The Crown of villainy

This used to be a hotbed of villainy police would even avoid it.

Location: 43 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9EW

Description: This pub used to be called The Clock House on account of the old timepiece that it still displays. It used to be the centre of an area renowned for criminal behaviour.

The pub itself was a hot bed of villainy where the King of the Pickpockets held his nightly court. Apparently, the police would stand outside, helpless to intervene, and would ‘no more think of entering therein than into the cage of a cobra’.

If a man lost a dog, the reward was offered there; if one's watch disappeared, it was there that immediate application was desirable; and if the emissary was not saucy he might with luck save it from the melting-pot that simmered all day and all night within fifty feet of Aldridge's horse repository.

Themes: Pub Pub Theme