Hades Hotel p2- The Tunnel Under the Thames

During the first day Brunel’s “Eighth Wonder of the World” opened to the masses, over fifty thousand amazed pedestrians paid the one penny toll to walk through the Thames Tunnel. Visitors first enter the octagonal rotundas  covering the descending shafts on both the Wapping and Rotherhithe shores. Landscapes depicting scenes from all four seasons of the year brighten the rotunda’s interior. Within the doorway, a brass turnstile and a toll keeper bar anyone from entering the tunnel without payment. After crossing a floor decorated in blue and white tiles, visitors reached the edge of a great circular chasm eighty feet deep and fifty feet in diameter. Two marble stairwells crisscross down the stucco walls. Paintings and statues at the landings, divert visitors during their long descent. Music from an organ echoes up the length of the shaft.

At the bottom, those entering or leaving the tunnel pass by entertainers, buskers and fortune-tellers assembled to take advantage of the crowd. Two grand arches cut into the side of the shaft lead into the tunnel, for the tunnel itself divides into two parallel stone-lined passages, each fifteen feet high and thirteen feet wide. Arched corridors, some large enough for a carriage to pass through, connect the passages through the ten-foot thick partitioning wall. These arches allow for ventilation and for pedestrians to turn around on crowded days. The river rushes as close as fifteen feet over the pedestrian’s heads as they cross the one-thousand three hundred feet to the egress on the opposite shore. Everywhere gaslights illuminate the underworld.

Stalls and small shops along the passages and the arches of the dividing wall leave little more than three feet of pathway for visitors in the busiest marketplaces. During the Thames Tunnel’s first years, no visitor ascended back above ground without toys, glassware, and souvenirs to commemorate their visit purchased from cheerful shop girls at the subterranean stalls. Unfortunately, the public’s enthusiasm for the tunnel waned. The Thames Tunnel Company never raised enough funds to convert the tunnel’s entrances into spiraling ramps suitable for vehicular traffic. Without regular tolls for passing coaches and shipping goods through the tunnel, the company lost all hope of recouping their costs. The Thames Tunnel soon gained the name “Hades Hotel”, both as a dolorous portal through the underworld and for the lost souls spending their lives in its depths.

By 1855, the stalls sell novelties only of interest to the tourist or rubbish only good to the desperate, the drunk, or the devious. Stripped of glamorous novelty, darkness resettled into the gloomy gaslight. The girls keeping the stalls enter the tunnel before daylight and often close shop after dark, leaving them pale anemic looking retches. Pedestrians glance up at the disconcerting moisture dripping from the ceiling, and noisome smells sift into the chilly air. Small restaurants refreshing visitors with cakes and wine occupy the largest corridors connecting the two passages. Puppet shows and street musicians attempt to brighten the damp passages with entertainment. To most Londoner’s a descent into the Hades Hotel is a necessary but unpleasant trek by day and to be avoided at night.

The Thames Tunnel never closes. A single penny buys transit underground any time of day or night all week. After sunset, London’s night goers seek a haven of privacy safe from constabulary patrols.  Thieves, prostitutes, pickpockets, and other scoundrels gather in the tunnel to ply their trade and to practice their vocations. Countless masses of the poor and sick pay their penny for a night’s sleep in shelter and relative safety.  

Next week, we’ll put all this fact together and make up some fiction. This colorful history invokes all sorts of adventurous ideas.