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Bohemian & Libertine · London, Greater London

The Fitzroy Tavern

The pub that named a district: Fitzrovia's all-comers salon where Dylan Thomas drank, Nina Hamnett — 'Queen of Bohemia' — held court on the subject of her lovers, and Quentin Crisp arrived nightly in full defiant maquillage. Louche, literary and gloriously unrespectable.

StatusDocumented history
Datebohemian heyday 1920s–1950s
The peopleDylan Thomas, Nina Hamnett, Quentin Crisp, Augustus John
The site16 Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia
Coordinates51.51806, -0.13472 (confidence 5/5)

The story

The Fitzroy Tavern at 16 Charlotte Street gave Fitzrovia its name. A former coffee house, it became the Fitzroy under landlord Judah "Pop" Kleinfeld, who renamed it in March 1919 and invented the "pennies from heaven" darts charity. From the 1920s to the 1950s it was London's bohemian crossroads — Augustus John called it "the Clapham Junction of the world." Dylan Thomas handed out beer-mat poems; Aleister Crowley mixed drinks; Nina Hamnett reigned as Queen of Bohemia. It was also a rare place where gay and bisexual people could drink relatively openly at a time when sex between men was illegal — a tolerance that was fragile, not guaranteed, with raids on other venues (Fitzroy Square 1927, the Caravan Club 1934) a constant reminder. Hamnett's 1932 memoir Laughing Torso led Crowley to sue her for libel in 1934; he lost, and the judge denounced his evidence from the bench.

More stories at this spot

Pennies from heaven

Pop Kleinfeld turned charity into a bar game: drinkers wrapped coins around darts and threw them at the Fitzroy's ceiling, where they stuck. Once a year the money was taken down and spent sending poor local children to the seaside. Nina Hamnett, generous and usually broke, was said to miss the ceiling but never the point.

The Tiger Woman and the cat

Betty May, a Fitzroy regular nicknamed the Tiger Woman for drinking from a saucer on all fours, became the star witness in Crowley's 1934 libel case. She testified that at Crowley's Sicilian abbey her late husband had been made to kill a cat and drink its blood — evidence that helped sink Crowley's suit.

Sources

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