Dirty Dick's (Forgotten London)

Until it was remodeled in the 1980s, Dirty Dick's Pub in Bishopsgate, (East End/City of London), was covered in cobwebs, filth, and long-dead mummified cats and rats. There was one cat in particular that visitors were encouraged to stroke for good luck, and it was fitted with a spring so that it leaped when touched. Fun times were had by all, I'm sure.

Allegedly the pub got its memorabilia from the estate of eighteenth-century eccentric Nathaniel Bentley, who was to marry his sweetheart - but she died on the wedding day. Heartbroken, he refused to leave his rooms and when he died fifty years later he was cocooned in muck. Apparently he was very fond of cats and when one of his pets died he refused to bury it, letting it mummify in his collection instead. The pub got its pick of the best bits and carried on the tradition in Dick's memory.

There is an alternative version of this story. From the History of Signboards (1866):

The name of Dirty Dick, which graces a public-house in Bishopsgate Without, was transferred to those spirit stores from the once famous Dirty Warehouse formerly in Leadenhall Street, a hardware shop kept in the end of the last century by Richard Bentley, alias Dirty Dick, in which premises, until about fifteen or twenty years ago, the signboard of the original shop was still to be seen in the window. Bentley was an eccentric character, the son of an opulent merchant, who kept his carriage and lived in great style. In his early life he was one of the beaux in Paris, was presented at the court of Louis XVI., and enjoyed the reputation of being the handsomest and best dressed Englishman at that time in the capital of France. On his return to London he became a new, though not a better, man. Brooms, mops, and brushes were rigorously proscribed from his shop; all order was abolished, jewellery and hardware were carelessly thrown together, covered by the same shroud of undisturbed dust. So they remained for more than forty years, when he relinquished business in 1804. The outside of his house was as dirty as the inside, to the great annoyance of his neighbours, who repeatedly offered Bentley to have it cleaned, painted, and repaired at their expense; but he would not hear of this, for his dirt had given him celebrity, and his house was known in the Levant, and the East and West Indies, by no other denomination than the “Dirty Warehouse in Leadenhall Street.” The appearance of his premises is thus described by a contemporary:—

“Who but has seen, (if he can see at all,) ‘Twixt Aldgate’s well-known pump and Leadenhall, A curious hardware shop, in generall full Of wares from Birmingham and Pontipool! Begrimed with dirt, behold its ample front, With thirty years’ collected filth upon’t; In festoon’d cobwebs pendant o’er the door, While boxes, bales, and trunks are strew’d around the floor. ....... Behold how whistling winds and driving rain Gain free admission at each broken pane, Safe when the dingy tenant keeps them out, With urn or tray, knife-case or dirty clout! Here snuffers, waiters, patent screws for corks, There castors, cardracks, cheesetrays, knives and forks; There empty cases piled in heaps on high, There packthread, papers, rope, in wild disorder lie.” &c.&c.&c.

The present Dirty Dick is a small public-house, or rather a tap of a wholesale wine and spirit business in Bishopsgate Street Without. [note: that means it's on the East End side of the Bishopsgate border, between City of London and East End,] It has all the appearance of one of those establishments that started up in the wake of the army at Varna and Balaclava, or at newly-discovered gold-diggings. A warehouse or barn without floorboards; a low ceiling, with cobweb festoons dangling from the black rafters; a pewter bar battered and dirty, floating with beer; numberless gas-pipes, tied anyhow along the struts and posts, to conduct the spirits from the barrels to the taps; sample phials and labelled bottles of wine and spirits on shelves,—everything covered with virgin dust and cobweb,—indeed, a place that would set the whole Dutch nation frantic.

Yet, though it has been observed that cleanliness of the body is conducive to cleanliness of the soul, and vice versa, the regulations of this dirty establishment, (hung up in a conspicuous place,) are more moral than those of the cleaner gin-palaces,—as, for instance:—“No man can be served twice.” “No person to be served if in the least intoxicated.” “No improper language permitted.” “No smoking permitted;” whilst the last request, for fear of this charming place tempting customers to lounge about, says, “Our shop being small, difficulty occasionally arises in supplying the customers, who will greatly oblige by bearing in mind the good old maxim:—

‘When you are in a place of business, Transact your business And go about your business.’”

The great thing about Dirty Dick's, from a gaming perspective, is that it covers a wide range of possibilities, from Victorian to Call to Trail to Bookhounds to Dracula Dossier, or Esoterrorists. Who knows what secrets lie under a pall of ancient dust? Mind you, I can't help but have sympathy for the no smoking rule - imagine what would happen if that place caught fire! You wouldn't have time to blink before the whole thing went up like Guy Fawkes, and good luck finding an emergency exit. 

It must have been interesting trying to justify all that to the Liquor Licensing Board and whichever body handled fire safety - probably the local council, in the 1980s. Still, for it to survive for more than a century argues it must have been profitable; not a gold mine, I suspect, but it paid its way.

Technically there's still a Dirty Dick's in London but somehow I don't think it has the charm of the original. It does claim to have some relics of the old pub kept under glass, which extends the plot life of this location into the 21st century. This PubWiki has some photos of the old Dirty Dick's, but not that many shots of the interior which seems a shame. 

What kind of stories can be told with a backdrop like this? Trail? Bookhounds? Dracula Dossier? 

There's one obvious story that can be told in any setting: the McGuffin. Somewhere in that pile of God knows what is a relic, weapon or other item that is critical to [insert plot here.] Someone thought it would be a good idea to hide it in plain sight, and it can be difficult to find a specific tree in a forest. 

So they squirreled it away in Dirty Dick's, perhaps when it was still a warehouse. Naturally whoever it was wouldn't leave it unguarded, but as to what or who that guard is ... if it's a Mythos entity of some description then Dust or Rat Things seem logical choices. It could also be someone like the Enigmatic Monsignor (Dracula Dossier) - in a Protestant country that's historically been very anti-Catholic for centuries, somewhere like Dirty Dick's might seem an attractive hiding place for a Catholic relic. It is Bishopsgate, after all, and Bishopsgate Without is home to some of London's ancient churches, as well as the old Bedlam hospital; plenty of story fodder there. Or some ex-Edom bigwig like the Boffin might have camouflaged something in his favorite drinking hole. It could even be a fake McGuffin, a ruse planted to attract the unwary.

Trail is technically a 1930s setting but there's nothing in its mechanics that prevents you from playing in the late Victorian period; you wouldn't even have to change the skill list, beyond making a note that Driving applies to horse and carriage. Though if the characters want to be one of the first to drive a car Frederick Bremer and Frederick Lanchester are making them in the 1890s. Dirty Dick's could also be a good Yellow King backdrop. As for what kind of story you'd tell in a Victorian setting, why, a ghost story, of course. Why waste all those cobwebs? The darn thing's practically screaming Gothic. Mummified cats! Need I say more? 

Dirty Dick's could be a good location for a time travel story. Your Trail investigators find, say, an iPhone buried in the other rubbish, and try to work out how it got there. Is there some strange Yithian device at Dirty Dick's that's inadvertently pulling in items from other time periods? Alternatively are Ythians or Mi-Go secretly operating Dirty Dick's, using its well-known squalor as an excuse for why everything seems just a little odd? Is that mummified cat crouched atop a brain case - and just how mummified is it, really? Or one of the vampire types that play with reality could be using Dirty Dick's as a kind of interstitial safe house - an alien stone hidden amongst the cobwebs fractures space and time while spreading its vampiric influence across London. 

Or Dirty Dick's could be a cult node, disguising its malign influence as an innocent, if eccentric, public house. With a name like Dirty Dick's (note - don't Google, unless you enjoy watching folks doing unspeakable things) this seems like the perfect place for Bookhounds' Keirecheires, but it could as easily be somewhere for the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh or the Witch Cult to hang out. After all, in its heyday Dirty Dick's warehouse was known across the empire; a globe-trotting organization like the Brotherhood might have snapped it up as a London base for its activities ages ago. Or a more local organization like the Witch Cult might be hiding a Dark Grail or some other artefact amongst the other rubbish, to be used in strange ceremonies.

Dirty Dick's could be a gateway to other places as well as other times. Where better to hide a Gate to the Dreamlands, the Library of Celano or some other mystic haven? There's a reason why Dick's is dirty and it has nothing to do with branding; the best way to hide magical chaos is under a grimy pile of mundane chaos. It could even be a means of passage from Earth to other worlds - Eversink, for example. Imagine vanishing behind a cobwebbed barrel only to reappear in another version of Dirty Dick's, in a different reality altogether.

Megapolisomancy might use Dirty Dick's as a kind of landmine, or it might already have been used as a landmine and exploded, hence its current condition. It's no longer really part of the city and can't be used as an anchor, but if you get too close your Magick might be scrambled. Just as a radioactive device leaves radiation behind so too do powerful Megapolisomantic activities leave marks of their passing, like cancers growing in the body politic. Maybe Dirty Dick's is spreading its filth across Bishopsgate, and maybe it's thanks to some protective working placed in the long-ago that it hasn't already spread beyond Dirty Dick's. Of course, if some foolish investigators look too close they might upset that delicate working ...

Enjoy!