Lowther Arcade

[John Townsend]

Can anyone help me recover a lost reference, please? I remember having read a short account of a game of living chess played at the Lowther Arcade, West Strand, London, during the 1830s, or perhaps early 1840s. The report was probably written later in the 19th century and may have been part of a non-chess publication about London history. It feels as if it should have been in John Timbs's Curiosities of London, but I can't find it - at least not in the 1855 edition! Any memory jogs welcomed ...

Best wishes,

John Townsend

[John Townsend]

Since writing the above, I have found two references, but neither is the one which I saw originally:

1. Notes & Queries (Second Series, Vol. III, 1857, p. 338) has an interesting article. "Some fifteen or sixteen years since" "men and women, dressed as pawns and pieces", could be hired at the Lowther Rooms, King William Street, Strand. The manner of play is described. It was five shillings to play and one shilling to spectate. "The speculation was not a successful one."

That would seem to date it as about 1840-2. I don't think it is mentioned in The Chess Player's Chronicle, which began May 1841, while The New Monthly Belle Assemblée (Vol. V, 1836, p. 46-47) contains what seems to be an earlier reference to living chess at the Lowther Rooms:

"We hear the Living Chess Players are to give their performances on alternate evenings, with Mr. Love, and shall ere long pay them a second visit."

2. The American chess magazine, The Chess Monthly (Vol. IV, 1860, p. 133) refers to living chess at the Lowther Rooms and continues with a related story.

[John Townsend]

An advertisement in The Times (14 May 1836, p. 1) corroborates that there was living chess "every evening" at the Lowther Rooms as early as 1836.

[Clive Blackburn]

This report is from the New York Times of November 12 1882

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.h ... 5B8284F0D3