Blowbladder Street

Blow Bladder Street, a short but broad str. betn Cheapside (by the Conduit) E. and Newgate str. end W. This street is so called, says Stow, from its being a Place where Bladders were sold.

[Blowbladder Street.] The Part of Newgate street, from Cheapside Conduit, a little above St. Martins le Grand, unto the Shambles, was called Blowbladder street, from the Bladders there sold in former Times.

The Butchers inhabiting in this Street, have their Slaughter Houses in Butchers Hall lane, formerly called Stinking lane, from the Nastiness of the Place; but now it is kept pretty clean, and here the Company of Butchers have their Hall. This Lane cometh out of Newgate street, and passing by Christ Church, into which it hath an entrance, falls into Bull and Mouth street, which leadeth to St. Martins le Grand, but this is in Aldersgate Ward.

Blowbladder street, from Cheapside to St. Martin's le Grand. It obtained its present name from the bladders formerly sold there, when the shambles were in Newgate Street.

Blowbladder Street, now the east end of Newgate Street. Stow calls it "Bladder Street, of selling bladders there." It extended from Butcher Hall Lane, Newgate Street, to the Conduit, Cheapside. [See Butcher Hall Lane; St. Nicholas Shambles.]

Blowbladder Street had its name from the butchers, who used to kill and dress their sheep there, and who, it seems, had a custom to blow up their meat with pipes to make it look thicker and fatter than it was, and were punished there for it by the Lord Mayor.—De Foe, Plague Year, ed. Brayley, p. 342.

But a more obvious derivation is from the practice of the vendors of bladders inflating them to their utmost dimensions and then suspending them on poles or cords to dry, and at the same time to notify their wares to purchasers. Long strings of such inflated bladders of all sizes might be seen a few years ago in bye-streets about Newgate Market and Smithfield, and quite lately in the neighbourhood of the Central Meat Market. In 1720 the butchers and bladder-sellers had left Blowbladder Street.

Blowbladder Street is taken up by milliners, sempstresses, and such as sell a sort of copper lace, called St. Martin's lace, for which it is of note.—Strype, B. iii. p. 121.

Theodore Hook introduces Blowbladder Street into one of the happiest of his jingles about Queen Caroline:—

And who were the company, hey ma'am, ho ma'am?
   Who were the company, ho?
We happened to drop in, with gemmen from Wapping,
   And ladies from Blow Bladder Row,
      Ladies from Blow Bladder Row, row.

But Samuel Foote had been before him. The Alderman's wife, Lady Pentweazel, in that amusing comedy Taste (8vo, 1752), lived here, and says to her husband, "Let us have none of your Blow Bladder breeding. Remember, you are at the Court end of the town."

Blowbladder Street. See Newgate Street.