hospital
grounds at that tune, and was an open stream about nine feet wide; while
its banks were supported by planks and struts across it. It was open
right up to the end of Eaton Place. It was crossed by two bridges, one
called Ranelagh, in the Pimlico Road, by the side of the "Nell Gwynn"
tavern, the other called Bloody Bridge, in the King's Road, between
Sloane Square and Westbourne Street. On the banks of this foul and
offensive stream there was no better than a common sewer. Between the
two bridges at the back of George Street and overlooking it, were crowded
together a lot of old two and three-roomed cottages that periodically at
high tide were flooded by the offensive matter. The district was known
as Frog's Island, and suffered terribly in the outbreak of cholera in
1832. It was inhabited by a class that was always in a chronic state of
poverty, and as there had been a very severe winter, that had a great
deal to do with it. I think this stream is now covered over. It had its
rise from the overflow in the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, and crossed under
the road at Knightsbridge, about where Albert Gate now stands, into the
Park. {32}

CHAPTER 5.--Old-time Chelsea.

It was a grand sight on the first of May to see the four-horse mail
coaches pass along Knightsbridge at eight in the evening. As many as
fourteen would pass all in their new livery of scarlet coats and
broad-brimmed top hats, trimmed with gold lace, the guards blowing their
horns. I have seen them take up passengers at the top of Sloane Street,
who arrived there in one of the old two-horse hackney coaches, and it
appeared quite an undertaking to get the passengers on board. They would
branch off there, some going along the upper road through Kensington, and
the others along the Fulham Road and across the river at Putney. The
road from Chelsea to Buckingham Palace was mostly through fields, some of
them called the Five Fields (now Eaton Square and neighbourhood),
extending as far as Grosvenor Place and St. George's Hospital, which you
could see from the toll-gate in Sloane Squire, the only building on that
part being Eaton Chapel. The road to the Palace was very lonely, as
there were but few houses. The Chelsea Bun Houses--there were two of
them--stood on the left side of the Pimlico Road, about one hundred yards
beyond the toll-gate by the "Nell Gwynn" tavern. The first one kept at
that time by London, had a frontage of at least f