Shoreditch, in 1530, consisting of 3,000
archers, sumptuously apparelled, 942 whereof wore chains of gold about
their necks. This splendid company was guarded by whifflers and billmen,
to the number of 4,000, besides pages and footmen, who marched through
Broad Street (the residence of the duke their captain). They continued
their march through Moorfields, by Finsbury, to Smithfield, where, after
having performed their several evolutions, they shot at the target for
glory.

The Hall of Commerce, existing some years ago in Threadneedle Street,
was begun in 1830 by Mr. Edward Moxhay, a speculative biscuit-baker, on
the site of the old French church. Mr. Moxhay had been a shoemaker, but
he suddenly started as a rival to the celebrated Leman, in Gracechurch
Street. He was an amateur architect of talent, and it was said at the
time, probably unjustly, that the building originated in Moxhay's
vexation at the Gresham committee rejecting his design for a new Royal
Exchange. He opened his great commercial news-room two years before the
Exchange was finished, and while merchants were fretting at the delay,
intending to make the hall a mercantile centre, to the annihilation of
Lloyd's, the Baltic, Garraway's, the Jerusalem, and the North and South
American Coffee-houses. L70,000 were laid out. There was a grand
bas-relief on the front by Mr. Watson, a young sculptor of promise, and
there was an inaugurating banquet. The annual subscription of L5 5s.
soon dwindled to L1 10s. 6d. There was a reading-room, and a room where
commission agents could exhibit their samples. Wool sales were held
there, and there was an auction for railway shares. There were also
rooms for meetings of creditors and private arbitrations, and rooms for
the deposit of deeds.

A describer of Threadneedle Street in 1845 particularly mentions amongst
the few beggars the Creole flower-girls, the decayed ticket-porters, and
cripples on go-carts who haunted the neighbourhood, a poor, shrivelled
old woman, who sold fruit on a stall at a corner of one of the courts.
She was the wife of Daniel Good, the murderer.

The Baltic Coffee House, in Threadneedle Street, used to be the
rendezvous of tallow, oil, hemp, and seed merchants; indeed, of all
merchants and brokers connected with the Russian trade. There was a time
when there was as much gambling in tallow as in Consols, but the
breaking down of the Russian monopoly by the increased introduction of
South American a