Notes and Queries

Among the "chief things of the ancient moun-
tains and the precious things of the lasting hills"
preserved in the British Museum is a certain
rudely chipped flint, which once formed part of
Sir Hans Sloane's collections, bequeathed by him
to the nation at his death in 1752. In the Sloane
Catalogue it is thus described :-

"No. 246. A British weapon, found with elephant's

tooth, opposite to black Mary's near Grayes inn lane

Conyers. It is a large black flint, shaped into the figure

of a spear's point, K."

The references to "Conyers" and "K." are, for-

tunately, fully explained in a letter on London

antiquities written by Mr. John Bagford to

Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, and printed among

the introductory matter to Hearne's edition of

Leland's 'Collectanea.' The whole passage runs

thus:-

cary formerly living in Fleet-Street, who made it his

chief Business to make curious Observations, and to

collect such Antiquities as were daily found in and about

London. His Character is very well known, and there-

fore I will not attempt it. Yet this I must note that he

was at great Expence in prosecuting his Discoveries, and

that he is remembered with respect by most of our

Antiquaries that are now living. 'Tis this very Gentle-

man that discovered the Body of an Elephant, as he was

digging for Gravel in a Field near to the sign of Sir

John Old-Castle in the Fields, not far from Battlebridge,

and near to the River of Wells, which tho' now dryed up

was a considerable River in the time of the Romans.

How this Elephant came there? is the Question. I

know some will have it to have layn there ever since the

Universal Deluge. For my own part I take it to have

been brought over with many others by the Romans in

the Reign of Claudius the Emperour, and conjecture (for

a liberty of guessing may be indulged to me as well as to

others that maintain different Hypotheses) that it was

killed in some Fight by a Britain. For not far from the

Place where it was found, a British Weapon made of a

Flint Lance like unto the Head of a Spear, fastned into

a Shaft of a good Length, which was a Weapon very

common amongst the Ancient Britains, was also dug up,

they having not at that time the use of Iron or Brass, as

the Romans had. This conjecture, perhaps, may seem

odd to some; but I am satisfied my self, having often

viewed this Flint Weapon, which was once in the Pos-

session of that Generous Patron of Learning, the Reve-

rend and very Worthy Dr. Charlett, Master of University

College, and is now preserved amongst the curious Col-

lections of Mr. John Kemp, from whence I have thought

fit to send you the exact Form and Bigness of it [a coarse

woodcut of the flint occupies the next page]. This dis-

covery was made in the presence of the foresaid Mr.

Conyers, and I remember that formerly many such bones

were shown for Giants-Bones, particularly one in the

Church of Aldermanbury which was hung in a Chain on

a Pillar of the Church; and such another was kept in

St. Laurence's Church, much of the same Bigness. All

which bones were publickly to be seen before the dread-

ful Fire of London, as it appears to me from the Chro-

nicles of Stow, Grafton, Munday, &c."*

Who or what the "black Mary" referred to in

the Sloane catalogue may have been I know not;

but although she has long since been topographic-

ally dead and buried, her silent ghost still per-

petually revisits its former haunts. In Cary's map

appears

of London in 1792 "Black Mary's Hole"
as part of an unnamed continuation of Coppice
Row, immediately before it passes Bagnigge Wells,
a spot identifiable in the London of to-day as that
part of Cross Street fronting the Clerkenwell
House of Correction. "Black Maria" for at least
some five-and-twenty years has been a favourite
London synonym for a prison van, and it seems
difficult to avoid the conclusion that the first
vehicle to which the name was applied was the one
which conveyed its duly qualified passengers to
this establishment at Clerkenwell, situated exactly
opposite black Mary's." I note here, moreover,

two other etymologies. The House of Correction

is known to its frequenters as The Steel," a fact

*Leland's Collectanea,' Hearne, second ed., vol. i.

"And here I cannot forget to mention the honest
Industry of my old Friend Mr. John Conyers, an Apothe- p. lxiii.

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