Blood, Guts and Hanging
along the Lost Rivers of London

London and the Thames are synonymous with one another. The bustling, 21st Century Metropolis, which is home to the sightseeing tour, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Madame Tussauds and other world famous attractions, sees 150 million tourists each year, and for those looking for a bit of time at the water's edge, perhaps feeding the ducks or watching the assorted boats and punts sail by, then the first port of call will be the River Thames.

But this 215 mile stretch of water that falls short of severing the foot of England completely by approximately 24 miles isn't the only river to flow through the capital city. Less well known to both native Londoners and tourists alike are the 'lost rivers' coarsing beneath the very streets they walk on, and the often gruesome activities that have taken place along their route.

Samuel Scott's 'Entrance to the River Fleet' .1759

The River Fleet

The River Fleet was the second longest of London's rivers and gave its name to the formidable Fleet Prison (1197 - 1846), and the equally notorious Fleet Street. What had been the lair of the British Press up until the late 1980s was also the home to a nefarious demon barber. A certain Sweeney Todd.

Embellished and reworked in various forms since its inception in 1846 (most recently in a film version starring Johnny Depp), the essence of the Todd legend has always been a crazed barber with a customised chair that plunges his unsuspecting customers into the darkest depths of his cellar, where he robs then dismembers them, providing a handy range of fillings for an associate's meat pie shop.

But back to the river, and its loss came as a direct result of constant neglect. The River Fleet was used as a dumping ground for not only human waste, but the offal, blood, and animal carcasses that came from the tanneries and abattoirs lining its banks; causing, it is said, the river to run a distinct shade of red.

The pollution continued, even after a short-lived attempt to revive its fortunes as a canal, and the River Fleet disappeared completely from sight in 1841. Nowadays it runs beneath the feet of oblivious Londoners via a network of manmade tunnels.

The Tyburn

The River Tyburn (actually a stream) had the dubious honour of giving its name to the 'Tyburn Tree', a gallows that stood at the water's edge and was the last port of call for many a ne'er-do-well and highwayman, who danced their final dance there, dangling by a rope.

William Hogarth's 'Idle Prentice Executed at Tyburn' .1747

The 'Tyburn Tree' was relocated to Marble Arch in 1571, where it continued to choke lost souls and break brigand's necks for a further two centuries until Newgate prison, the main provider of bodies for the drop, began to carry out their own executions.

Oliver Cromwell, the most prominent figure of the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War, was hung there, albeit three years after he'd already died from malaria. This posthumous retribution was ordered by King Charles II whose father King Charles I had been beheaded, putting an end to the civil war. Cromwell's body was hung in chains before being cast unceremoniously into a pit. His head was removed and impaled on a spike at Westminster Abbey where it would remain displayed for a further 24 years.

Like the majority of these lost waterways, the Tyburn stream now makes up part of London's vast network of sewers, albeit under the less salubrious title of King's Scholar's Pond Sewer. It services, amongst others, the conveniences at Buckingham Palace, conjuring up an image of the Royal family that tourists and visitors to London rarely consider.

The River Neckinger

The River Neckinger not only sounds gruesome but its name is believed to originate from a slang term for the hangman's noose, 'Devil's Neckcloth'. Up until the 18th Century Neckinger wharf was used extensively for hanging the river pirates and blaggards that plagued the city's primary river and its subsidiaries. Their bodies were then displayed further along the Thames as a macabre warning to others against plying their suspect trade on the capital's waterways.

Hoisted with his own petard. Bill Sikes meets a deserved end on Jacob's Island

The area around the River Neckinger was also home to 'The Capital of Cholera'. This was the unenviable name given to the unsavoury district of Jacob's Island, a rookery of dark, winding alleyways and ramshackle, substandard housing, surrounded and intersected by open sewer ditches. Rife with poverty, crime, disease and squalor, it is at Jacob's Island that the violent thief and murderer, Bill Sikes, meets his timely demise by accidentally hanging himself whilst fleeing a vigilant mob, at the climax of the Charles Dickens classic, Oliver Twist.

Jacob's Island has long since crumbled into history and its location is now an upmarket district inhabited by city investors and the like. The River Neckinger, upon which this unfortunate slum once sat, now runs entirely underground, merging with the London sewer system.

Until the day that these rivers are unearthed and allowed to once again shimmer in the sunlight (something recently proposed by the new Mayor of London), they and others such as the Effra and Westbourne - which is notable for the fact that part of it travels through pipes above Sloane Square Tube Station - will remain a seldom mentioned mystery, rooted in an unpleasant past, to not only the good people of London but tourists the world over.

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