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London Oddities # 6: Tower Subway
 Tower Hill E C 3.
Unnoticed by many of the visitors to the Tower of London is what looks like an oversized brick post box. It is in fact the entrance to the second tunnel that was to be built under the Thames. The first tunnel now runs the tube line from Wapping to Rotherhithe and took fifteen years to dig at an enormous sum in those days of £600,000.
A south African by the name of James Greathead said he could dig a tunnel under the river in under a year at the cost of £16,000 using his own invention of the Greathead Shield Tunneling digger. Digging commenced at four and a half feet a day and took ten months to complete, a staggering successes for those times, even allowing for some delay when the digger unearthed 300 silver coins from Henry III times. The tunnel was used for foot passengers and when Tower Bridge was erected around fifty years later the tunnel became redundant. Today it is only used for carrying cables and pipes under the river.
London Oddities # 7: Tothill House of Correction
Tothill Fields prison gateway
 Just across the road from Westminster Abbey, unnoticed
to all the thousands of tourist that visit every day, is a quite street named Little George Street. This gateway was the prision gate for Tothill Fields House of correction, and was resited here in 1959. On the site of the present Westminster Cathedral, stood a correctional facility, Tothill Fields Prison. This was said to be a more desirable place to be incarcerated than most others, due to the more humane (in comparison) treatment handed out to its inmates. Maybe this is the reason it only lasted for a period of fifty years. Or was it because the land was wanted for the building of the cathedral?
The main punishment seemed to be the rule of silence, prisoners were not allowed to converse with each other. The other main form of punishment was to withhold their food, and the main reason for this to be imposed upon you was being caught talking to another prisoner.
According to record of the time, a whipping had only been authorised twice between 1851 and 1855, for what crimes I do not know. Henry Mayhew visited the prison in 1861 and in his book, 'Criminal Prisons of London', praises the staff for ensuring discipline without the need for physical punishment.
Most of the inmates were in their early teens but children from the age of five years and upwards were sentenced to be detained there.
London Oddities # 8: The Turkish Baths
Built in 1895 by Henry and James Forder Nevill to house a new Turkish bath, this is a hidden gem that stood up to the bombs of two world wars, and I.R.A attacks in this Bishopsgate area, and also stood up against the property developers in the mid 1970's and kept this historical baths untouched. It is now used as Ciro's Pizza Primadoro Restaurant, but in 1970's it was a Turkish resaurant named Gallipioli, where you would be dinning down in the baths to belly dancers, and Turkish music. When the developers moved in the owners of the day would not sell for under 1 million pounds, thank God the developers would not
pay, so left this priceless building in tact. To find this hidden treasure, walk along Old Broad Street from Liverpool Street, it is hidden on the left side behind the office court yard.
London Oddities # 9: The Panyer Boy
When the Panyer boy first sat on his basket the great fire of London was only 22 years old, he has now been sitting on his basket for more than 320 years. Panyer Alley in the Middle Ages was London's bread market, and on a wall of a house in the alley was this stone with a boy seated on a panyer, or bread basket. The little ditty inscribed on the stone is the motto for this website:
"When ye have sought the city round yet this is the highest ground. August the 27 1688." During several rebuildings over the years the boy has been moved a few times. During the Second World War he was placed in the safe custody of the Vintners Company. Nowday's hidden above the steps of St Paul's Underground Station, unoticed by most travellers, he is one of the best hidden gems of London.
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