Milkmaids’ Passage

There was a smutty joke at school. “What went up Judy’s Passage?” “Lupton’s Tower.” This passage connects The Green Park with a courtyard at the end of St James’s Place, previously a stable yard.

Today, as you emerge from Milkmaids’ Passage, moving purposefully on an easterly tack, there is the Royal Ocean Racing Club and the Stafford Hotel. The American bar at the latter is a tempting destination but turn back and look at The Green Park, as I did in the picture above.

Not a milkmaid nor a cow to be seen. In 1794 there were 8,500 cows being milked in London; by 1830 there were 12,000 and in 1850 20,000. Of course all these cows weren’t in St James’s Park and The Green Park but there were quite a lot, enough to provide milk for St James’s Palace and the aristocrats nestling close to the palace hoping for preferment.

As you know, milk is a nutritious drink for babies and children needing a shot of calcium. Its shelf life was very short in the 18th and 19th centuries so the milk had to be sourced locally. I don’t want to paint too an idealistic picture of attractive milkmaids going about their business, carrying pails of steaming fresh milk from fine Jersey cows. In 1797 in The Green Park one such milkmaid, Jane Bell, was abducted and raped by a rotter. He was not sent into therapy or given counselling: he was executed. They were so primitive in those days, so unaware of how damaged perpetrators of crime are. On the other hand …