush
joins the highway. Let it further be placed on record, before "historic
doubts" have had time to gather about the origin of the name, that it
derives from a little grocer's shop kept at the north-east angle of that
junction of the roads within the recollection of the present writer, by
one Young, who has probably been long since gathered to his fathers, for
his Corner knows him no more, and a house-agent's shop, a brand-new
building (like all its neighbours), stands where the now historic Young
sold tea and sugar, and (let us hope) waxed prosperous in days gone by.
[Sidenote: _TURNHAM GREEN_]
Turnham Green lies ahead: a place historic by reason of a preliminary
skirmish in the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads, and the
residence in the early part of the century of a peculiarly heartless
murderer. The passengers by the two-horsed "short-stages" which in the
first half of this century travelled from London to the outlying villages
and halted at the "Pack Horse and Talbot," doubtless were curious
regarding Linden House, near by, notorious from association with Thomas
Griffiths Wainewright, author and poisoner. He was born at Chiswick in
1794, and was a grandson of Dr. Ralph Griffiths of Turnham Green. He began
life by serving in the army, but presently took to literature as a
profession, and wrote voluminously in the magazines of that day. As an
author, although possessed of a sprightly wit, he would long since have
been forgotten had it not been for the sensational career of crime upon
which he entered in 1824. In that year he forged the signatures of his
trustees, in order to obtain possession of a sum of £2259. He induced his
uncle, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, of Linden House, to receive him there as an
inmate. Within a few months his relative died, poisoned with nux vomica,
and Wainewright came into possession of his property. In 1830 he persuaded
a Mrs. Abercromby, a widow lady, to take up her abode with him and his
wife at Linden House. She came with her two daughters and was promptly
poisoned with strychnine. After this he removed from the neighbourhood,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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