Macklin Street

Charles-Street, Drury-lane,—at 174, on the L. from St. Giles's, leading into Newton-street and to 206, High-Holborn.

Charles-St., Drury-lane, is at No. 174, on the left hand from St. Giles's, and leads into Newton-street, and to No. 206, High Holborn.

Lewknor's Lane, now Charles Street, Drury Lane (east side, opposite Short's Gardens), was so called after Sir Lewis Lewknor, temp. James I., Master of the Ceremonies, who resided in Drury Lane. It was long a rendezvous and nursery for loose women. In Dryden's Wild Gallant (1663) the old procuress who is introduced as Lady du Lake tells the heroine that her "lodgings are in St. Lucknor's Lane, at the Cat and Fiddle," and Mr. Lovely (the Wild Gallant) exclaims, "I am ruin'd, for ever ruin'd. Plague! had you no place in the Town to name but Lucknor's Lane for lodgings?"

The nymphs of chaste Diana's train.
The same with those of Lewknor's Lane.
Butler's Posth. Works.

At Mr. Summers, a Thief Catcher's, in Lewkner's Lane, the man that wrote against the impiety of Mr. Rowe's Plays.—Instructions to a Porter how to find Mr. Curll's Authors (Pope and Swift's Misc., vol. iv. p. 33).

Drawer. I expect him back every minute. But you know, Sir, you sent him as far as Hockley-in-the-Hole for three of the ladies, for one in Vinegar Yard, and for the rest of them somewhere about Lewkner's Lane.—Gay, The Beggor's Opera, 8vo, 1728.

Here Jonathan Wild, the famous thief and thief-taker, assisted by Jane Sprackley, kept a house of ill-fame. At a butcher's near Lewkner's Lane, while cheapening ribs of beef, Jack Sheppard, the highwayman, was taken (1724) after his second escape from Newgate.

Lewknor's Lane, opposite Short's Gardens, at the top of Drury Lane, now styled Charles Street, derived its name from Sir Lewis Lewknor, who owned property here in the reign of James I. From an early date it bore a bad character, and in it Jonathan Wild kept "a house of ill-fame." Constant allusions to its residents occur in the plays of the time of Queen Anne; and Gay, in the Beggar's Opera, alludes to it as one of the three places in which ladies of easy virtue might be found. If we may judge from a passage in "Instructions how to find Mr. Curll's Authors," published in Swift's and Pope's Miscellanies, it was also the residence of hack-writers for the press. "At Mr. Summer's, a thief-catcher, in Lewknor's Lane, a man that wrote against the impiety of Mr. Rowe's plays." The thoroughfare (called Lutner's Lane by Strype) is, as it was two hundred years ago, "a very ordinary place." It is to be hoped that its morality is higher now than it was in the time of Samuel Butler, who speaks—satirically, of course—of

"The nymphs of chaste Diana's train,
The same with those of Lewknor's Lane."

To which passage Sir Roger L'Estrange adds a note to the effect that it was a "rendezvous and nursery for lewd women, first resorted to by the Roundheads." It is said that in the time of Henry III. the north-west corner of Drury Lane was occupied by a smith's forge.