Wednesday 24 June 2009

Famous London Pubs - The Blind Beggar

The Blind Beggar is a public house in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is located in the Whitechapel Road, Whitechapel. It was built in 1894 on the site of another inn, established before 1654, and named after the legend of Henry de Montfort, a son of Simon de Montfort. In the legend, Henry was wounded and lost his sight in the Battle of Evesham in 1265, and was nursed to health by a baroness, and together they had a child named Besse. He became the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green and used to beg at the crossroads. The story of how he went from landed gentry to poor beggar, became hugely popular in the Tudor era, and came to be adopted in the arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green in 1900.
The Blind Beggar is a common tourist attraction for Salvationists. It is known as the site on which The Salvation Army started, as in 1865, it was outside the public house that William Booth preached his first open air sermon which led to the establishment of the East London Christian Mission, later to become the Salvation Army. William Booth is commemorated by a nearby statue.

The Blind Beggar is notorious for its connection to East End gangsters, the Kray twins. On 9 March 1966, Ronnie Kray shot and murdered George Cornell, an associate of a rival gang, the Richardsons, as he was sitting at the bar. The murder took place in the then saloon bar.
The pub is also a popular starting point for the Monopoly Pub Crawl, despite being located on the board's third space.

Thought For Today


After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
Italian Proverb

I Guess It's True What They Say About A Scotsman


Definitions (Medical)

Cauterize
Made eye contact with her.

Colic
A sheep dog.

Coma
A punctuation mark.

Dilate
To live long.

Enema
Not a friend.

Eyedropper
A clumsy ophthalmologist.

World Nettle Eating Championships

Each year in June a rather bizarre world championship is held in the Dorset village of Marshwood. The World Stinging Nettles Eating Championship is held at the Bottle Inn. Past competitors have travelled from as far away as Canada and Australia, and this years event attracted a record crowd of around 1,000.
The contest began more than 20 years ago when two customers at Marshwood's 16th century Bottle Inn, argued over who had the worst infestation of stinging nettles. One of them said, "I'll eat any nettles of yours that's longer than mine." And so they had a competition. Though both men are now dead, the competition has carried on. The contest has separate men's and women's sections, and the number of entrants is strictly limited to 65. Only nettles grown in a field outside the village are allowed to be eaten. Competitors are served two-foot-long stalks of nettles from which they must pluck and devour the leaves. The bare stalks are then measured and the winner, after an hour of combat, is the one with the greatest accumulated length.
This year's male champion, Mike Hobbs, landlord of the New Inn at West Knightly, near Doncaster, managed to consume 48ft of nettles. The female winner was Mel Lang of West Bay, Dorset , who finished on level terms with Mr Hobbs.

Ever Wondered Why

On a Swedish chainsaw: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals.
(Was there a lot of this happening somewhere?)

Church Signs