A guest post by London Historians member Stanley Slaughter, in which he continues his reports on London’s lesser-known historic attractions.
When Benjamin Franklin arrived in London in 1757 he was already rich and famous. As he planned a long stay, 18 years with a brief return to his homeland of America in 1762-64, he needed fitting lodgings to mark his wealth and celebrity.
These he found at 36 (in those days, number 7) Craven Street, a row of tall, narrow but supremely elegant Georgian houses a few minutes from Charing Cross.
Mid-18th century London, with a population of 740,000 by 1760, was the largest city in Europe and the unchallenged centre of an expanding empire. It was a massive contrast to Franklin’s adopted city of Philadelphia which had about 15,000 residents. London offered theatres, concerts, coffee houses and restaurants but, most of all, a wide range of people for Franklin, a printer, publisher, journalist, author, scientist, politician and diplomat, to engage with. He revelled in this thriving, buzzing environment and soon became a fixture of the city’s political and scientific elite.
Much socialising was done at Craven Street, now better known as Benjamin Franklin House, a museum dedicated to the memory of this great American. His landlady, Margaret Stevenson and her daughter Polly became his second family – he had left his common law wife Deborah Read in Philadelphia. He referred to Margaret as his “good dame” and became great friends with Polly and her husband, William Hewson, an anatomist who ran a private school in the house’s basement. Franklin occupied rooms on the first floor with his son William and two enslaved men, Peter and John.
A group called the Friends of Benjamin Franklin restored the house after a long period of decay in the 1990s and indeed earlier. It opened to the public in 2006. As none of the furniture used by Franklin survives, the restorers made the decision to leave his rooms largely bare. But with a little imagination, you can fairly easily envisage how the tireless Franklin occupied his time. His bedroom doubled as his workshop where he carried out many scientific experiments.
In his time in Craven Street, Franklin, a self-taught scientist and expert on electricity, invented the lightning rod and helped fix one to St. Paul’s; he refined his design for bi-focals, stoves and catheters, built a ‘glass armonica’ – a type of musical instrument; researched ocean currents and the Gulf Stream; and carried out experiments to improve ventilation, heating and lighting in houses.
But it is the room next door, his parlour where Franklin comes alive. Large windows look onto the street, there is a grate which once held a blazing fire and there is a desk, the like of which Franklin used for this vast correspondence and reading. There would have been chairs and side tables to entertain his guests. Over the years these included Joseph Priestley, a political theorist and outstanding chemist, an Enlightenment man like Franklin; David Hume, the Scottish philosopher; Captain James Cook, the great naval explorer, and radicals like Thomas Paine, later a great supporter of American independence.
One great guest, although they met in Margaret Stevenson’s parlour, was the former and later prime minister, William Pitt the Elder, the earl of Chatham. At the height of the controversy over the Stamp Act, he asked Franklin to help him write the speech that secured its repeal. The Stamp Act, passed the year before, infuriated the colonists by directly taxing them without them having any say.
In the basement there is a display of bones, dug up in the 19th century, of some 15 individuals which must have featured in Hewson’s anatomy lessons, supplied perhaps by the notorious Resurrection Men.
But there is also a prominent display about Franklin’s two slaves, Peter who returned to Philadelphia where all trace of him was lost, and John who escaped in London. Franklin, whose views on slavery were changing, made little attempt to get him back. John was taken in by a lady in Suffolk who taught him to read and write and also, apparently, to play the violin.
Sadly Franklin’s stay in London ended in 1775 on the sourest of notes. He had secretly obtained from one of his many contacts in 1772 letters of the governor of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Hutchinson. They revealed he had encouraged the Crown to crack down on Bostonians at a time of growing unrest in the colonies. The letters were published in 1773 in the Boston Gazette and Franklin was called before the British Privy Council. There he was accused of dishonesty. There were also suspicions that the self-proclaimed monarchist who saw himself as British was actually an American agent.
In March 1775, Franklin left England, never to return. He sailed to Philadelphia and shortly after began to help write the American Declaration of Independence.
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FACTFILE: Benjamin Franklin House, 36 Craven Street, London WC2N 5NF. Nearest Underground stations: Embankment, Charing Cross. Tel: 020 7839 2006; e-mail: [email protected]; website: www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org; self-guided tours: Wednesdays and Thursdays 11am-3pm. Admission: adults: £8, concessions £6, children under 11 free. Friday: architectural tours, hourly from 11am-3pm. Adults £10, concessions £8, children under 12 free. Saturdays and Sundays: Historical Experience. Adults £12, concessions £10, children under 12 free. Hourly from 11am to 3.15pm.
The House is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays although private tours can be arranged on request.
Please book ahead for all visits or tours. The House is part of the National Art pass scheme.
The author is a founder member of the London Historians’ Group. For further information on Franklin, please see Benjamin Franklin in London by London Historians member George Goodwin. It is available at Benjamin Franklin House.
