Esoteric London

Charlotte Terrace, London, N1. Photo © Roger Dean 2014

London and Londoners in the Eighteen-Fifties and Sixties – Alfred Rosling Bennett, 1924:

On March 21st, 1861, our old friend Big Ben caused much amazement and some consternation by striking twenty at 3 o’clock in the morning. Of course we did not hear it, but of it we did. The papers recalled that it had long been a tradition that anything going wrong with Great Paul meant calamity for the Royal Family. Big Ben having succeeded to the crown of metropolitan bells, such a lapse on his part might more or less reasonably be held to mean something – and had not the Duchess of Kent, mother of Queen Victoria, died on the 16th, only five days before? The two occurrences certainly seemed somewhat out of order, but – there was the fact.