Dark Houses

5753 "Dark Hovse nere Billingsgate" 1573–1666 consumed in the Fire; rebuilt c1668–1874. Tavern; visited by Ned Ward 1690s, and Hogarth in 1732 who leaves us the following lines:

"Our march we with a song begin;
Our hearts were light, our breeches thin.
We meet with nothing of adventure
Till Billingsgate's Dark House we enter;
Where we diverted were, while baiting,
With ribaldry, not worth relating
(Quite suited to the dirty place)"

A mid-seventeenth century token issued here, bears the device of a ship.

Dark House, A tavern that offered beds for the night, situated in Dark House Lane (formerly Little Somers Key) to the west of Billingsgate.

An entry in the Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles II, 1671, for January 24 mentions the Dark House:

B. St. Michel to the Navy Commissioners. Understanding that the four muster books of the Newcastle and Dragon which I mustered last November, and sent up by Mr. Gilbert, the Canterbury carrier, have not been delivered, I ask you to send one of your officers to the carrier's porter, Matthew Bryant, at the Dark House, Billingsgate, with whom they were left. I will transmit copies in the meantime. The wind being southerly, has sent about four score of great Flemish ships, outward bound, into the Downs, together with three men-of-war as their convoy. I have the books for 9 November. [S.P. Dom., Car. II. 296, No. 6.]

Strype (1720) lists the Canterbury Coach in his "exact List of all the Stage Coaches and Carriers, with the Names of the Towns they come from, and their respective Inns in London, and the Days they go out: Very useful for Shopkeepers and Tradesmen," which had a carrier on Thursdays at Dark-house Billingsgate (140).

Dark House. In his London Spy (1700), Ned Ward describes the "Dark Houses" at Billingsgate, where the narrator and his companion spend the night carousing. "We now were at a stand which way to move;at last my Companion propos'd the Dark-Houses at Billings-gate: Where, he told me, we need not question, amongst the various humours of the Maritime Mobility, but to find abundance of Diversion. Besides, when our Faculties should grow tired with our Pastime, and Nature, for the Refreshment of our drowsie Microcosms, should require rest, we could there have the conveniency of a Bed to Repose our weary Members" (part III, p. 9). Eventually they reach their destination: "By this time we were come to Billingsgate; and in a narrow Lane, as dark as a Burying-Vault, which stunk of Stale Sprats, Piss, and Sir-reverence, we groped about, like a couple of Thieves in a Cole-hole, to find the Ent'rance of that Nocturnal Theatre, in whose Delightful Scenes we propos'd to terminate the Nights felicity. At last we stumbled upon the Threshold of a Gloomy Cavern; where, at a distance, we saw Lights burning like Candles in a Haunted Cave, where Ghosts and Goblins keep their Midnight Revels" (part III, p. 13). In the morning after a night of carousing, the Spy reports, "we fortified our Appetites against the Contagious Breaths of Funking Carmen, with a Penny-worth of burnt Bread soften'd in a Mug of Por­ters Guzzle, improv'd with a slice of Cheshire. This we gobbled up (being hasty to be gone) with as much Expedition as a Citizens Wife does an Islington Cheese­cake, when Treated by her Husband. Then satisfied our Tun-Bellied Hostess, and left the Infernal Mansion to the Sinful Sons of Darkness, there to practice their Iniquities" (part IV, p. 3).

In his Five Days' Peregrination, Hogarth relates visiting the tavern: "On Saturday, May 27th, we set out with the morning, and took our departure from the Bedford Arms Tavern in Covent Garden, to the tune, "Why should we quarrel for riches?" The first land we made was Billingsgate, where we dropped anchor at the Dark House." There Hogarth purportedly drew a portrait of a porter known as the "Duke of Puddledock." "We were agreeably entertained by the humours of the place," wrote Hogarth, "particularly an explanation of a Gaffer and Gammer, a little obscene, though in presence of two of the fair sex. Here we continued till the clock struck one." — The Genuine Works of William Hogarth by John Nichols and George Steevens, vol. 3, pp. 113–14.

There was still a Dark House tavern in Dark House Lane in 1800:

On Monday was brought before Alderman Le Mesurier (who sat for the Lord Mayor), Mary Foster, with assaulting him: a person who attended him as his Attorney wanted to explain the business, but the Alderman told him he must explain it himself first.
     When Foster being sworn, told the Alderman that he kept the Dark House, in Dark House-Lane, Billingsgate; confessed that Mary Foster was his wife, but that he had not lived with her for some years; that he allowed her so much a year; that she came to his house about ten o'clock at night on Sunday and assaulted him, and a young woman, one of his servants.
     Mrs. Foster declared she never assaulted this young woman, nor yet her husband, which she could prove by a witness present, who was there all the time, and who went with her on purpose to claim her right of possession, as there was no articles of separation between them; nor has she ever had a shilling from him, as he had just now sworn; that he had been from her several years, since which she had industriously worked as a servant, and never could find out where he lived till withn these three weeks, when she found he kept this public-house, and lived with another man's wife, who sometimes passed for his wife, and sometimes for a bar-maid. ...
—The Oracle, and the Daily Advertiser 22.422, Wednesday, December 17, 1800.