*all about “23 Paradise Street” – Grave Robbing & the St.Mary’s “Watch House” – Bermondsey

23 Paradise Street & the St. Mary Magdalen Church ‘Watch House’

Bermondsey – London 

Last week, under bitterly cold London skies – my London Shoes shuffled off down to Bermondsey on the southern banks of the River Thames – London SE16.

The reason for crossing the River to the ‘dark side’ was for the purpose of tracking down a specific house in a particular street – and then widening that that exploration, to seek out a tiny little building in a churchyard – both buildings have an interesting little story behind them.

First off, having exited Bermondsey tube station (on the Jubilee Line) my London Shoes made their way to no.23 ‘Paradise Street’.

This magnificent old Regency period town-house dates way back to 1814 – and many of its original external structure/architecture brickwork/fixtures & fittings, are all still in situ, some 200+ years down the line.

Today, it houses luxury flats/apartments – but it has an interesting history that goes way back to Georgian (pre-Victorian) London.

The original owner of 23 Paradise Street was one ‘William Gaitskell’, and this is where the story gets interesting.

William Gaitskell was a well respected doctor and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons & Society of Apothecaries–London – and in 1830 he was elected President of the Metropolitan Society of General Practitioners in Medicine and Surgery.

Local references/records show that he was referred to in professional circles as ‘Sir William Gaitskell’ – but checks have been made, and apparently no official records exist to confirm that he was ever made a Knight of the Realm – so it is thought that perhaps he saw himself as a self-styled ‘Sir’.

Apparently – according to some local folklore stories, he had a tunnel built from the basement of his 23 Paradise Street home, that led down to the River Thames just a few hundred yards from the house.

It is said that it is at the end of this tunnel, dead bodies that had floated down the River, would often pile up, and that local kids were paid money to take the bodies to William Gaitskell for him ‘work on’– practicing his surgeon skills.

I would add – this is only folklore, and from my research for this particular blog topic, I found no evidence to confirm that William Gaitskell dabbled in this particular practice – but, it was most definitely a common practice at the time.

Medicine and surgery in Georgian/early Victorian times, was nothing like today – and it was common practice for corpses to be used for learning about the human anatomy and for teaching purposes.

During the late 1700’s and early 1800’s there was a massive demand from hospitals, their doctors and surgeons – for dead bodies for them to view the anatomy / practice surgery on – and to use to teach/educate – and there was a fair few quid to be made from providing corpses.

This big demand led to a lot of criminal activity throughout London where gangs of grave robbers would hang around church graveyards during the daytime, to observe what funerals were taking place – then return late at night or in the early hours of the morning – to dig up the recently placed soil over the grave – remove the recently laid to rest corpses, and then sell them on promptly to the highest bidders. Not surprisingly, the dead bodies being traded in this way tended to always be the corpses of the lower classes.

Under the law at that time, buried bodies were not viewed as being a ‘property’ – and as a result ‘resurrectionists’ (as they were named at the time – ie grave robbers), were able to dig up fresh dead’uns without fear of arrest or imprisonment – and then sell them on to private doctors/surgeons/medical schools and hospitals.

This grave robbing business started to get a bit out of hand, to the extent that resurrectionists weren’t always waiting to rob a recently laid corpse – some were actually creating corpses – murdering potential candidates, and providing extremely fresh bodies!!!

It created a trend of relatives placing cages and bars around a grave/tomb – or laying tombstones down flat on top of a grave – all of which made it more challenging for robbers to get easy access to a corpse.

In an attempt to keep some sort of control over this rather grisly activity, lots of London graveyards, especially those whose graves had been regularly targeted – built ‘Watch Houses’ at the main gates to the church/graveyards.

A ‘Watch House’ was like a mini police station built at the main entrance to a graveyard, where ‘Watchmen’ were stationed to keep an eye on any potential grave robbing activity taking place in the graveyard. If someone was caught ‘in-the-act’ then they were often apprehended and taken back to the Watch House, where quite often there was small cell that they would be locked up in overnight.

Now – what’s interesting here is that one of these old London Watch Houses that still exists, is located in Bermondsey, only a few minutes’ walk from William Gaitskell’s house in Paradise Street – and so my London Shoes just had to pay it a visit.

The St. Mary Magdalen Church– is a Grade II Listed late 17^th Century church located in Bermondsey Street – the oldest building in Bermondsey London SE16.

At one of the entrances to the church’s old graveyard (now a public park space) there stands an original Watch House.

The St. Mary’s Watch House was built in 1821 – it has a single storey above ground and a small cell below ground – and it is from this Watch House that the Watchmen would patrol the grounds of the church’s graveyard, to prevent ‘resurrectionist men’ from robbing freshly laid to rest corpses – and then selling them on to places like Guys Hospital and other London hospitals around at the time.

In 1828, in an attempt to ‘legalise’ the trade of providing dead bodies for medical research – Parliament passed the ‘Anatomy Act’ which gave surgeons and their students legal access to recently deceased bodies from workhouses / hospitals / prisons……that hadn’t been claimed within 48hrs. At the same time, the Act gave the next of kin the legal right to ‘donate’ the body of the deceased to ‘medical science’.

Now – here’s a nice little touch……. the St. Mary’s Church ‘Watch House’ as it is today – has been converted into an impressive little coffee shop called, not surprisingly – “The Watch House” – and it is clearly a popular little place from the activity London Shoes witnessed during my visit there.

Meanwhile – back up the road at no.23 Paradise Street – owner (Sir) William Gaitskell passed away in 1833 at the age of 70 – and irony of ironies bearing in mind all the grave robbing shenanigans going on around Bermondsey and London in general at that time – no.23 Paradise Street became one of London’s first Police Stations.

By 1864 records indicate that there were up to 117 officers working from what was Rotherhithe Police Station – and it remained a Police Station right up until 1965.

The building, now officially called ‘Gaitskell House’, survived all the extensive bombing of the area throughout the WW2 Blitz – whereas many of the similar buildings surrounding no.23 did not.

Following the departure of the Met Police from no.23 in 1965, the building then stood empty for several years and then eventually became offices.

Today, Gaitskell House is a residential property having been converted into luxury apartments/flats that currently sell for around £1.5m !!!

So – that’s last week’s Shoes’ trek down to Bermondsey – ‘Paradise Street’ and the St. Mary Church ‘Watch House’ – a couple of interesting little stories, which I hope you enjoyed reading about.

For this particular jaunt out London Shoes was accompanied by my old mate Pete – who in fact lived in Bermondsey as a youngster – as did several members of his family (nan’s / aunts/uncles/cousins etc) – so this particular trek out was a lovely little walk down memory lane for Pete, as he was able to tell me quite a bit about the history/background to a number of sights/landmarks we came across whilst pounding the Bermondsey pavements.

One local landmark in particular that Pete enjoyed re-visiting, was the recently re-opened “Old Justice” pub situated in Bermondsey Wall East – a pub that Pete used to have to sit outside as a kid in the early 1960’s, with an Arrowroot Biscuit and a bottle of pop – whilst his family were all inside enjoying a few drinks and often having a sing song around the old piano.

Built in 1933, the ’Old Justice’ pub has an amazing history about it. It is Tudor in its design and style – and, back in the day, was very much a ‘locals’ pub.

In 1984 the pub was used as a backdrop for the video of Paul McCartney’s hit single ‘No more lonely nights’ – which reached no.2 in the UK Charts and no.6 in the US Charts. It also appeared in McCartney’s 1984 album and film ‘Give my regards to Broad Street’ – and throughout the pub there are, naturally references to the above facts, displayed on an internal wall – plus a commemorative plaque on an exterior wall.

In 2017 the pub building was bought by a new owner who intended to convert the place into residential flats – and started ripping out the wooden bar and existing wood panelling and other fixtures/fittings. However – the pub building was Grade II Listed, and Planning Permission was refused – and Southwark Council took successful enforcement action against the new owner – which resulted in the reinstatement of the pubs original design

This reinstatement work was completed in 2022 and the Old Justice re-opened as a pub in Feb 2023.

My mate Pete certainly enjoyed ‘holding court’ up at the bar, discussing his past connections to the place, with all the regulars!!

The ‘Justice’ (as the locals call it) is definitely good pub to enjoy a few cheeky beers – well worth a visit if you’re ever in the area.

Hope the accompanying photos helped bring the ‘Paradise Street’ / St. Mary’s ‘Watch House’ & the ‘Old Justice’ stories to life a bit for you.

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Below is the entire gallery of photos taken to accompany this blog article