Croatia
and originally drawn from his family regi-
ment, the 10th Hussars. The famous ban on
whistling in the arcade dates from the days
when prostitutes occupied the units’ upper
levels — seeing a beadle approach, they
would whistle a coded warning to the pick-
pockets below. The prostitutes have depart-
ed, but the ban is still enforced.
Unless you are one of two people. In the
1980s a man whistled as he examined one
of the window displays. A beadle politely
requested that he stop, only to see as the man
turned round that it was Paul McCartney.
The beadle granted the Beatle a lifetime
exemption on the spot, and to this day Macca
whistles whenever he passes through. His
third wife Nancy refused to believe him, so
he got a Beadle to confirm it to her.
The other exception? He’s a schoolboy
from the East End, aged about 11. A few
years ago he was going through a tough time
at home and misbehaving at school. His uncle
treated him to a day in the West End, includ-
ing a trip to Burlington Arcade, which the boy
loved. The beadles took a shine to him, and
said that if he got a good report from school
they’d issue him a permit to whistle. It took a
while, but last year the boy went back, and his
uncle confirmed that things had improved.
The beadles were true to their word — and
even printed the boy a certificate.I
t all began with oysters. Londoners used
to eat them as they walked along, throw-
ing away the shells much as they do burg-
er wrappers now. Lord George Cavendish,
owner of Burlington House on Piccadilly
(now the Royal Academy), was sick of shells
littering his garden, and so in 1819 decided
to open a shopping arcade down that side of
his property to protect it from the ‘tossers’.
Nearly 200 years later the place is thriving.
You can buy expensive watches and shoes,
perfumes and scarves, wallets and pens. Fred
Astaire would get ‘lost for days’ in the Burl-
ington, having discovered it when an admirer
bought him nine pairs of gold striped slip-
pers there. In 1964 a group of masked men
spent rather less time in the arcade, driv-
ing a Jaguar Mark X halfway along it, using
sledgehammers to relieve the Goldsmiths
and Silversmiths Association shop of £35,000
worth of jewellery, then reversing the car
back out. Workers in a nearby office show-
ered the robbers with flower pots and fur-
niture, but the Jag did its duty and the gang
were never caught. Elegant bollards were
installed at either end to prevent a repeat.
Units 52 and 53 are occupied by Han-
cocks, makers of every one of the 1,358 Vic-
toria Crosses awarded since the medal’s
inception in 1856. The lump of metal they
use (from an ancient Chinese cannon, whichmay or may not have been captured from the
Russians during the Crimean War) is good
for another 80 or so.
The arcade is kept in order by its sumptu-
ously uniformed beadles. This private police
force was instituted by Lord George himself,Don’t whistle: Burlington ArcadeNOTES ON ...
Burlington Arcade
By Mark Mason