Published: 15 April 2010
by FIONA GREEN

FOR those who don’t know the lively work of Mike Pentelow, this gem of a book makes a welcome companion to his Characters of Fitzrovia, and is marvellously illustrated with photos by Peter Arkell.

In the introduction, Mike says: “Commoners who have a pub named after them are particularly uncommon people indeed, compared to members of the aristocracy, and what earned them the rare distinction is the purpose of the book.” He goes on: “These characters constitute a very mixed bunch: criminals (including highwaymen, smugglers, pirates,witches and murderers) pioneering discoverers (including inventors and explorers) rebels, revolutionaries, and reformers; war heroes, writers, entertainers and sports stars.”

The pubs which make up the book are situated throughout the UK and as far away as Ireland and Germany; but, I will focus on a few closer to home in central London.

Many of us drink in pubs without questioning how they earned their names. If pubs named after commoners are uncommon, pubs named for women are even less so.

The first I found is the Mother Red Cap (real name Jinny Bingham 1600-80), also known as Mother Damnable or the Witch Queen of Kentish Town. She disposed of several partners before being celebrated as a legend.

One of the pubs is in Camden High Street on the site of her cottage. It is now called the World’s End, but has a bar called the Mother Red Cap. Built by her father, and her partner, by whom she had a baby as a teenager; Jinny was rumoured to use witchcraft – like her parents before her – to kill him, and several other men, unfortunate enough to live with her.

Over time, this red-hatted woman with her companion cat, who sheltered highwaymen and women, lived up to her legend as a witch.

Another pub named after her has existed in Islington, since the 17th century. 

It used to have an inn sign of a woman with ale in one hand and cakes in the other, bearing the inscription: Old Mother Redcap according to her tale,

Lived twenty and a hundred years, by drinking this good ale;

It was her meat, it was her drink and medicine beside,

And if she still had drunk this ale, She never would have died.

The second, the Charlotte Despard (1844-1939) in Archway Road, changed its name two years ago, to honour the Suffragette twice Imprisoned in Holloway Prison nearby. 

Irish by birth, her father died when she was a teenager and her mother taken to a “lunatic asylum”. She grew up helping the poor in London, and campaigning to reform the Poor Law. 

She later returned to Ireland where she joined Sinn Fein. In the 1930s – following a visit to the Soviet Union – she joined the Communist Party of Ireland.

The third is the Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) in University Street, Fitzrovia. It is well known in the area, due in the main to Bentham’s wish that his head be embalmed, put on his skeleton, dressed in Quaker clothes and preserved for all to see in University College London, which he founded in 1826. 

His skeleton – it is said – is placed in the boardroom for meetings of college governors.

• A Pub Crawl Through History: The Ultimate Boozers’ Who’s Who. By Mike Pentelow and Peter Arkell pub. Janus Publishing £16.99