Black Plaques London

BUCKINGHAM PALACE SW1

GRUBBY NICKER

As dawn was breaking one morning in December 1838, the night porter at Buckingham Palace was suddenly confronted by a ghostly face at his door. But when the apparition promptly vanished, he was left wondering whether it had been a figment of his imagination, so out of caution he alerted police who began a careful search of the building.

Smudges of a curious fatty, yet sooty substance was all that confronted constables until a figure was spotted lurking in the shadows of the Marble Hall. Quietly creeping up on the intruder, an officer lunged at them - but the mysterious dark form was daubed with grease so simply slipped from his clutches; it scurried across the room, leaped out of a window and sprinted across the lawn. When police finally caught up with it, the trespasser turned out to be 14-year-old Edward Jones, Britain's first royal stalker.

Jones was frogmarched to the kitchen, where the full extent of his filthiness became apparent, leading officers to believe that he had disguised himself as a chimney sweep. It later became clear that Jones was habitually this dirty, however his grubbiness had been cultivated by means of a bottle of bear's grease - a popular (though misguided) hair loss treatment that he had discovered in a state bedroom and, for reasons known only to him, chosen to smear over himself. But most appalling to onlookers was the conspicuous bulge in his trousers that, when forcibly slackened, caused the spilling out of several items of Queen Victoria's underwear.

Undergarments made no appearance on Jones's charge sheet and a prevailing desire to avoid airing intimate Royal laundry in public eased a jury towards a verdict of sending the youth on his way.

But two years later, despite an assassination attempt on the Queen and the birth of her first child, palace security was again found wanting. During a December night in 1840, the Queen's midwife heard something moving in the Royal dressing room, just a door away from the sleeping monarch. She summoned assistance and from beneath a sofa was dragged a creature of 'most repulsive appearance'; there was no mistaking that it was soap-shy Jones again. On this occasion he had none of the Queen's unmentionable apparel on his person, but there was an awkward feeling that he might have observed it being worn by its owner. Nothing more than a wry grin escaped Jones's lips, but were he to delight the press with the finer details of his escapade there would be acute embarrassment. Consequently the safest course of action was to deal with the scoundrel in a manner more befitting treasonous barons in medieval times: he would be interrogated in secret by the Privy Council.

Jones merrily informed the venerable assembly how he climbed a wall into the palace garden, hopped through an open window, then curled up for a snooze under one of the servant's beds. The following evening, he sauntered off to procure dinner and when suitably sated wandered between state rooms and private apartments. A trail of dirt confirmed his palace peregrinations and this time Jones was handed three months' hard labour.

Palace security was stepped up with a detachment of fourteen constables on twenty-four hour watch, yet on 16 March 1841, a midnight patrol of the Grand Staircase revealed a squat shadow lolling in a recess beside a pair of grimy shoes. With weary resignation, an officer called out: 'What, Jones is that you?' to which: 'Yes, it is me,' was the sheepish reply. Once again, Jones recounted his caper around the palace to the Privy Council - how he tried a throne for size, pulled out books in the library, then came upon a room with a crown and jewels to play with. Grubby stains again bore out the truth of his tale so 'In-I-Go Jones' returned to the treadmill.

When the scoundrel later emerged frail and sickly from what seemed a concerted effort by the authorities to break him, his family had an unexpected surprise - their landlord, Mr James, was suddenly expressing heartfelt concern for the delinquent boy's welfare. As luck would have it, a Captain acquaintance of his would shortly set sail from London so why didn't the lad sign up as an apprentice seaman? Jones declared no yearning for the sea but the promise of financial favour dulled any reasoning so he gaily set off - unaware that it was an emigrant ship bound for New Zealand. But the plan had an unexpected flaw: the boy's exploits had brought such notoriety, the captain recognised his cargo and immediately offloaded it; the rascal reached no further from Buckingham Palace than Gravesend. James was evidently not devoid of nous because he hurriedly bribed another boy to take the voyage and on arrival announce he was Jones, thus satisfying the shadowy figures behind the plot - but the deception lasted merely a few weeks.

Had this story been a work of fiction, it would now conclude with a dramatic last act, but regrettably, the final curtain is somewhat threadbare. After James spent several years making whistle-stop tours of Britain's docks with the boy, coaxing him aboard ships bound for far-flung regions, the scallywag's grimy trail finally loses its scent somewhere in Australia.

KENNINGTON PARK SE11

BATTLE LINES

The south field of Kennington Park bears a distinct series of bumps, which in summer become a pattern of brown lines in the grass; they are the ghostly outline of a vast underground air raid shelter dug in 1938 to accommodate up to 3,000 people. Towards one end the contours become fainter, and for tragic reasons.

Like many Second World War shelters in parks and commons across London, Kennington Park's was built by the local authority from pre-cast concrete slabs; wall panels slotted into floor and roof sections to form a warren of tunnels buried 12in below ground. But even before war was declared, workers died while constructing shelters such as these due to their poor-quality materials and the speed at which they were built, and concerns were voiced over their grid layout because an explosion would funnel straight through them. While later versions adopted a zig-zag design or steel frame with reinforced brickwork, these early so-called trench shelters remained highly vulnerable.

The scale of its inadequacy became apparent at 8 p.m. on 15 October 1940 when a 250kg high-explosive bomb struck the southern end while several hundred men, women and children were taking refuge from an air raid. Not only was the impact zone obliterated, but the huge blast lifted the shelter's roof so its walls caved in under the weight of soil; an area of almost 10,000 sq ft collapsed and amid a scene of utter horror; those not blown to pieces were buried alive.

Messages relayed to the Air Raid Precautions post offer a dreadful glimpse into the tragedy that night. Rescuers arrived with shovels to dig out survivors in the darkness but five hours after the bomb landed, it was estimated that at least 100 people were still trapped underground - their condition perhaps hollowly described as 'fairly calm', despite the fact that further bombs had landed in the vicinity. A couple of hours later, those who had not been recovered were declared dead and rescue attempts were called off. Screens were erected around the devastation, quicklime scattered to hasten decomposition, and all memories of the disaster erased for the rest of the war and some time afterwards.

An official death toll has never - or perhaps will never - be given, not least because numbers entering the shelter were not recorded and bereaved families may have kept their grief private. Although the bodies of forty-eight victims were recovered, it is generally declared that 104 people lost their lives; the remains of those unrecovered individuals still lie beneath the grass.

An easily overlooked memorial in the adjacent sunken garden commemorates 'over 50' men, women and children who died in the tragedy.

DUDMASTON MEWS SW3

COTTAGE SPY

In 1953, male homosexuality was causing moral panic and the Government acknowledged its duty to halt the spread of what Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe labelled 'this plague'. Answering urgent Parliamentary questions about the sharp rise in sexual delinquency, Fyfe fulminated: 'Homosexuals in general are exhibitionists and proselytisers and are a danger to others, especially the young', and expressed confidence that male perversion could be curbed through custodial sentencing: sodomy and bestiality warranted life imprisonment, attempt to commit unnatural offence or indecent assault on a male person: ten years, gross indecency: two years, and importuning: six months on summary conviction, or two years on conviction on indictment. One parliamentarian urged the adoption of medical procedures because the conviction rate was such it necessitated two or three men to a prison cell - which could only exacerbate the epidemic.

It was while walking home at about 11 p.m. on 21 October 1953 that the newly knighted Sir John Gielgud visited the gentleman's lavatory on Dudmaston Mews. As the actor made his exit, an attractive young man sauntered in and smiled at him. A particular glance or wink was sufficient for gay men to discreetly identify each other and because this particular lavatory was a well-known 'cottage' for homosexual liaisons, Gielgud turned around and followed him back in. Despite being an immensely private man, Gielgud evidently derived a thrill from both the fruits and hazards of cruising.

What happened next remains unspecified, but at a timely moment when an act of intimacy was perhaps on the cards, the man revealed himself to be a plain-clothes officer from Metropolitan Police B Division...