The Nine Lanterns

On the Friday morning Wren walked the ground. He went up from Bloomsbury Square by the west side, into Bedford Square, and out of Bedford Square by the north, and so into Bedford Place, and round Russell Square on its eastern side, and down Guilford Street to Brunswick Square, and from Brunswick Square along to the east as far as Regent Square, and back by way of Queen Square to his starting-point. He walked at Phoebe Latham's pace, which he estimated from Mrs. Pell's evidence and from his own knowledge of the route, and he counted lanterns. There were nine gas-lanterns along the particular stretch between the Theatre Royal omnibus-stop at Southampton Row and the door of the pawnshop in Brunswick Street. He had confirmed this with a diagram drawn for him by the clerk at the Bloomsbury District Vestry. The vestry kept such diagrams because the vestry paid for the gas. The lanterns were numbered for the purposes of the contract with the Gas Light and Coke Company: they were Numbers 117 through 125 of the Bloomsbury district, and they were lit each evening by a lamplighter whose route Wren had also, with the clerk's assistance, obtained in the form of a small printed sheet. The lamplighter's name was Mr. Digby Salt. He was employed by the company. He was paid, according to the sheet, for the lighting and the extinguishing of two hundred and thirty-one lanterns in the district