n
found it; but there was no clue to guide them, for nearly every house in
the lane was infamous. Years after, two ruffianly fellows who were
confined in the King's Bench were heard accusing each other of the
murder in Shire Lane, and justice pounced upon her prey.

One thieves' house, known as the "Retreat," led, Mr. Diprose says, by a
back way into Crown Court; and other dens had a passage into No. 242,
Strand. Nos. 9, 10, and 11 were known as Cadgers' Hall, and were much
frequented by beggars, and bushels of bread, thrown aside by the
professional mendicants, were found there by the police.

The "Sun" Tavern, afterwards the "Temple Bar Stores," had been a great
resort for the Tom and Jerry frolics of the Regency; and the
"Anti-Gallican" Tavern was a haunt of low sporting men, being kept by
Harry Lee, father of the first and original "tiger," invented and made
fashionable by the notorious Lord Barrymore. During the Chartist times
violent meetings were held at a club in Shire Lane. A good story is told
of one of these. A detective in disguise attended an illegal meeting,
leaving his comrades ready below. All at once a frantic hatter rose,
denounced the detective as a spy, and proposed off-hand to pitch him out
of window. Permitted by the more peaceable to depart, the policeman
scuttled downstairs as fast as he could, and, not being recognised in
his disguise, was instantly knocked down by his friends' prompt
truncheons.

In Ship Yard, close to Shire Lane, once stood a block of disreputable,
tumble-down houses, used by coiners, and known as the "Smashing Lumber."
Every room had a secret trap, and from the workshop above a shaft
reached the cellars to hurry away by means of a basket and pulley all
the apparatus at the first alarm. The first man made his fortune, but
the new police soon ransacked the den and broke up the business.

In August, 1823, Theodore Hook, the witty and the heartless, was brought
to a sponging-house kept by a sheriff's officer named Hemp, at the upper
end of Shire Lane, being under arrest for a Crown debt of L12,000, due
to the Crown for defalcations during his careless consulship at the
Mauritius. He was editor of _John Bull_ at the time, and continued while
in this horrid den to write his "Sayings and Doings," and to pour forth
for royal pay his usual scurrilous lampoons at all who supported poor,
persecuted Queen Caroline. Dr. Maginn, who had just come over from Cork
to practise Toryism, was