LONDON CHARACTER

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 460, 18 June 1937, Page 3

LONDON CHARACTER

COLOURFUL MEMORIES Saw Pirates Hanged (By Air Mail.) London, May 22. London has just lost one of its oldest inhabitants —a man with many cotpurful memories of the London thst htas gone. Edward Hipwell, who for’ 40 years was beadle ait Billingsgate and senior aleconner for the City, died in fife ninetieth year. He could reinember whM miikmails delivered milk in the City from pails hung from wooden yokes on their shoulders. Policemen were clad in blue swallow-tailed coats, white trousers and shiny top hats. Postmen wore scarlet uniforms and Smithfield Market was full of live cattle for sale in pens. Once he saw five piraltes hanged putiide Newgate for mutiny land murder. As for Billingsgate Market, he claimed that the air and the language there were purer than anywhere else in London. “Billingsgate people,’ he said, “don’t swchr. Billingsgate language —like the fish —is brought into the market. It is nothing to do with (the natives." Although he was- senior ale-conner, Mr. Hipwell said he had no real liking for ale and often went ia month without tasting it. In ithe old days his office gave him the right to walk into any public house and taste the beer Every month Mr Hipwell attended at the Guildhall—un official qedasior in full dress. a long violet cloak, goldbraided, with gold-bound tri-cornered black hat.