Identifier: oldnewlondonnarr03thor (find matches)
Title: Old and new London : a narrative of its history, its people, and its places
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Thornbury, Walter, 1828-1876
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Cassell, Petter, & Galpin
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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In a tavern at Covent Garden, the husband of the exquisite sculptress, the Hon. Mrs. Damer, shot himself in 1776. Mr. Damer's suicide vvas hastened, and indeed provoked, by the refusal of his father. Lord Milton, to discharge his debts. Horace Walpole, after entering at length into this matter in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, in August, 1776, gives the following circumstantial account : — " On Thursday Mr. Darner supped at the 'Bedford Arms,' in Covent Garden, with four ladies raid a blind fiddler. At three in the morning he dismissed his seraglio, ordering his Orpheus to come up again in half an hour. When he 'returned he found his master dead, and smelt gunpowder. He called : the master of the house came up ; and they found Mr. Damer sitting in a chair dead, with one pistol beside him and another in his pocket. The ball had not gone through his head or made any report. On the table lay a scrap of paper with these words, 'The people of the house are not to blame for what has happened ; it was my own act . . . .' What a catastrophe for a man at thirty-two, heir to two-and-twenty thousand a year !" Horace Walpole remarks, with his usual cynicism on this aftair, that "Five thousand a year in present, and £22.000 in rever-sion, are not, it would seem, sufficient for happiness and cannot check a pistol." The following curious circumstance is mentioned in the "Life of Queen Anne," where, under date of 1708, we read that "the Muscovite Ambassador having had his audience of leave of the Queen, Mr. Morton, a laceman in Covent Garden, and some others of his creditors, caused him to be arrested, on the 21st of July, as he was riding in his coach. The bailiffs thrust themselves into the coach, took away his sword and cane, and carried him to a spunging-house, called the 'Black Raven.' Here the Ambassador sent to one of the Secretaries of State to acquaint him with his being insulted in that manner, but no secretaries could be found ; and only Mr. Walpole, an under-
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