London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
A cherry-bright top of the morning to you, London Walkers. Just a soupçon this morning. A little amuse-bouche to go with your coffee.
An amuse-bouche you can dazzle your friends with.
Better still, completely flummox them.
Just ask them this.
“When was Britain’s first blackout?”
They’ll exchange knowing looks.
They’ll think, “He’s trying to catch us out.”
“He thinks we’re going to say 1940.”
They’ll say, “No chance we’re falling for that.”
“Anybody with half a brain knows London was blacked out during the Zeppelin raids in the First World War.”
“So we’ll say 1915.”
That’s game, set, match to you.
Because you smile beatifically.
And say…
“I’m so sorry, old chap. Britain’s first blackout began not in 1915…
…but in 1696.”
Three hundred and thirty years ago.
Sit back.
And enjoy the slack jaws.
Because Britain’s first blackout had nothing whatever to do with bombs.
Or Zeppelins.
Or the Luftwaffe.
It was brought to you by…
His Majesty’s Treasury.
It was caused by a tax.
Not a tax on candles.
Not a tax on oil lamps.
A tax on windows.
Yes.
Windows.
It sounds gloriously absurd.
But it happened.
The government desperately needed money to pay for its wars against France.
Taxing income was all but impossible.
There had been a Hearth Tax.
But that one was a nuisance.
The taxman had to come into your house and count your hearths.
Windows?
He didn’t even have to knock on the door.
He could stand in the street…
…and count them.
Little historical aside.
Britain taxed windows to pay for its wars against France.
France, meanwhile, sold half of North America to the Americans to help pay for its wars against Britain.
The Louisiana Purchase.
Napoleon sold an empire for about three cents an acre.
But back in Britain, the Treasury had settled on a rather different way of raising money.
The more windows your house had…
…the more tax you paid.
The idea was that only the well-to-do would be caught.
After all, bigger houses had more windows.
But taxes have a habit of spreading.
Before long, plenty of people decided they’d rather have less daylight than pay more tax.
So they simply bricked up their windows.
Builders caught on.
New houses went up with fewer windows.
Existing houses lost them.
Whole streets became darker.
Literally darker.
Britain’s first blackout had begun.
Doctors were horrified.
They argued that the tax wasn’t merely taxing windows.
It was taxing sunlight.
Fresh air.
Health itself.
The poorest suffered most.
Many found themselves living in gloomy, ill-ventilated rooms that were colder, damper and far less healthy than they had been before.
The tax lingered on for more than a century and a half.
Then, on this very day, July 24th, 1851…
…it was finally abolished.
The country breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Some houses reopened their windows.
Others never bothered.
Which is why, to this day, if you wander through Bloomsbury…
…or Hampstead
….or Chelsea
…or Clerkenwell…
…or Spitalfields…
…or any number of older London neighbourhoods…
…you’ll still come across blank rectangles of brick where windows once were.
They even have a wonderful nickname.
Pitt’s Pictures.
Named after William Pitt the Younger, whose government increased the tax. Which of course encouraged even more people to wall up their windows.
So the next time you spot one of those curious patches of brickwork…
Don’t think, “Odd bit of building work.”
Think instead…
“There’s the first blackout.”
That’s London.
A city where even a missing window has a story to tell.
See you tomorrow.