The Fortune of War Public House

The Fortune of War Public House

The Fortune of War was an ancient public house in Smithfield, London.

It was located on a corner originally known as "Pie Corner", today at the junction of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane. Its name derived from the magpie represented on the sign of an adjoining tavern. [cite book
last = Cobham Brewer
first = Ebenezer
authorlink = Ebenezer Cobham Brewer
title = Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
accessdate = 2008-02-17
year = 1898
pages =
chapter = Pie Corner (London)
chapterurl = http://www.bartleby.com/81/13226.html ]

The "Fortune of War" on Pie Corner is allegedly the place where the Great Fire of London stopped, after destroying a large part of the City of London in 1666. The statue of a cherub, initially built in the front of the pub, commemorates the end of the fire.

In 1761, the tenant of the house Thomas Andrews was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to death, but was pardoned by King George III in one of the first cases of public debate about homosexuality in England. [cite book
editor = Rictor Norton
title = Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook
url = http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/eighteen.htm
accessdate = 2008-02-17
origyear = 2004
chapter = The First Public Debate about Homosexuality in England: Letters and Editorials in the London Evening Post concerning the Case of Captain Jones, 1772
chapterurl = http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/jones4.htm ]

Until the 19th century, the "Fortune of War" was the chief house of call north of the River Thames for resurrectionists, being officially appointed by the Royal Humane Society as a place "for the reception of drowned persons". [cite journal
last = Forbes
first = Thomas Rogers
title = Crowner's Quest
journal = Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
volume = 68
issue = 1
pages = 1–52
date = 1978
url = http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0065-9746(1978)2%3A68%3A1%3C1%3ACQ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X
accessdate = 2008-02-17
doi = 10.2307/1006152] The landlord used to show the room whereon benches round the walls were placed with the snatchers' names waiting till the surgeons at St Bartholomew's Hospital could run round and appraise them.

The public house is mentioned in William Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848) in a chapter entitled "How to Live Well on Nothing a Year" (ch. 37):

The bill for servants' porter at the "Fortune of War" public house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer. Every servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and thus kept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in fact was paid. Not the blacksmith who opened the lock; nor the glazier who mended the pane; nor the jobber who let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it; nor the butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals which roasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the servants who ate it: and this I am given to understand is not infrequently the way in which people live elegantly on nothing a year.

The public house was demolished in 1910.

References


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