Fleet
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a name prominent in the history of London. Fleet Brook emptied into the Thames from the north. Its banks were a deep clay ravine. It became a general and an offensive dumping ground for the offal of a city noted for filth, plague, and pestilence. Fleet ditch, as it was contemptuously called by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has been converted into one of the main sewers of London. It empties into the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge . Fleet Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares of the city, was named for the brook. It leads westward from old Fleet Bridge, now Ludgate Circus, to the Strand. It is a part of the direct route from St. Paul's to Westminster. The roar of traffic is tremendous. Fleet prison formerly stood on the east side of the brook. It was established about the time of William the Conqueror. As early as 1290 it was a debtor's prison, or prison in which persons were confined for the crime of refusing to pay their debts. It was for a time the place of confinement for state prisoners held by order of the Star Chamber . As a debtor's prison, it was open to the visits of outsiders who might come with food or money for friends. As many reduced clergymen were among the prisoners, men who were glad to make a shilling or two, the prison became a rendezvous for couples who desired to be married unknown to their friends. In this way runaway and secret weddings came to be known as "Fleet marriages." In 1754 Parliament forbade marriages within the prison. It was burned by Wat Tyler and his men in 1381, by the Great Fire in 1666, by a mob in 1780, and was abolished in 1846. The site is now occupied by a handsome Gothic Congregational hall.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910, Fleet Street's "tremendous" roar was largely the traffic of the newspaper trade, which then had almost every national title packed into the street and its courts. That is finished: Rupert Murdoch's News International moved to Wapping in 1986 after a bitter year-long dispute, the other proprietors followed, and Reuters left in 2005, leaving "Fleet Street" as a figure of speech for the British press rather than an address. The buried Fleet still runs as a sewer and still discharges near Blackfriars Bridge, so that part of the account stands. The "handsome Gothic Congregational hall" on the prison site — the Memorial Hall, where the Labour Party was founded in 1900 — was pulled down in the late 1960s and replaced by an office block.
Written for this edition, 2026.