Images of London in 1899

On the last day of the 19th century, a large stone at Stonehenge fell over. The collapse changed people's attitudes toward Stonehenge, as people started thinking of it as a national treasure.

Repairing Stonehenge in 1900

The falling of the stone, to me, represents the need that Victorians created in us to preserve so many aspects of our lives "for prosperity's sake." Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for the Victoria and Albert Museum on 17 May 1899, as her last public engagement.

Laying the foundation stone of the Victoria & Albert Museum at South Kensington:
the Queen's arrival at the pavilion. The Illustrated London News (20 May 1899)

The National Trust acquired Wicken Fen, the nation's oldest wetland national reserve.

In transportation news, the first motorized bus was run by the Motor Traction Company between Kensington and Victoria in 1899. Horses were expensive to feed and care for, needing attention round the clock, while they worked only a small proportion of the day. There were many experiments in steam, with batteries and petrol engines, as engineers tried to find the most economic and reliable way of replacing horses.

Without further ado, pictures of London in 1899.

Motor Traction Company 1899. 

If London Were Like Venice: Oh! That It Were’
From Harmsworth’s Magazine (The London Magazine)
Click here for more pictures from this article.

Children in a London alley (1899)

John Atkinson Grimshaw Paintings, The Strand, London, 1899.

Beestar Motor Tricycle with Gun replacing the front forks. London 1899.

The Tower of London (1899)

Chess Club, London 1899.

Mile End Road, June 1899.

The Marylebone Street Station of the Great Central Railway, 1899.

London, 1899, by Léonard Misonne

London, 1899, by Léonard Misonne

The Royal College of Surgeons' Museum circa 1899.

London 1899

Montgomery and Stone at the Palace Theatre 1899

Lillie Langtry 1899

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet
Princess's Theatre, London, 1899. 

Elsie Maitland & George Kirby's Wedding 1899

The London School of Tropical Medicine, Royal Albert Dock, 1899. 

Rear view over the roof of Temple station in 1899

Program for the laying of the Foundation Stone
at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A bird shop on Neal Street (1899)

A "lady" photographed by Millon E. Mallett,
258 Brixton Hill, S.W. London 1899

Aldgate from Mitre Street 1899

15 & 16 Stratton Street, Piccadilly, London 1899.

Nina Boucicault, 11 February 1899

A November Morning
the Embankment, London
by Harold W. Lane (1899).

A stereoscopic image of Holborn Viaduct 1899.

Family tea party at Royal Holloway 1899.

Samuel (Mark Twain) and Olivia Clemens lounging:
taking the air in London 1899.

Dr. Bucke seated in the Medical Superintendent's office of
the London Asylum for the Insane (1899)

Want more? Go further back to Images of London in 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892,1893,1894, 1895, 1896, 1897, and 1898!

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The Most Haunted House in London... or not?

The haunted upper floor of the headquarters for Maggs Bros Rare bookseller have been out-of-bounds since the 1950s, and one room in the attic is said to be so haunted that it has driven at least two men to their death through 'fits.'

The four-storey house at 50 Berkeley Square was built around the end of the eighteenth century. It housed Prime Minister George Canning. Then the Viscount Bearsted, bought the house, and rented it out. It was resold, and eventually purchased in 1937 by Maggs Bros, a firm of antiquarian book dealers.

From Charles Harper's
Haunted Houses (1907).

Alternately called the most haunted house in London, and not haunted at all, the original source of the specter is said to be the spirit of a tormented young woman, who threw herself out of the top-storey window, to escape the abuse of her uncle.

According to Charles Harper the haunting of the house in Berkeley Square was known throughout London, and even attracted tourists of the supernatural. Harper wrote in 1913 that:

There is quite a literature accumulated around No. 50, and even in the staid pages of  Notes and Queries the questions of "Haunted or not haunted? and if so, by what or whom?" have been debated. It seems that a Something or Other, very terrible indeed, haunts, or did haunt, a particular room. This unnamed Raw Head and Bloody Bones, or whatever it is, has been sufficiently awful to have caused the death, in convulsions, of at least two foolhardy persons who have dared to sleep in that chamber.

Harper goes on to describe a case that was reported in 1887.

The story is told of one who was not to be deterred by the fate of an earlier victim. He was skeptical and practical as well. Before retiring to bed he gave some parting instructions to those who occupied the rest of the house. "If I ring once," said he, "take no notice, for I might perhaps be only nervous, without due cause, but if I ring twice, come to me."

He should have chosen to signal with a second ring if all was not well.

They bade him good-night. When the clock struck twelve they heard a faint ring, followed by a tremendous peal, and on opening the door, they found the unfortunate man in a fit. He died, without ever being able to reveal what It was.

Harper talks about how past owners had to pay people to live in the house so that it wouldn't sit empty.

You can read Haprer's Haunted Houses: Tales of the Supernatural: With Some Account of Hereditary Curses and Family Legends (1907) for free online.

Throughout October 2014, I will be sharing the horror stories of 1890s London. Check back often!
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Images of London in 1898

William Ewart Gladstone died in May 1898. As one of the icons of the Victorian Era, his passing brought the period nearer to its end. He had only been out of office for three years. Yet, the city moved on, post was delivered, the Earl's Court Exhibition featured big. Londoners were interested in all things Egypt.

Midland Railway goods offices at Poplar Dock, London, 1898.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party from 'Alice in Wonderland'
with Rosa Hersee as Alice and Arthur Elliot as the Hatter
at the Opera Comique Theatre in London, 1898

The Mad Hatter in action (I think Johnny Depp got it right), 1898.

Gladstone's coffin entering Westminster Abbey, London 1898. 

Broad Street Station, 1898.

The Great Wheel, Earl's Court, 1898.

Robert Bosch's first shop outside of Germany. (Circa 1898)

The Great Northern Railway Station in 1898 (later renamed King's Cross).

Changing of the Guard at Tower London, 1898.

First foreign branch of the Swiss Bank opened in London in 1898.

Construction work on the Central Line of the London Underground, 1898.

Aubrey Beardsley 1898.

Acoustic location experiment in London, 1898.

A surgery at University College Hospital Medical School, London, 1898.

A horse hauling a railway wagon at the Midland Wharf at Victoria dock,
London, 1898. Coal was unloaded here onto barges waiting below.

An early recording studio set up in rooms of the Cockburn Hotel, 1898

Poster for the Earl's Court Exhibition, 1898.

The Midway at the Earl's Court Exhibition, 1898.

A zebra-drawn carriage, London, 1898.

London postmen, 1898.

Ella Skyes, photographed in London,
as "a Persian Lady," 1898.

Want more? Go further back to Images of London in 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892,1893,1894, 1895, 1896, and 1897.

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