NOT everyone who finds their way to our Street of Shame achieves fame and fortune through the world of newspapers. But digging the dirt can pay well. Take black road sweeper Charlie McGhee in the 18/19th century.

His patch of mud, dung, human waste and horse manure in Ludgate Circus brought him rewards others could only have dreamed of … for he swept up a secret fortune.

 

His official title was Crossing Sweep, but he wasn’t paid by the council. He existed on handouts from thankful Gentlemen and Ladies after sweeping away the muck and dung that stained shoes, boots, petticoats and breeches as they made their way from their carriages to shops and offices.

 

Born in Rio Bueno, Jamaica in 1744, Charles spent most of his life sweeping the junction between Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, which in those days had an obelisk smack bang in the centre of the crossroads.

 

He called the obelisk his shop. And that is where he could be found every day. At night he would trawl around theatres and bear pits selling nuts and fruit from a basket. He was always working.

 

He became well known as one of the few black people in London, and by his distinctive appearance: a shock of frizzy white hair bunched at the back, sideburns, one eye missing (no one knows how) and a smart frock coat. People loved him … and especially one young lady.

 

Across the road on the corner of 103 and 104 Fleet Street was a successful linen-draper’s shop called Waithman & Co, owned by Robert Waithman, who had eight children. He would go on to become MP for the City of London and eventually Lord Mayor. He had three daughters and one of them, Mary, befriended road sweeper McGhee. Charlie’s obelisk was in fact, erected in honour of her father.

 

She would see him out of the window, sweeping the crossing in all weathers. When she passed him in the street, she would chat and give him money (no one ever knew how much) … even sending out bread and soup to keep him warm and fed. He never forgot her kindness.

 

Crossing Sweeps were thought of as the lowest of the low in the world of the street traders. My favourite London chronicler of the time Henry Mayhew called them “private scavengers” who were just beggars. But their jobs were the last chance they had of earning an honest crust.

 

Most of them suffered from rheumatism, asthma or injuries that prevented them from other, harsher work, such as bricklaying. They hobbled up to people who appeared rich and started to sweep the muck away in front of them just for a halfpenny. Many people called them pests.

 

Charlie was one of the “St Giles Blackbirds”, the first black community in London to live inside the St Giles Rookery. They were freed slaves who fought on the British side during the American War of Independence. They settled in England in the late 1700’s and soon found themselves poor, dispossessed and living within the St Giles-in-the-fields area of London.

 

One morning Mary looked out of the window and noticed that Charlie, who lived in a passage leading from Stanhope Street into Drury Lane, wasn’t there. She searched for him all day, asking other street traders and was heartbroken to discover he had ‘simply retired somewhere.’ She never saw him again. From here on his story becomes a mystery.

 

Charlie died many years later in the 1820s, aged around 87, although no one knew exactly how old he was. Nothing seems to be recorded. But he apparently left a letter to Mary.

 

On December 8, 1884, in a lengthy article about him, London’s Daily News reported he had left her all his savings … £800. Today that would be worth £120,000.

 

Across the road from Charlie’s obelisk in Fleet Street was a shop that fitted glass eyes and wooden legs. I wonder if that’s where Charlie got his pretend eye from?

 

 

NOT MUCH WEDDING MAGIC FOR JUDY FIFTH TIME AROUND

GLASSES filled to the brim with champagne stood untouched on the tables decked in flowers and the huge, three-decker wedding cake was uncut. It was frozen solid. Someone had forgotten to take it out of the freezer.

 

Only a few reporters sat on the chairs around the wedding couple as Hollywood legend Judy Garland told the man from the Sunday Express: “I don’t understand it, they all said they would come.”

 

It was March 15, 1969, and the star who stole our hearts as Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, had married for the fifth time. The wedding reception was held in The Big Room at Quaglino’s Restaurant in Bury Street near Piccadilly and hundreds of stars and friends had been invited - but few showed up.

 

The Press did though for the saddest wedding party of the Swinging decade. Oh, and the Best Man was thankfully there — singing sensation Johnny Ray, known for crying on stage.

 

Judy, 46, looking tired, frail and forlorn and wearing a blue chiffon mini dress, with a draped neck and ostrich feather sleeves, had married gay ex-discotheque manager and part-time jazz pianist Mickey Devinko, better known to his friends as Mickey Deans, at Chelsea’s Old Town Hall in the King’s Road.

 

Judy told reporters: “This is it. For the first time in my life, I’m really happy. Finally, I am loved.” Not that much loved, it seemed. Even her daughter Liza Minnelli, rang her to say: ‘I can’t make it Mamma, but I promise I’ll come to your next one!’

 

The wedding was so badly organised a young actor friend of Judy’s new husband Mickey, named Allan Warren, was asked to be wedding photographer. He later told the Express what happened: “Mickey phoned and said, ‘Have you got a camera? At the time I was in Alan Bennett’s play Forty Years On and oddly enough had just bought one. He offered me £20 to take some photographs at the reception. He was usually stone broke. I laughed and said, ‘sure, who’re you marrying?’ He said, ‘Judy Garland so I can pay you’.

 

“I had never taken any pictures before and when I arrived at the reception there was a small band playing; a huge amount of press and a little group of people sitting with the couple in the corner.

 

“I took a few snaps including some of Judy and Mickey dancing. Then Mickey told me to dance with Judy as there was nobody else apart from Johnnie. She seemed very frail and very skinny. When we waltzed, I could feel the bones of her spine sticking out.

 

“She seemed very dazed as if on drugs. Her eyes were glazed over, and she was very uptight. We danced in time to a one-armed trumpet player playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Afterwards I left as I had to do the play. Mickey never paid me of course!”

 

On Saturday 22 June, just three months after their wedding, Judy and Mickey had been watching a BBC documentary on the Royal Family at their mews home in Chelsea. But both felt unwell they went to bed early.

 

At around 10.40am the next morning the phone rang for Judy. Mickey got up and found the bathroom door locked. He climbed out on to the roof and looked through the window. Judy was motionless on the toilet with her head slumped forward and her hands on her knees.

 

She had been dead for eight hours. A bottle containing 25 barbiturate pills was later found by her bedside half-empty, and another bottle of 100 was still unopened. It was twelve days after her 47th birthday.

 

Frank Sinatra paid for her funeral.

 

More bollocks … but true

AFTER Judy’s death, Sinatra’s local newspaper The Desert Sun reported that he often paid for the funerals of friends who hit bad times. He was buried aged 82 in his local cemetery at Palm Springs California, with a packet of Camel cigarettes; a bottle of Jack Daniels, a Zippo lighter and a bag of dimes in his pocket … in case he needed a pay phone. The Desert Sun said he would often get ‘his people’ to follow up stories and help those in need.

 

HERMIONE BATS FOR NEW BOOK ON NEWSPAPER LOVE AND SEX

A BIG thank you this week to the Daily Drone’s so-called diarist Hermione Orliff who took time off from her ping-pong circuit for seniors with X-large bats and bottoms, and even cut her column back, to find time to tell me about a new book of political skulduggery and intrigue around lovebirds Malcolm Muggeridge and Lady Pamela Berry, the flirtatious wife of Daily Telegraph owner Michael Berry, Viscount Camrose.

 

Serial groper Muggeridge had a 10-year affair with Pamela, the leading press hostess of her generation, during which time she wielded ‘Petticoat Power’ over Downing Street in the Suez crisis, the point at which some historians claim the British Empire died.

 

Her power behind the scenes led to cartoons of her dominance over Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, whom she hated, appearing in the daily Press. The Telegraph meanwhile accused Eden’s administration of lacking “the smack of firm government”.

 

Future Labour leader Michael Foot got involved as Britain as France failed to gain control of the canal from Egypt’s from highly-excitable, olive-munching General Nasser. Foot said: “The real snake in the grass is Lady Berry. She runs a salon in true 18th-century style. She would always be there when the moment comes for the kill.”

 

Writer Evelyn Waugh called her “a prize booby” and described her mischief-making as “the nicest side of her character”.

 

Despite her allegiance to her husband’s Daily Telegraph, Pamela often leaked gossip and information to her lifelong friend Lord Beaverbrook, what a tangled web of deceit and skulduggery it all was.

 

The book, Lady Pamela Berry: Passion, Politics and Power was reviewed in The Sunday Times by Max Hastings, who didn’t win many friends among the hacks reporting the Falklands War, like our own dear Bob McGowan if you remember. The title is: “The grand dame of Fleet Street and is a window into the remarkable life of a woman through her letters and diaries. Nothing is spared. It is warts and all.

 

It was long known that Muggeridge had a reputation for groping women at social gatherings, that sometimes led to affairs, and sometimes didn’t. He would introduce himself with a squeeze on his target’s knee under the dinner table. But he went on to repent his sexual escapades though and became a Christian. Even sent Mother Theresa Christmas cards.

 

TERRY MANNERS

 

7 April, 2025