Aldgate

Daniel Mendoza was born in Aldgate, east end of London, in 1764 to a Portuguese Jewish family.

He grew up in London's east end.

in and around Oldgate and Whitechapel, neighbourhoods shaped by trade, migration and a substantial Jewish community.

Mendoza was not a giant.

That was part of the point.

It shouldn't be romanticised.

But it also was a place where Londoners made public identities in unexpected ways.

A Jewish fighter from Oldgate could become a national celebrity.

And they're now an organised group akin to an army with Watt Tyler at the head, making their way to London in a pincer move with their Essex comrades, making a beeline for London themselves.

The Essex army has it slightly easier in that they're on the right side of the river to enter London via Mile End, and likely entering the City of London through Aldgate.

For the Kentish forces, they're heading to London via Blackheath, where they'd camped out to group up everyone before setting off with Watt Tyler at their head.

The King and his advisors were aware of two armed groups heading to London and were stumped on what to do.

So if you've been to London, you've definitely come across them.

There are seven in all.

You've got Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate.

Lots of gates.

Again, the cab drove on, Stokes growing more and more breathless behind.

Down Aldgate Street, then towards Fenchurch Street, onto Leadenhall Street, and there it branched off to London Bridge and crossed the river.

Stokes was taken for a lunatic as he raced along.

Two policemen whom he met only laughed at him derisively as he pointed to the cab ahead and gasped, "That cab, there ahead.

Many watercourses ran from the north into the Thames, the names of which are still attached to districts or streets in the metropolitan area.

Thus, beginning at the east, one has to mention Langbourne, a watercourse flowing through what is now Langbourne Ward in the city, making its course from Aldgate through Fenchurch Street, and probably flowing into the Walbrook, a stream which divided the city into nearly equal halves, and flowed from Moorgate to Dowgate through the Bank of England, and the Poultry, and the name of which still remains in a ward and a street.

The river Fleet rose from Highgate Ponds and meandered through St. Pancras to King's Cross, where is Battle Bridge.

Thence its course skirted the western side of Clerkenwell, and flowed at the foot of Saffron Hill, Snow Hill, Holborn Hill, and Ludgate Hill, reached the Thames at Blackfriars.

These wheels continued in use for two hundred and forty years until 1822, when the Act for Rebuilding London Bridge caused their removal.

The pumping machinery was of its kind excellent, but the mains were very defective, and there was much loss by leakage, and leakage also caused great damage to the bridge.

The chief mains ran in Bishopsgate Street, Cheapside, Aldgate, Fleet Street, and Nougat Street.

The fact that the London Bridge waterworks were in use until eighteen twenty-two is important as showing that the Thames water up to that time was not so grossly impure as to preclude the possibility of distributing it for household purposes without filtration.

I go before, and you shall follow after, to our long home.

On the morrow the sheriff of London with his officers came to the compter by two o'clock in the morning, and brought forth Dr. Taylor, and without any light led him to the woolsack, an inn without Aldgate.

Dr. Taylor's wife, suspecting that her husband should that night be carried away, watched all night in St. Boltoff's church porch beside Aldgate, having her two children, the one named Elizabeth of thirteen years of age, whom, being left without father or mother, Dr. Taylor had brought up of alms from three years old, the other named Mary, Dr. Taylor's own daughter.

Now when the sheriff and his company came against St. Boltoff's church, Elizabeth cried, saying, O my dear father, mother, mother, here is my father led away.

Then his wife cried, Roland, Roland, where art thou? For it was a very dark morning, that the one could not well see the other.