Dog and Duck, St George's Fields

The Dog and Duck was a seventeenth-century tavern that once stood in the marshy expanse of Saint George's Fields. It earned its name from the cruel local sport of duck-baiting, where dogs were set upon birds trapped in the surrounding ponds. By the eighteenth century, the tavern reinvented itself as a fashionable spa, marketing its mineral waters as a cure for ailments ranging from sore eyes to cancer. Despite this attempt at refinement, the tavern remained a notorious haunt for amusement, vice, and criminals, with observers noting that highwaymen often drank there before setting out to rob travelers under the cover of dusk. The authorities eventually revoked its license in seventeen ninety-nine, leading to the building's demolition and its transformation into a school for the blind, and later, the site of the Bethlem Royal Hospital.