London's Death Pump

London's Death Pump
By the gentle author
See how these people pump water. They seem unaware that they are in the presence of the infamous "pump of death" in 1876, when the water began to have a strange taste and was found to contain liquid human remains that seeped into the underground stream from the cemeteries.
Hundreds of people died in the Aldgate Pump Plague caused by drinking contaminated water – this was apparently a distant memory in the nineteen twenties when Whittard's tea merchants “always filled their kettles at Aldgate Pump and only took clean ones. Water was used to flavor the tea.
Before it was switched to a supply from the New River Company in Islington, Aldgate Pump's spring water was prized by many for its abundant health-promoting minerals, until - in an unexpectedly gruesome development - it was discovered to be oozing from human bones.
This absurd phenomenon quickly entered popular folklore, so that a bouncing check was called "a draft on Aldgate Pump" and "Aldgate Pump" in rhyming slang meant to provoke - "to get caught". The horrific revelation confirmed widespread morbid prejudice about the East End, and Aldgate Pump was a defining landmark in the land's origins. The "pump of death" became a symbol of the decadence of life in East London, and it was once said that "east of the Aldgate pump, men care for nothing but drink, vice and crime".
Today this sturdy stone pump of the late eighteenth century, a battered reminder of an old world, is no longer functional, lost amid the modern city's traffic and recent developments. Despite the fascinating evidence of this venerable ancient landmark, which counts all the miles east of London, nobody sees it anymore and its terrible history is almost forgotten. Even in old photos you can see how the venerable pump was marginalised, cut down and eventually neglected. Aldgate Well was first mentioned in the thirteenth century - during the reign of King John - and was mentioned by the sixteenth century historian John Stowe, who described the execution of the bailiff of Romford on a gibbet "by the well within Aldgate". In "The Uncommercial Traveller," Charles Dickens wrote, "My day's business took me to the east end of London, and I turned my face to that part of the compass...past Aldgate Pump." Before the "Pump of Death" happened, music hall composer Edgar Bateman, nicknamed "The Shakespeare of Aldgate Pump", wrote a comic song to commemorate the Aldgate Pump - "I will never forget the gal by the aldgate Pump. ..."
The pump was first installed on the wellhead in the sixteenth century, and was replaced in the eighteenth century by an ornately shaped and fluted Portland stone obelisk with nineteenth-century gables. The finest detail that survives to this day is the beautiful brass spot in the form of a wolf's head - still clattering wildly in a futile attempt to maintain its "death pump" reputation - placed there to mark the last of these creatures. Shot outside of London.
Amazingly, the brass button that controls the outflow of water is still there, but the water stopped flowing in the last century, although pressing it is irresistible. A drain remains beneath where the stone has been weathered by the action of water over the centuries, and there is an elegant iron pump handle – enough details to convince me that the water may one day return.

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