■ Mil J 
 
 
 PRICE QNE SHILLING 
 
 
 333 ^ 
 
 
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 BY 
 
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 LON 
 
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 (Successor to J. <>'• Ii. Maxwell) 
 
 35, St. Bride Street, Ludgate .Circus, E.C. 
 
 
 
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ATTRACTIVE PICTURES AND STORIES 
 FOR YOUNG CHILDREN. 
 
 BEAUTIFULLY COLOURED TOY BOOKS. 
 
 With Stories Written by Miss F. M. GALLAHER. 
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 Eleven Coloured Plates . Price , picture boards , is, 6d. Postage , 3 d. 
 
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 Contains bright and pleasing pictures of children asid their pets, and 
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 Baby’s Book. Stories by Miss F. M. 
 
 Gallaher. 
 
 Contains brightly coloured pictures and reading suited to very 
 young minds. 
 
 “Jessie Rayne,” in Truth , says : “I have only time to mention 
 three children’s picture books, ‘A Night at the Circus,’ 
 
 ‘ Baby’s BoorfJ^hJsdj^good, and * Children’s Chums,’ very 
 good indeed. 
 
 “ Delightful books for the small children in the nursery. The type 
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 plishment, and the stories are not beyond the comprehension 
 of very little ones.” — Court Circular. 
 
 Snnbon : 
 
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 Milton House, St. Bride Street, Ludgate Circus, E.C 
 
GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 (. Reprinted from The Sunday Times.) 
 

 
[. All rights reserved.'] 
 

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 LONDON: SPENCER BLACKETT. 
 

 
 I 
 
 ‘if 
 
 
 
 
 • V 
 
the great landlords 
 
 OF LONDON 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK BANFIELD, M.A. 
 
 WITH MAP SHOWING THE ESTATES 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SPENCER BLACKETT 
 
 (.Successor tu Jf. * fl. iE.txtocU) 
 
 MILTON HOUSE, 35, ST. BRIDE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C 
 
 [All rights reserved.'] 
 

 >• 
 
 •4 , ■ 
 
 
 
 

 'B 2^ * 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 For permission to reprint the articles on “ The 
 Great Landlords of London,” which I contributed 
 
 my investigations on the Portman, Grosvenor, and 
 Bedford Estates, I have to thank Mr. Joseph Hatton, 
 Editor of the paper mentioned, on whose suggestion 
 and initiative I undertook the inquiry. I also received 
 kind help, information, or advice from Mr. James Platt, 
 of St. Martin’s Lane ; from Mr. James Rowlands, M.P., 
 of the Leasehold Enfranchisement Association ; and 
 from Mr. Charles Harrison, of Bedford Row. I 
 must express, too, my indebtedness to Mrs. Susanne 
 Weatherley, of 60, Baker Street, for placing at my 
 disposal the interesting and valuable correspondence 
 which appears in the last chapter of this book. 
 Finally, I am grateful to all those many victims of 
 a harsh system of house tenure, whose courtesy and 
 kindness made my task as Special Commissioner of 
 The Sunday Times less difficult than it would else 
 have been. 
 
 to The Sunday Times , and which contain the result of 
 
 FRANK BANFIELD. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ESTATE HAP OF LONDON 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . Frontispiece 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 7 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON MAP-MAKING, ETC. 
 
 . 24 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PORTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY . . 
 
 , 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GROSVENOR ESTATE AND POLICY 
 
 . . 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY . 
 
 . 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SUMMING UP 
 
 03 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY . 
 
 , 113 
 
THE 
 
 GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It will be my endeavour to place clearly before 
 my readers, in this introduction, the general position 
 of those who would relieve London tenants from 
 the shackles imposed by the present leasehold 
 system upon their industry and enterprise. They 
 may possibly not acquiesce so quickly as they 
 do now in the present state of things, when they 
 learn they are exceptionally ill off, not only in com- 
 parison with the urban population of Europe, but 
 also with others, their own countrymen, who dwell 
 in towns and cities. I shall show them that the 
 system of short leases is not a law of nature, which 
 must be submitted to, like the rough vicissitudes 
 of the weather; but a result, for them calamitous, 
 of the combined working of organised interests 
 and of old Acts of Parliament. They will 
 learn, some of them to their surprise, that leases 
 limited to 99 years are practically confined to 
 London, to Wales, and to Cornwall ; that leases are 
 rarely to be found existing in European cities ; and* 
 indeed, that the foreigner generally has scarcely 
 
8 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 heard of such things. The agents of the great 
 ground landlords of course assure us that we could 
 not get on at all without leases for short terms ; that 
 London would never have existed as it is to-day 
 with a freehold tenure. What they must presumably 
 mean is that it would not be such an El Dorado 
 as it proves for the Duke of Westminster, the 
 Duke of Bedford, and Viscount Portman, for the 
 lawyers who thrive on drawing up leases and so on ; 
 and, indeed, for a whole tribe of satellites. That 
 London could not have grown but for great ducal 
 landowners is a statement monstrously absurd, and 
 rebutted by the fact that the many populous 
 centres of industry in the North of England 
 will only have houses in freehold, or, what amounts 
 to the same thing, in fee farm rent, or on terms of 
 999 years. Before I come to deal with the origin 
 and development of the present iniquitous system 
 in London, let me give instances of how cannier 
 provincials regard it, and how they have, by their 
 pluck and shrewdness, brought wily and grasping 
 soil-owners to something like sweet reasonableness. 
 
 One great secret of the happy success of the 
 Northern folk especially, is this : that the landlords 
 have not found it so easy to combine against them ; and 
 another is that their towns, having developed during 
 the present century, they had learnt, from the mistakes 
 of London, not to fall into a pit similar to that digged 
 for so many an unfortunate London tenant. When 
 builders and others came forward with some specious 
 proposition about erecting dwellings on short terms, 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 9 
 
 the Northerners bluntly said, “No, we are not going 
 to take any such thing as this London term of 99 
 years, we insist on having the fee or a long lease- 
 hold.” “Do you represent,” Mr. Charles Harrison was 
 asked by the Chairman of the Town Holdings Com- 
 mission, “ that they had seen the evils of the London 
 system and knew better than to follow it ? ” and he 
 answered, “I have no doubt that is so. A Lan- 
 cashire man is perfectly wide enough awake for that.” 
 And it has come to this, that in old Northumbria, and 
 in many other districts of England, ordinary average 
 working men in towns, not merely picked and skilled 
 men, have been perfectly able to obtain the freehold, 
 or 999 years* lease of their own houses, and this they 
 have actually done in many cases. In fact I find a 
 good example of healthy working of the freehold 
 system in the South of England, at Portsmouth. A 
 solicitor there wrote to Mr. Charles Harrison as follows : 
 cc This place affords a favourable instance of freehold 
 tenures, I mean the absence of leaseholds, because 
 any w r orking man here can purchase a house to suit 
 himself. I may say that the cost of preparing a 
 simple conveyance here, has of late years, owing to 
 competition amongst members of our profession, 
 been reduced to a very small sum. In fact, no 
 system of registration could make conveyancing for 
 the working classes cheaper than it is now.** Happy 
 is the countryside and town where lawyers and land- 
 lords compete briskly. In Portsmouth there are not 
 fifty houses of leasehold tenure, and builders there 
 decline to build unless they can purchase the fees. 
 
10 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 To afford a just idea of how competition affects 
 landlords, inducing them, much against the grain, to 
 sell on the freehold tenure or on leases of 999 years, 
 
 I shall give examples which are most instructive and 
 interesting in their bearing on the whole question. 
 In the neighbourhood of Bradford, on the Bradford 
 estate, there was formerly no power to grant building 
 leases for a longer period than 99 years. As a result 
 all the building went to other estates. A private Act 
 was accordingly obtained enabling Lord Bradford to 
 grant building leases for 999 years, and the building 
 has now returned to his estate. 
 
 Then there is the Ramsden Estate, which is 
 situated in the parishes of Huddersfield, Almondbury, 
 and Kirkheaton. It was a settled estate, but the 
 settlement was a comparatively modern one. Now 
 the settlers had voluntarily trammelled themselves in 
 the development of the property by limiting the 
 power of leasing on the estate to 21 years. But the 
 trustees had to obtain an Act of Parliament extending 
 their powers of leasing to 80 or 90 years. Still, even 
 then, Huddersfield folk looked askance at the Ramsden 
 sites. They were not good enough, on such terms, for 
 the hard-headed Yorkshiremen. They declined, with 
 limits of time of this sort, to take and develop the 
 property. While the Ramsden trustees and the wily, 
 waiting investors stood looking at each other, adjoin- 
 ing properties came into competition and began to 
 grant building and repairing leases for terms not ex- 
 ceeding 1,000 years ; and, moreover, leases of the 
 same length were becoming customary in neighbour- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 11 
 
 in g towns. So the Ramsden trustees began to fear 
 that unless they had their power of leasing at once 
 extended by Act of Parliament, the value of their 
 estates would be seriously prejudiced by the diver- 
 sion of the progress of building and improvements to 
 other landed properties. Therefore they promoted a 
 new Act of Parliament with the result that all leases 
 on the Ramsden estates are now granted for the three 
 nines. The same story might be told over and over 
 again. Estates everywhere in the provinces where 
 building was going forward actively, had to come into 
 the freehold or three nines system, or submit to being 
 left out in the cold. It is worth noting, in con- 
 nection with what I shall have presently to say on 
 London Church Lands, that the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 missioners, even on their property in the North of 
 England, are in the habit of letting for the three 
 nines. For instance, leases for 99 years used to be 
 granted on the Rochdale Vicarage Glebe Estate, in 
 Rochdale, under Acts for granting leases of that 
 estate, but the practice ceased after the transfer of 
 the estate to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners under 
 an Act passed in 1886. In York they have no lease- 
 holds, though they have Church property which has 
 been enfranchised by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. 
 I will let these examples suffice ; but the reader must 
 bear in mind that it is competition, working to- 
 gether with the clear determination to have a fair 
 contract in the sturdy Northern nature, that has made 
 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners depart from the 
 London practice. 
 
12 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 Torquay is a good example of the way in which 
 enfranchisement acts as a charm. The sale of the 
 ground rents there, and of the fee, was due to the 
 necessity of clearing off incumbrances on the estate of 
 Lord Haldon. The leasehold system had produced 
 such rottenness and stagnation, that one of the 
 wings of the harbour would probably have tumbled 
 down, if it had not been purchased. Now the local 
 authorities have bought their harbour, they are going 
 to extend it, and the town will be vastly benefited. 
 They did not lose a moment in repairing the tottering 
 wing. The traders, holders of leases of £40 and £30 
 a year, have all shown themselves eager to buy. The 
 improvements which have taken place since the fee 
 of different places has been sold, has tended so im- 
 mensely to raise the value of that portion of the 
 property which Lord Haldon has kept in his hands, 
 that he will be a great gainer in the end. So that 
 for ground landlords, as for other folk, honesty and 
 justice are often the best policy. 
 
 Before coming to the history of poor London's 
 misfortunes, let me give a brief synopsis of the result 
 of the inquiries made by Her Majesty’s representatives 
 throughout Europe, as to the system of tenure of 
 dwelling houses in other countries, whether such 
 houses are generally freehold or leasehold. The 
 following are extracts from these official reports : — 
 
 AUSTRIA. 
 
 Me. Victor Drummond says: — “The houses are 
 freehold, and land is not let on long building leases ; 
 leaseholds, in fact, appear to be unknown." 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 13 
 
 BADEN. 
 
 The information given is somewhat indefinite, but 
 it is evident that the leasehold system does not exist. 
 
 BAY ARIA. 
 
 Mr. H. G. MacDonell says : — “ The system of 
 leasing* land which prevails in England is altogether 
 unknown in Bavaria.” 
 
 BELGIUM. 
 
 Me. W. J. G. Napier says : — “ Houses are as a rule 
 freehold property. Leaseholds exist only to a very 
 limited extent, and are tending generally to disappear.” 
 
 DENMARK. 
 
 Mr. A. Gosling says : — “In towns as in the country 
 districts, the practice of erecting tenements on lease- 
 holds may be said to be unknown. The fee-simple of 
 the land having been purchased for sum down, the 
 landlord either builds himself or re-sells the freehold 
 for building purposes.” 
 
 , FRANCE. 
 
 Sir John Walsham testifies that the terminable 
 leasehold system obtains to a certain extent in the 
 great towns of that country, more especially in Paris. 
 He says : — “ Instead of being sold in building lots, 
 land is sometimes let for a term of years upon condi- 
 tion that houses are built upon it ; that an annual or 
 other periodical rent is paid by the lessee ; and that at 
 the end of the term the houses shall become the pro- 
 perty of the landlord.” 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 Mr. C. S. Scott says : — “In Prussia, and, as far 
 as can be ascertained here, throughout Germany 
 
14 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 generally, house property is invariably held in free- 
 hold tenure, and the system of letting land on long 
 building leases is practically unknown.” 
 
 GREECE. 
 
 Me. A. Nicolson says Freehold property is 
 the almost universal custom. * *. * Landed and 
 household property is sold in Greece by a simple 
 notarial act, without other formalities / 3 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 Me. Consul Eeanz says “ The Italian law en- 
 ables tenants, under an c emphiteosis , 3 to redeem their 
 rent by paying an amount of money equivalent to 
 twenty times the amount of the yearly rent.” 
 
 NETHERLANDS. 
 
 Me. H. P. Fenton says : — “ As a general rule, 
 property in land or houses in the Netherlands is held 
 by the proprietor as a freehold, no limited ownership 
 being known in this country / 3 
 
 NORWAY. 
 
 Me. H. Rumbold says: — “Land is let at an annual 
 ground rent, either for a term of years or in per- 
 petuity / 3 (See Sweden.) 
 
 PORTUGAL. 
 
 Me. F. Elliot says : — The system of letting 
 land on long building leases is practically unknown / 3 
 
 ROUMANIA. 
 
 Me. W. A. White says : — That even in Bucharest 
 “building sites are freehold without exception.” 
 
 RUSSIA. 
 
 Me. J. G. Kenneedy says : — " It may be safely 
 asserted that tenements in general, and especially in 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 15 
 
 towns, are freehold.” He adds, as to Poland, that 
 ‘'houses are almost without exception freehold.” 
 
 SERVIA. 
 
 Me. Locock says:— "Land sold for building pur- 
 poses is sold unconditionally. No houses are built 
 except on freehold ground.” 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 Me. M. de Bunsen says “ Absolute freehold 
 
 is the tenure which most generally prevails. 
 Emphiteosis, known to some extent, obtains in 
 Spain as in Italy.” 
 
 SWEDEN. 
 
 Me. E. W. Cope says : — " The tenure of houses 
 in this country is usually freehold, especially in the 
 towns.” 
 
 SWITZERLAND. 
 
 Me. C. C. Thoenton says “ Absolute owner- 
 ship is the only condition known to the Swiss, and 
 they possess no idea of such tenures as exist in 
 England, viz., building leases for 99 years, copy- 
 hold, estate in tail, and so forth.” 
 
 TURKEY. 
 
 Me. C. G. Stavsides says:— "That in that 
 country, though property is largely freehold, it 
 is sometimes let instead of being sold to persons, 
 for terms of years upon condition that they shall 
 build houses thereon, paying an annual rent, so 
 that the houses shall become the property of the 
 landlord at the end of the term.” 
 
 WURTEMBURG. 
 
 Me. C. Geeen says : — " Real property is sold in 
 Wurtemburg unconditionally, and subject to no reser- 
 vation of an annual rent chargeable on the estate,” 
 
16 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 It will thus be seen that France, Turkey, and 
 Scandinavia are the only countries where anything 
 like the grievous system existent in London prevails. 
 There is nothing surprising in the fact that in 
 that hot - bed of corruption and oppression, the 
 Ottoman Empire, counterparts of some British ex- 
 tortioners, should be found. Paris is in somewhat 
 similar plight to London ; but in Scandinavia the 
 poor peasant can carry away his wooden house, if 
 he cares to do so. 
 
 The question naturally arises, why is London 
 so different from the rest of the world ? It would 
 appear that the miseries I describe further on in 
 Chapters III., IV., and V., arise entirely from the fact 
 that the metropolitan leasehold system was due to 
 our legislators of the past, or to quote Mr. Charles 
 Harrison, “absolutely created and preserved by Act 
 of Parliament,” and is a thing of yesterday. 
 
 The present system of 99 years’ leases or shorter 
 term leases in London has grown up out of the 
 extension of the limited leasehold system of corpora- 
 tions and chapters and settled estates. In London, 
 formerly, people were to some extent obliged to build 
 on Church land, or corporation land, or settled estate 
 land at a disadvantage ; because lands of other kinds 
 were distinctly limited in quantity. If we had before 
 us a map of London, as it was two hundred years 
 ago, we should find that all the land immediately 
 beyond the area then built over was Church 
 property. Outside of old London was the Bishop 
 of London’s Manor of Stepney at one end (part 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 17 
 
 of this is now the Tyssen Amherst Estate), and his 
 Manor of Paddington and Westbourne at the other 
 end. Between was an intermediate mass of pre- 
 bendal manors attached to the different prebends of 
 St. Paul's generally, from Hackney on the one side 
 to Paddington on the other. With the exception of 
 a break in those two northern areas of the Portman 
 and the Portland settled estates, the whole of this 
 land was practically in Church hands, and after the 
 restraining statutes (the meaning of these will be 
 presently explained) were incapable of being leased 
 for more than forty years. The ground of old 
 London itself belonged to one or other of the City 
 companies and charities. Without the walls was the 
 Bedford estate (1708); beyond was the Portland 
 estate, extending from the bottom of Tottenham 
 Court Road to the Portman estate The next settled 
 estate was the upper portion of the Grosvenor 
 estate. The lower portion of it is the Ebury 
 estate, and was also in settlement. Away in Surrey, 
 stretching far south from Lambeth Bridge, were the 
 vast demesnes of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Over the Church lands here mentioned the Ecclesias- 
 tical Commissioners to-day have control. 
 
 In the earliest times when a man wanted to build 
 a house in a town, he, as a rule, purchased the free- 
 hold, or took the land on a fee farm rent. There was 
 an old statutory power to lease, but only for 21 years. 
 There was nothing beyond this, and it is generally 
 supposed that this power of leasing was not framed 
 in reference to house property, but to land. As Mr. 
 
 B 
 
18 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 0. Harrison puts very clearly the position, I venture 
 to quote him here pretty fully and word for word, as 
 he answered before the Town Holdings Commission : 
 
 “ First of all there is an enabling statute, 32 Henry 
 'VIII. c. 28, in 1540, which allowed the tenant for 
 life or person in possession to lease as against the 
 reversioner, for a term of 21 years; but from that 
 date there were no other powers of leasing conferred 
 upon owners of settled estates, except such as were 
 inserted in deeds of settlement of the present century. 
 That is how the matter stood from that date down to 
 the passing of the Settled Estates Act. The enabling 
 Act only allowed leases to be granted for 21 years; 
 it did not allow property to be pulled down and re- 
 built when the 21 years expired. Another 21 years' 
 term could always be granted, but there was no 
 power to pull down or improve, or grant a longer 
 term* That is the enabling statute as affecting 
 settled estates. Next there were the restraining 
 statutes, w^ich were statutes passed in the 1st 
 Elizabeth, 13th Elizabeth, 14th and 18th Elizabeth, 
 and 43rd Elizabeth, extending from 1558 down to 1601, 
 and the object of those statutes was to prevent, first 
 of all, bishops, then prebends, and subsequently deans 
 and chapters of cathedral or collegiate churches, or the 
 master or guardian of any hospital, parson, vicar, or 
 any other person having Parliamentary or ecclesiastical 
 living, from letting (I am speaking now as regards 
 houses) for a longer term than 40 years; and as 
 regards houses situate in a city, borough, town, cor- 
 porate or market town* or the suburbs thereof, the 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 19 
 
 power that was given was limited simply to the 
 granting of the lease. If, at the end of the 40 years, a 
 house wanted pulling down, a new lease could not 
 be granted allowing the property to be pulled 
 down, but only a lease to renew and repair the old 
 building for another term of 40 years; and a great 
 quantity of the property built in London on the area 
 between the old City of London and the land which 
 forms now the increase of the metropolis, was built 
 on leases granted on those 40 years’ terms, renewable 
 from time to time, as the 40 years’ term ran out. Thus, 
 as population developed, and spread as a matter of 
 course outside the old City boundaries, the people had to 
 take their houses of the land belonging to the Church. 
 That is to say the greater portion of the increase of 
 London, from the seventeenth century onwards, con- 
 sisted of buildings on the property belonging to the 
 Church ; in a word, to either the Bishopric of London 
 or the Prebends of St. Paul's.” 
 
 Of course, in the eighteenth century, as at other 
 times, influential folks managed to get hold of Church 
 lands, restraining statutes notwithstanding. Por in- 
 stance, the Fitzroy estate is an imposing example of 
 the truly delightful jobbery that could be practised 
 with impunity a hundred years or so back. In 1768 
 the Duke of Grafton was Prime Minister. There 
 existed, too, at that time, the Prebendal Manor of 
 Cantelows— what is now known as the Kentish Town 
 estate. Its tenant, in 1768, was Mr. Fitzroy, brother 
 of the Duke, and he had the 21 years’ lease, 
 which was the utmost term that the Church could 
 
 b 2 
 
20 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 then grant for the land. Now, in 1768 the Duke of 
 Grafton managed to get an Act passed vesting the 
 estate in Mr. Fitzroy, subject to a ground rent of 
 £300 a year, payable to the Dean and Chapter of St. 
 Paul’s. This was a glorious bargain for the Fitzroy s. 
 The estate was no small one. It commenced at 
 St. Giles’s parish, extended some distance on the 
 north of Oxford Street, went northwards through a 
 large part of St. Pancras and Camden Town, and up 
 to Highgate, including a coppice, and woods, and 
 grounds lying near that suburb. It was evidently 
 cheap, even in those days, at the price paid, for, 
 immediately after it was granted, Mr. Fitzroy hastened 
 to settle £400 a year on Mrs. Fitzroy, and this income 
 was charged on only twenty- three acres of the estate. 
 So that, in obtaining but £300 a year for the whole of it, 
 the officials of St. Paul’s scarcely had their quid pro quo . 
 Mr. Fitzroy took care to put it in settlement, and it 
 was always subject to the forty-years’-term powers of 
 leasing down till certain Acts were passed which 
 enabled the granting of leases for 99 years. It will 
 therefore be seen that a large estate was no sooner 
 emancipated from the Church than it was put under 
 settlement. A large part of this Fitzroy estate is now 
 known as the Camden. As a result of somewhat 
 similar legislation, the Thistlethwaite family draw 
 two-thirds of the revenues of the Bishop of London’s 
 Manor of Paddington. 
 
 We may then take it that almost the whole of 
 London, outside its limits of two hundred years ago, 
 is occupied by Church lands or settled estates, and 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 21 
 
 that there has really been no quarter whence competi- 
 tion could arise which would have forced our ground 
 landlords to apply to Parliament for an extension of 
 their powers to lease. They have had a monopoly, 
 have been masters of the situation, and the London 
 trading and artisan community have shown a meek- 
 ness which, however amiable and exemplary, has no 
 doubt tended to make the fastening of a grievous 
 yoke about their necks more easy. Possibly the rush 
 for houses, owing to the amazing growth of the metro- 
 polis, has rendered the perpetuation of the short lease 
 system less difficult for the estate-owners, and has 
 provided them with readier victims of rapacity. 
 
 Of the value of competition in the interests of 
 the tenants, Mr. Robert Castle, who has been for 
 thirty years a land agent and surveyor at Oxford, 
 gave striking evidence before the Town Buildings 
 Committee. Indeed, his words put the practical 
 bearing of this portion of the subject in a nut- 
 shell. He said (this was in May, 1887): “ I have, 
 within the last fortnight, been asked to advise a 
 college, for whom I am not the usual agent, with 
 reference to two blocks of building land in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Oxford, one piece about twenty-eight 
 acres, and the other about eight acres ; and, in order 
 to enable me to report, I had to make special inquiries 
 as to how I might find it possible to dispose of this 
 ground. It happened that, in these two cases, both 
 of them were surrounded by freehold land which was 
 also in the market. I found there that it was simply 
 out of the question my being able to let this ground on 
 
22 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 leasehold tenure, so long as the freehold of the adjoin- 
 ing properties was to be got y and have advised the college 
 to offer it in plots and sell out and out . hi other parts 
 of Oxford , where there is practically a monopoly of the 
 ground , it is easy enough to let on leasehold tenure E 
 In London the Settled Estates and the Ecclesi- 
 astical Commissioners have, as a matter of fact, had 
 the monopoly of the ground, and so have found no 
 difficulty in letting on leasehold tenure. Monopolies 
 benefit but the few, and are a calamity to the many. 
 In the succeeding chapters, notably those numbered 
 III., IV., and V., which describe my visits to the 
 Portman, Grrosvenor, and Bedford estates, will be 
 revealed the cruelties, wrongs, and outrages arising 
 out of the ground monopoly in London. In ordinary 
 business life between commercial men, a give-and- 
 take principle is in vogue. This is entirely absent in 
 the relations of the London ground landlords and their 
 lessees. The former have had the latter on the hip, at 
 their mercy. It has been no use pleading with them. 
 They have been hard anchored in unrighteous and un- 
 just prerogatives of law. So Antonio said of Shylock: 
 
 You may as well go stand upon the beach, 
 
 And bid the main flood bate his usual height ; 
 
 You may as well use question with the wolf, 
 
 Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb ; 
 
 You may as well forbid the mountain pines 
 To wag their high tops and to make no noise, 
 
 When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven ; 
 
 You may as well do anything most hard, 
 
 As seek to soften that : — than which what’s harder ? 
 
 His Jewish heart : therefore I do beseech you 
 Make no more offers, use no farther means, 
 
 But with all brief and plain conveniency, 
 
 Let me have judgment and the Jew his will. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 23 
 
 As will be seen, the pound of flesh has been cut 
 so close to the commercial life of many English 
 citizens, that it is a question whether, in metaphor at 
 least, the blood may not be said to have been shed. 
 Venice knew how to protect those privileged with 
 her franchises against extortion carried to such excess 
 under forms of law. England should not be behind 
 that mediaeval state. Boasting that she carries freedom 
 everywhere together with her flag, she should scarcely 
 endure longer in the heart of her Empire a most vile 
 oppression. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON MAP-MAKING AND LONDON GROUND LANDLORDISM 
 GENERALLY. 
 
 The prominence which the question of leasehold en- 
 franchisement had assumed in the public mind, and the 
 reports of arbitrary management of certain London 
 estates, more especially of one, formed the motive in- 
 ducing Mr. Joseph Hatton, editor of The Sunday 
 Times , to institute a special inquiry into the grounds 
 of complaint, and into the reasonableness of the de- 
 mand for an alteration of the law. He asked me to 
 undertake the investigation as Special Commissioner 
 of his paper, and I gladly gave my consent. When 
 starting on this undertaking I deemed that my first 
 task should be to ascertain the limits of the ground 
 areas owned by different landlords. I thought that 
 this introductory statement would be much more in- 
 teresting to my readers if it were accompanied by a 
 sketch map showing the outline of some of the large 
 properties, and such a map I supposed, in my inno- 
 cence, it would be easy to obtain — to hunt up some- 
 where. The supposition was natural enough. The 
 
MAP-MAKING AND GROUND LANDLORDISM 25 
 
 ground landlords are one of the most important social 
 and economic facts in the polity of modern London. 
 Their territorial possessions in our midst must, as 
 regards their area, rental, position, and boundaries, 
 be matter of interest and curiosity to hundreds of 
 thousands of our fellow-citizens. A map of the great 
 estates seemed, therefore, to me to be a thing easily 
 obtainable. Let me, then, first tell the story of my 
 disappointment. To the neophyte ingenuous in such 
 matters, to the ordinary elector, it will be news ; to the 
 previous investigator it may be stale, but possibly 
 amusing. 
 
 First I ventured into one of the large London 
 libraries, rich in varied books of reference ; and as 
 the myriad bindings looked down in serried rows, with 
 an air of dusty omniscience, upon me from the 
 shelves, I felt it was a mere question of “ Open 
 Sesame,” and all I sought would be mine. There 
 were books on London by the score, and maps in 
 plenty. I will not weary my readers with all their 
 names and titles. In one wild moment of despair, I 
 clutched the portly volumes of the modern Domes- 
 day Book, only to discover that that grandiose, 
 pretentious, and misleading publication leaves the 
 metropolis untouched. The supplement, which is to 
 partially enlighten Londoners, is yet to come. Still 
 the maps remained, and though they tell many things 
 of Parliamentary and Municipal Divisions, of the 
 distribution of land and water, of streets and build- 
 ings, of parks and recreation grounds, of bridges, 
 tramways, and railroads, of one great, living, vital, 
 
26 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 important fact they told nothing. The Ordnance 
 Maps told nothing. Not all the enterprise of such 
 firms as those of Messrs. Stanford, Philips, and Bacon 
 could tell anything, and yet they must have been 
 ready, nay eager, to supply that for which a demand 
 would immediately exist. 
 
 The vestries next suggested themselves as possible 
 sources of information ; and I recommend any person 
 ambitious of classifying from experience all varieties 
 of the type of sensation summed up in the past 
 participle “ snubbed,” to try and obtain for a public 
 purpose useful facts from vestry officials. “ The 
 extent of his Grace’s or my Lord’s estate in this 
 parish. You had better go to the estates' offices. 
 We decline to say anything or give you any facilities.' 
 A plethoric guardian, to whom I appealed in the 
 matter, said, “ I decline also ; I decline if the vestry 
 clerks decline.” It is some relief to know that to the 
 vestries themselves the territorial secrets of London 
 are scarcely revealed. There was nothing for it then 
 but to try the estates’ offices. The first visit was by 
 no means a success. 
 
 The mystery thus made added fuel to my curiosity, 
 and I began to wonder whether the professed enemies 
 of property in land had been more successful than 
 myself, whether they had been able to get behind a 
 door so assiduously locked. Their books and pam- 
 phlets were full of allusion to ground landlords, but 
 showed no glimmering of a knowledge of the territorial 
 geography of the metropolis. I sounded some of 
 their men of light and leading, and* came away with 
 
MAP-MAKING AND GROUND LANDLORDISM 27 
 
 the conclusion that the ground, which 1 wished to 
 traverse, was a terra incognita . 
 
 However, with a certain amount of perseverance, 
 by following a hint here, and a suggestion there, I 
 was able to frame a territorial map of no incon- 
 siderable portion of the metropolis. This map shows 
 the outline of the Portman, the Bedford, and the 
 Grosvenor estates ; moreover, the position of numerous 
 other properties is roughly indicated by printing their 
 names in small clear type on that portion of the map 
 which they approximately occupy. I do not say 
 that this estate chart is exact to a house or the side 
 of a street, that it takes account of certain small 
 freeholders— and there are some in London, as every- 
 body knows ; but I can guarantee the approximate 
 accuracy of the boundaries as I have given them. 
 In the next chapter will be told in much detail the 
 story of the management of one of these estates, and 
 then I shall verbally, at least, go more into the minutice 
 of topographical detail. As it is, however, I claim for 
 my map that it is unique, placing plainly before the 
 householders and leaseholders of the metropolis as has 
 never before been done the size and shape of the 
 dominions of some at least of those who exercise so 
 much — so immense a power over the fate of individuals 
 in the metropolis, and draw so much money out of it, 
 revenues which make the mouths of “ beggarly 33 
 foreign princes water with sympathy and envy. 
 
 But the power possessed by the agents of the 
 ground landlords is an anachronism, as to-day it 
 exists divorced from responsibility to public opinion. 
 
28 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 This would be so, even if there were no complaints to 
 make of the manner in which that power is exercised, 
 vexatiously and arbitrarily often, and also too fre- 
 quently to levy black mail on the necessities of 
 tenants, leaseholders, and others. 
 
 One grievance is very tersely and ably put by a 
 gentleman signing himself “ Liberal-Conservative,” 
 who wrote a number of letters in The Estates Gazette 
 of last year. U A tradesman’s lease expires, and he 
 applies for renewal to the big freeholder owning the 
 whole of the street, and most probably many adjoining 
 streets. Now, the big freeholder says, Here is a 
 wealthy tradesman who, from the nature of his busi- 
 ness, must keep in this street, therefore I will ask him 
 an excessive rent, and mulct him of a heavy fine, which 
 he must pay or lose his business.” This statement 
 will obtain the endorsement of, I make no doubt, 
 thousands of victims. 
 
 Another instance was mentioned to me. An 
 upholsterer in a considerable way of business, aware 
 that his lease is expiring, applies for a renewal to the 
 great man’s agents. They dilly-dally, and in fine 
 decline to give him any satisfactory answer at all. 
 One fine day upholsterer number two walks into the 
 shop and says to upholsterer number one, “ Oh, you 
 want your lease renewed; Fll renew it to you on 
 such and such terms.” The just and kindly ground 
 landlord had re-leased the premises to a stranger 
 over the first upholsterer's head. This story is 
 eloquent enough of itself. Comment is superfluous 
 — would be a painting of the lily, in fact. 
 
MAP-MAKING AND GROUND LANDLORDISM 29 
 
 Again, a tenant is leaving his premises not ten 
 miles from St. Paul's. The landlord exacts five 
 hundred pounds for dilapidations, and then promptly 
 makes the new tenant undertake the repairs. On 
 that five hundred pounds no tax, we may be sure, 
 was paid. It was something over and above rent, 
 one of those pickings and stealings which are not 
 uncommon, and, indeed, form an interesting moral 
 feature of the investigation I have had on hand. 
 
 As a change from the above examples let me 
 quote from a “ Liberal-Conservative ” again in a case 
 where the system was faulty and not the man. “I 
 was interested," he says, “ in securing a property for 
 a public institution, and having obtained a suitable 
 site, the leasehold of which could be purchased, it 
 was found that although the owner or tenant for 
 life did not object to sell, yet, so complicated was 
 the settlement, that no purchase could be made, and 
 thus a very valuable public institution was lost to the 
 locality." He goes on to say : “ Many other instances 
 of a similar nature have come to my notice, and I am 
 only too well acquainted with the capricious way in 
 which large estates are managed.” 
 
 Further, to show how ready the great London land- 
 lords have been to refrain from assisting even in the 
 work of enhancing the value of their own property, 
 how much more willing to take than to give, I make 
 the following excerpt from a work on “The Land” by 
 a Mr. John Macdonall. The passage is concerned with 
 the Bedford estate, but in many points it will apply 
 to others: “Any one," he says, “who examines the 
 
30 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 local or private measures passed for the most part 
 in the reigns of George III. and George IV., in order 
 to e pave, cleanse, light, water, and embellish ’ various 
 squares in London, will find them studded with various 
 acts of favouritism to landlords. . . . The ratepayers, 
 in short, were mulcted in order to improve and em- 
 bellish the landlords 5 estates. It is true they have 
 occasionally done a little paving. Thus, the Duke of 
 Bedford went to some expense with respect to Oakley 
 Square, but I find that the vestry of St. Pancras re- 
 paid him. In the urban domains of the Duke of 
 Bedford (and others) there are erected gates, which 
 are closed at early, odd, and inconvenient hours, and 
 which vindicate the seigneurial rights to treat some 
 of the populous districts of London as if they were 
 private gardens. At not a few turnings stand ducal 
 beadles, ready to turn back plebeian vehicles, and to 
 bar the way against short cuts at late hours or early 
 hours. A recent Parliamentary return showed the 
 numbers of these gates to be very great, especially 
 on the Bedford estate. It was by the same legisla- 
 tion that it came to pass that St. Pancras alone 
 had sixteen Paving Boards, eleven of which, filled 
 with nominees of the freeholder, were self-elected. 
 The Metropolis Local Management Act swept these 
 Boards away, and the sole reminiscence of these ex- 
 tinct bodies consists of the bond debts which they 
 incurred, and which still remain to burden certain 
 districts. What is the net result of the history ? 
 This : By private Acts the proprietors originally got 
 their estates paved by the occupiers ; the maintenance 
 
MAP-MAKING AND GROUND LANDLORDISM 31 
 
 and repair of the streets, from which the public are 
 partially excluded, is and was the work of the public, 
 each district receiving the benefit of the general rate 
 levied on the whole of the metropolis; and, to com- 
 plete the job, the value of the streets is artificially 
 enhanced by the maintenance of gates, which, giving 
 privacy, enable the freeholder to exact a higher 
 rent.” 
 
 (T The same author writes, with reference to the 
 Grosvenor estates, as follows: “ Looking into 7 th 
 Geo. IV., c. 58, relating to Grosvenor Place and other 
 lands and streets adjoining, I find among its 140 
 clauses one giving powers to Commissioners to compel 
 owners and builders of houses, where there ought 
 to be streets, to pave, level, or gravel them. But the 
 Act specially exempted Robert, Earl Grosvenor, from 
 paying for the improvement of his own property. It 
 also empowered him to put whatever fences or gates 
 he was pleased to erect on streets which others main- 
 tained.” 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that the absence of 
 generosity in the ground landlords, of which so many 
 complaints reach us now, is a thing of old standing* 
 They have, it would seem, made always a thorough 
 use of the opportunity given by the necessity of so 
 many tens of thousands of their countrymen to carry 
 on their callings in London. 
 
 There can be no question that the present system 
 is a great obstacle to building — a serious infliction 
 upon the commercial classes — and it also tells with 
 great hardship on the poor. In this connection I 
 
32 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 will quote an authority as to whose fairness and dis- 
 passionate judgment little doubt will be felt — the 
 Eoyal Commission on the Housing of the Working 
 Classes — whose supplementary report ran as follows : 
 
 “At present land available for building in the 
 neighbourhood of our populous centres, though its 
 capital value is very great, is probably producing a 
 small yearly return until it is let for building. The 
 owners of land are rated, not in relation to the real 
 value, but to the actual annual income. They can 
 thus afford to keep their land out of the market, and 
 to part with only small quantities, so as to raise the 
 price beyond the natural monopoly price which the 
 land would command by its advantages of position. 
 Meantime, the general expenditure of the town on 
 improvements is increasing the value of their 
 property. 
 
 “ If this land were rated at, say, four per cent, 
 of its selling value, the owners would have a more 
 direct incentive to part with it to those who are 
 desirous of building, and a twofold advantage would 
 result to the community. First, all the valuable 
 property would contribute to the rates, and thus the 
 burden on the occupiers would be diminished by the 
 increase in the rateable property. Secondly, the 
 owners of the building land would be forced to offer 
 their land for sale, and thus their competition with 
 one another would bring down the price of building 
 land, and so diminish the tax in the shape of ground 
 rent, or price paid for land which is now levied on 
 urban enterprise by the adjacent landowners — a tax, 
 
MAP-MAKING AND GROUND LANDLORDISM 33 
 
 be it remembered, which is no recompense for any 
 industry or expenditure on their part, but is the 
 natural result of the industry and activity of the 
 townspeople themselves.” 
 
 This is one of many proposals for alleviating the 
 mischiefs arising out of the present position of the 
 ground landlord. Whatever suggestions I have to 
 make will be found further on. One thing is certain; 
 the present unsatisfactory state of affairs cannot last. 
 How unsatisfactory it is will be shown in the next 
 chapter, when I lay bare the story of a great estate, 
 and present to my readers numerous instances of the 
 hardship and inconvenience — to give it no worse 
 name — which an owner of land in London can inflict 
 on those whom the law, as it at present stands, places 
 absolutely at his mercy in many important concerns. 
 What I have to tell affects intimately all London 
 tenants, and I feel confident that it will receive, as it 
 will merit, their closest attention. 
 
 c 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PORTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY. 
 
 Two lines drawn north to Regent’s Park from where 
 Chelsea and Vauxhall Bridges touch the northern 
 hank of the River Thames, will shut in between them 
 a good deal of Crown land, many freeholds, big and 
 small, but also, chiefly and principally, three great 
 residential estates — the Portland, the Portman, and 
 the Grosvenor. As far as complaints of hardness and 
 arbitrariness against ground landlords go, they are 
 few on the Portland, many on the Portman, and most 
 on the Grosvenor. But the Portman estate has just 
 now the larger claim to public interest, from the fact 
 that on Sunday, March 25th, 1888, all the leases for 
 ninety-nine years over the greater part of the estate 
 fell in, and the process of drawing handsome premiums 
 and of raising ground rents to seven and eightfold 
 their original figure has been carried out on a wholes 
 sale scale, calculated to make the mouth of a Midas 
 water, or to cause Croesus to turn in his grave for 
 envy. The modern Pactolus, the genuine El Dorado, 
 must be sought by the topographical explorer of 
 to-day somewhere in the vicinage of Baker Street. 
 
THE PORTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY 
 
 35 
 
 We Englishmen are not, on the whole, over fond of 
 geography, but we do love wealth ; we can rise into 
 something like sentiment as we see the big money- 
 bags mounting up, tier after tier, round any favoured 
 mortal/ Consequently it is possible that a certain 
 curiosity may be felt as to the limits of this happy 
 region, where bricks and mortar are exuding gold, 
 and where those who find it, and hand it over to the 
 exploiters, grimly smile, and swear that everything 
 is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and ask 
 indignantly, “ Why should not a man do what he likes 
 with his own ? ;; 
 
 Let us take a walk round the Portman estate, 
 keeping it on the right hand all the way, and see 
 what streets we shall pass through. Starting from 
 the Edgware Road, we walk up Richmond Street, 
 and then tarn to the right down Upper Capland 
 Street. On arriving at Church Street — unless we 
 would stop to visit the ea-rly home of Eliza Armstrong 
 — we proceed midway between Alpha Road and 
 Broadley Terrace and Boston Street to Park Road, 
 Regent’s Park. Oar path is now straight to the 
 Marylebone Road, up which we walk eastward for 
 about a hundred and fifty yards, when we go almost 
 due south to the west end of Marylebone Street. 
 We hereupon make our way round the eastern end 
 of Manchester Square, and enter Oxford Street 
 between Duke Street, and Orchard Street. Turning 
 westwards, we leave Oxford Street by Hyde Park 
 Place. We follow the Edgware Road to Queen 
 Street, and turning once to the right, and twice to the 
 
 c 2 
 
36 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 left;, arrive at Lisson Grove. We depart from tliis 
 classic thoroughfare by Devonshire Street, going 
 eastwards to this latter road’s sinuous extremity. We 
 are within sight of home once more. We have only 
 to trudge up the Edgware Road, and we are at 
 Richmond Street again. The round of duty has 
 been accomplished. The Portman estate has been 
 circumambulated. From the northern extremity of 
 Richmond Street to the point where Oxford Street 
 and Orchard Street join, it is a little over a mile 
 in length. Altogether it covers between two and 
 three hundred acres. Along Chapel Street and the 
 Marylebone Road it extends east and west for 
 three-quarters of a mile. All this extensive district 
 is crowded with large residences and fine shops, 
 while here and there are some commonplace side 
 streets, and certain alleys which might blush with 
 vexation, but not at calumny, if they were dubbed 
 slums. It includes such well-known localities as 
 Baker Street, Upper Baker Street, Portman Square, 
 Montague Square, and Gloucester Place. 
 
 TERMS OE RENEWALS. 
 
 All the leases for ninety-nine years, over the 
 greater part of the Portman estate, fell in on the 
 25tli of March last ! They are said to number 1,786. 
 The terms of renewal must interest every Londoner. 
 Generally, I can give him those terms, which a man, 
 who has been resident on the Portman estate, has had 
 either to accept or to go. The old Viscount Portman is 
 
T1IE PORT MAN ESTATE AND POLICY 37 
 
 eighty-nine, so the family council, assisted by Mr. 
 Hunt, have evolved the following stipulations. Theie 
 are three classes of renewals, which I number here 
 below 1, 2, and 3. 
 
 1. Long term: — Where a tenant is able to do 
 certain works, and a house in a residential street is 
 
 for forty years at £80 a year and a premium of 
 £1,400. The “ certain works ** alluded to are these : 
 The tenant must put on an extra storey, and 
 modernise the house throughout. Modernising the 
 house throughout means putting in plate -glass 
 windows, new drains, water service, and raising the 
 ceiling of the top-floor, that is to say, as I am given 
 to understand, from 7 ft. 6 in. to 8 ft. 6 in. 
 
 2. Same class of house A lease of twenty-five 
 years. Here the rent is again fixed at £80 a year, 
 and the premium is £1,400. The tenant also has 
 to modernise the house and repair. His lease is 
 fifteen years shorter than that of No. 1, because he 
 has not been disposed to go to the expense of making 
 Lord Portman a present of an additional storey, 
 together with the other good things. What the 
 difference is between Nos. 1 and 2, architecturally 
 considered, may be seen by any one who cares to pay 
 a visit to Gloucester Place, and there, on the spot, 
 study the points of divergence in modern buildings. 
 
 3. Where the tenant will not lay out capital, a 
 seven years* lease for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one 
 years is given at a rack rent, the tenant only doing 
 repairs. 
 
38 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 Generally, these are the terms which the Portman 
 Estate Office is offering to those who have held 
 99 years* leases, and the business of arranging and 
 signing them has been occupying a great deal of atten- 
 tion, thought, and anxiety in that district of London 
 on whose topographical position I have already des- 
 canted. On the part of the agent the fortiter in re 
 is said to be a more conspicuous quality than the 
 suaviter in modo. 
 
 Fortiter in re ! Yet Lord Portman*s surveyor 
 has a most exquisite tact, to judge from one small 
 anecdote which came to my ears. A gentleman in 
 Baker Street, who had paid the two-guinea fee which 
 alone enables the tenant in esse to learn on what terms 
 he may renew, was not pleased with the amount of 
 the fine fixed. He therefore called on Mr. Hunt, and 
 briefly stated the object of his coming. 
 
 “ I must ask you, Mr. Hunt,” said he, “ to reduce 
 that premium by £200.** 
 
 For a moment the great man was aghast, as was 
 Mr. Bumble when Oliver Twist made his world-famed 
 yet audacious request for more. He looked round 
 him “ astonied,” to use a word that has a Scripture 
 sanction. Then his gaze locally fixed itself on an, 
 adjacent corner ; a bland smile suffused his face as 
 if he saw both a physical object and a point of 
 humour at one and the same time ; his right arm 
 was extended, the fingers of the right hand one by 
 one contracted themselves till the primal digit alone 
 remained prominently pointed. 
 
 “ Is — is — isn’t that your um— umbrella ? ** ho 
 
THE PORTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY 39 
 
 queried anxiously. The petitioner followed the sur- 
 veyor’s eye and the surveyor’s finger, and recognised 
 the old familiar gamp ; knew it at once as his long- 
 valued shelter against the watery effusiveness of 
 Jupiter Pluvius . 
 
 “ It is my umbrella,” he said with alacrity, and he 
 went out into Upper Baker Street. 
 
 But what Briton would be hardly critical on a 
 man busy shovelling golden sovereigns at such a 
 rate into the coffers of his master ? “ He has had 
 
 £120,000 in premiums out of Baker Street alone, ^ 
 said, admiringly, a gentleman to me, and this gentle- 
 man knew what he was talking about, and the figures 
 were the result, not of pure guesswork, but of careful 
 calculation. When any one is milking a thoroughfare 
 in this style, he is hardly to be blamed if he is 
 impatient of interlopers, and indignant at murmurers 
 who would spoil the enjoyment. I observed to this 
 gentleman that it had been stated that the Portman 
 family had taken, or would take, a million and a quarter 
 out of their gold mine in and around Baker Street, 
 and he, with opportunities of knowing more than 
 most men about the matter, said that he thought that 
 this lordly sum was under rather than above the 
 amount acquired from premiums by Viscount Port- 
 man. Rents have been raised to just eight times 
 what they were before, so that for every thousand 
 a year that the Viscount drew out of his* London 
 property before Lady Day, 1888, he will henceforward 
 draw eight thousand. Of course, such desirable 
 financial changes, as far as the Portmans are con- 
 
40 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 cerned, have not been wrought without some incon- 
 venience to mortals of inferior standing. Ninety 
 families are said to have gone out of East Street, 
 which runs north and south just east of Baker Street, 
 in the week preceding All Fools' Day. 
 
 One small tradesman in the street had his renewal 
 fourteen years ago, and had secured an extension for 
 seven years. His premium was £300. His ground 
 rent was raised from £4 to £28 a year, and he is 
 now assessed at £85 instead of, as formerly, at £36. 
 It may be permitted me to wonder what proportion 
 of his one and a quarter million Viscount Portman 
 pays to the local authorities and the State for keeping 
 the streets in good condition, for lighting, policing, 
 and so on. Here I may venture also to interject that 
 many folk will have perhaps been puzzled as to the 
 precise intention of the ponderous phrase, “unearned 
 increment.” Let me say once and for all that 
 “unearned increment” on the Portman estate upon 
 March 25th, 1888, meant a million and a quarter of 
 pounds sterling — not a penny less. It shows what 
 a wealthy city London is when from that parcel of 
 ground whose limits I have described, a million and a 
 quarter can be raised so easily by the ground landlord, 
 and scarcely a squeak of repining be heard. Everybody 
 too afraid of the great man to frankly open their 
 mouths at what they fretted against ! Everybody, 
 that is, who wished to remain where they had passed 
 the best part of their lives, by the businesses they 
 had built up, and in the homes to which they had 
 grown attached. 
 
THE POBTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY 41 
 
 A generous and kindly landlordism is thus reaping 
 an abundant reward, it may be remarked. I will give 
 an example to show how beneficent and beneficial to 
 the individual leaseholder the ground landlord may be. 
 There lived, let us say, in Gloucester Place, a lease- 
 holder, whom I will call A. A had been one of those 
 unfortunate men who suffer for the sins of rogues. 
 His property— nearly all his eggs were in one basket 
 —was in the hands of a firm who lived not ten miles 
 from Bedford Row. One fine morning these astute 
 gentlemen levanted, carrying off with them not only 
 the goods of many others, but also the worldly wealth 
 of A, who from a position of comparative affluence, 
 found himself reduced, at one fell swoop, to something 
 like penury. A felt the necessity of raising the wind, 
 and fortune, apparently repenting of the rude trick 
 she had played him, seemed for a moment determined 
 to make some small amends. A had a house in 
 Gloucester Place, and about this "house a doctor called. 
 He was ready to lease it from A, offered £360 a year 
 and a handsome premium, but he wished to put a 
 brass plate upon the door, and a sister of his would 
 take over a part of the residence, where she proposed 
 to instruct in the graces of dancing and deportment 
 such of the select youth and beauty of the neighbour- 
 hood as might wish to utilise her services. A was 
 immensely pleased. Pate, after all, might be cruel, 
 but she did not intend to kill. He hastened off to Mr. 
 Hunt, Viscount Portman’s steward, at the Portman 
 Estate Offices, near the top of Upper Baker Street, on 
 the right hand side, and asked for the requisite licence 
 
42 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 for the brass plate of the medical man. A was full of 
 hope, charged with brighter thoughts of his own 
 future than he had had since he had lost one 
 }3ortion of his property. But black care sat at 
 his back once more when he learned the agent’s 
 decision. He declined to give his high autocratic 
 authority to A’s proposal. The doctor could not 
 
 have the tenant’s house. He might have this 
 
 one, that one, and the other one, dwellings then 
 on the hands of the Portmans ; but A’s he could not 
 have. All which, we may be sure, was a great dis- 
 appointment to A, a grievous, a harsh trial ; but then 
 the Viscount’s representative was merely doing what 
 he was legally entitled to do. The tenant wished to 
 mitigate his ruin in a legitimate fashion ; but that, of 
 course, was no concern of the great ground landlord, 
 looking to the interests of his important property. 
 
 Another interesting instance of the operation of 
 our system of leasing and owning land in London 
 may be given, and one that figured in the proceed- 
 ings of the Town Holdings Commission. It is the 
 case of a house in Baker Street. B, a tradesman, 
 saw a house there which he thought would suit 
 him, and bought the lease of it about sixteen years 
 ago, at a ground rent of £10 a year. It was a 
 private residence when he came into its possession, 
 so he had to lay out £1,500 in turning it into 
 premises suited to the conduct of his business. This 
 year his lease was to expire; but, like a prudent man, 
 he took time by the forelock, and in 1880 asked Mr. 
 Hunt, Viscount Portman’s agent, for the terms of re- 
 
TEE POETMAN ESTATE AND POLICY 43 
 
 newal. Everybody can guess, from the figures already 
 supplied, as to wbat those terms were likely to be. 
 The ground rent was to be raised from £10 to £80, 
 c^tnd a fine of £1,200 was demanded. Add to this the 
 fact that the fine of £1,200 was not to be paid in 1888, 
 but at once down on the nail, and a notion may 
 be formed of how B looked askance at the proffered 
 lease. “Why,” he said to himself, “£1,200 a year 
 in eight years at compound interest should amount to 
 £2,200.” B objected to this, and none the less when 
 it was proposed that the house should be put into 
 thorough repair five years before the lease expired. 
 B said no more about it ; but what was his surprise 
 and annoyance when a neighbour of his came into 
 the shop one day and informed him that he had 
 bought the agreement. The neighbour, a shrewd 
 descendant of the outwandered children of Judea, 
 parted with the agreement to B, making a profit 
 on the transaction of £400. This shows how unwise 
 it is for tradesmen to allow their feelings to get 
 the better of them when they have to do with the 
 agent of a Viscount Portman. They should remember 
 that everything is “ in the bond,” and fork out the 
 ducats without a murmur, lest Shylock whet his 
 dreadful knife. B’s night thoughts about ground 
 landlords, we may be sure, have a tinge of bitterness, 
 and, expressed, might possibly offend the ears both of 
 the pious and of the polite. Here, again, is the case 
 of a lady who lived in Baker Street. She wished for 
 a renewal eight years before her lease expired. She 
 had laid out £900 on her house, in the main compelled 
 
44 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 to do so by the nature of the Portman requirements. 
 Lord Portman, it is perhaps needless to say, never 
 laid out sixpence on the premises. What was the 
 agent’s demand? A fine of £1,000, paid at once, 
 or delayed, compound interest would be charged, 
 which he said would make it £1,680: and the ground 
 rent to be raised to £80 from £10. Looking at the 
 submissiveness of British tradesmen between Orchard 
 Street and the Marylebone Road to the dispensations 
 under which they live, it is small wonder that this 
 lady has indignantly remarked, “ The average British 
 tradesman is as timid as a hare, and as dumb as death, 
 and shakes in his shoes before a landlord or his 
 agent, and submits, tremblingly, like a slave, to any 
 terms they choose to inflict.” But what, one may well 
 ask, is the use of striking an agent almost speechless 
 with wonder at your angry, indignant rebuke, and 
 flouncing out of his office, if, in the end, like B, you 
 have to pay £400 extra to a third person for the 
 momentary delight of being a spirited exception to 
 your kind ? No ; as the law stands, Mr. Hunt has 
 the whip hand of the refractory. If they do not like 
 his terms, are there not furniture vans, and cannot 
 they migrate from the buildings which they have 
 built or embellished with their hard-earned money, 
 from the businesses they have established, and in 
 which they have sunk capital? It is a case of stump 
 up or go. So the prudent, who want to stay, hold 
 their tongues ; for it is not well to offend the great 
 man of the district, whom you must consult at all the 
 most important crises of your occupation, and who, 
 
TEE POSTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY 45 
 
 if lie is vexed, and you wished to put a brass plate on 
 your door, might decline to pocket his two guineas 
 and let you do it. 
 
 The authorities of the Samaritan Free Hospital do 
 not think that they have been treated by the Port- 
 mans with all the consideration due to an institution 
 engaged in a work so noble and philanthropic as 
 theirs. No. 1, Manchester Street, Dorset House, was 
 in their hands, and they were never allowed by the 
 surveyor to put up a board outside which might 
 announce to the passer-by the work of healing and of 
 mercy being carried on within. The authorities of 
 the hospital found the Portman demands so unreason- 
 able that they could come to no agreement, and 
 narrowly escaped being fined in £200 because the 
 negociations fell through. An amiable stipulation to 
 this effect had fortunately been omitted from the 
 preliminary treaty for discussion between the parties. 
 Now, the Samaritan Free Hospital is none the worse, 
 for they have purchased fine freehold premises on 
 the north of the Marylebone Road, which suit them 
 infinitely better than Dorset House, and which if 
 situated on the Portman estate would have cost a 
 sum which they shrink from contemplating. 
 
 Everybody knows that there are such things as 
 covenants in leases, and very absurd things some of 
 them are. For instance, the City of London always 
 stipulates with reference to its property near Regent 
 Street that its servants may enter the dwelling houses 
 to look after and repair old conduits and drains that 
 have been blocked up this hundred years and more. 
 
46 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 On the Craven estate, a covenant in the leases pro- 
 vides that if the plague breaks out in London the 
 leaseholders are to surrender their dwellings so that 
 they may be used as pest-houses. There is another 
 covenant, however, that is curious, and may not be 
 so harmless in its operation. It runs somewhat in 
 this fashion : — “ And also that the lessee shall not at 
 any time without the previous consent in writing of 
 the landlord, his surveyor, or agent, commence any 
 action in respect of any permanent or temporary 
 erection, alteration, or work which may be at any 
 time made or carried on upon any adjoining, or 
 opposite, or neighbouring messuage or building be- 
 longing to the landlord, or upon any site of any such 
 building, or area, or yard belonging thereto in respect 
 of any interference, or alleged interference, by such 
 alteration or work with any existing or future right of 
 access, of light or of air, or of other right or easement 
 which is, or may hereafter be belonging to or enjoyed 
 with or in respect of the premises.” I must apologise 
 for inflicting all this elegant legal phraseology upon 
 my readers ; but I will give an instance of how this 
 covenant may be made to work. I do not say that 
 my example comes from the Portman estate, but I 
 supply it in illustration of the operation of an un- 
 just covenant. A tradesman wished to renew his 
 lease, and did so. His fine amounted to £1,000, his 
 ground rent was doubled, and there was £400 in- 
 surance. “We won’t interfere with you,” said the 
 agent, and at this the tradesman was glad, for good 
 light was essential to the carrying on of his business, 
 
THE PORT MAN ESTATE AND POLICY 
 
 47 
 
 £ipd he did not like the look of the Portman covenant. 
 No sooner was his fresh lease signed than the premises 
 next door were let on lease to an association, who were 
 authorised to pull down the old residence and build a 
 most imposing edifice in its stead. This the associa- 
 tion did, with the result that the tradesman’s lights 
 were blocked, and the premises, on which he had laid 
 out so much money, were rendered useless for his 
 trading purposes. He went in haste to an eminent 
 solicitor, who stopped all lamentations by a pertinent 
 request that he might see the lease. When it was 
 brought, there staring him in the face was the Port- 
 man covenant, by which he had signed away his right 
 to bring an action in his own defence, unless he had 
 for it the previous consent in writing of his landlord. 
 This very unfair covenant might so operate as to keep 
 a man out of his premises altogether, unless he cared 
 to perform his civic duties, and administer his per- 
 sonal affairs through the attic windows. The object 
 of this equitable arrangement is, according to Mr. 
 Bailey, of the Portland estate, who gave evidence 
 before the Town Holdings Commission, to “ prevent 
 litigation.” That, indeed, is evident on the face of 
 things. 
 
 As I have dwelt at so much length on the Port- 
 man estate, I may give a few brief biographical 
 facts about its owner and about its heir. 
 
 The Right Hon. Edward Berkeley Portman, first 
 Viscount Portman, is descended from Sir William 
 Portman, Lord Chief Justice of England in the reign 
 of King Henry VIII. He is the son of the late Mr. 
 
48 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 Edward Berkeley Portman, of Bryanston, and Orchard 
 Portman. Bryanston is Lord Portman’ s palatial resi- 
 dence in the county of Dorset. In the adjoining 
 villages the inhabitants are said to be debarred, by 
 autocratic susceptibilities, from so much as seeing a 
 newspaper not approved by the powers that be. But 
 the aged Viscount isolates himself from the affairs 
 of his London property, living in the stately seclusion 
 of a Tiberius at Caprern. When Lord Leigh pleaded 
 on behalf of the Samaritan Free Hospital, the reference 
 was always to Mr. Hunt and Mr. Moore, and “my 
 son.” Feminine tact could not even break through 
 the rigid barriers which hemmed in an exalted isolation. 
 “ What’s your name ? ” said the butler of Bryanston 
 to a fair visitant, who had made the journey from 
 London, and had driven up to Lord Portman’s in a 
 brougham hired at the village hotel — the Crown. 
 “ C,” said she ; “and can I speak to Lord Portman ? ” 
 Back came Robert after an interval with, “ My lord 
 says you must put in writing what you want to see 
 ’im about.” This was done, and Robert returned 
 once more with a note referring “ C ” to Mr. Hunt, 
 Mr. Moore, and “my son.” “ Can I wait and speak 
 to Miss Portman ? ” asked C. “ My lord don’t like 
 people a-waiting about his ’ouse,” remarked Robert, 
 as C said, as if he had had the cue to be rude from 
 his master. No refreshments ! not even sherry and a 
 biscuit; the offhandedness of a menial to the dis- 
 tressed tenant who had travelled, like another Jeanie 
 Deans, so many miles to power for succour! “Will 
 you call my carriage? ” said C, moved to indignation 
 
THE PORTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY 49 
 
 at so cavalier a treatment. This Robert did, and as 
 he held open the brougham door, so that he might 
 discount his official civility, he observed familiarly — it 
 was a breezy day — “This wind don’t suit my ’ead.” 
 The wind and Robert’s “ ’ead 33 are mingled in C’s 
 memory with many a bitter reflection. Look at this 
 incident as we will, it is significant of the absence of 
 that suaviter in modo among the Portmans to which 
 I have already drawn attention. 
 
 His lordship was born ten years after the grant- 
 ing of the 99 years’ leases, one year before the century 
 opened in 1799, and is a living rebuttal of the quaint 
 theory that “ those whom the gods love die young.” 
 During ten years he represented Dorset in Parliament, 
 and Marylebone may proudly remember that for three 
 months of 1833 the first Lord Portman sat for it in 
 the House of Commons, and that its legislative in- 
 terests were, for one quarter at least, watched with 
 tenderest solicitude by one who understood them. 
 When the Viscount dies, he will, in all human proba- 
 bility, be succeeded by his eldest son, the Hon. 
 William Berkeley Portman, who was born in London 
 in 1829. This gentleman married, in 1855, the 
 only daughter of William Charles Viscount Milton 
 (deceased), and granddaughter of the third Earl Fitz- 
 William (she was born posthumous 1836). He was 
 educated at Eton and at Merton College, Oxford. In 
 1854 he was appointed Colonel of the West Somerset 
 Yeomanry Cavalry, in 1850 Deputy Lieutenant of 
 Somerset, and in 1852 of Dorset. From July, 1852, to 
 March, 1857, he was M.P. for Shaftesbury, and for 
 
 D 
 
50 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 Dorset from 1857 to 1885. He is Chairman of 
 Dorset Quarter Sessions. 
 
 In connection with the advocacy of the direct 
 popular veto by Mr. Edwin Berkeley Portman 
 (Viscount Portman’s second son), it is instructive 
 to consider the procedure adapted towards licensed 
 victuallers on his father’s estate. As usual, they 
 have had to pay a heavy fine, to lay a great deal 
 out on building, to submit to a vastly enhanced 
 rent; but the agent, before he would listen to 
 anything regarding an extension of lease, has re- 
 quired the applicant to produce all his trade books, 
 to assist him, as the agent said, in fixing the terms of 
 a renewal. Of course there are many persons whose 
 opinions on the drink question will,' in part, render 
 them indifferent in a case like this. But, after all, 
 the publican is a tradesman, and should not be liable, 
 unless the State commanded it, to inquisitorial inquiry 
 into his private concerns. Such an inquiry has too 
 selfish an object, palpably, in view to be justified on 
 any public grounds. On this principle, any landlord, 
 where a monopoly gave him the power, and the law 
 backed him up, might investigate the amount of his 
 tenant’s income, and then fix his demands at the 
 highest point the tenant could possibly pay. This 
 sort of thing, on a large enough scale, would put 
 an end to enterprise and all business energy. 
 It is clear, finally, I imagine, that our whole system 
 of land tenure in towns needs revision. 
 
 It may be asked how these cruel premiums, ex- 
 actions, and rack rents affect the worldly prosperity 
 
THE PORTMAN ESTATE AND POLICY 51 
 
 of the dwellers on the Portman estate. I have already 
 alluded to the migration from East Street. A trades- 
 man, who has long carried on business in Baker Street, 
 informed me that, after the heayy fine levied on him 
 by the estate, and withdrawn from his working 
 capital, he has had to face the fact that sixteen of 
 what he called his “ good-old-fashioned-customers ” 
 have been driven off the estate out of Gloucester 
 Place by the policy which commends itself to Mr. 
 Hunt. Tradesmen aver that it is with declining 
 revenues that they have had to face the fierce finan- 
 cial cyclone which burst upon Baker Street and 
 the surrounding thoroughfares during the month of 
 March just past. I was told a pathetic story of how 
 the Portman extortions make it impossible to conduct 
 business except at a loss, and the victims endure 
 and persist in their callings only because of that hope 
 for better days which, happily, though it is often vain, 
 cheers, like the sun-ray flashing between dark storm- 
 clouds, the most melancholy, cast down, and dismayed 
 of mortals. One shopkeeper, whose name was given 
 me, has despaired of earning more money in Baker 
 Street. He has resolved, while a little capital is still 
 his, to shake the dust off his feet and depart, trusting 
 that he may be able to support his remaining days 
 upon the money he has been able to save from the 
 wreck of his fortunes. But the others, for the most 
 part, hang on. It has been hard to leave the old 
 haunts, and the goodwill acquired at so much cost. 
 But they maintain that the Portman policy spells 
 “Ruin,” that a once prosperous trading community 
 
 D 2 
 
52 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 is in a condition not dissimilar from that of the least 
 fortunate of English farmers. Customers look closer 
 at prices than formerly, they expect deductions from 
 the tradesmen ; customers are fewer than formerly, 
 and with all this the hand of the Yiscount is heavier 
 than formerly. This is not happening in Poland, but 
 in the capital of a great free country. A bad system 
 and hard, injudicious men have filled with gloom and 
 foreboding hundreds of London homes. Surely this 
 is not good for the State ? Surely this system ought 
 not to be perpetuated ? Surely a remedy is to be 
 found ? The first object of the existence of an 
 English community should not be the filling of the 
 porte-monnaie even of Portmans, 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY. 
 
 In the ranks of English dukes there is one whose 
 name stands prominently and pre-eminently associated 
 in the English mind with wealth in London land. 
 What Michael Angelo is among artists, Napoleon 
 among generals, Nelson among admirals, such is Hugh 
 Lupus Grosvenor, K.G., P.C., Duke of Westminster, 
 among the noble ground landlords of our metropolis. 
 He is, however, by far too great a luminary to be ap- 
 proached directly by the major part of the race of 
 men. It is the great man ; s great man who is the more 
 immediately important person for tenants on the Lon- 
 don Grosvenor estates to consider, as it is with him 
 that they are brought most nearly into contact. His 
 Grace may be at Cannes, or at Eaton Hall, but Mr. 
 Henry Trelawny Boodle is always on the spot, ready 
 to clinch a good bargain for his ducal employer. And 
 on the Westminster estate they stand in awe of 
 Mr. Boodle. It was with no small surprise that 
 I noted the panic dread displayed by a British 
 trading community lest they should offend Mr. Boodle. 
 They seemed horribly afraid that, if the Duke's 
 
54 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 solicitor could identify any story of alleged extortion 
 appearing in the Press with one of them, that man 
 would have reason to feel very uncomfortable. Said 
 an independent observer to me in the course of my 
 inquiry, u If only half-a-dozen of them would stand 
 up like men, the rest, though cowards, might rally 
 to them.” But it is useless to ask for an urban 
 Hampden on the Grosvenor estate of to-day. 
 
 Before we proceed further, let us, as we did with 
 the Portman estate, walk round the territory of the 
 Duke of Westminster. If my map is not elaborate 
 enough in detail for the reader, let him take a Post 
 Office map. For the Upper Grosvenor estate our 
 promenade will be as follows : We shall begin at the 
 Marble Arch, on the south side of Oxford Street, and 
 we may, if we do not mind the vehicular traffic, go in 
 the centre of Oxford Street, almost to South Molton 
 Street, to Davies Street. Then we shall proceed be- 
 hind Davies Street, down South Molton Street. We 
 now turn westwards, so as to include the north side 
 of Berkeley Square and Thomas’s Hotel, and, giving 
 one curious glance at the architectural beauties of 
 Mount Street, we shall try to go westward, and then 
 south-westward, to Dorchester House, the residence of 
 Mr. Holford, of a little bit of whose garden the Duke 
 of Westminster is ground landlord. Then we get 
 back to the Marble Arch as best we can by the middle 
 of Park Lane. Thus we have made the tour of the 
 Grosvenor Square part of this mighty property. 
 
 We will now turn our attention to the Lower 
 Grosvenor estate, the Belgravia portion of it. We take 
 
THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY To 
 
 cz- 
 
 our start from St. George’s Hospital, for of the southern 
 portion of that noble institution His Grace is ground 
 landlord. We proceed down the middle of Grosvenor 
 Place, and, when at the bottom, we bend a little to the 
 eastward along Lower Grosvenor Place till we arrive 
 at the Buckingham Palace Road. Here we move round 
 a tongue of land which juts out eastward almost to 
 Palace Street, where there is a chapel, and now we follow 
 the western side of Yauxhall Bridge Road and Tach- 
 brook Street, nearly in a straight line to the River 
 Thames. We have a pleasant walk along the river to 
 the Grosvenor Canal. Afterwards we turn north behind 
 new lodging-houses facing the Chelsea Road. We 
 wander to Commercial Road behind the barracks, 
 but we must leave out Sloane Square, though we 
 may include Westbourne Place. We leave Cadogan 
 Place and Lowndes Square on the west, as neither 
 of these is contained within the territories of the 
 Duke of Westminster. Then we embrace Wilton 
 Crescent and Belgrave Square in our perambulations, 
 thus reaching once more the Knightsbridge Road. 
 Let us bear in mind, to be perfectly accurate, that 
 the Knightsbridge Road frontage does not own the 
 sway of Mr. Boodle. There is yet another property 
 of our Duke, around which, if my readers will bear 
 with me for just a few lines more of topographical 
 detail, I may as well lead them. This is what 
 is known as the Millbank estate, and is near the 
 Houses of Parliament. It is a still older property 
 than the others, and here was Peterborough House, 
 the ancient town home of the Mordaunts, Earls of 
 
56 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 Peterborough, before it passed to the Grosvenors. 
 We start here at Lambeth Bridge, and walk along 
 the Horseferry Road nearly to Regent Place, then 
 west to Vincent Street and the Penitentiary, the 
 wall of which we skirt to get back to the river. 
 It will thus be seen that the Millbank estate, as 
 shown upon our map, has a tolerably regular oblong 
 shape. 
 
 The main interest as regards the Duke of West- 
 minster's London estate of to-day centres about 
 Mount Street. Mount Street lies south of Grosvenor 
 Square, and runs from the northern extremity of 
 Berkeley Square westwards to Park Street. When 
 Mr. Boodle was asked before the Select Committee 
 on Town Holdings : “ Can you give instances within 
 your recollection where the Duke of Westminster 
 and his father have caused rebuilding?” he answered : 
 “ They have caused a great deal of rebuilding to 
 take place in my recollection ; for instance, Grosvenor 
 Gardens, Hereford Gardens, half of Grosvenor Place, 
 part of Grosvenor Crescent, nearly the whole of the 
 Oxford Street frontage of the estate, besides the 
 houses now being built in Mount Street and in Duke 
 Street, and isolated houses and rebuilding.” And, 
 frankly, as far as I have been able to ascertain, 
 one of the main complaints against the Duke of 
 Westminster is the manner in which he has 
 effected cc a great deal of rebuilding." His aim, 
 according to Mr. Boodle, is to have wide thorough- 
 fares instead of narrow, to put back the houses in 
 rebuilding, so as to obtain broad areas and a good 
 
TEE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 57 
 
 basement for the servants. Most of the old London 
 houses, Mr. Boodle stated, have very bad servants* 
 offices, and very narrow areas, so that the gas has 
 to be kept alight pretty well all day. His Grace of 
 Westminster, however, wishes to have effective archi- 
 tecture, to insist upon good sanitary arrangements 
 in houses, to promote churches, chapels, and schools, 
 and open spaces for recreation, and so forth. This is 
 altogether fair-sounding, in fact, too fair-sounding to 
 be taken without a grain of salt. If the architectural 
 good things were all done at the Duke's expense, 
 if all the changes to be wrought had been under- 
 taken with all the consideration due to long 
 tenancy and careful regard for good-wills earned, 
 I might have had some doubt whether it was 
 advisable to touch on the subject of the Grosvenor 
 estate. But, unfortunately, this is not the case, 
 and in order to bring home to my readers the 
 exact state of things, I must ask them to walk out 
 from the north-west corner of Berkeley Square, and, 
 keeping Davies Street on the right flank, to look 
 round. 
 
 There is a couplet, which has done service 
 frequently as an exemplification of the bull proper — 
 
 If you had seen these roads before they were made, 
 
 You would hold up your hands and bless General Wade. 
 
 This is just the feeling with which we may 
 suppose Mr. Boodle contemplates his Duke*s activities 
 when he gazes on them westwards from the lower 
 end of Davies Street. On the immediate right, 
 the north-eastern end of Mount Street, there is a 
 
58 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 ghastly gap where houses have come down and 
 the builder has not yet had time to replace them. 
 On the left, the southern side, stretches for a con- 
 siderable distance a massive pile of dwellings, 
 rich in all the ornament which the artistic skill of 
 Messrs. Doulton can command. The ground floors 
 are handsome shops, and above rise five or six 
 storeys of such height and general dimensions that 
 one immediately comes to the correct conclusion 
 that they are not adapted to be abodes for the 
 tradesmen who carry on business below, but must 
 be meant for letting in residential flats. This side 
 of the street now presents a very fine appearance, 
 and there can be no question that when the archi- 
 tectural schemes have been carried out to com- 
 pletion, Mount Street will be one of the most strik- 
 ing thoroughfares in the metropolis. “Very noble 
 and public-spirited of the Duke,” it may be observed. 
 Just so, but then these grand edifices were not 
 raised at his cost, but by the present tenants out 
 of their hard-earned savings, on the commercial 
 credit they possess, and on pain of having to wander 
 forth. They constructed this massive pile no more 
 willingly than the children of Israel, some thousands 
 of years ago, expended their energies in deference 
 to the task-masters of Pharaoh. 
 
 Each of these new houses cost, on an average, 
 seven thousand pounds to build, and, in certain 
 instances, the occupier has found his outlay run 
 up to nine thousand pounds, and has had no choice 
 in the matter. He has been obliged to follow the 
 
TEE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 59 
 
 Duke’s plans, and his liberty has been further 
 fettered in that he has had to accept the Duke’s 
 architects. A list of them has been given him, 
 and from this list he has been obliged to choose. 
 If he consents to build in this way he is granted 
 a lease, the ground rent varying from £3 to £6 a 
 foot, and as much as £6 10s. a foot has been asked. 
 As a leading tradesman observed to me, the outlay 
 demanded of the tenant is so great as to seriously 
 handicap him in his business ; and he asked me 
 if there was any relation in reason between the 
 lofty structure above the shop and the place of 
 business below. Architecturally one supported the 
 weight of the other ; but financially the burden was 
 much too great. Of course, where the tenant may be 
 lucky enough to let the superimposed flats at a good 
 rent, he may survive the ordeal through which he has 
 been forced to pass ; but this is a speculative matter, 
 and we may venture to inquire what moral right the 
 Duke of Westminster has to compel old tenants of 
 fifty years’ standing to go to an enormous expense, at 
 grave risk to themselves, to launch out in such an 
 experiment. Then, be it borne in mind, that, after 
 paying a large ground rent, and spending £7,000 to 
 £9,000 on the house, the premises will go to the de- 
 scendants of the Duke, without one pennyworth of 
 compensation to the descendants of the man who 
 staked his capital and ventured his credit that they 
 might stand a monument to the Duke’s taste in archi- 
 tecture. Yet tradesmen accept these terms, because 
 they do not wish to leave the neighbourhood where 
 
60 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 they have formed a connection, and where they have 
 acquired a good-will. They admit, some of them, that 
 they are seriously dissatisfied ; but every one has the 
 fear of the Duke and the Duke’s dependents so much 
 before his eyes that there is the greatest difficulty in 
 getting them to speak out. “ I was dissatisfied,” said 
 one bourgeois complacently to me, “but I’ve got what 
 I want now.” “And what may the terms be?” 
 I inquired. “ Oh, I shan ; t say ; better than some of 
 the others, and I don’t want to make them dissatis- 
 fied.” Then, smoothing his knee, he observed confi- 
 dentially : “ It isn’t every one that can stand up 
 against the Duke of Westminster. You must hold a 
 candle to the devil, as the saying is.” As this seemed 
 an intimation that a candle would certainly not 
 be held to me by this gentleman, but that I should 
 be left as far as possible in the dark, I took my 
 leave. 
 
 It might be expected that, as the terms of the 
 ground landlord are so sufficiently onerous as regards 
 building and ground rent, there would be no hard 
 covenants to hamper a man in the conduct of his 
 business. Butchers in Mount Street, however, will be 
 in future under a disability which, in the eyes of their 
 trade, may seem a serious one. They have been com- 
 pelled in their leases to sign away the right to hang 
 carcases outside their shop-windows on a rail. The 
 current of air thus obtained does the meat no harm, 
 and in the morning, when the butcher is busy, it gives 
 him more room inside to move about and attend to his 
 customers. He and his confreres have a profound 
 
THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 61 
 
 faith in the trade benefits to be derived from what is 
 known as a good display, and they argue that any 
 stipulation which prevents them from giving full 
 advertisement to their business in the old-fashioned 
 style inflicts on them injury and loss. The powers 
 that be do not see the thing in this light, and frown 
 sternly upon the very suggestion to bring “ a slovenly, 
 unhandsome corpse between the wind and their no- 
 bility. ” A butcher remarked feelingly on this sub- 
 ject : “A row of clean, white carcases^ is rather a 
 taking and pretty object/* and Mount Street would, 
 perhaps, have been none the worse if the monotony of 
 its southern fagade had been broken by the raw mate- 
 rial of the roast beef of Old England swaying in the 
 breeze. 
 
 It is very generally observed on the Grosvenor 
 estate that the actual tenants do not receive that con- 
 sideration which is their due. Speculative builders 
 appear to be preferred on the estate before the private 
 occupiers, and the interests of holders of leases are not 
 fairly considered — which, indeed, would seem to be 
 clearly evidenced by what we have already said about 
 Mount Street. If a tenant does not care to renew his 
 lease on the Duke's terms, his premises will be let out 
 to a stranger over his head for five years on nominal 
 terms. What is worse, also, it is impossible for 
 tenants to find out, right up to the end of their lease, 
 whether they can renew or not. This is a grave 
 regardlessness of the convenience and interests of 
 others, and slight consideration will show how hard 
 in its effects and injurious such conduct must be. I 
 
62 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORES OF LONDON 
 
 now give an example which will make this still 
 clearer. 
 
 A large business firm — Messrs. A— had premises 
 in Mount Street. Their connection with that locality 
 began in 1830, fifty-eight years ago. They had 
 added to their buildings houses on leases of varying 
 length; but these were eventually so assimilated 
 that all the leases came out at the same time — 
 namely, Lady Day, 1886. On March 14th, 1881, they 
 entered into their first communication with the Gros- 
 venor Estate Office with regard to their position as 
 tenants on the estate, and, as this had merely to do 
 with the terms under which renewal would be granted 
 to equalise all the leases, there was small difficulty 
 about it. In July, 1884, however- — that is to say, 
 a year and three-quarters from the expiry of their 
 leases— they called at the Estate Office regarding a 
 site for rebuilding, and they thought that it was 
 quite time that they should know what they were 
 to do on Lady Day, 1886. In case they failed with 
 the Duke’s agent, they had their eyes on a good site 
 which they could secure on advantageous terms. 
 When Mr. Boodle learned this latter fact, his manner 
 towards Messrs. A- changed, and they inferred from 
 this that they would soon have the conditions on 
 which they could build. So they let slip the golden 
 opportunity which presented itself elsewhere, and 
 waited patiently for Mr. Boodle’s announcement. 
 On the 20th December, 1884, they secured the 
 services of an architect, and sent him a letter of 
 instructions. That gentleman put himself into com- 
 
THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 63 
 
 munication with Mr. Boodle, with the result that on 
 the 24th March, 1885, he received a letter from 
 Messrs. Boodle and Co., in which they stated that 
 ~ Messrs. A's application had been noted, and would 
 be considered at the proper time. (Could there be a 
 procrastination more cruel and selfish than this ?) 
 This was within twelve months of the expiration of 
 the leases. The construction Messrs. A put upon the 
 words “proper time/' despite their past experience, 
 was this — a fair and reasonable time before the 
 expiration of their leases, so that, if they could not 
 come to terms, they should have a reasonable time to 
 remove their stock and get into other premises ; and 
 they rested upon that promise, and continued resting 
 on it more or less uneasily. On the 18th December, 
 1885, they received a letter from the architect before 
 mentioned, stating that he had been unable to get 
 any appointment, on their behalf, to see Mr. Boodle. 
 This was now about three months from the expiry of 
 their lease, and the state of affairs looked very serious 
 for Messrs. A. However, on the 1st January, 1886, 
 they did hear from Mr. Boodle, but not as they 
 expected, with reference to a site for rebuilding. He 
 offered to renew the leases of the houses in Mount 
 Street for 7J years from Lady Day, 1886, Messrs. 
 A to pay the* same rental as before, namely, £210 
 per annum, and a premium of £1,215. They could 
 not see their way e to accepting this, and now they 
 had but three months before they must turn out. 
 Fortunately for themselves, indeed it was great good 
 luck, they found other premises. Still, the time given 
 
64 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 was so very short that, with the heavy stock they 
 held, and this a breakable one, too, they could not 
 move out in time. They therefore instructed their 
 solicitor to call at the Grosvenor Estate Office and ask 
 that they might be allowed to stay on another three 
 months. They knew that the house was not wanted, 
 and that the new tenants were not coming in before 
 June 24th. They naturally enough thought that they 
 would be permitted to stay. The answer was 
 peremptorily in the negative. Nevertheless, one of 
 the partners in Messrs. A’s firm wrote personally to 
 the Duke of Westminster, then in the south of 
 France, and going, as he put it, over the agent’s head. 
 The Duke intervened, did give the extra quarter’s 
 grace, but, like a thrifty Croesus, demanded a double 
 rental for the three months' extra extension given. 
 Messrs. A, on March 16th, wrote to the Duke acknow- 
 ledging his kindness, and on April 15th they received a 
 note from Mr. Glennie, the Duke’s collector, demand- 
 ing the last quarter’s rent, payable in advance. 
 Any one who reads this story carefully must arrive at 
 the conclusion that Messrs. A were treated with very 
 scant consideration and courtesy indeed. One result 
 of the short notice vouchsafed to them was this — that 
 there was one department of their business which 
 they were obliged to give up. They were thus left 
 here with £3,000 worth of stock, for which they could 
 not get £500. But, had they been allowed proper and 
 fair notice, they might, by judicious and fair adver- 
 tising, have got their capital back, even though they 
 had seen no profit. When a Duke of Westminster 
 
THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 65 
 
 and his agent exercise so much power as they do 
 over citizens of a free country, it would be well 
 that they should yield some slight deference to the 
 demands of equity and generosity. If I do not now 
 go into the Armbrecht ease, which runs on somewhat 
 similar lines, it is because it was sufficiently ventilated 
 in the London Press last year. 
 
 This autocratic kind of proceeding is by no means 
 new ; and when the Duke of Westminster was 
 making his alterations in the neighbourhood of 
 Victoria Station, he appears to have shifted streets 
 about in all directions at his own good will and 
 pleasure. A magistrate is said once to have asked, 
 in a vague sort of way : “ Where is the Act of 
 
 Parliament under which the Duke of Westminster 
 is proceeding in Grosvenor Place ? ” but the Duke 
 disturbed, and beautified, and modified public rights 
 of way as if he was monarch of all he surveyed. 
 The Vestries of St. George's, Hanover Square, and 
 St. John's, Westminster, exist only to register his 
 decrees and those of his agent, so that no voice of 
 remonstrance is likely to be heard from them. 
 Indeed, they all work harmoniously together, as 
 the following story will show : When the Duke 
 
 was busy about Grosvenor Place, he found that, to 
 suit his architectural ambitions, the basements of the 
 houses must be sunk lower than of old, and that 
 this would necessitate a new sewer 2,000 feet in 
 length. He thought the Vestry should meet the 
 expense, which was some £2,000. However, for a 
 wonder, a sound of remonstrance was heard. A com- 
 
 \ 
 
 E 
 
66 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 promise was tlie result, and of the £2,000 for the sewer 
 pipes, rendered necessary by the Duke's operations, the 
 Yestry paid one half and the Duke the other. For 
 all this complacency the Yestry have rarely got any- 
 thing out of the Duke. “ The only generous thing he 
 ever did for them," said an influential resident in the 
 neighbourhood under consideration, a was to give to 
 the Yestry an utterly useless piece of ground by 
 Ebury Bridge, to be used as a mortuary," and then 
 this gentleman, taking up a Times of January 14th, 
 1888, pointed out, and asked me to read, the follow- 
 ing advertisements, which appear twice cn the front 
 page of the leading journal of that date : 
 
 OTICE. — Notice is hereby given That on the third day of April 
 next APPLICATION will be made to Her Majesty’s Justices 
 of the Peace assembled at the Quarter Sessions of the Peace in and 
 for the County of Middlesex at the Sessions House Clerkenwell in 
 the said County for an ORDER for the STOPPING UP of a 
 PORTION of a certain PUBLIC HIGHWAY called Little Brown 
 Street in the Parish of Saint George Hanover Square in the said 
 County of Middlesex as unnecessary as indicated in a Plan marked 
 B and therein coloured red and deposited with the Clerk of the 
 Peace as hereinafter mentioned and that the Certificate of two 
 Justices having viewed the same and proof given to their satisfaction 
 of the several notices required by the Statute having been published 
 with the said Plan marked B will be lodged with the said Clerk of 
 the Peace for the said County on the twenty -fourth day of February 
 next. 
 
 Dated this twelfth day of January in the year of our Lord One 
 thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight. 
 
 The Seal of the Vestry of 
 the Parish of Saint George 
 Hanover Square in the 
 County of Middlesex af- 
 fixed by Order of the 
 Vestry as Surveyors of 
 Highways for the said 
 Parish. 
 
 J. H. SMITH, Vestry Clerk. 
 
THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 67 
 
 TVT OTICE. — Notice is hereby given That on the third day of April 
 ll next APPLICATION will be made to Her Majesty’s Justices 
 of the Peace assembled at the Quarter Sessions of the Peace in and 
 for the County of Middlesex at the Sessions House Clerkenwell in 
 the said County for an ORDER for the STOPPING UP of a 
 - PORTION of a certain PUBLIC HIGHWAY called Balderton 
 Street in the Parish of Saint George Hanover Square in the said 
 County of Middlesex as unnecessary as indicated in a Plan marked 
 C and therein coloured Brown and deposited with the Clerk of the 
 Peace as hereinafter mentioned and that the Certificate of Two 
 Justices having viewed the same and proof given to their satisfac- 
 tion of the several notices required by the Statute having been pub- 
 lished with the said Plan marked C showing the old and new high- 
 way will be lodged with the said Clerk of the Peace for the said 
 County on the twenty-fourth day of February next. 
 
 Dated this twelfth day of January in the year of our Lord One 
 thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight. 
 
 The Seal of the Yestry of 
 the Parish of Saint George 
 Hanover Square in the 
 County of. Middlesex af- 
 fixed by Order of the 
 Yestry as Surveyors of 
 Highways for the said 
 Parish. 
 
 J. H. SMITH, Yestry Clerk. 
 
 “That is to enable the Duke of Westminster to 
 appropriate those two streets as building ground/' 
 said the gentleman just quoted, and he did not hesi- 
 tate to stigmatise the whole thing as a job, wherein 
 the vestrymen showed themselves the very obedient 
 servants of His Grace. In rearranging his London 
 territories, the Duke annexes streets consecrated be- 
 long usage to the service of the public without saying 
 by your leave or for your leave to anybody. To this 
 sort of thing, as we see, subservient vestries lend 
 themselves. 
 
 If Viscount Portman compels his tenants to 
 
 e 2 
 
68 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 pay exorbitant premiums, and to undertake heavy 
 modernising improvements before he will renew, 
 we see that the hand of his brother potentate of 
 Westminster is not much less heavy. The tenants 
 on the Westminster Estate have to lay out larger sums 
 on extravagant rebuilding. I like fine streets as much 
 as any one, but I object to see numbers of Englishmen 
 forced to tax their capital so heavily and perilously 
 merely to suit the dictatorial architectural caprices of 
 a millionaire Duke. When a man has been fifty years 
 in a neighbourhood and has obtained there all the 
 consideration and good-will accruing to long and 
 respectable residence, he should not be liable to be 
 sent adrift, to start afresh in the world somewhere else, 
 at the mere nod of a landlord or his agent. Further, 
 I hold that a great noble should be courteous and 
 civil, and should enforce on his representatives and 
 agents the truth of the old saw — “ Manners makyth 
 man/” Letters should be answered, and that, too, 
 with politeness. His Grace should know his own 
 mind on the question of granting a building site to a 
 tenant before the latter’s lease is within three months 
 of expiry. Otherwise, a sense of injustice suffered 
 and of tyranny endured will grow up in the colu- 
 mn unity. I can imagine the intelligent child of the 
 future being taken to Mount Street and there asking 
 these questions and obtaining the answers affixed : — 
 “ Who caused these houses to be built ? ” “ The 
 
 Duke of Westminster.” “ Who paid for the building 
 of these houses?” “ The Duke of Westminster’s 
 tenants.” “ Then they belong to the Duke of West- 
 
THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 69 
 
 minster*s tenants* children?** “No; to the Duke of 
 Westminsters children.** “Was the Duke of West- 
 minster very kind to the tenants ? ** “ He made 
 
 Them beautify his building land out of their own 
 pockets, and took credit for that ; charged them a 
 heavy ground rent, and at the end of ninety years 
 they were to submit to reversion of the property to 
 his descendants.** If further inquiry was made as 
 to his urbanity and courtesy, we know what answer 
 might be given. As to his liberality, it would be 
 declared that he once gave a piece of land, perfectly 
 useless to himself, as a mortuary to the parish of St. 
 John*s. With regard to the Duke*s life in other 
 respects, the child of the future might listen to some- 
 thing similar to the biography I supply in brief outline 
 here. 
 
 Hugh Lupus G-rosvenor, K.G., P.C., of Eaton 
 Square, Cheshire, first Duke of Westminster, was 
 born in 1825, and succeeded his father in 1869. The 
 first peer of his family was Sir Richard Grosvenor, who 
 was so rewarded by Pitt for his electioneering services. 
 Sir Richard was raised to the peerage under the title 
 of Baron Grosvenor, and subsequently of Viscount 
 Belgrave and Earl Grosvenor. The present Duke of 
 Westminster was M.P. for Chester from 1847 to 1869,* 
 and, as Earl Grosvenor, obtained considerable notoriety 
 from the part he played in the formation of the Cave 
 of Adullam. He was a Volunteer aide-de-camp to the 
 Queen in 1881, and was Master of the Horse from May 
 1880, to June, 1885. He is said to be descended from 
 Gilbert le Grosvenor, one of the companions of William 
 
70 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 the Conqueror in his invasion of England. A large 
 part of the Grosvenor property has come from fortunate 
 marriages. Davies Street, which we have mentioned 
 before, takes its name from the heiress who brought this 
 Cheshire house most of their London property. In the 
 “ Annals of Westminster/' by the Rev. M. Walcott, 
 I find it stated that on July 2nd, 1665, Alexander 
 Davies, of Ebury, County Middlesex, was buried in 
 the yard to the north of St. Margaret’s Church ; and 
 he further remarks that it was through this Alexander 
 Davies’s daughter, Mary, all his extensive property 
 round London devolved upon his grandson, Sir Robert 
 Grosvenor, who lived "at Peterborough House, Mill- 
 bank, purchased from the famous captor of Barcelona 
 by the Grosvenors. The present heir to the title and 
 colossal wealth of the Duke of Westminster is a boy 
 of nine, Hugh Richard Grosvenor, Viscount Belgrave, 
 who was born at Saighton Towers, Chester, in 1879. 
 This young gentleman is manifestly too young to have 
 any part in the sins of his forbears. Perhaps he will live 
 to see the ninety years 5 leases fall in, or, better still, 
 enfranchised. In any case, great power for good or 
 ill as regards an important portion of London will 
 rest in his hands. Let us hope he will use it, when 
 the time comes, generously and wisely. Is it too 
 much to wish that he may at once begin to play the 
 part of “ Little Lord Eauntleroy ” to his 'grandpapa's 
 “ Earl of Dorincourt ” ? 
 
 In looking back over what I have seen on the 
 Grosvenor estate, I do not hesitate to affirm that 
 the advantage taken by the ground landlord of the 
 
THE WESTMINSTER ESTATE AND POLICY 71 
 
 fact that the hiw empowers him to confiscate the 
 good-will of a tenant long resident in a neighbour- 
 hood is outrageous, A tailor doing business in Mount 
 Street for fifty years is not supposed to be able to 
 bear his share of the expenses of the Duke’s archi- 
 tectural mania, and Mr, Boodle contemplated cutting 
 him adrift with equanimity. A large firm in Park 
 Street objected to the extravagant premium and 
 vastly enhanced rent of their premises demanded from 
 them. “li you donT take them,” said Mr. Boodle, 
 “ so-and-so will.” So-and-so was a stranger to the 
 estate, and as a member of the firm, a dear old gentle- 
 man, said smilingly to me : “ When he put it in this 
 way, we gave in.” The most high and mighty Duke 
 did not scruple to use to the full the lever his ability 
 to separate a man from his good-will gave him. Thus 
 he can seize old streets and appropriate them to him- 
 self) or get a subservient vestry to do it for him. He 
 makes the tenants impoverish themselves to build too 
 costly structures, because he has them by the throat, 
 and can kick them out of their livelihood, if they do 
 not erect enormous piles, for his grandsons to annex 
 one day altogether. ‘ Actually, too, Mr. Boodle quotes 
 this sort of thing to the Town Holdings Committee, as 
 showing how superior the Duke’s streets on the lease- 
 hold system are to Bond Street, where there are a 
 number of separate freeholds. I make bold to ask 
 any one to walk down Park Street and Bond Street, 
 and see if the latter is not the finer street. As for 
 the new avenues built by the Duke at other people’s 
 expense, forced by a cruel, mercilessly exploited 
 
72 
 
 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 terror, which tells them they must do it or starve— 
 well, I prefer the more modest, but still handsome 
 thoroughfares where free men dwell. Admiration 
 of the great architectural remains of Oriental monarch s 
 of the past is tempered by the reflection that those 
 huge piles of bricks and mortar represent not only 
 the pride of one, but the groans, the tears, the life- 
 long misery of millions. So it is with the Duke of 
 Westminsters achievements in street reconstruction. 
 And this is to be deplored — that the terrible anxiety 
 of the many, and their attachment to home, should 
 minister to the triumph of an autocratic whim. 
 Pharaoh and his prerogatives are an anachronism in 
 modern London. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BEDEORD ESTATE AND POLICY. 
 
 Among great Whig Houses, that of Russell holds a 
 proud position. In these latter days its headship has 
 fallen into the hands of Francis Charles Hastings 
 Russell, ninth Duke of Bedford, K.G. Yague notions 
 exist in the public mind as to the extent of this 
 noble’s London property, probably induced in great 
 measure by the frequency with which his name has 
 appeared in the columns of the Press, a target for 
 a good deal of censure, not altogether undeserved, 
 as my readers will presently see. Possibly, also, the 
 reiteration of names associated with the family in 
 many a street and square has something to do with it. 
 However that may be, as a matter of fact the whole 
 estate in the three parishes of St. Pancras, Bloomsbury ? 
 and Covent Garden covers 118^ acres. Of these, 100J 
 acres are in Bloomsbury and St. Pancras, leaving 18 J 
 acres for the Covent Garden portion of the property. 
 Mr. John Robert Bourne told the Select Committee 
 of the House of Commons on Town Holdings, with a 
 certain complacency at what he evidently thought 
 was the magnanimity of the ducal house of Russell, 
 
74 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 whose steward he is, that, out of the 118 ^ acres, 
 one-fifth of the whole was devoted to pleasure- 
 gardens, altogether exclusive of roadways and street- 
 ways, and so on, which were “ unusually wide and 
 handsome, as is very well known.” Further, Mr. 
 Bourne is pleased to think that there are few poor 
 on His Grace of Bedford’s estate. As he informed 
 the Select Committee that “ a working-class popula- 
 tion necessarily creates decadence and decay/’ it is 
 fortunate, from his point of view, that the Bedford 
 Estate has been so laid out as to exclude the people 
 from its borders. Mr. Bourne admitted, indeed, that 
 this sad consequence need not result from working 
 people living in houses if they were under the 
 benevolent care of a ground landlord, of the free- 
 holder, or of the owner of a house, or whoever it 
 might be. We shall learn all about “ the benevolent 
 care ” presently ; but beforehand we take our 
 accustomed walk round. Mr. Bourne remarked to 
 me when first I had the pleasure of making his 
 acquaintance, that he showed the Select Committee 
 a map of London with the Bedford estates marked in 
 colour, and that the members of the Committee were 
 really quite astonished to find what three very small 
 “ splashes ” the Duke's estate made in the whole 
 metropolitan area. 
 
 First, let us take “ splash ” number one. It lies 
 just north of Euston Station, midway between Pancras 
 Road and Regent's Park. The eastern boundary takes 
 us up to Hampstead Road, from Robert Street to 
 Crowndale Road, along which thoroughfare we go east 
 
THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 75 
 
 till w© come to Oakley Square, when, turning at right 
 angles and towards the Euston Road, we arrive at 
 Johnson Street, by which we proceed west to Seymour 
 Street. We walk down Seymour Street till Euston’s 
 big railway buildings loom up on our right. Our course 
 now should be right across the station to Robert 
 Street again. Within our circuit we shall have in- 
 cluded the following streets and squares — Harrington 
 Square, Ampthill Square, and Oakley Square, Sey- 
 mour Street, and Warrington Street. This is the 
 Pancras portion of the estate. 
 
 Now for “ splash ” number two. As it will take 
 me some time to get through it, perhaps my readers 
 will be best pleased if I suspend the peregrinations, 
 and just mention the principal squares and thorough- 
 fares in the middle, or Bloomsbury part, of Bedfordia. 
 It is the region, as everybody knows, of University 
 College and of the British Museum. Besides there 
 are Tavistock Square, Gordon Square, Russell Square, 
 Torrington Square, Woburn Square, Bloomsbury 
 Square, Great Russell Street, Chenies Street, Woburn 
 Place, and part of Gower Street. Roughly speaking, 
 it stretches from Endsleigh Gardens on the north to 
 New Oxford Street on the south, and from Woburn 
 Place on the east to Tottenham Court Road on the 
 west. 
 
 “ Splash ” number three is the smallest, but still . 
 the most important of the lot, for it includes Covent 
 Garden, with its world-famous market, where Duke 
 Francis levies toll on the vegetables, flowers, and 
 fruit of all London in a style which would do credit to 
 
76 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 an old Rhine baron of the Dark Ages, and keeps his 
 ducal thumb well down on his serfs, whether the 
 fractious or the obedient. As everybody knows, or 
 should know, Covent Garden is not, in its external 
 form and condition, kept in precisely the way one 
 might expect, when it is remembered that noble 
 revenues are drawn from it by its autocrat. The 
 principal thoroughfares of the estate here, I may 
 now observe, are Bedford Street, Henrietta Street, 
 Russell Street, and Tavistock Street. With these 
 streets we shall not have much to do ; but it may be 
 noticed on passing that the family are addicted to 
 their domestic names, as though afraid they might 
 die. A vain fear, I take it. They will live as long as 
 the memory of Covent Garden savours, which will rank 
 hereafter with the record of the ancient charms of 
 the Fleet river. 
 
 On the Bedford estates the town houses are held 
 from the freeholder under building leases, or repairing 
 leases, or rack-rent leases, or on agreement, or by 
 parol. Overthe leases in the squares of Bloomsbury, Mr. 
 Bourne watches with a quite paternal solicitude. He 
 told me that actually once an American doctor applied 
 for a house in Bedford Square, and wanted to put up 
 a plate on the door with “ Aural Institution,” in big 
 letters upon it. Mr. Bourne observed to the American’s 
 solicitor that he should not object to M.D. on a plate, 
 but “ Aural Institution ” looked like a trade, and the 
 introduction of such a thing into their midst would 
 certainly shake the nerves of the residents in Bedford 
 Square. And really, it was quite curious, enough to 
 
THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 
 
 77 
 
 1 make one smile, for the solicitor admitted that he was 
 afraid it was a trade, and that the American wanted to 
 manufacture little things for people to put in their 
 ears. Of course, it was quite out of the question 
 letting such a person have a house in Bedford Square. 
 Bedford Square would have come down to the office to 
 resent such an outrage. But still there was Bloomsbury 
 Square, which, strangely — such things will happen, 
 as one knows — has fallen off in caste lately, having a 
 College of Preceptors, though they use no brass plate 
 with long letters. So the New Yorker was consigned 
 to Bloomsbury Square, and Bedford Square was saved. 
 Gordon Square, too, was once in the throes of anguish. 
 The inhabitants, some of them, complained that a house 
 there was being used as a boarding-house. It was 
 surmise, pure surmise. They had no proofs, and, 
 without these, the steward could not act, for he is far 
 too straight and magnanimous to employ detectives. 
 Then there was another square. The residents — 
 altogether it was quite amusing — thought Mr. Bourne 
 was going to move the bars and gates, and they 
 held a meeting and formed a committee to watch 
 his action. It is a wonder that the bars and gates 
 did not begin to chuckle and guffaw at so absurd a 
 proceeding. 
 
 But now for a change. Let me turn to the story 
 of the widow, to be followed by that of the fatherless 
 girl. We shall see how the Duke and his steward 
 looked upon these in their afflictions. It will be 
 more interesting than the little trials of Bloomsbury 
 respectabilities. 
 
78 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 In Mr. Bourne’s estimation the Dake of Bedford 
 is a sort of earthly Providence to London, and His 
 Grace’s steward is a sweet ministering angel. I 
 proceed to give my readers, in full and authentic 
 detail, a case in which these high powers will be seen 
 in congenial, cherubic, and chivalric play. A poor 
 widow recently lived in Long Acre. Her husband, 
 before he left her to mourn for him, had purchased 
 the good-will of a tobacconist’s business, with a lease 
 which had originally fourteen years to run. He spent 
 also a considerable sum of money on his premises 
 situate in the thoroughfare above-named. He died, 
 leaving his widow practically unprovided for. She 
 was, however, what our ancestors were in the habit 
 of calling a “ notable body”— that is to say, she 
 was thrifty of her earnings, obliging to others, and 
 attentive to her business. Thus she was enabled to 
 pay off a great many of her husband’s liabilities, and 
 to put things tolerably straight. Macaulay’s young 
 Virginia was no more bright and cheery on her 
 memorable course home from school, to end all so 
 sadly, than was our widow. The blow came suddenly 
 out of a sky from which the clouds had been swiftly 
 lifting. It was fifteen months before the widow’s 
 lease expired that, one fine morning, the Duke’s 
 agents called upon her to give up possession, repre- 
 senting to her that the house was dangerous, and that 
 they were going to pull down the adjoining building. 
 If her house was dangerous, matters would scarcely 
 seem likely to be improved by demolishing the 
 premises next door. Still, she was only a poor 
 
THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 
 
 79 
 
 widow, and so the agents of his great Grace Francis, 
 Duke of Bedford, jauntily proceeded to the work of 
 destruction. I can imagine the chirpy, chirruppy 
 laugh, which awaited news of the sorrow of a widow. 
 Down came the adjoining house all but the ground 
 floor. Then our gentlemen thought they would 
 remonstrate again with their gentle but perverse 
 antagonist. They told her that unless she removed, 
 the house would fall, and she would be buried among 
 the ruins. They thus frightened away her lodgers, 
 who had been with her eight years, and in other ways 
 molested her. For instance, they erected a massive 
 timber support in front of her house. This may 
 seem, to some people, a kindly, considerate act ; but 
 was eminently calculated to keep nervous passers- 
 by from becoming her customers. It, as certainly, 
 hindered- access to her shop. Fortunately, the story 
 of her treatment came to the ears of a gentleman of 
 means, who was also a foe to injustice. He speedily 
 found that Duke Francis’s agents had exceeded their 
 powers, and were liable in damages. So an action was 
 brought for damages sustained through loss of lodgers 
 and from diminution of trade. As we know, the former 
 had fled, and His Grace’s strut played havoc with 
 the takings. The action, however, was strenuously 
 defended by the Duke’s agents up to the very day of 
 trial, and then compromised by the Duke’s counsel 
 in court just before being called on for hearing ! 
 Read side by side with this, another fact is eminently 
 instructive. The Duke had not even obtained the 
 authority of the district surveyor for pulling down 
 
80 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 the adjoining house ! Those who swear by legality, 
 who appeal to it in and out of season, care little for 
 their idol, when it does not suit them. 
 
 The Duke would, doubtless, say of law what some 
 folk do of literature — that it is a good servant, but a 
 bad master. Let us suppose, however, that the poor 
 widow had been as helpless as the Duke’s agents 
 evidently thought her. What would have happened, 
 as sure as fate, is most distressing to contemplate. 
 The bustling little woman would have been robbed 
 of the fifteen months of her lease yet to run. Her 
 good-will, her livelihood would have been confiscated. 
 Helpless, forlorn, abandoned, she would have wan- 
 dered forth to swell the throng of the destitute and 
 the despairing in the least savoury of London quarters. 
 The weak would have gone to the wall. Had not a 
 widow’s importunity been backed by kind friends, it 
 would have lost the day, and a bitter wrong have been 
 perpetrated. But, then, my Lord Duke does not like 
 poor people on his estate. They deteriorate my Lord 
 Duke’s property. So, forsooth, they must be hunted 
 forth wherever found, with just about as much con- 
 sideration as is given by mankind to vermin. 
 
 If the Duke and his steward are indifferent to the 
 claims of the widow, neither can it be said that they 
 have much bowels of compassion for the fatherless, as 
 the following too true narrative will show. In Centre 
 Row, Covenfc Garden, during forty-three years, the 
 Slaymaker family carried on business as fruiterers and 
 florists. There were a father and mother, two sons, 
 and a daughter. The father died many years ago ; 
 
THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND DOLICY 
 
 81 
 
 "but it was only in April last year that Mrs. Slay maker 
 passed away, leaving* her daughter, Miss Julia Slay- 
 maker, to carry on the shop and to support herself 
 and her invalid brother, who lived, for his health’s 
 sake, amid the pine-trees and soft sea breezes of 
 Bournemouth. The shop in Centre Row, Covent 
 Garden, had been tenanted by the Slaymakers at a 
 rental of £1 15s. a week. When her mother died, 
 Miss Slaymaker called on Mr. Bourne, at the Bedford 
 office, in order to obtain permission to continue in the 
 premises. It may here be interjected that her father 
 had paid £100 in 1844 to the then outgoing tenant 
 for the business, while the Slaymakers laid out so 
 much money in fitting up the place that it was the 
 most completely provided retail establishment in Centre 
 Row. Now let us return to the steward's office, where 
 Mr. Bourne either sits by the large window looking 
 out on Russell Street, or stands with legs extended 
 and hands crossed behind his back on the hearthrug 
 by the mantelpiece. He informed Miss Slaymaker 
 that she could continue in the premises at a rent of 
 £4 a week ; but on conditions. Dismayed as that 
 lady was at the sudden rise in the rent, she was still 
 more thunderstruck at the other stipulations. She 
 was to give up the florist department, and become, 
 purely and simply, a fruiterer. Moreover, besides this, 
 she was to dismiss her manager, whose skill and 
 energy, displayed over a number of years, had proved 
 the mainstay of her family. Proposals so monstrous 
 were certainly not to be accepted without reflection. 
 She left Mr. Bourne’s office, and lived in suspense for 
 
 F 
 
82 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 six months, when she received the following letter 
 from the steward : 
 
 Bedford Office, Bloomsbury, W.O., 
 Oct. 20th, 1887 . 
 
 Centre Row, Co vent Carden, 
 
 Madam, 
 
 You asked for time within which to make the 
 alteration in your arrangements so as to carry on the 
 business on the terms stated at our interviews. I 
 am willing to let you the shop and premises, as a 
 weekly tenant, at the rent of £4 per week, subject to 
 all the market rules and regulations. 
 
 It must be distinctly understood that the place is 
 let for the business of a fruiterer’s— also that it is not 
 to be used as a residence. 
 
 In strictness the rent ought to date back to the 
 time of the death of Mrs. Slaymaker, but it can com- 
 mence from the current week. Be pleased to write 
 your acceptance of these terms. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 John R. Bourne. 
 
 Miss Slaymaker. 
 
 This lady, then, with doubled rent and manager 
 dismissed, was to dock herself of the best half of her 
 business, and to add to her expenses by living away 
 from the shop. Such was the modest proposal which 
 Duke Francis’s steward flung at orphanhood in its 
 first months of anxiety and grief. This is Miss Slay- 
 maker’s reply : 
 
 Covent Garden, 
 
 Oct . 20th , 1887 . 
 Sir, 
 
 In reply to yours, I am willing to accept the 
 shop and premises occupied by my late mother as a 
 
/ 
 
 THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 83 
 
 'weekly tenant at £4 a week to carry on tke business 
 of a fruiterer and florist combined as hitherto. I 
 agree not to use the premises as a residence, and also 
 to comply to the market rules and regulations. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 Julia Slaymaker. 
 
 Mr. Bourne. 
 
 Note the feminine craft of “ fruiterer and florist ” 
 tq catch wily Mr. Bourne ! It is piteously like the 
 small stratagems with which the poor little fly might 
 seek to evade the machinations of his arch enemy, the 
 spider. Surely in vain was the snare set, for here is 
 the steward’s rejoinder : 
 
 Bedford Office, Bloomsbury, W.C., 
 Oct . 21 st , 1887, 
 
 Centre Row. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I must beg your attention to a variation you 
 have introduced. I offered to let the premises for a 
 fruiterer's business, not a florist’s. There must be no 
 misapprehension on this point. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 John R. Bourne. 
 
 Miss Slaymaker. 
 
 The fly’s small attempt to outwit the estate lawyer 
 was a failure. So now, scarcely more wise than before, 
 she appeals to his sense of justice, to any quality of 
 mercy and of pity, that might survive in him from 
 childhood, and the lessons in compassion and sympathy 
 with fellow-mortals learnt at a mother’s knee. 
 
 V 2 
 
84 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 Covent Garden, 
 
 Oct. 24 th, 1887. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 At my last interview with you, when you spoke 
 of letting the premises in question as a fruiterer’s only, 
 and at an increased rental, I told you that under those 
 conditions I could not possibly get a living. I left 
 you on the understanding that you would give it your 
 consideration, and then write me your terms for my 
 acceptance or refusal, as the case might be. 
 
 As you now offer me the premises to carry on the 
 business of a fruiterer only, I make an earnest appeal 
 to you to reconsider your decision, and to let me the 
 premises at a weekly rental of £4 (the sum named by 
 you), to carry on the business of a florist and fruiterer. 
 
 The premises in question have been tenanted by 
 my family for forty-three years, most of which time a 
 florist’s business has been carried on. Awaiting your 
 decision, which, I trust, may be favourable, I am, sir, 
 yours respectfully, 
 
 Julia Slaymaker. 
 
 Mr. Bourne. 
 
 Thus closes this correspondence, for to this appeal 
 the steward deigned no reply. After some short in- 
 terval had elapsed, the lady moved to 25, Catherine 
 Street, just outside the Bedford realm, and there re- 
 commenced a fresh start in trading life as Slaymaker 
 and Co. But it is no small loss to sever business 
 associations which have lasted forty-three years, centred 
 round one spot. It is matter, too, of wondering reflec- 
 tion to Miss Slaymaker that, since her departure, her 
 old abode has been let to a neighbour named Garcia, 
 who is allowed to pursue together the twin callings of 
 
TEE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 85 
 
 fruiterer and florist, and for whom the shop has been 
 specially fitted up, so that he may pursue together the 
 twin callings. Altogether, this episode has a hard, 
 autocratic atmosphere about it, which does not smell 
 much of freedom. That such thraldom to a grand 
 seigneur should exist and be possible in the heart of 
 this great metropolis is scarcely credible to many easy- 
 going folk in the commercial capital of the world. In 
 such ignorance of wrongs and tyrannies, practised at 
 our very doors, we have been contented to exist. 
 
 The tolls levied by the Duke of Bedford in that 
 market of Oovent Garden where Miss Slaymaker 
 resided, till she was so meanly ousted, have been 
 declared, on good legal authority, to be illegal. I 
 have not space here to go into the long list of them. 
 I just give three or four, or so, as a sample of the 
 style in which the great noble looks after other 
 people’s halfpence. As it is somewhat a dry subject, 
 perhaps it may be made slightly more juicy if we 
 take our lesson in the Fruit Market : 
 
 For cherries, a toll of \d. per sieve, and so in pro- 
 portion for any greater or less quantity. 
 
 For apples, pears, plums, apricots, peaches, nec- 
 tarines, gooseberries, and currants, a toll of \d. per 
 sieve or bushel, and so in proportion for any greater 
 or less quantity. 
 
 For carrots, a toll of Is. 6d. per score dozen 
 bunches, and so, etc. 
 
 For oranges, a toll of 4 d. per ohest, and 2 d. per 
 box, and so, etc. 
 
 The schedule of the rents, tolls, and sums of money 
 
86 TIIE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 to be payable and paid in the several parts of Covent 
 Garden Market would quite fill six or seven pages of 
 this book. As regards the general grievance of the 
 market gardeners of Covent Garden, I am of opinion 
 that they are very satisfactorily put in the columns of 
 an evening paper. This is the view of those primarily 
 concerned, so I venture to quote at some length : 
 
 By an Act of Parliament passed in 1823, \d. is 
 fixed as the toll on each sieve or bushel, and so on for 
 any greater or less quantity in proportion. Millions 
 of packages of fruit, flowers, and vegetables arrive 
 yearly from France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and 
 other countries, and for each packet a fee of from \d. 
 to 4 d. is charged. Now, in the majority of cases it 
 would take six packages of fruit — cherries, etc., to 
 make up what is described as a sieve or bushel, and it 
 is evident the Act of Parliament clearly meant by the 
 words “ Greater or less quantity in proportion,” that 
 on a sieve or bushel, no matter in how many packages 
 it arrived, only a tax of \d. was to be levied. Yet the 
 Duke of Bedford in many cases receives 2d., or even 
 3d. for his sieve or bushel. . . . Another piece of 
 gross injustice of which bitter complaint is made by 
 the market people is this : — The Act of Parliament 
 declares that for such cart-stand on which any person 
 shall expose fruit, flowers, etc., for sale, Is. per day 
 must be paid.- Instead of this, however, those who 
 occupy those stands with the waggons have to pay a 
 sum of 2s. per day, thus being compelled to contribute 
 to the noble Duke exactly double the sum allowed by 
 the Act of Parliament. Again, there are what are 
 called yearly stands, and for these Parliament has fixed 
 a toll of Is, per annum for every square foot (superficial). 
 
THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 
 
 87 
 
 Where the stand is covered, Is. 3 d. is allowed. Now the 
 Duke of Bedford, in many cases, refuses to let these 
 stands to the growers by the year, but lets them 
 as casual stands to the growers, thus considerably 
 adding to his own income at the expense of those 
 who are compelled to submit to his terms. Another 
 grievance with the growers who have casual cart 
 stands is that they are charged so much the stand, 
 and a toll for each sieve in addition, instead of being 
 charged by the waggon. Thus a man may have, and 
 often has on the stand, 200 packages, and he has 
 to pay \d . per package (9s. 4d.) } instead of the legal 
 charge, Is. For all goods except carrots Is. per 
 waggon is allowed by Parliament. For carrots a toll 
 of Is. 6d. is fixed. Perhaps the extra charge was put 
 on with the laudable desire of checking indigestion. 
 Again, Is. is charged for a cart at the casual stand, 
 where only 4 d. is allowed by the Act of Parliament. 
 In the portion of the market set apart for the flowers 
 the Duke has raised the prices in the same exorbitant 
 manner. By Act of Parliament a charge of Is. 8 d. 
 per annum per square foot (superficial) is fixed as the 
 rental. The Duke turned the people who occupied 
 those stands into the flower market, which he had 
 built outside the boundary, and he has managed to 
 raise their rents to nearly 6s. per square foot. These 
 rents, too, have to be paid six months in advance. 
 . . . The Duke, and even his meanest agent, regard 
 themselves as not merely lords and masters of Oovent 
 Garden, but of every man or woman who occupies any 
 portion thereof. It is the old relation of lord and 
 villain renewed under crueller social conditions. The 
 shopkeepers in the centre avenue originally paid about 
 £1 12s. per week. They are now paying £4 to £6 for 
 the same premises. The result is ruin to many. One 
 
88 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 man got “ smashed " and died in tlie workhouse after 
 struggliug for many years. Others have become 
 bankrupt, and so have had their prospects blighted. 
 
 Further to exemplify how “ tolls ” are levied in 
 the neighbourhood of and in Covent Garden, I may 
 add that the carters and waggoners who bring in 
 goods to the market cannot all get into it. So they 
 form a “ toll 33 in all the approaches to the market. 
 On market mornings carts with vegetable produce 
 have been seen standing in line as far distant from 
 Covent Garden as Trafalgar Square. Now, the owners 
 of every one of these carts, even if it be obliged to 
 stand half a mile from the market, pays toll to 
 the Duke of Bedford, who makes £10,000 a year out 
 of it, the money being paid daily into the Duke's 
 banker’s hands. In fact, the more the streets of 
 London are incommoded by these produce carts, the 
 greater His Grace’s gains. He is an obstructor of 
 thoroughfares on almost as large a scale as he is a toll- 
 collector. 
 
 In order to relieve the depression produced by the 
 tenour of what has just gone before, I must tell the 
 story of the cabman. Just opposite the southern end 
 of the market was Tavistock Row, now pulled down. 
 The site has been fenced round with railings, so as to 
 form an enclosure. Into this the traps of small green- 
 grocers are shoved in the morning, to get them out of 
 the way of the carts and waggons, crowded about the 
 market, and from each driyer twopence is extracted. 
 There is a broad entrance to this fenced-in space at 
 
THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 89 
 
 the north-eastern end. Now, down from Great 
 Russell Street, towards the Hummums, came cabby 
 gaily one morning, as gay as if Duke Francis did not 
 exist. The vehicles from in front of the market 
 jostled him, and, in order to save himself and his cab 
 from disaster, he backed into the enclosure. No 
 highwayman was ever quicker with “ your money or 
 your life ; ” no waiter was ever more insistent upon 
 his tip than were the ducal retainers upon extracting the 
 price of a pint of four ale from our poor Jehu. From 
 this it is to be seen that one must drive warily in the 
 vicinage of Covent Garden. 
 
 As it may interest my readers, I now proceed to 
 give copies of the notices, and details of the customs 
 in the matter of bars and gates, which artificially 
 enhance the value of the property of the Duke of 
 Bedford, for which no compensation is given to the 
 public in return for the inconvenience. Of course it 
 is all done under Act of Parliament, and His Grace is 
 not the only sinner. 
 
 Copy of notice at gate east end of Harrington Square, 
 near Houghton Place. 
 
 By permission of the Duke of Bedford, and during 
 His Grace’s pleasure, gentlemen’s carriages of every 
 description, hackney coaches, cabriolets, and persons on 
 horseback may pass this gate from seven o’clock in the 
 morning till eleven o’clock at night. Empty hackney 
 coaches, empty cabs and carts, drays, waggons, trucks, 
 cattle, and horses at exercise, will not be permitted to 
 pass. 
 
 Bedford Office, Bloomsbury, June, 1887. 
 
90 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 At the south end of Harrington Square there is 
 this further notice : 
 
 “No thoroughfare for coal waggons or omnibuses 
 through the gate of Harrington Square. The gates 
 are open from 8 a.m. till 11 p.m.” 
 
 Between the two gates in Crowndale Road for 
 Oakley Square, at the gate at Taviton Street, at the 
 gate at Endsleigh Street, at Gordon Street, and over 
 the gate rails with six posts on either side at Torring- 
 ton Place, there are notices similar in their terms to 
 those found in the notice at the east end of Harring- 
 ton Square. There is no notice, however, at the gate 
 at Upper Woburn Place, nor has there been any 
 notice put up here during the present porter’s occupa- 
 tion of the lodge close by, which is over twenty years. 
 The practice is for gentlemen’s private carriages, and 
 gentlemen on horseback, to be let through between 
 seven o’clock in the morning and ten o’clock at night 
 from Lady Day to Michaelmas ; for the remainder of 
 the year — namely, from Michaelmas to Lady Day — from 
 eight o’clock in the morning to ten o’clock at night. 
 There are gates across the roadway, and iron posts 
 fixed in footways on both sides. Naturally, many of 
 the residents in these neighbourhoods do not object 
 to these bars and gates, for if they block the circula- 
 tion of the metropolis generally, they provide a larger 
 amount of privacy, seclusion, and quiet for the 
 favoured few. The Duke’s agents can use them to 
 exact a much-enhanced rent. His property is raised 
 in value at the expense of the easier flow of London 
 
THE BEDFORD ESTATE AND POLICY 
 
 91 
 
 life, and we have yet to learn tliat he has given the 
 public any compensation in return. While awaiting 
 an Act of Parliament which will set things straight, 
 the Duke will, perhaps, bethink him of the debt he 
 owes London for the forbearance shown him, and we 
 shall see something handsome done in Covent Garden, 
 which will make us think that the services rendered 
 by the Russells to the State need not only be looked 
 for in the annals of our past history. 
 
 Francis Charles Hastings Russell, ninth Duke of 
 Bedford, was born in 1819. He was M.P. for Bed- 
 fordshire from 1847 to 1872, in which latter year he 
 succeeded to the Peerage. The founder of his family 
 the eloquent Burke described as follows : — “ The 
 political merit of the first pensioner of the House of 
 Bedford was that of being concerned as a Councillor 
 of State in advising, and in his person executing, the 
 conditions of a dishonourable peace with France — by 
 instigating a tyrant to injustice to provoke a people 
 to rebellion — by giving his hand to the work, and 
 partaking the spoil with a Prince who plundered a 
 part of the National Church of his time and country, 
 by being a prompt and greedy instrument of a 
 levelling tyrant who depressed all descriptions of 
 his people. His grants were from the aggregated 
 and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously 
 legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered 
 by their lawful proprietors with the gibbet at the 
 door. His merits were by acts in which he served 
 his master, and made his fortune to bring’ poverty, 
 wretchedness, and depopulation on his country.” 
 
92 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 The heir to the Dukedom is George William Francis 
 Sackville, Marquis of Tavistock, who was born in 
 London in 1852. He married, 1876, Lady Adeline 
 Maria, daughter of the third and last Earl Somers. 
 She too was born in 1852. He was educated at 
 Balliol College, Oxford, graduated B.A., 1874, and 
 is a student of the Inner Temple. He was M.P. 
 for Bedfordshire from April, 1875, to November, 
 1885. The impression left upon the mind, after 
 careful consideration of the management of the 
 Bedford estate, is that it is void of all generosity 
 and kindliness. In this inquiry for the first time I 
 heard angrily used such epithets as “hard,” “flinty,” 
 “tyrannical,” and also the even less taking ones of 
 “mean,” “petty,” “grasping.” Greed and peddling 
 interference go hand in hand to keep alive a feeling 
 of bitter resentment. However, this is not merely a 
 question for the folk who trade in Covent Garden. 
 It is plainly to the interest of the people of London 
 that their great floral, fruit, and vegetable market 
 should not any longer be a by-word and laughing- 
 stock through the barefaced exactions and illiberality 
 of Duke Francis of Bedford. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 In the last three chapters I have taken my readers 
 round three great estates — the Portman, the Grosvenor, 
 and the Bedford. The titular sovereigns of these 
 realms, as we have seen, are Viscount Portman, the 
 Duke of Westminster, and the Duke of Bedford; the 
 living, moving, ever-present vicegerents are Mr. F. 
 W. Hunt, Mr. H. T. Boodle, and Mr. J. R. Bourne. 
 Around these estates are many others, including the 
 dominions of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. But 
 the three I have visited and examined are fairly 
 typical of the rest. There is no need to pursue inquiry 
 further to feel certain that the present position of the 
 London tenant under the leasehold system is in the 
 highest degree unsatisfactory, if not intolerable. Let 
 me, then, summarise the result of the investigation 
 into the policy pursued on these three great properties. 
 
 On the Portman we have found that, owing to the 
 fact that nearly two thousand leases were to fall in 
 on Lady Day, 18S8, the landlord and his agent were 
 placed in a position of enormous power and authority 
 
94 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 towards the dwellers in Baker Street, in Gloucester 
 Place, and in all that neighbourhood. The trading lease- 
 holders have known that at a mere nod from Mr. Hunt, 
 endorsed by the venerable Viscount at Bryanston, they 
 might be deprived of the good-will and the connection 
 they had won for themselves by years of respectable 
 toil. They had given to their houses a special value 
 through their persevering efforts, and if they were 
 compelled to leave their shops, they would be forced, 
 if not too old to attempt it, to begin afresh, to fight 
 again the battle of life from the very beginning. 
 They would have no legal hold whatever on the 
 premises, in which they had lived so long, on the 
 morning of March 26th, 1888, unless they had the 
 permission of Lord Portman's surveyor. Viscount 
 Portmanhas had his lieges at his mercy, by the throat. 
 If they had been his worst enemies, he could not 
 have desired them more thoroughly delivered into his 
 hands bound hand and foot. Such tremendous power 
 for weal or woe should have prompted to generosity, 
 should have been wielded with a full sense of the 
 responsibility attaching to it, with a sentiment akin 
 to that which is summed up in the presumably 
 ironical French phrase, noblesse oblige. Instead, the 
 huckster has supplied the model for the wealthy noble, 
 and their ransom of their property and their homes 
 has been measured for the Portman tenants by their 
 necessities. 
 
 On the Westminster estate we have seen the same 
 employment of the opportunity of putting on the 
 screw. Though here the object sought has been the 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 95 
 
 erection of costly buildings at the leaseholder ex- 
 pense, for the use of which they will pay heavily 
 during ninety years, and which they will have to sur- 
 render towards the last quarter of the next century to 
 the Duke^s descendants. 
 
 On the Bedford property we have observed how the 
 might of the ground landlord has been used to worry the 
 widow and to overbear the orphan. We have a great 
 London market, to which his Grace might be puzzled 
 to show his original title-deeds, hampered in its 
 healthy work of circulating through London the 
 products of the field, the orchard, and the garden, 
 by vexatious tolls and taxes.. We note that the free 
 coming and going of London traffic is impeded by 
 bars and gates, which enhance the value of the Duke's 
 residential property, but for which no other good 
 purpose can be pleaded, while he pays no adequate 
 compensation to any public body in this metropolis. 
 
 The power in the hands of the agents of the two 
 dukes and of the viscount is, to my thinking, more 
 than should be in the hands of private individuals in 
 a free country. Its only justification would have been 
 in its being made good use of, that is to say in a mag- 
 nanimous and public-spirited fashion. But monopoly 
 has bred oppression. There is no gainsaying the fact. 
 If it were not so, the series of articles here reprinted 
 would not have been received with such wide-spread 
 indignation and approval. In no vital or cardinal 
 point have the facts I have vouched for been tra- 
 versed. They have, on the contrary, been cordially 
 endorsed by many independent observers, and by 
 
96 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 those who are in the best position to judge of their 
 accuracy. 
 
 There is unquestionably a monopoly. Everywhere 
 we find in greater London, outside the bounds of two 
 centuries ago, nothing but settled estates and Church 
 lands under the control of the Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioners. There are not, as there have been in many 
 provincial towns, competing freehold properties, which 
 would have forced the settled estates and the Eccle- 
 siastical Commissioners to seek from Parliament an 
 extension of their power to lease or else submit to a 
 deterioration of their property. But whatever the 
 cause from which the monopoly arises, the question 
 now for the people of London to decide is whether 
 they will any longer put up with it. Seeing what its 
 fruits are, it is not too much to hope, that now they 
 are known, and have been publicly ventilated, deci- 
 sive Parliamentary action will draw the teeth of that 
 monopoly. 
 
 But that monopoly is the mainstay of a great 
 interest, and a great interest dies hard. The popular 
 voice must ring out clear, and even menacing, before 
 that monopoly will be content to forego the spoiling 
 and plundering to which it has grown accustomed. 
 The agents are deeply concerned in the perpetuation 
 of the present system. They are astute lawyers and 
 men of business, very capable, by specious phrase 
 and sophism, of making the worse appear the better 
 reason. There are not improbably many snug jobs 
 and bargains that may be made on a big London 
 estate by those who know how to keep on the right 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 97 
 
 side of the great potentate's great man. There are 
 all the lawyers, who make nearly as good a thing out 
 of leases as the ground landlord himself. It would be 
 going contrary to all we know of human nature to 
 expect many firms of solicitors to object to that 
 out of which they derive ahandsome and easily acquired 
 income. 
 
 Mr. Bourne told the Town Holdings Committee 
 that he did not think the present system much 
 deterrent of business enterprise. He found that 
 twenty-one years was a sufficient time in which to 
 establish a sound business, and averred that if a man 
 was an occupying tenant, he always knew that the 
 lease would be renewed to him. When asked, “ You 
 do not think that the loss of the good-will is a dis- 
 advantage ? ” he answered : “ It does not come into 
 the question. A man never loses his good-will.” 
 This is remarkable testimony in the face of the occur- 
 rences we have described, and is a fair specimen how 
 audacious in assertion the agent of a ground land- 
 lord can be when he is bolstering up a case in 
 the interest of his class. 
 
 The official argument of the interested upholders 
 of the status quo has been officially put as follows : 
 “ Now the permanency and substantiality of interest 
 on the part of the landowner have this one very 
 good result (at least, on a residential estate), that he 
 is directly interested in enforcing on each of the 
 residents on the estate the restrictive covenants and 
 conditions entered into for the benefit of the neigh- 
 bourhood. An estate developed on the leasehold 
 
 a 
 
98 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 system lias, when compared with one built on the 
 freehold system, greater coherence, a more definite 
 unity, and a better regulation of each part for the 
 benefit of the whole. These features are to be re- 
 marked in a leasehold estate even during the con- 
 tinuance of the leases. But when the leases have 
 expired, and the reversion of the ground landlord 
 has become an estate in possession, it is obvious that 
 he resumes that complete control over the whole 
 estate which he previously possessed, and that he 
 can provide for the renovation and rebuilding of the 
 estate in accordance with modern requirements in a 
 fashion that would be impossible, were a great diversity 
 of interests involved/’ 
 
 This is the stock argument of the ground land- 
 lords. They say that they alone keep house property 
 in good condition. According to Mr. Bourne and 
 others, small freeholds mean squalor, unhealthy 
 buildings, and all other manner of evils. He told 
 me as he told the Town Holdings Commission, 
 his stock case of Bedfordbury, which he evidently 
 thinks is conclusive as against all interference 
 with leasehold tenure. As the story is an interest- 
 ing one, I may perhaps as well give it, and as 
 nearly as possible in the words of the steward of the 
 Duke of Bedford. “Bedford Street/' he said, “runs 
 parallel with a street which is known as Bedfordbury. 
 Now Bedfordbury belonged to the Bedford estate at 
 the same period as the first lease of 1630 was granted. 
 An attempt was made in Bedfordbury to grant out, 
 not building leases with a ground rent subject to 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 99 
 
 covenants, but to grant out plots of land on fee farm 
 rents. Those grants were good grants in perpetuity. 
 Those fee farm rents were created by means of grants 
 containing no restrictions, but the people who took 
 the grants became the absolute owners of the property 
 without any obligations as to building, without any 
 restraint as to the mode of occupation. Every grantee 
 became his own freeholder, and this plot of land was 
 under his own absolute control with this result : 
 that Bedfordbury commenced its career by every man 
 doing what was right in his own eyes in the way of 
 building. A number of alleys came into existence, 
 and, instead of a single house being put upon a single 
 plot such as that shown on the lease, a man would put 
 two or three or four or it may be half-a-dozen houses, 
 or cottages, or anything he pleased upon it, and that 
 went on in perpetuity; and from the time those grants 
 were made until a few years ago when the Metropolitan 
 Board stepped in under Sir Richard Cross's Act, 
 Bedfordbury gradually became one of the worst dens 
 in London. It was a perfect by-word and a proverb 
 for everything that was disorderly and disgraceful ; 
 the reason being that there were so many independent 
 freeholders, every man being his own master and 
 under nobody's control, except under that control 
 which a man chooses to exercise over himself; and 
 with the result that the Metropolitan Board had to 
 step in, condemn the area under Sir Richard Cross's 
 Act, buy up all the people who were living there, make 
 a clean sweep of the whole lot and begin afresh by 
 making a grant of it to the Peabody Trustees." 
 
 a 2 
 
100 THE GEE AT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 Mr. Bourne should know perfectly well that slums 
 develop just as rapidly on leasehold estates. That of 
 the Marquess of Northampton in Clerkenwell affords 
 a notable example of this, for it was, as everybody is 
 aware, unpleasantly prominent during the proceedings 
 of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Housing 
 of the Working Classes. Moreover, no one would 
 propose now that freeholders should be left, like those 
 in Bedfordbury, to work their own sweet will in their 
 premises without any reference to the convenience of 
 their neighbours, to the public good, and the public 
 morals. That is a bugbear which the agents of the 
 ground landlords conjure up to daunt timid and 
 muddleheaded folk. But it is an unreal one. In the 
 days when Bedfordbury began its career of disreputa- 
 bility, there were no regulations for the sanitary and 
 other control of dwellings as there are now. We have 
 changed all that, we no longer need the great feudal 
 lord to protect us from each other. Are there not 
 municipal authorities and sanitary authorities ? If 
 they did not exist, would it not be possible to erect 
 a council which should have power to keep the free- 
 holder within the limits required by the need of the 
 community ? On this point of municipal regulation I 
 will venture to quote at length from the reports of the 
 agents of our Foreign Office abroad, when questioned 
 as to the usages of the different countries in which 
 they are stationed. 
 
 AUSTRIA. 
 
 Mr. Victor Drummond says: — “A purchaser is 
 not bound to build and deal with property in any 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 101 
 
 particular way, or required to enter into any covenants 
 or agreements, although such dealing is not prohibited 
 by law ; the only restrictions are those in regard to 
 public rights, which are determined by existing laws 
 in regard to municipal regulations.” 
 
 BADEN. 
 
 Mr. 0. Green says : — “ With respect to the laying 
 down and widening of streets and public places, the 
 parishes in Baden are endued with extensive powers 
 based upon the public law of the land.” 
 
 BAVARIA. 
 
 Mr. H. G. Macdonell says : — " With regard to a 
 third person, such restrictions, as, for example, that 
 the purchased dwelling-house shall not be turned into 
 a shop, can only be enforced if they have entered in 
 the register of mortgages, and if special stipulations 
 have been made under the law of reversion.” 
 
 BELGIUM. 
 
 Mr. W. T. G. Napier says : — “ The owner of the 
 soil may establish on his property, or in favour of his 
 property, any usage or condition which may appear 
 agreeable to him, provided that it be not contrary to 
 the law. This charge constitutes a servitude (liability 
 of property to rights of third parties), and it must 
 result from a title-deed. The owner who has thus 
 charged his property with servitude, sells it on condi- 
 tion that they be respected. The purchaser of every 
 lot has the right to enforce the respect of the servi- 
 tude established for the benefit of his lot.” 
 
 DENMARK. 
 
 Mr. A. Gosling says : — “ In certain suburban 
 districts, it is customary to sell plots for building 
 
102 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 burthened with conditions or provisions called c servi- 
 tut.’ . . . The ‘ servitut/ though a comprehensive 
 term, applies usually to an obstruction of a view, to 
 the erection of unsightly or unsafe buildings, and to 
 their being applied to noxious trades or industries.” 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 Sir John Walsham says: — “With respect to the 
 question of selling or letting property, the provisions 
 of the French law are equally applicable to urban and 
 rural property, and considerable latitude is allowed to 
 vendors and lessors as regards the conditions they 
 may desire to attach to sales or leases, provided 
 always that these conditions do not in any way 
 interfere with police, municipal, or state regulations, 
 and do not contravene either existing servitudes and 
 prescriptions, or infringe the rights and privileges of 
 neighbours.” 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 Mr. C. S. Scott says : — “The only restrictions to 
 which an owner would be subject who was desirous of 
 building on such lots in country as well as in town 
 would be : 
 
 “ (a) Legal restrictions, in case of buildings for 
 commercial or industrial purposes and the 
 like, imposed for the purpose of prevent- 
 ing any prejudice to the convenience, 
 safety, or health of the public. (Imperial 
 Trade Regulations.) 
 
 “ (b) Police restrictions,- imposed with the object of 
 securing proper access to the dwelling- 
 house and its proper sanitary condition, 
 and further to provide for the arrange- 
 ments of the structure being kept strictly 
 within the limits of any plan which may 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 103 
 
 have been fixed or approved by tbe muni- 
 cipal authorities. (Building Regulations. 
 
 “ (c) Private restrictions, arising out of any cove- 
 nant or agreement which may have been 
 entered into between the vendor and the 
 purchaser as to the description of building 
 to be erected, or the use to be made of the 
 ground sold.” 
 
 GREECE. 
 
 Mr. Nicolson says “ Should the purchaser of a 
 lot intend to build thereon, the only restrictions which 
 are imposed on him are that he should observe certain 
 regulations which may be laid down by the town 
 architect or the Chief of the Police in regard to 
 alignment and sanitary provisions.” 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 , Mr. Consul Franz says : — “ Generally speaking, no 
 such restrictions are made, except for private con- 
 venience, owing to the vicinity or other reasons ; but 
 some restrictions exist in the laws of the country and 
 municipal regulations.” 
 
 NETHERLANDS. 
 
 Mr. H. P. Fenton says : — There are, as a matter 
 of course, certain restrictions in regard to the building 
 of houses, which the interests of the State, or the 
 public safety or convenience impose — such, for 'in- 
 stance, as the prohibition to build within a certain 
 distance of fortified places, or to construct houses in 
 towns otherwise than in accordance with regulations 
 laid down by the municipal authorities.” 
 
 NORWAY. 
 
 Mr. H. Rumbold says : — “ In towns, and especially 
 in Christiania, purchasers of plots in districts in which 
 
104 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 it is desirable that handsome houses should be built 
 are not uncommonly bound to build such house in 
 conformity with plans submitted to them by the 
 sellers, and to the exclusion of establishments that 
 might be a disfigurement or of inconvenience to 
 neighbours. In other respects there are no restric- 
 tions except such as are imposed by the building 
 regulations.” 
 
 SERVIA. 
 
 Mr. Locock says : — “ The only restrictions known 
 are those imposed in towns by the municipality. 
 They have reference chiefly to the prevention of 
 nuisances and to police regulations.” 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 Mr. M. de Bunsen says : — “ If he proceeds to 
 build, or to utilise the houses which he builds upon 
 the property in a way which the State, province, 
 municipality, or a private individual consider to be an 
 infringement upon their rights, the aggrieved party 
 can obtain from the competent Court an order sus- 
 pending such work or use of buildings until the ques- 
 tion has been decided by an appeal to the tribunals.” 
 
 SWEDEN. 
 
 Mr. E. W. Cope says : — “ The law prescribes abso- 
 lutely nothing as to the use of the ground, and the 
 purchaser is free to deal with it as he likes, unless he 
 has bound himself by an agreement to use the pro- 
 perty in any particular way.” 
 
 SWITZERLAND. 
 
 Mr. C. C. Thornton says : — “ No restrictions accord- 
 ingly can be imposed, saving obedience to ordinary 
 municipal regulations in or near towns.” 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 105 
 
 WURTEMBERG. 
 
 Mb. C. Green says : — “ The legal restrictions, to 
 which property is subjected in the matter of buildings 
 erected upon it, are founded principally upon the 
 Building Regulations of 1873, framed to meet the 
 public interests concerned, and those of the neighbours 
 • living near the estate.” 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that on the Continent 
 they know perfectly well how to protect themselves 
 against the evils that might arise out of the caprice 
 of freeholders. But we need not go abroad to learn 
 so much as this. As is very well known in our 
 northern towns where, in large measure, a freehold 
 tenure practically prevails, there has been none of 
 the decadence, deterioration, and decay which Mr. 
 Bourne professes to anticipate from the withdrawal 
 of the control of the landlord. The evils apprehended 
 are imaginary. That cannot be said of those which 
 flourish under the present system. Now, and in 
 London, we see the hard-earned savings of the people 
 swallowed up periodically by the great ground 
 landlords, who are able, if they like, by the use of 
 their arbitrary power, to prevent the development 
 of towns and to handicap and inconvenience all 
 enterprise. 
 
 Land is not in the position of other property 
 when it is allocated in the midst of a great metropolis 
 like London. The rights of possession must be 
 placed after the public good. Our railway companies 
 were given the pbwer to expropriate landlords from 
 their immediate line of route. Supposing that they 
 
106 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 had built up all their property on the 99 years’ lease 
 system, it would all have reverted to the original 
 owners of the soil at the end of that period, who 
 would have compelled them to buy all their plant 
 and buildings back. The supposition will seem 
 monstrously absurd to many people because of the 
 power of the companies in question, and because 
 of the fabulous sums of money involved. Except 
 for these accidental circumstances the hypothetical 
 confiscation of railway property is no more contrary 
 to all rhyme and reason, than is the confiscation 
 which the law allows now to be made in London of 
 the tenant’s good-will and improvements. It is no 
 more monstrous than that a trader, for fear of losing 
 his business connection, should be compelled to put 
 his hand to an iniquitous bargain which eats up his 
 capital, burdens oppressively, and handicaps fatally 
 his industry and enterprise. 
 
 Allowing for the moment that the large free- 
 holders should be left free to grant 99 years' leases 
 and no more, I maintain that at the end of the 
 term they should be allowed only to take back the 
 land, and that for everything else which had been 
 put there by the tenant, whether building or business 
 connection, they should pay a fair valuation. It is 
 of the nature of the shopkeeper's vocation as distinct 
 from that of the wholesale merchant and manu- 
 facturer that his good-will should be tied to the 
 locality where it has been won. For instance, let 
 me take any one of the tradesmen in Baker Street. By 
 his honesty and civility, by the quality of his wares, 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 107 
 
 lie has created for himself a large connection. It 
 is something which Yisconnt Portman did not give 
 him; but which Viscount Portman can take away. 
 These permanent customers look to Mr. A. when 
 they want a certain class of goods, but it is to Mr. 
 A. of Baker Street. If he is forced to move, say 
 to Brixton, and becomes Mr. A. of Loughborough 
 Parade, he is divorced from his own handiwork, from 
 his skilfully and industriously created clientele. He 
 has been obliged to leave something behind him, 
 worth less because of his absence, but still worth a 
 great deal. This something Lord Pdrtman and Mr. 
 Hunt would presently proceed to sell to any one who 
 would pay them for it. In so doing they would be 
 selling what was, in all sound morals, not their own. 
 They would, when they took the price of it, have 
 received the proceeds of a legal robbery. Fearing 
 this “ legal robbery,” all victims of the ground land- 
 lord agree to a ransom, just like Christian knights 
 in former times may have done when immured in a 
 Paynim hold. The oppressor is bought off with the 
 extortionate premium and the crushing tribute of the 
 ground rent. No Mogul Monarch, no Persian Satrap, 
 was ever harder on a conquered people. They might 
 go if they did not like the terms, it may be said. 
 That was Mr. Hunt’s contention. 
 
 But how is an old man of sixty or seventy to go 
 and start in business elsewhere, and work up a circle 
 of customers in a strange quarter of London ? His 
 apprehensions and his affections make him cling to the 
 old spot. He will bleed through all his pores rather 
 
108 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 than be cut adrift. He may be buffeted about by the 
 Viscount and the surveyor; but lie will still hang on 
 desperately, like the sailor to his last hope, the life- 
 buoy, flung to him amid the whirling surges of the sea. 
 It seems to me that some impartial tribunal should step 
 in between this old man and his master, and say, “No, 
 yon shall not trade on his fears so as to mulct him in 
 these fearful financial penalties. The ground is yours, 
 you say. Good; take it. It is in the bond, you affirm. 
 But you may not, on that account, ruin him and drive 
 him with his gray hairs to beggary in the cold streets, or 
 to the harsh misery of the workhouse. English public 
 opinion has so changed old feudal law, as to afford 
 better protection than that to our citizens. You must 
 compensate him handsomely for every penny he has 
 laid out on that property of yours. Impartial valuers 
 shall estimate it. You shall pay him the market value 
 of that good-will of his, and give him an adequate 
 solatium for the loss further accruing from his personal 
 divorce from his property, and for the separation you 
 have worked between him and his old home.” This 
 would be no plundering. It would take away from the 
 landlord the guilt of the commission of it. The policy 
 of confiscation has been the ground landlord’s hitherto. 
 We want him to cease from that, to be just, to be 
 honest. 
 
 Let us go back to Mount Street, Berkeley Square. 
 Here we have precisely the same command of the 
 situation on the part of the Duke of Westminster and 
 his agent, Mr. H. T. Boodle. I am not saying for a 
 moment that fine buildings should not rise in the 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 109 
 
 trading thoroughfares of a fashionable district, I 
 only maintain that they should be erected from 
 motives of self-interest and of public duty ; not under 
 compulsion. The architectural improvements should be 
 tarnished by no taint of injustice done to any one. They 
 should not be the outcome of fear and apprehension, 
 a vast monument in brick of the unfair bargain the 
 ground landlord is now able to make with his tenants. 
 It is mere nonsense to say that, without this tyranny, 
 we should have anarchy. It would be a comparatively 
 easy matter to safeguard the community against the 
 bugbears of Mr. Bourne and others. I am far from 
 declaring that this is a question capable of being 
 settled without much trouble and thought. But that 
 is no reason for leaving bad alone, for acquiescing in 
 present and palpable injustice and wrong. Whatever 
 be the changes that may immediately take place in the 
 tenure under which the ground and the houses in 
 London are held, it will always be necessary for Par- 
 liament or the new local authorities to keep close and 
 anxious supervision to prevent abuses arising. 
 
 There is still another point. Mr. Bourne, who is 
 the happy theorist and philosopher of the estate 
 agents, is strong on sanitation. “ The parish of St.. 
 George's, Bloomsbury,” he said, “was mentioned at the 
 Commission of the Housing of the Working Classes 
 as being an exceptionally healthy and well-to-do 
 parish. And what is the reason ? It is not far to 
 look if you wish to see the reason. It is just this : 
 that, with the single exception of a little of the fringe 
 on the north-east corner, the whole parish of Blooms- 
 
110 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 bury belongs to one freeholder, and the whole parish 
 of Bloomsbury is under one care and one manage- 
 ment.” 
 
 “It is not far to look, if you wish to see the 
 reason.” There is no slum in Bloomsbury, because 
 His Grace’s forbears, in their own interest, laid out the 
 place in big squares, and arranged for the building of 
 houses whose rentals would necessarily keep the poor 
 away. This proves nothing ; but is a bald statement 
 of fact about a particular district. The poor, it is to be 
 assumed, must live somewhere. If one ground landlord 
 edges them off his estate, they must crowd in on some 
 other estate— on the Marquess of Northampton’s, 
 for example. But if there is one ground landlord 
 for the whole kingdom, and this sort of superior 
 management was universal, the indigent members of 
 the State would be compelled to take up their abodes 
 on the sea-shore, between high and low water mark, 
 where the waves of oblivion would at once pass over 
 them, and the next morrow’s sun would rise and shine 
 upon an England of unmitigated respectability — a 
 Bournian paradise. 
 
 The poor of London would have been indeed in a 
 bad way if they had been left to the tender mercies 
 of the ground landlords. Happily the agents of a 
 large-hearted and large-headed charity, like the Pea- 
 body trustees, have stepped in to remedy some of the 
 horrors of overcrowding, due directly, as we know, 
 and on good authority, to the leasehold tenure. The 
 working population has been tossed about from pillar 
 to post to suit aristocratic caprices, and if there is a 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 111 
 
 promise of better days now, it is clear that it does 
 not come from Mr. Bourne and his colleagues. 
 
 Further, when London has to pay so heavily and 
 ceaselessly to its ground landlords, the money must 
 be found somewhere. In the first place, it comes out 
 of the pockets of the traders ; but they, to fill the 
 vacuum, must charge higher prices for their goods, 
 and these prices the public must pay, and so become 
 sufferers in their turn. The value of land is forced 
 up abnormally, which is bad for the many (the toiling 
 millions), and good for the few only. Then the 
 ridiculously high scale of legal charges is another 
 grievance bound up with the leasehold system ; and, 
 in the long run, these absurdly extravagant fees must 
 be made good by the citizens at large of London. 
 Just as the exactions of Co vent Garden make fruit 
 and vegetables dearer all over the metropolis, so the 
 charges of the lawyers, added to the tribute taken by 
 the ground landlord, render life everywhere harder 
 for everybody else. 
 
 Wherever I went among the various classes on three 
 great estates, I found always the same sense of being 
 trodden under foot wrongfully. There was desire for de- 
 liverance from such ignominious thraldom, mingled with 
 somethingakin todespair as to its being at all attainable. 
 It was not a question of Liberal or Conservative, Tory 
 or Radical. The murmuring was just as deep among 
 those who had voted at the last elections for the 
 present Government as among the followers of Mr. 
 Gladstone and Mr. Bradlaugh. But one and all were 
 afraid ! Yes, afraid ! In free England, at the latter 
 
112 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 end of the nineteenth century, we have come to this, 
 that men are so afraid of offending the agent of a 
 ground landlord that the vast majority of them shrink 
 from uttering the story of their very real grievances. 
 They dread vindictive punishment from their little 
 tyrants. They may criticise Mr. Gladstone or Lord 
 Salisbury, they are permitted an opinion on Free 
 Trade versus Protection ; but they must open their 
 mouths and shut their eyes and take what the ground 
 landlord sends, lest it be worse with them. This 
 is a relation between fellow mortals, repugnant to 
 Englishmen and to all notions of freedom of contract. 
 It breeds a sort of white slavery, which is an anachro- 
 nism, which it is hard to think of and repress the 
 expletive instinct. Something must be done, and 
 done soon, in the direction of giving security of 
 tenure, under fitting covenants, to the London tenant ; 
 to remove this reproach of a petty domestic despotism 
 away from us. 
 
 / 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 
 
 CONTAINING THE WEATHERLEY CORRESPONDENCE AND A 
 tradesman’s PROTEST. 
 
 Correspondence from 1881 between 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley and Mr. F. Hunt. 
 
 September 6th } 1881. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 As I do not think it possible that you notice 
 the terms demanded by your agent, for the renewal 
 of lease, I will state my case as briefly as I can. 
 
 I am willing to pay a fair price for everything, 
 but object strongly to extortion, and I think your 
 Grace will agree with me that the terms I have for 
 this house are extortionate in the extreme. In April, 
 1880, I purchased this lease, which had eight years to 
 run. Thinking that I should get a renewal of the 
 ground on reasonable terms, I spent nearly £300 to 
 put the house into tenantable repair, and then applied 
 for a renewal accordingly. Mr. Hunt came and 
 inspected the property, and afterwards wrote me 
 that I could have a renewal of lease for thirty-four 
 years from 1888. The ground rent to be £80 per 
 annum instead of £10, and a premium of £1,000 down, 
 or five per cent, on the premium, from the date of 
 application, June, 1880; also I am to pay Lord 
 Portman’s solicitors fees for drawing up a copy of this 
 
 H 
 
114 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 agreement. I paid £15 ; and a more extorting exacting 
 demand no usurer or money-lender could ever have 
 drawn. My agreement would cause a sensation were 
 I to publish it. I remonstrated with the exorbitant 
 terms. The reply was I could accept or not, but if I 
 did not accept the terms, I should not be eligible to 
 apply at any future time; therefore I was compelled to 
 accept. Besides all this, in the space of four years I 
 have to make certain. 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 To Lord Postman. SuSANNE WEATHEKLEY. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 September 9th , 1881. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I have just received your letter. I will inquire 
 carefully into the matter. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 To Mrs. Weatherley. PoETMAN. 
 
 September 17 th , 1881. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Lord Portman has desired me to write to you 
 in reply to your letter of the 8th instant. 
 
 In consequence of it I have looked into the matter, 
 and I find that the terms for the new lease are even 
 lower than those agreed upon on the renewal of leases 
 of property closely adjacent to your house, and I am 
 sure you will find on inquiry that the price was quite 
 a fair one. 
 
 The costs of the agreement are always paid by the 
 lessee on this and I believe all London estates, and the 
 costs charged for it, are, you will find, the usual pro- 
 fessional charges. 
 
 If you particularly wish it, the insurance may be 
 made in any respectable London office. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 115 
 
 Witli respect to the fine, the payment of the 
 balance of it with interest can, if you wish it, be 
 deferred until you wish to take up the lease. 
 
 I am, 
 
 * Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Charles A. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 November 28th, 1881. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 I was glad when I received your letter of 
 September 9th; but much surprised and disappointed 
 when I heard fjptn the agent informing me that 
 nothing cquld W dgne .excepting that I might insure 
 in any respectable fire office, and was not compelled to 
 insure in the land. Co-operation has entirely ruined 
 trade, and makes it utterly impossible for tradespeople 
 to pay enormous sums, as profits now are very small. 
 I thought the least your lordship would have done 
 would have been to take off the interest. I bought 
 this house, and the lease does not expire until 1888. 
 The house is strictly mine until that date ; it is ex- 
 tortionate and unjust that I should have to pay £1,000 
 fine or £50 per annum interest on the same eight years 
 before my lease expires. I am sure that your lordship 
 cannot think it right, and I beg you to rid me of this 
 heavy burden, as I still look to you for justice, and beg 
 you to listen to my case yourself. 
 
 If landowners would only interest themselves a 
 little on behalf of their tenants there would not be 
 such a prevalent spirit of discontent ; but we are left 
 entirely to the discretion of the agent. I feel myself 
 very much aggrieved, and consider it a perfect im- 
 position that I should have to work to pay your 
 lordship £50 per annum interest on money that is not 
 
 n 2 
 
116 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 due for years. Again begging you to take this burden 
 from my shoulders, 
 
 I am, 
 
 Your Lordship’s obedient Servant, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 To Lord Portman. 
 
 December 30th, 1881. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In reply to your letter of this date, I beg to say 
 that no answer has been received to the letter of 
 September 17th last (or of December 2nd), informing 
 us that you wish to avail yourself of the permission to 
 defer the payment of the fine. " 
 
 If you will be kind enough toAep.'y to that letter, 
 the matter shall be properly recorded, ai^3 you will 
 not be troubled again with notices on this matter until 
 the time arrives for the completion of the lease. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Henry R. Baker. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
 December 30th, 1881. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 I beg respectfully to address your lordship 
 again on the subject of the heavy demands your agent 
 has laid upon me. I was speaking last week to a 
 gentleman who rents under you in Gloucester Place, 
 and he informed me that he had not to pay any fine 
 for a renewal, neither did William Robinson, the 
 corner of George Street. Then why should I pay you 
 such a heavy fine ? My first lease does not expire till 
 1888, and yet I am compelled to pay you £50 per 
 annum interest on £1,000, eight years before my first 
 lease expires. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 117 
 
 The gentry I tell cannot believe it, it is only trades- 
 people who are treated so unjustly, it is all this extor- 
 tion that causes the people to revolt. That the ground 
 rent should be raised is just, but that you should 
 demand £1,000 fine, eight years before you have any 
 power over the ground, is unjust, and the least you 
 ought to do is to release me from the interest ; 1 can- 
 not understand any nobleman inflicting such terms. 
 I have not been clandestine, I have acquainted your 
 lordship with all, and I expect you to see me righted. 
 No wonder that people try to rid themselves of land- 
 lords; it is the landlords’ own fault, they will not listen 
 to the people from whom they derive their wealth, but 
 endeavour to draw their life’s blood. 
 
 This is my last appeal, and if you will not help me 
 materially, I shall leave no stone unturned to form an 
 alliance to seek redress. As you increase the rent, so 
 the taxes are increased, and we toil on for ever to 
 satisfy landlord and tax collector, and gain nothing 
 for ourselves. 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 To Lord Portman. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 60, Baker Street, 
 
 December 30 th , 1881. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I beg to remind you that the amount of £100 
 on account of fine for the new lease of the above pre- 
 mises, together with interest, is due this day, and I 
 have to request that it may be paid to me here. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Henry R. Baker. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
118 
 
 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 SlR, January 2nd, 1882. 
 
 I will avail myself of tlie opportunity of paying 
 tlie fine wlien I take up my new lease, which I think is 
 time enough when this one expires. I am most dis- 
 satisfied with the terms you have given me. The 
 landed aristocracy have now gone in masses, and have 
 ceased to support the tradespeople ; therefore it is im- 
 possible for tradespeople to pay such enormous sums. 
 I still maintain that it is a gross imposition that I am 
 compelled to pay five per cent, interest on a fine, eight 
 years before my lease expires. I bought this house in 
 a most dilapidated state ; I paid more than £300 to 
 make it tenantable, and now have to pay a larger fine 
 because I put the house in good condition. There are 
 people on this side of the way who only pay £50 
 ground rent, and mine is to be £80. People the other 
 side only pay £80, and their house occupies three 
 times as much ground as mine. I beg to say in con- 
 clusion, that I have no right whatever to be compelled 
 to pay Viscount Portman five per cent, interest on a 
 fine inflicted before my lease expires. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mr. Baker, SuSANNE WeATHEKLEY. 
 
 [REPLY.] January 4 th y 1882. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 dated January 2nd. I have no authority to enter into 
 a discussion as to the agreement you have entered 
 into ; but I beg to say the payment of the remainder 
 of the fine, with interest as arranged, can stand over 
 as you wish. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Henry R. Baker, 
 
 Mrs. 8, Weatherley. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 119 
 
 May 4 th, 1882. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am directed by Lord Portman to write to you 
 in answer to your letter of 26th April. His lordship 
 is sorry to find that you are still dissatisfied with the 
 agreement that you have entered into for an extended 
 lease of the premises you occupy, No. 60, Baker 
 Street, and he has desired me to inform you that he is 
 quite willing to release you from the agreement that 
 you have entered into for the new lease, and to repay 
 to you the instalment of £200 which you have paid, 
 together with interest, and to cancel the agreement. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Peed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
 May 1 2th, 1882. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In reply to your letter of the 10th, I beg to 
 say that, as I think an interview may lead to some 
 satisfactory arrangement on your behalf on this matter, 
 I write to say that I could see you here at ten o'clock 
 to-morrow, or, if this is not convenient to you, I 
 could call upon you at that hour. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
 January 29th . 1884. 
 
 SlE, 
 
 I again trouble you to reconsider the terms 
 you have made me for renewing this lease, as the 
 terms stated are much above the value of the premises. 
 (And in these days of competition it is impossible to 
 meet such a demand,) When I purchased this house,. 
 
120 TEL 7 GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 I was informed by my solicitor that a small fine would 
 probably be imposed, and I was indeed astounded 
 at the enormity of the demand. Three years since I 
 paid for the lease, and repairing and redecorating 
 this house, £1,000. You now impose a fine of £1,400. 
 Surveyors, solicitors, and other fees on both sides 
 will doubtless be another £100, making £2,500, and 
 then I have to make very substantial rebuilding and 
 outside decoration, which will cost a considerable 
 sum ; and besides all this enormous outlay, the ground 
 rent is to be £80 per annum instead of £10, and then 
 only a 34 years’ renewal of lease is granted. 
 
 The other day a much larger house than this was 
 sold in this street, with the same term of lease, 
 ground rent, from 1888, £70 per annum, all the 
 rebuilding and improvements had been made, and 
 it was sold under the hammer for £1,200. I also find, 
 on inquiry, that for some renewals no fine has been 
 imposed, and in other cases a much smaller fine, and 
 a much lower ground rent than mine, and rebuilding 
 and outside decoration not compulsory. Also the 
 ground rent you impose on me is quite out of pro- 
 portion with the other side of the street (which is the 
 best side), and yet those houses occupy double the 
 space of mine. The more I know, the more unjust 
 and exorbitant I consider my terms, and I beg you 
 respectfully to make better ones, as I shall certainly 
 never rest satisfied with the present stipulations. 
 What I consider so unfair is, that I am compelled to pay 
 interest on a fine eight years before Viscount Portman 
 comes into possession of the house ; it seems to me 
 incredible that such a demand could ever have been 
 made. I have given you ample time to consider my 
 case, and I beg you respectfully to do something 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 121 
 
 substantial on my behalf. Awaiting your reply, and 
 trusting that you will deal favourably with me, 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 S US ANNE WEATHERLEY. 
 
 To F. Hunt, Esq. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 January 31st , 1881. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am in receipt of your letter of the 29th, and 
 as you refer to so many points, some of which I do 
 not think you fully understand, I think an interview 
 would be more desirable than a long correspondence, 
 and I shall therefore be glad to see yon here some 
 morning by appointment. Awaiting your reply, 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
 February 5th, 1884. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I am agreeable to call at your office any 
 morning by appointment if with the view of making 
 better terms ; but, for the sake of explanation, I prefer 
 not , as no amount of argument from any one could 
 make me contented with the terms specified, con- 
 sidering that mine is a ground at £10 per annum. 
 
 If it is not in your power to make a more reason- 
 able demand, I must appeal to Lord Portman. 
 
 Awaiting your reply, I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 Susanne Weatherley. 
 
 F. Hunt, Esq. 
 
122 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 February 18th, 1884?. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am sorry to find from your letter of tlie 5th 
 inst. that it will not be convenient to yon to see me 
 on the subject of the renewal of your lease. I 
 thought that if we could have met and personally 
 conferred upon the matter, I might have been able 
 to remove the misunderstanding which you have 
 evidently entertained on the subject. The premises 
 you occupy had been let, with three other adjoining 
 houses, by Lord Portman’s ancestor, for a term of 
 99 years, which will expire at Lady Day, 1888, at 
 a peppercorn rent. Of course, in granting a new 
 lease, I could not, as advising Lord Portman upon 
 the subject, at all regard what you may have paid 
 for the purchase of the remainder of the term, but 
 can only consider what is the fair value of the 
 property at the present time. You will recollect that 
 in 1880, after conferring with your agent, Mr. Dierken, 
 on the subject, I arranged to recommend the granting 
 to you a term of 84 years on the basis of a rent of 
 £200. This was represented at that date by the 
 reserved rent of £80 and the fine of £1,000, instead of 
 a rent of £80, and a fine of £1,723, which would have 
 been the amount payable in 1888. The terms being 
 arranged, the usual agreement was prepared, and 
 approved by your solicitors, and signed by yourself, 
 and the first instalment of the premium, amounting to 
 £200, paid by you in March, 1881, without any 
 objection on your part. But you will recollect that 
 after the completion of the agreement, you, in 
 September, 1881, wrote letters complaining of what 
 you considered to be the excessive terms for the 
 renewal } and as the explanation offered, and the 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 123 
 
 concession made as to further postponement of the 
 payment of the fine were not satisfactory to you, I 
 wrote to you by Lord Portman’s direction on May 4th, 
 1882, saying: “ That as you are still dissatisfied 
 
 with the agreement that you have entered into for an 
 extended lease of the premises you occupy, 'No. 60, 
 Baker Street/ he has desired me to inform you that 
 he is quite willing to release you from the agreement 
 that you have entered into for the new lease, and to 
 repay to you the- instalment of £200 which you 
 have paid, together with interest, and to cancel the 
 agreement.” You will recollect that in reply to this 
 letter you wrote declining this proposal. I confess 
 I am surprised that after all that has taken place you 
 should now desire to reagitate the matter. The terms 
 settled for the renewal of the lease of your house 
 can be shown to be lower than those upon which the 
 renewal of other houses in your immediate neigh- 
 bourhood has been granted, and as the arrangement 
 was made by you under the advice of your solicitor 
 and agent, and adhered to by you after the offer 
 made you in 1882, to which I have referred, I beg 
 now to say that your application to vary the terms 
 agreed upon cannot be entertained. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 Madam S. Weatherley. 
 
 February 18 tli, 1884. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 A few weeks since I stated my case to a very 
 influential person, who advised me to call in a well- 
 established valuer, which I did on the 4th inst. The 
 estimate given is as follows : “ After the Portman 
 requirements have been made, the market value of 
 
124 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 the lease will be £1,345 10s. The building will cost 
 about £500 ; fees, I think, about £50 ; making 
 £1,895 10s., leaving value of fine.” First, you say 
 in yours of yesterday that you can only consider the 
 value of the property at present time, which you 
 estimate at £1,722, being an excess of nearly £1,000 
 over the valuer’s estimate. Second, I confess I ignored 
 the agreement, much against my will, and under pro- 
 test ; but I had no option, your reply to my protest 
 being so peremptory, viz. : “I cannot further reduce 
 the terms or rent ; I must therefore leave it to you to 
 accept the terms or let the matter drop. In the latter 
 case, I must inform you that you would not again 
 have the option of renewing.” That simply amounts 
 to accept or go. When I purchased the old lease, I 
 was informed that the utmost renewal-fine would be 
 £500, as the property was so dilapidated and unin- 
 habitable, and I now very much regret that I did not 
 call you to inspect it before I spent my money on it ; 
 but I thought you would make better terms to a 
 tenant who took care of the property and had it in 
 good condition. However, I was mistaken. Thirdly, 
 the reason I would not agree to take back the £200, I 
 considered it unjust for me to pay £16 for an agree- 
 ment, and leave all my repairs and improvements 
 without compensation for the same. It is ruinous to 
 have to change a residence that you have had adapted 
 to your business. Fourthly, I am compelled to agitate 
 the matter because I feel myself so unjustly treated, 
 being compelled to pay more for the lease than I 
 could possibly sell it for, did circumstances compel me 
 to do so. I have begged you two years to consider the 
 heavy fine you have burdened me with, and once more 
 appeal to your sense of justice. I have been most 
 patient, considering I am the injured party, but if you 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 125 
 
 will not show me any favour, or lessen my burden, I 
 must then again lay detailed particulars of my case 
 before Lord Portman, and appeal to his honour and 
 justice to let me have the lease at its market value, as 
 I cannot explain more to you than I have ; but I 
 sincerely hope you will arrange. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 SuSANNE WEATHERLEY. 
 
 To F. Hunt, Esq. 
 
 (Valuer’s Letter.) 
 
 February 7 th , 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In reply to your letter, dated yesterday, I beg 
 to say that the value of the lease of these premises 
 proposed to be granted by the estate, if the rental 
 value be taken at £200 per annum, would be 
 £1,115 10s. I am, however, of opinion that the 
 premises would let at £225 when the renovations and 
 alterations suggested by the surveyor to the estate 
 have been carried out. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 Walter Holcombe. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
 (Valuation.) 
 
 60, Baker Street, 
 
 February 7 th , 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Agreeably with your instructions, I have this 
 day surveyed these premises, for the purpose of 
 enabling me to report to you my opinion of the value 
 of the lease you think of taking up from the Portman 
 estate, which I understand to be for 34 years, at 
 a rental of £80 per annum. I estimate the rental 
 
126 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 value of the premises to be £225 per annum, and 
 I am of opinion that such a lease as that referred 
 to above would be worth £1,345 10s. I arrive at this 
 amount thus : 
 
 Gross annual rent •• ... 
 
 Deduct per annum, rent payable to 
 Portman estate ... ... 
 
 Insurance against fire and loss of rent 
 
 by fire ... ... 
 
 Repairs ... ... ,,, ... ... 
 
 £225 0 0 
 
 £80 0 0 
 
 3 0 0 
 25 0 0 
 
 108 0 0 
 
 Net annual rent ... ... 
 
 To pay 8 per cent. Number of years’ purchase 
 
 117 0 0 
 114 
 
 £1,345 10 0 
 
 This calculation of course does not take into account 
 the value of your lease at £10 10s. per annum, expiring 
 at Lady Lay, 1888, which I am of opinion is worth 
 about £500. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours faithfullly, 
 
 Walter Holcombe. 
 
 Mrs. Susanne Weatherley, 
 
 60, Baker Street, 
 
 Portman Square, W* 
 
 February 2 6th, 1884. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 I beg respectfully to appeal to your lordship 
 respecting the ruinous terms imposed on me for a 
 renewal of this ground lease. The rent is raised from 
 £10 to £80 per annum, and £1,000 fine is imposed to 
 be paid on the day I applied for a renewal, or five per 
 cent, interest on the same from that date, which was 
 eight years before my present lease expires, which 
 would make interest alone for the eight years £400. 
 On the 4th of this month I called in an old-established 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 127 
 
 valuer to give me an estimate for the value of the 
 lease of these premises. It is as follows : The value 
 
 of the lease, after the Portman requirements have 
 been made, will be £1,345 10s.> the rebuilding, etc., 
 required by the estate, will cost about £500, leaving 
 a balance of £845 10s. by these figures. A fine of 
 £1,000 is above the value of the lease without any 
 interest being added to it, and it appears to me unjust 
 that I should be compelled to pay interest on a fine 
 eight years before my present lease expires, and I 
 write to you, my lord, to beg you to deduct the 
 interest on the fine, as the improvements required 
 on the estate, costing £500, and the fine of £1,000 is 
 a large sum for a 34 years’ lease. Begging your 
 lordship to consider my case and grant my request to 
 deduct the interest, 
 
 I am, my Lord, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 To Lord Portman. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 Felruanj 29 th , 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In consequence of your letter to his lordship 
 of the 26th instant, his lordship has instructed me to 
 write to you upon the subject, I beg to remind you 
 that the agreement to you for a renewed lease of the 
 premises you occupy was not entered into until after 
 I had conferred with your agent fully on the sub- 
 ject, and you had had the advice and assistance of 
 your own solicitor. But notwithstanding this, on its 
 appearing that you were dissatisfied with, the agree- 
 ment you had entered into, an offer was made to you 
 by his lordship’s instructions, to release you from the 
 agreement, and to repay you the deposit of the £200 you 
 
128 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 had made with interest ; but this you declined. I am 
 therefore now instructed to inform you that you must 
 fulfil your agreement which you have entered into, or 
 if you wish to withdraw from it and give up the future 
 lease, and inform me in writing of this on or before 
 the 5th of April next, you can be released from the 
 agreement, and your deposit-money of £200 returned 
 to you with interest. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
 March 3 rd , 1884. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 Removing would ruin my business. Will you let 
 me hear at your earliest convenience if any objection 
 would be raised to my having the entrance made in 
 the centre of the house, also building over the back- 
 yard to enlarge the shop, and could I have a license 
 for jeweller or fine art depot, or any trade not 
 derogatory to the estate, or to my present business. 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 F. Hunt, Esq. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 March 5 th , 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am in receipt of your letter of the 3rd inst., 
 and beg to say that in the usual course, I should at once 
 recommend that permission is given for making of any 
 such alterations as your letter refers to. I cannot, 
 however, do anything to prejudice what I have stated 
 in my letter of the 29th, except, I may say, that as 
 soon as you have paid up the instalments of the fine 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 129 
 
 now due under the agreement, your present application 
 shall be considered. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. 
 
 March 13th, 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In answer to yours of the 8th, I write to say 
 that I am sorry I cannot do more than refer you to 
 my letter of the 5th. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 March 27th , 1884. 
 
 SlE, 
 
 In yours of the 29th, you do not refer to the 
 complaint I made to Viscount Portman respecting the 
 interest levied on the already high fine of £1,000. I 
 have fully considered the terms offered on behalf of 
 Viscount Portman, and beg respectfully to say that I 
 think them most unfair, as I have no option given 
 me only to pay what is demanded or leave, and re- 
 moving means ruining a business. I am willing to 
 pay the fine of £1,000 at the end of 1885, less the 
 £200 (and interest) already paid. I will also carry 
 out the Portman requirements, and ray alteration, in 
 the course of this year. I consider my offer just, and 
 it is only justice I want ; but to have to pay interest 
 on a fine levied eight years before my lease expires, 
 is most unjust, and I never would have submitted to 
 such a proposal had I have had any choice in the 
 matter. The £1,000 fine is above the valuers estimate 
 
 i 
 
130 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 without interest being added. Trusting that Viscount 
 Portman will see the justice of my claim, and grant 
 my request, and allow me to be a contented tenant. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 F. Hunt, Esq. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 April 3rd, 1884 . 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am in receipt of your letter of the 27th, and 
 in reply I have to say that I have no instructions to 
 vary the proposals made to you in my letter of 
 February 29th last. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 April l<Wi 9 1884 . 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 In September, 1881, you wrote me that you 
 would enquire carefully into my case, but to the 
 present no justice has been done me. I have only 
 been offered liberty to leave, which means ruin to my 
 business. I think it very hard that landlords should 
 claim such immense sums from their tenants, and yet 
 not pay any attention when a tenant complains of a 
 grievous wrong she is suffering from. I called in an 
 independent valuer to value this lease, and get his esti- 
 mate after the Portman requirements have been made. 
 The value of the lease will be £1,345 10s. The require- 
 ments will cost me, with lawyers, surveyor's fees, etc., 
 both sides about £500, reducing the market value of 
 the lease to much less than £1,000 ; and the demand 
 
S UPRLEMENTAR Y AND DOCUMENTARY 131 
 
 made on me is £1,000, with eight years interest at five 
 per cent., which will bring the fine up to £1,560, 
 which is £700 more than the valuer’s estimate, who 
 is an old-established man on the Portman estate. 
 Surely your lordship does not want to make me pay 
 £700 more than I could get did circumstances compel 
 me to sell? I look for justice from your lordship, 
 and it is now nearly three years since I first appealed 
 to you. What I wish to do is as follows : Pay your 
 
 lordship, when I take up my new lease, £1,000 (less 
 the £200 with interest already paid) ; make the Port- 
 man improvements this autumn, and be allowed to 
 make the entrance in the centre ; build over the back- 
 yard, and let the entrance-hall into the shop, and be 
 allowed to let to a jeweller, fine art, or any elegant 
 trade not derogatory to the Portman estate. If your 
 lordship would like to see the valuer’s estimate, I 
 will wait upon you any time you appoint. 
 
 I am. Sir, 
 
 Your lordship’s obedient Servant, 
 
 SuSANNE WEATHERLEY. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 April 22nd y 1884 , 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Lord Portman has requested me to acknow- 
 ledge the receipt of your letter of the 14th inst. 
 There has already been so much correspondence on 
 this matter, that I am sure no good could arise from 
 continuing it any further, but I do not like to leave 
 your letter unanswered. I should, however, not 
 object to see the gentleman you have employed, and 
 his valuation, if he will call upon us. 
 
 - I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 i 2 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
132 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 April 24th, 1884. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 As you inform me no good can arise from 
 correspondence, I sliall be obliged if you will let 
 me have a clear, definite reply to this letter. On 
 September 17th, 1881, you wrote me that the fine 
 could stand over until I wished to take up the new 
 lease. In January 2nd, 1882, I wrote: “ I will avail 
 myself of the opportunity of paying the fine when 
 I take up my new lease, which I think is time enough 
 when this one expires.” In reply to that, January 
 4th, 1882, you wrote me: “ The fine with interest as 
 arranged can stand over as you wish,” that meant 
 1888 ; “it is also specified that the improvements 
 must be completed in 1885.” I want you now to 
 tell me if you consent to the alteration specified, 
 to build over the back-yard and make the entrance 
 in the centre of the house, and if you will grant 
 a license for any superior trade, I should like to 
 do the alterations this summer and pay the balance 
 of the fine in 1885. I will with pleasure send you 
 the estimate, but I am not in a position to order 
 the gentleman to wait on you. Waiting your reply, 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mr. Hunt. S. WEATHERLEY. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 April 2 6th, 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In answer to your letter of the 24th, I am 
 to inform you that, subject to your carrying out 
 the arrangements you now definitely propose, and 
 paying th§ balance of the fine with interest in 1885, 
 I am to consider and examine your plans for any 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 133 
 
 alteration yon desire to make to the premises, and 
 I will do so as soon as I receive them from yon. 
 Subject to my approving the plans and alterations, 
 the necessary license would be given. Of course 
 I write this without prejudice. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 July 1st , 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In answer to your letter, I have to say that 
 if you can acquire the interest under the existing 
 leases of any house in Baker Street that you think 
 more desirable for your purpose, I shall be ready 
 to consider an application for the renewal of it ; 
 but, until you have placed yourself in that position, 
 I do not see how I can well do more than this. 
 
 I am. Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 P.S. — If you think well to call here upon the matter, 
 I will give you any explanation I can. 
 
 November 15th, 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am sorry that I cannot interfere in the 
 matter to which your letter of the 12th inst. refers. 
 I must, as is usual in all such cases, leave you to 
 arrange as Inay be necessary with the adjoining 
 tenant as to the right of light he claims. 
 
 I am. Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
134 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 December 2nd, 1884. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Lord Portman has forwarded me your letter 
 of the 28th, and in reply I beg to explain that you do 
 not properly understand the principle upon which 
 the fine is calculated. If the amount of the fine 
 had to be estimated for payment in 1888, when the 
 new lease commences, the amount would be £1,680 ; 
 but as it was estimated on the same basis'for payment 
 in 1880, the amount was only £1,000, and on this 
 reduced amount interest is charged until it is paid. 
 
 If you wish for any further explanation I shall 
 be happy to see you, and hear anything you have 
 to say. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Tours truly, 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 June 2 6th, 1885. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I write respecting the building Lord Portman 
 requires done this year. I have had new earthenware 
 drains laid, and my house is in a perfect state of deco- 
 rative repair ; I should therefore be obliged if the 
 outer decorations can be deferred, as trade is not at 
 all prosperous, and the requirements are oppressive as 
 well as needless. Also I am still most dissatisfied with 
 the terms of my lease. Under the present state of 
 trade, it is impossible to meet such demands. Profits 
 are too small to allow tradespeople to pay such fabu- 
 lous imposts. I must therefore again beg you to lay 
 the matter before Lord Portman, and get him to deal 
 more justly with me, and entirely reconsider the terms. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt, Esq. S. WEATHERLEY. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 135 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 July 7 thy 1885, 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 of the 26th. In reply, I would remind you that, 
 although the terms for the renewal of the lease of 
 these premises were, after careful consideration, 
 accepted by your agent so long ago as July, 1880, and 
 were subsequently embodied in an agreement, ap- 
 proved by your solicitors, and signed by yourself, you 
 have, in consequence of your alleged dissatisfaction 
 with the arrangement made, more than once had the 
 opportunity offered you of giving up the agreement 
 with all its conditions, and having the £200 paid 
 returned to you, with interest at five per cent. This 
 offer, however, you have declined to accept, and there- 
 fore you will, I think, agree with me that, under the 
 circumstances, I have no alternative but to ask that 
 the terms of the agreement may be carried out with- 
 out further correspondence or delay. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 September 9 thy 1885. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am in receipt of your two letters, and, with 
 respect to the questions before us, I may remind you 
 that I assented to the omission of the cement dressings 
 to the front windows to save you some expense, and 
 afterwards I assented to the lowering of the window- 
 sills, explaining when I did so that, after the omission 
 of the cement dressings, there was not the same neces- 
 sity to keep the sills at the old levels. But as you have 
 changed your views, and desire now to put the cement 
 
136 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 dressings, I am obliged to ask yon to make them 
 similar to those of No. 58, Baker Street. I think it 
 will be better that you should give your instructions 
 to your builder yourself, and I have accordingly 
 referred Mr. Years to you. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. Fred. W. Hunt, 
 
 October 5th, 1885. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 Before settling with my builder, I should be 
 glad to hear from you whether work has been duly 
 inspected and considered satisfactory. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. S. WEATHERLEY. 
 
 January 29th, 1886. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 As I have not heard from you as I expected, in 
 accordance with your letter to me of the 24th of April, 
 4884, stating that you proposed to pay the balance of 
 the fine, and take up the lease of the above premises 
 in 1885, and my letter of the 26th of the same month 
 conditionally granting your proposal, I now write to 
 ask you to name an early day for the completion of the 
 matter. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 February 9th, 1886. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 In your letter of January 2nd, 1882, it was arranged 
 that the payment of the June quarter could stand over 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 137 
 
 till my present lease expired. I must, however, again 
 protest against the enormity of the amount demanded, 
 and request you, on my behalf, again to place the 
 matter before Lord Portman, as no doubt he will be 
 the same as other large landowners — willing to meet 
 tradespeople under the terrible depression they are 
 now experiencing. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 S. Weatheeley. 
 
 Mr. Hunt. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 February 12 th, 1886. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am sorry to be obliged to decline to continue 
 the correspondence upon this subject. Every considera- 
 tion has been shown you, and I must now ask you to 
 state definitely a day (not later than the end of next 
 month) by which you will be prepared to pay the 
 balance of the fine due to Lord Portman, and complete 
 the lease. 
 
 To Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Peed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Sie, 
 
 February 15 th, 1886. 
 
 I fail to see that I have received any considera- 
 tion whatever, and I write to say that I prefer taking 
 up my new lease, when my present one expires, as 
 agreed to in your letter of January 4th, 1882. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, . _ 
 
 S. Weatheeley. 
 
 To Mr. Hunt. 
 
138 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 February 23rd, 1886. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 In reading your letter of January 29th, 1886, 
 I find that you referred to mine of April 24th, 1884* 
 in which I proposed to build over the yard, and make 
 an entrance in the middle of front, so as to make two 
 shops, that I might let one so as to lessen my ex- 
 penses ; but my neighbour, Mr. Boulnois, objected to 
 the yard being built over, on account of his light ; 
 thus my plans to economise were frustrated. I fully 
 explained all this to you at the time, and even con- 
 templated taking, so that everything concerning this 
 house remained the same in 1884 as in January, 1882, 
 that I would accept Lord Portman’s offer to take up 
 the new lease in 1888, when my present one expired. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 Mr. F. Hunt. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 March 2nd, 1886. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Your letter of the 23rd February has been 
 handed to me as Lord Portman’s solicitor. I regret to 
 find from the correspondence, that all efforts to meet 
 your wishes have failed ; and that there would appear 
 to be no alternative but to insist, on behalf of Lord 
 Portman, that the arrangement proposed by you on 
 the 24th of April, 1884, and accepted by Mr. Hunt, 
 shall be carried into effect. With this view I am 
 instructed to communicate with you, but I hope you 
 will obviate the necessity for any hostile proceedings 
 by arranging for the payment of the fine and interest, 
 not later than the 31st of this month. 
 
 I am. Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. WALTER E. MOORE. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 139 
 
 March 11 th, 1886. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I was surprised at receiving a letter from Lord 
 Portman’s solicitor, as I fully understood by your 
 letter of 1882, that I am to take up my new lease in 
 1888, when this one expires. My proposal in 1884, to 
 build over my back-yard, was frustrated, and in your 
 letter of July 1st, you were agreeable to treat with me 
 for another, as I could not do as I wished with my own 
 house, therefore everything respecting it remains the 
 same as in 1882. Also I have only just made the im- 
 provements required by you at an immense outlay; 
 and being assured, by your letter of 1882, that I was 
 not to settle till 1888, I am not prepared to do so. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 To F. Hunt, Esq. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 March 12th, 1886. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, 
 which I have handed to Lord Portman’s solicitor. I 
 would for myself only remind you that I relieved you 
 from making the improvements to the front of the 
 premises, under your agreement with Lord Portman, 
 and you expressed yourself glad to be relieved from 
 such expenditure. 
 
 t I am. Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 April 29 th, 1886. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 As I have been requested to forward at once a 
 copy of the new lease with the entire correspondence 
 
140 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 that has passed between ns, and to give evidence to 
 the committee now sitting at the House of Commons 
 to inquire into Town Holdings, I beg to inform you 
 before doing so my views of the terms are unalterable. 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 S. Weatheeley. 
 
 F. Hunt, Esq. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 May 1 st , 1886. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 of yesterday, for which I am obliged. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mrs. Weathekley. Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 December 10 th , 1887. 
 
 My Loed, 
 
 I read with great interest the speech in which 
 your lordship said : “ That tenants in Ireland, when 
 giving up their holdings, received compensation from 
 their ground landlords for any improvements they 
 had made during their tenancy.” Will your lordship 
 please inform me whether the same law exists for 
 English tenants ? Apologising for troubling your 
 lordship, 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your lordship^s obedient Servant, • 
 
 S. Weatheeley. 
 
 To The Marquis of Salisbury. 
 
 December 12 th , 1887. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am directed by the Marquis of Salisbury to 
 acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 10th. I 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 141 
 
 am to say, in reply, that Lord Salisbury is unable to 
 answer the question yon ask. It is one for a lawyer. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. B. T. GuNTON. / 
 
 Estate of G. M. Perry, Esq., 60, Baker St., 
 
 February 27 th, 1888. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 As agents for Mr. George Murray Perry, we 
 have to acquaint you that the term created under the 
 existing lease now held by you, will expire on the 
 18th March next, on which, date possession of the 
 above premises will have to be given to Mr. Perry. 
 
 As, however, Mr. Perry understands that you 
 have treated for a new term from Lord Port- 
 man, to commence at the expiration of Mr. Perry’s 
 lease, on the 25th March, 1888, we beg to say that in 
 lieu of possession of the house and premises being 
 given up on the 18th March next, Mr. Perry will be 
 content to receive rent for the seven intervening days, 
 between the 18th and 25th March, 1888, at the same 
 rate at which the premises are assessed; viz. £200 
 per annum. The rent for the seven days will there- 
 fore be £3 17s. Kindly let us hear from you. 
 
 This letter is without prejudice to any question as 
 to dilapidations or repairs. 
 
 We are. Madam, 
 
 Your obedient Servants, 
 
 Mullet Brooker and Co. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley, 
 
 60, Baker Street, W. 
 
 P.S. — The rent due on the 18th of March next will 
 be £7 13s. 6d. for two quarters and twelve weeks from 
 Midsummer, 1887. Went to Blandford to see Lord 
 Portman. 
 
142 
 
 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 March 1 st , 1888. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 Hearing of your great goodness, I have come 
 direct from London to see you, feeling sure after I 
 had taken such a long, cold journey, your lordship 
 would grant me an interview, if only for five minutes, 
 so that I might explain my case direct to your lord- 
 ship. Trusting that you will allow me that honour, 
 
 I am, 
 
 Your Lordship's obedient Servant, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 A 
 
 His lordship sent word by servant. 
 
 Q. — What do you want to see me for ? 
 
 A . — Concerning my house, 60, Baker Street. 
 
 Note sent down by his lordship. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I cannot enter into London business here, as 
 Mr. Hunt with Mr. Moore act for the estate under the 
 guidance of my son who is in London. 
 
 I must beg to decline to discuss the subject with 
 you. ✓ I regret that you have taken the trouble of a 
 journey without having inquired if I would interfere ; 
 but that is not my fault. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 PoRTMAN. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 Sent note by servant. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 Will you kindly give me a letter of introduction 
 to your son, and his address ? 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
• SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 
 
 143 
 
 Verbal message by servant. 
 
 A. — Yon can get bis address at the Horfices . 
 
 Q. — I should prefer seeing one of the family. Can 
 I see Miss Portman ? 
 
 A. — You can see her at the rooms in the village. 
 
 Q. — I prefer waiting here, it is such severe weather. 
 (It was snowing hard.) 
 
 A. — My lord don’t like people waiting about the 
 
 ’ ouse . 
 
 Q . — Then call my carriage, please. 
 
 Goes to the door. 
 
 A . — It is a breezy morning ; this wind don’t suit 
 my ’ ead . 
 
 60, Baker Street, 
 
 * March 2nd, 1888. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Understanding that you have recently called 
 upon Lord Portman with reference to your tenancy of 
 the above premises, I wish to say I shall be happy to 
 see you upon the subject, if you wish it, upon your 
 making an appointment for the purpose. 
 
 I should, however, remind you that the lease under 
 which you now hold expires at Lady Day next, and I 
 shall be glad to know whether you wish the new lease 
 to be sent to you for signature direct, or through your 
 solicitor, with a statement of the amount payable to 
 this office. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mbs. Weatherley. Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 March 2nd , 1888. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I have been to Blandford, and am informed 
 by Lord Portman that you have the guidance of this 
 
144 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 estate. I should therefore be obliged if you would 
 grant me an interview to explain one or two things 
 respecting the renewal of my lease. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 To the Hon. W. H. Portman. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 March 4 th, 1888. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I left town yesterday and shall not be there 
 again probably till May, but must decline to see you 
 on business connected with your lease ; you have 
 behaved so unreasonably in the matter that I cannot 
 hold any communication with you, except through my 
 solicitor, or Mr. Hunt, our estate surveyor. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 W. H. B. Portman. 
 
 March 6th , 1888. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I thank you for yours just received ; as you 
 prefer not seeing me, only receiving my explanations 
 for dissatisfaction through Mr. Hunt, I beg to say 
 that 1 wrote Mr. Hunt yesterday full details of my 
 grievance (I enclose a copy of that letter). I have 
 only one thing to add, that is, in 1884 I had an 
 independent valuer in to value this house. His 
 valuation is as follows : 
 
 After the improvements have been made £1,345 10 
 New drains, improvements, etc. . . 500 0 
 
 £845 10 
 
 I am agreeable to send that valuation, and do 
 whatever is right ; but I still hold that if I am com- 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 145 
 
 pelled to pay more than the house would fetch in 
 open market, it would be unjust. It is a most serious 
 thing for me, as times are very bad, much worse than 
 when the valuation was made ; such an enormous fine 
 as the one demanded, after all I have spent on the 
 house, swoops the profit of a lifetime, and mortgages 
 my future labour. I have implored this last eight 
 years for fair terms, and have not received the 
 slightest consideration, or I should have acted very 
 differently, but my only alternative has been “ accept 
 or go ; ” removing means annoyance and great loss, 
 now that I have made the house suitable for my 
 business. Now that I have brought the matter under 
 your own notice, I am satisfied, and rest assured that, 
 as an English gentleman, you will see justice done to 
 me, that is all I ask. 
 
 Apologising for the trouble I am compelled to give, 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 To the Hon. W. H. Portman. 
 
 March 5th, 1888. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I duly received yours of the third. In reply, 
 beg to say that I have been pleading to you now 
 nearly eight years (without avail) to recot] sider the 
 terms you have made me for a renewal of the lease, 
 therefore I thought my only alternative was to see 
 Lord Portman, and explain to him that it is quite im- 
 possible, in these days of sharp competition and 
 unheard of depression, to fulfil the terms stipulated. 
 
 1st. — My house is the smallest in the block, all 
 the others have built over their back-yards. This 
 I cannot do as Mr. Bulnoir objects. 
 
 2nd. — My house does not occupy half the space of 
 
 K 
 
146 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OE LONDON 
 
 the one opposite, which has more rooms, front and 
 back staircase, larger frontage, coach-honse and stables, 
 and that side is much better for business. The ground- 
 rent is only the same as this. 
 
 3rd. — The improvements are not yet made. I 
 had to make mine nearly three years since, and lay 
 out my money which would have brought me interest. 
 
 4th. — The removal of Tussaud^s has greatly injured 
 the business, as the shop now is perfectly useless, 
 being no chance trade. 
 
 5th. — The dancing-room is a great nuisance, the 
 cabs and men being there all night makes it impos- 
 sible to get any rest in the front, consequently I had 
 to remove to the back, where I am still annoyed by 
 the music. 
 
 6th. — I should never have thought of retaking 
 this house only that I spent £400 on it before I 
 applied for the terms, and then you know you made 
 them absolute, accept or no further application could 
 be made, which left me no alternative. 
 
 7th. — Mr. Inglefield only wanted £135 annual rent, 
 you say £200. Times are much worse now ; the 
 extra value you must make on the money I have 
 spent on the house. I am quite as dissatisfied and 
 more so than when I first wrote to you, as times 
 are much worse, and there is now no chance trade 
 whatever this side of Baker Street. I must therefore 
 beg you to entirely reconsider the terms. My ground- 
 rent is too high for so small a house, and the premium 
 is altogether impossible with interest. I trust that 
 you will take this letter in a fair business light and 
 entirely reconsider my case, as I can prove my 
 complaints respecting shop trade, dancing-room, etc. 
 
 1 am, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 147 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 March 12th, 1888. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In acknowledging the receipt of yonr letter, 
 I think it right to say that your information as to the 
 terms upon which the leases of other premises have 
 been and are still being renewed, is so inaccurate 
 that the comparison you make is quite erroneous. You 
 are equally in error as to my answers to Mr. Dierken, 
 when he was considering the terms in 1881. I am so 
 satisfied that the basis of the renewal of the lease 
 of the house you occupy is reasonable and proper, 
 that I still decline to advise Lord Portman to agree 
 to any reduction, although, as I have previously told 
 you, I am quite prepared to advise the acceptance of 
 a surrender of your agreement or the readjustment of 
 the terms of the agreement, if you desire it. The 
 balance of the fine now due with interest under your 
 agreement amounts to £1,101 18s. 6d., and if, as you 
 intimate, you are not able to meet this, I would suggest 
 that you should now pay a sum of £260 only, and the 
 reserved rent should then be proportionately raised, 
 making it £150 per annum. If you prefer to com- 
 plete the matter on any such basis as this, I should 
 be happy to consider any proposal you may make, 
 but it must be clearly understood that this suggestion 
 is made purely as a matter of grace, and without 
 prejudice to Lord Portman's rights under the agree- 
 ment, and, inasmuch as you undertook in February, 
 1886, to take up your lease on the expiration of the 
 existing one, no delay can be allowed after the 25th 
 of March. As you refer to the expenses you have 
 been put to for improvements, I may mention that 
 when at your request I agreed to the omission of the 
 cementing of the front and other works to save you 
 
 K 2 
 
148 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 expense, yon proceeded almost at once to do these 
 works, and incurred that expense quite unnecessarily. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mrs. Weatherley. 
 
 March 14 th } 1888. 
 
 Deae Sie, 
 
 Replying to yours of last night, I beg to quote 
 your first letter, July 12th, 1880 : “I must therefore 
 leave it to you to accept the terms as they now stand, 
 or let the matter drop. In this latter case, I must 
 inform you that you would not again have the option of 
 renewal;” this certainly means accept or go. Second, 
 You say that I mistake the terms of the other houses ; 
 but, 26, opposite occupies double the ground, has also 
 stable and coach-house (which in letting would pay 
 half the ground rent) ; it is on the better side of the 
 way, and the ground rent of that house is only the 
 same. But I now want to settle this eight years 
 controversy amicably, if you will let me, and I think 
 after all the trouble, annoyance, and mental anxiety 
 you have caused me, you ought now to listen to me 
 and consider me as well as Lord Portman. I have 
 to earn and find the money, you only have to take it ; 
 that is all the difference between us, and as you are 
 kind enough to say that you will be happy to consider 
 any proposal I make, I propose as follows : That on 
 the day this lease expires, March 25th, 1888, the fine 
 shall be £1,000, which I will pay as follows: March 
 25th, 1888, in cash, £500. Bight years since I paid 
 you £200, for which I expect you to allow me interest, 
 £200, which would make I had paid between £700 
 and £800 paid on that date. For the balance, £200 
 odd, I would give you a six months bill of acceptance, 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 149 
 
 payable at my bankers. If you will kindly consider 
 tbe question from ;my point of view as well your own, 
 take into consideration: 1st, The deterioration of Baker 
 Street since 1880, when you gave the terms. 2nd, 
 The smallness of my house. 3rd, The prohibition 
 from utilising my back-yard. 4th, The removal of 
 Tussaud’s. 5th, The annoyance of the dancing-room. 
 6th, The unprecedented depression of trade. 7th, 
 The £900 I have spent on the house during my eight 
 years' tenancy. I am sure you will see your way clear 
 to accept my proposal, which is liberal and just. In 
 that case I will settle all myself with you, as I 
 have given up my lawyer, as I consider his advice to 
 accept your terms was wrong, as when I first spoke 
 of renewing, he thought ground rent would have been 
 about £50, fine £500, as the property was so dilapi- 
 dated, and that could have managed without all the 
 worry I have had. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 S. Weatherley. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 60, Baker Street, 
 March 1 6th, 1888. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 As I informed you from the first, I cannot 
 advise Lord Portman to make any alteration in the 
 basis of the terms for the renewal of the lease of the 
 above premises ; but as stated in my last letter, I am 
 willing to assent to any reasonable readjustment of 
 them. As your proposal is not on that basis on 
 which the terms were prepared, I regret to say that I 
 cannot accede to it. I must therefore ask you to make 
 your arrangements for the completion of the lease 
 without further delay, and I have given instructions 
 
150 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 to Lord Portman's solicitor to send it to you for 
 execution. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mrs. S. Weatherley. Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 [Reply.] 
 
 March 20th , 1888. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In reply to your letter of yesterday I beg to 
 say that as I stated in my letter of the 12th inst., 
 that, if the rent reserved under your agreement is 
 raised to £150 per annum, the premium with interest 
 now payable is £260. 
 
 I am, Madam, 
 
 Yours truly. 
 
 Madam Weatherley. Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 March 21 st, 1888. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 Up to the present no concession has been made. 
 Can it be that now I have laid my case clearly before 
 you explaining all, that you will not show me the 
 slightest consideration. You have all power ; to you I 
 plead for more lenient terms. Can it be that such a 
 rich gentleman will let me plead in vain. Anxiously 
 awaiting a favourable reply, 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Hon. W. D. B. Portman. S. WEATHERLEY. 
 
 March 22nd, 1888. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I am in receipt of your decision, and will send to 
 have the plan taken, that your lease may be prepared. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Fred. W. Hunt. 
 
 Mdme. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 151 , 
 
 March 29 th , 1888. 
 
 This Indentuee made the day of 
 
 in the year of our Lord 188 between The Right 
 Honoueable Edwaed Beekeley Viscount Poetman 
 of the one part and Susanne Weatheeley of No. 60 
 Baker Street in the Parish of St. Marylebone in the 
 County of Middlesex Court Milliner and Dressmaker 
 (hereinafter called the said Lessee) of the other part 
 Witnesseth that in consideration of the said Lessee 
 having put the said messuage and premises herein- 
 after described into complete and substantial repair 
 and condition and in consideration of the sum of 
 £1,000 of lawful money of Great Britain by the said 
 Lessee by way of fine or premium to the said Edward 
 Berkeley Viscount Portman in hand well and truly 
 paid at or immediately before the sealing and delivery 
 of these presents the receipt whereof the said Edward 
 Berkeley Viscount Portman doth hereby acknowledge 
 and of and from the same sum and every part thereof 
 doth acquit release and for ever discharge the said 
 Lessee her executors administrators and assigns And 
 also in consideration of the rent covenants and condi- 
 tions hereinafter reserved and contained and on the 
 part of the said Lessee her executors administrators 
 and assigns to be paid observed and performed he the 
 said Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman in exercise 
 of all powers enabling him in this behalf doth by this 
 deed sealed and delivered by him in the presence 
 of and attested by one credible witness demise and 
 lease unto the said Lessee her executors administrators 
 and assigns all that piece or parcel of ground situate 
 on the west side of Baker Street in the parish of 
 St. Marylebone in the county of Middlesex fronting 
 east upon the said street together with the messuage 
 or tenement and shop erected and built thereon and 
 numbered 60 in Baker Street aforesaid in such condi- 
 tion as the same shall be in at the expiration of the 
 existing lease of the said premises and which said 
 messuage or tenement and shop is now in the occupa- 
 
152 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 tion of the said Lessee or her undertenants the dimen- 
 sions and abuttals of which said piece or parcel of 
 ground and premises are delineated and set forth in 
 the plan or ground plot thereof drawn in the margin 
 of these presents and therein coloured pink together 
 with the outhouse buildings yards gardens ways water- 
 courses lights areas vaults cellars casements profits 
 and commodities whatsoever to the said piece or parcel 
 of ground messuage or tenement and shop and here- 
 ditaments hereby demised or intended so to be belong- 
 ing or in anywise appertaining To have and to hold 
 the said piece or parcel of ground messuage or tene- 
 ment and shop and hereditaments hereby demised or 
 intended so to be with the appurtenances thereunto 
 belonging unto the said Lessee her executors ad- 
 ministrators and assigns from the 25th day of 
 March 1888 for a term of 34 years thence next 
 ensuing and fully to be complete and ended yielding 
 and paying therefore yearly and every year during 
 all the said term of 34 years the yearly rent or 
 sum of £80 of lawful British money by four equal 
 portions on the following quarterly days (that is to 
 say) on the 24th day of June the 29th day of Sep- 
 tember the 25th day of December and the 25th day 
 of March in every year the first of such quarterly 
 portions to be paid on the 24th day of June 1888 
 The said rent to be paid without any deduction or 
 abatement whatsoever out of the same for or in 
 respect of any present or future land tax sewer rate 
 or other taxes rates assessments or impositions 
 whatsoever charged or to be charged upon the said 
 demised premises or any part thereof or on the land- 
 lord in respect thereof by authority of Parliament or 
 otherwise howsoever (the property or income tax pay- 
 able in respect of the said reserved rent only expected) 
 And the said Lessee doth hereby for herself her heirs 
 executors administrators and assigns covenant promise 
 and agree with and to the said Edward Berkeley Vis- 
 count Portman and his assigns and successors in title 
 to whom the reversion or remainder of the demised 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 153 
 
 premises immediately expectant on the term hereby 
 granted therein shall from time to time belong and 
 with every of the said parties respectively in manner 
 following (that is to say) That she the said Lessee her 
 executors administrators and assigns will well and truly 
 pay or cause to be paid unto the said Edward Berkeley 
 Viscount Portman or his assigns or successors in title 
 the said yearly rent of £80 on the days and in the 
 manner hereinbefore appointed for payment thereof 
 respectively without any deduction or abatement 
 whatsoever except as aforesaid And also shall and 
 will bear pay and discharge all the present and future 
 land tax sewer rate and other taxes rates assessments 
 and impositions whatsoever charged assessed or im-^ 
 posed upon or payable in respect of the hereby 
 demised premises or any part thereof or upon or by 
 the landlord in respect thereof during the term hereby 
 granted therein by authority of Parliament or other- 
 wise howsoever except as aforesaid And further that 
 she the said Lessee her executors administrators or 
 assigns will at all times during the term hereby 
 granted at her and their own expense keep the said 
 demised messuage or tenement and shop insured in 
 the joint names of the said Edward Berkeley Viscount 
 Portman his assigns or successors in title and of the 
 said Lessee her executors administrators or assigns 
 from loss or damage by fire in the Law Fire Insurance 
 Society or some other public insurance office in London 
 Westminster or Middlesex to be approved of by the 
 said Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman his assigns 
 or successors in title to the amount of three fourth 
 parts at the least of the value thereof and forthwith 
 lay out and expend all such moneys (if any) as shall be 
 received by virtue of any such insurance in or towards 
 the rebuilding reinstating or repairing of the messuage 
 or tenement and shop e which shall have been consumed 
 or damaged by fire And also wfill at the request of 
 the said Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman or his 
 assigns or successors in title or his or their agents 
 produce the voucher for the payment of the premium 
 
154 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 for such insurance for the then current year And 
 further that in case and as often as such insurance 
 shall not he kept up as aforesaid or such voucher shall 
 not be produced as aforesaid it shall be lawful for the 
 said Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman or his assigns 
 or successors in title to insure the said messuage or 
 tenement and shop against loss or damage by fire to 
 such amount as aforesaid and that the said Lessee her 
 successors administrators or assigns will forthwith 
 repay all sums that may be expended in effecting such 
 insurance and in nonpayment thereof the same shall 
 be recoverable by distress in like manner as if the 
 same sum of money were part of the yearly rent 
 hereby reserved and were in arrear And also that she 
 the said Lessee her executors administrators or assigns 
 will paint all the outside cement stucco wood and 
 ironwork of the messuage or tenement buildings and 
 premises hereby demised twice over with good oil 
 colour in the first three months of the term hereby 
 granted and afterwards in every third and in the last 
 year of the said term and paint in like manner and 
 paper grain varnish whitewash colour and decorate all 
 the inside parts of the said premises usually painted 
 papered grained varnished whitewashed coloured and 
 decorated in the first three months of the term hereby 
 granted and afterwards in every seventh and in the last 
 year of the said term and further that she the said 
 Lessee her executors administrators or assigns will 
 at all times during the term hereby granted well 
 and sufficiently repair uphold maintain paint and 
 cleanse respectively the said messuage or tenement 
 and shop hereby demised and every part thereof 
 And all pavements walls buildings pipes gutters water- 
 courses privies sinks drains sewers and wydraughts 
 which are or shall be upon the demised premises or 
 any part thereof or which do or shall belong thereto' 
 and also the pavement and railways lying between 
 the said demised premises and the public pavement 
 and keep the same respectively and every part thereof 
 in complete tenantable repair and condition And 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 155 
 
 that it shall be lawful for the said Edward Berkeley 
 Viscount Portman and his assigns and successors in 
 title and every of them by himself and themselves and 
 his or their agents or other person by him or them 
 authorised for that purpose with or without workmen 
 or other in his or their company at all reasonable 
 times in the day during the said term hereby granted 
 to enter upon the said premises hereby demised or any 
 part thereof and to view and examine the state of 
 repair and condition thereof and of all such defects or 
 wants of repair or amendment as shall be found upon 
 any such view or examination to give to the said 
 Lessee her executors administrators or assigns or to 
 leave for her or them upon the demised premises 
 notice or warning in writing to repair and amend 
 or supply the same respectively within the space 
 of three calender months from the date thereof within 
 which time she the said Lessee her executors adminis- 
 trators or assigns shall and will repair and amend the 
 same premises accordingly which requisition neverthe- 
 less shall not prejudice or impair any other remedies 
 available to the said Edward Berkeley Viscount Port- 
 man or his assigns or successors in title for the breach 
 of the foregoing covenant of the Lessee for keeping the 
 said demised premises in such repair and condition 
 as aforesaid And moreover that she the said Lessee her 
 executors administrators or assigns shall and will at 
 the expiration or sooner determination of the said term 
 hereby granted peaceably and quietly leave surrender 
 and yield up unto the said Edward Berkeley Viscount 
 Portman or his assigns or successors in title or to whom- 
 soever he or they shall direct all the said premises here- 
 by demised with their appurtenances in such complete 
 tenantable repair and condition as aforesaid together 
 with all floors wainscots partitions locks keys bars 
 bolts hinges staples windows window-frames and 
 shutters hearths slabs chimney-pieces dressers shelves 
 cisterns water-butts pumps pipes water-closets and 
 all other things which shall be thereunto affixed or 
 belonging And also that she the said Lessee her 
 
156 TEE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 executors administrators or assigns will bear and pay all 
 the costs and expences which the said Edward Berkeley 
 Viscount Port man and his assigns or successors in 
 title entitled as aforesaid in respect of being the 
 owner or owners Lessor or Lessors of the premises 
 hereby demised or any part thereof during the con- 
 tinuance of the said term shall be liable to in or 
 about every or any reparation pulling down rebuilding 
 or raising of every or any party wall party fence wall 
 timber partition or party arch or incidental thereto or 
 in or about any drainage or sewerage or otherwise by 
 virtue of any Act or Acts of Parliament already made 
 or hereafter to be made And further that the said 
 Lessee her executors administrators or assigns shall 
 and will at her and their own costs and charges 
 within one calendar month next after the execution 
 of every assignment or underlease of the said 
 demised premises or any part thereof produce such 
 assignment or underlease or the counterpart thereof 
 to the said Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman or his 
 assigns or successors in title for the time being 
 entitled to the immediate remainder or reversion of 
 the demised premises or to his or their solicitor or 
 appointed agent for that purpose and will permit a 
 docket or minute of every such assignment or under- 
 lease to be made and retained by or for the use of 
 the said Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman and his 
 assigns or successors in title entitled as aforesaid and 
 will pay the reasonable costs of the solicitor or agent 
 of the said Lessor reversioner or reversioners of 
 making each such docket or minute not exceeding 
 one guinea And further that she the said Lessee her 
 executors administrators or assigns shall not nor will 
 at any time or times during the term hereby created 
 use the said premises hereby demised or any part 
 thereof or permit the same or any part thereof to be 
 used in the exercise or carrying on of the trade or 
 business of a soap-maker or soap-boiler tobacco-pipe 
 maker or burner melting tallow-chandler gold-beater 
 brazier pewterer manufacturing ironmonger black- 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 157 
 
 smith farrier tanner fellmonger currier leather-dresser 
 dyer scourer weaver beater or preparer of bed-feathers 
 slaughterman butcher tripe-boiler or seller victualler 
 or sugar-baker or as or for a slaughterhouse or house 
 for the melting of tallow common brewhouse or dis- 
 tillery chandlerVshop public-house or house for the 
 sale of ale or beer glass house or laystall or for the 
 making or burning of glass bricks tiles lime or bones 
 or as or for a bazaar hospital dispensary theatre or 
 place of public exhibition or entertainment or place 
 for the relief of sickness or disease or for any noisy 
 or offensive art trade or business whatsoever without 
 the license and consent in writing under the hand of 
 the said Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman or his 
 assigns or successors in title so for the time being 
 entitled in remainder or reversion as aforesaid nor 
 shall nor will without such license and consent as 
 aforesaid have or permit to be had any sale by auction 
 in or upon the said hereby demised premises or any 
 part thereof except for the purpose of selling the 
 furniture or other articles and things of any occupier 
 of the premises who may have died or removed or be 
 removing therefrom nor without such previous license 
 and consent as aforesaid erect build or put up or 
 permit or suffer to be erected built or put up any 
 building erection or portico bay window sign or sign- 
 post or other post in upon before or adjoining and 
 which shall project beyond the external walls of the 
 premises hereby demised nor any advertisement or 
 writing on any part of the premises above the sills of 
 the windows of the first floor of the said premises 
 nor alter or pull down any erection or building 
 standing on the hereby demised premises nor maim or 
 cut the main timbers of the said messuage and 
 buildings And shall not place or expose for sale 
 or otherwise or permit or suffer to be placed or 
 exposed for sale or otherwise upon or over the 
 ground lying between the said demised premises 
 and the public pavement or outside the front of the 
 demised premises any goods or things whatever 
 
158 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 And further that she the said Lessee her executors ad- 
 ministrators or assigns shall not nor will keep or 
 allow to be kept upon any part of the said demised 
 premises any cows or pigs or any fowls Provided 
 always and it is hereby further agreed and declared 
 between and by the parties to these presents that in 
 case the yearly rent of £80 hereinbefore reserved or 
 any part thereof shall at any time or times be in 
 arrear by the space of twenty-one days or more after 
 the same shall have become due and whether any 
 previous formal demand shall have been made thereof 
 or not or (by way of separate conditions) if the said 
 Lessee her executors administrators or assigns shall 
 not well or truly observe and perform all the cove- 
 nants and agreements herein contained and on her 
 and their part to be observed and performed inclusively 
 of the foregoing covenant relating to the production 
 to the Lessor or his assigns or successors in title of 
 every assignment or underlease of the demised premises 
 or the counterpart thereof or (by way of further 
 separate conditions) if any of the acts or matters 
 prohibited by any of the said covenants to be done 
 without the license and consent of the said Edward 
 Berkeley Viscount Portman or his assigns or successors 
 in title or his or their agent shall be by such license 
 and consent authorised to be done and subsequently the 
 same or any other of the said acts or matters shall be 
 done without the further license and consent in 
 writing of the said Edward Berkeley Viscount Port- 
 man or his assigns or successors in title or if the said 
 Lessee her executors administrators or assigns shall 
 not afterwards in all things observe and perform all 
 the covenants herein on her part contained then 
 and in any of the said cases it shall and may 
 be lawful for the said Edward Berkeley Viscount 
 Portman or his assigns or successors in title so for 
 the time being entitled in remainder or reversion as 
 aforesaid into and upon the said hereby demised pre- 
 mises or any part thereof in the name of the whole to 
 re-enter and the same to have again repossess and 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY AND DOCUMENTARY 159 
 
 enjoy as in his or their first or former estate and the 
 said Lessee her executors administrators and assigns 
 and all other occupiers of the said demised premises 
 thereout and from thence utterly to amove this In- 
 denture or anything herein contained to the contrary 
 thereof in ampirse notwithstanding And the said 
 Edward Berkeley Viscount Portman for himself his 
 heirs executors administrators and assigns doth here- 
 by covenant and agree with the said Lessee her execu- 
 tors administrators and assigns that she the said 
 Lessee her executors administrators and assigns paying 
 the said yearly rent of £80 hereinbefore reserved on 
 the days and in manner hereinbefore appointed for 
 payment thereof and observing and performing the 
 covenants and conditions hereinbefore contained and 
 by her and them to be observed and performed shall 
 and may peaceably and quietly hold occupy and enjoy 
 all and singular the said hereby demised premises with 
 the appurtenances for the term hereby granted with- 
 out any lawful let denial hindrance or interruption 
 whatsoever of or by him the said Edward Berkeley 
 Viscount Portman or any person or persons now or 
 hereafter lawfully or equitably claiming or possessing 
 or to claim or possess any estate right title or interest 
 through from or under him them or any of them In 
 witness whereof the said parties to these presents have 
 hereunto set their hands and seals the day and year 
 first above written 
 
 Feed. W. Hunt. 
 
 / SUSANNE WEATHEELEY. 
 
 Documentary Statement by a Tradesman on the 
 Portman Estate . 
 
 It was in 1881 that I first heard that it would be ad- 
 visable for me to see to the renewal of my lease that 
 I had held for more than twenty years, and which had 
 then seven years to run. I thought it very extra- 
 ordinary, but after a little time I heard that a neigh- 
 
160 THE GREAT LANDLORDS OF LONDON 
 
 bour, who bad demurred, had had his sold over his 
 head to a Mr. Solomon, with whom h.0 would have to 
 make terms. (Since then Mr. Solomon is dead, and 
 so he never reaped any fruit from his bargain.) So I 
 paid one two guineas for learning the terms on which 
 I could renew. I was at the time paying £130 a year 
 rent. The renewal terms were : That I was to pay 
 immediately, six years before my lease was out] a fine 
 of £1,150, a ground rent of £80 (when my old lease 
 was out), to put the house in order, and stucco round 
 the windows, adding a great compo cornice at the top, 
 the said cornice being known in the locality as the 
 Shylock cornice, because it is of no utility but is a 
 “ pound of flesh business/' 
 
 What was I to do ? I knew that the premises were 
 not worth the amount demanded, so I paid the money, 
 as I would have done if I had been helpless in the 
 clutches of a highway robber, for I had spent thousands 
 of pounds on my premises, and removal would have 
 been almost ruin. Now I was able to do this ; but 
 what has been the fate of my poorer neighbours — 
 some had to borrow the money from Building Societies, 
 paying interest, thereby increasing their rental before 
 their leases were out, and this at a time of depression 
 and struggle that only business men know. Of 
 course all protest with Mr. Hunt was useless ; he had 
 his orders, and had to carry them out in his own 
 way ; his master's motto being, of course, noblesse 
 oblige ! 
 
 But the above does not tell all the tale, as if Lord 
 Portman wanted not only to fleece the tenants, it 
 would appear that he also wished to injure them; 
 for, though they had to pay interest six years before 
 their old leases expired, this is not allowed to show in 
 the deed or lease given. So, though I paid £1,150 
 plus about £400 interest, plus cost of ornamenting the 
 front, say nearly £2^,000, if I want to sue I appear to 
 have only paid £1,150. 
 
 LONDON : srENCEB BLACKETT, ST. BRIDE STREET, E.C. 
 
Object: — To obtain for Leaseholders compulsory power of purchasing 
 the Freehold; 
 
 Offices: I, Salisbury Street, Strand, London, W.C. 
 
 IBrtstoent: 
 
 H. L. W. LAWSON, M.P. 
 
 ^ast^resftient 1883-5. 
 
 H. Broadhtjrst, M.P. 
 
 treasurer 
 
 O. Y. MORGAN, M.P. 
 
 Hon. Secretary 
 
 HOWARD EVANS. JAMES ROWLANDS, M.P. 
 
 Hankers 
 
 London and County Bank, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. 
 
 Secretary 
 
 The Executive Committee earnestly appeal for the support 
 of all friends of the movement . They are fghting before the 
 
 Town Holdings Committee find elsewhere an organised opposi- 
 tion of the ivealtliy ground landlords and their agents , and the 
 Association is greatly in need of funds to carry on a vigorous 
 propaganda. 
 
 Date 1888 
 
 THE LEASEHOLD ENFRANCHISEMENT ASSOCIATION. 
 
 1, SALISBURY STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 President: H. L. W. LAWSON, M.P. 
 
 Treasurer: 0 . Y. MORGAN, M.P. 
 
 Sir 8 , 
 
 1 am willing to join the above Association , and herewith 
 subscribe my name. 
 
 Name * 
 
 Address 
 
 Mr. Howard Evans, Hon . Secretary. 
 
 Mr. James Rowlands, M.P. Secretary . 
 
 Annual Subscidption £ 
 Donation £ 
 
 Cheques crossed London and County Bank, Covent Garden branch. 
 
■MISS DORA RUSSELL’S NOVELS. 
 
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 Crown 8vo. Price , picture boards , 2s. ; cloth gilt, 2 s. 6d. Postage , t^d. 
 
 1. Footprints in the Snow. 
 
 2. The Vicar’s Governess. 
 
 3. Beneath the Wave. 
 
 4. Annabel’s Rival. 
 
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 Milton House, St. Bride Street, Ludgate Circus, E.C. 
 
BLACKETT’S SELECT SHILLING NOVELS 
 
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