The London Daily Newsletter Wednesday 21 June

St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics
St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics was founded in London in 1751 for the treatment of incurable pauper lunatics by a group of philanthropists.

It was London’s second public institution in London created to look after mentally ill people, after the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlem (Bedlam), founded in 1246. In 1786 the hospital moved to purpose-built premises on Old Street, between Bath St and what is now the Old Street Roundabout. The building had a magnificent frontage of brick, 500 feet long and had a central entrance, with the male wards to the left and female wards to the right. There wered single cells for 300 patients, each with small windows set high in the wall. All patients were transferred in 1916, and the buildings were acquired by the Bank of England to become the St Luke’s Printing Works, used for printing bank notess. The building was demolished in 1963.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

St Paul’s Cathedral from Ludgate Circus, London c 1885 John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 – 1893) was a Victorian-era painter, notable for his landscapes. In 1861, at the age of 24, to the dismay of his parents, he departed from his first job as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway to pursue a career in art. He began exhibiting in 1862, under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.

John Atkinson Grimshaw

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.