Bateman Street is a street in London's Soho district linking Greek Street to Dean Street , and crossing Frith Street between them. It is named after Bateman's Buildings, built on the site of the former Monmouth House. It was formerly called Queen Street.
33-680: William Le Queux described it in 1895 in The Temptress as being grimy and squalid, home to "spirited juveniles of the unwashed class". It is said to be the location of one of the Seven Noses of Soho . 51°30′51″N 0°07′53″W / 51.5141°N 0.1314°W / 51.5141; -0.1314 This London location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . William Le Queux William Tufnell Le Queux ( / l ə ˈ k j uː / lə- KEW , French: [ləkø] ; 2 July 1864 – 13 October 1927)
66-636: A baronetcy on 12 July 1916, whereupon he took the title Sir Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet of St Dunstan's , London. He received the GBE in 1917. Pearson was a close friend of the pioneer of the Scouting movement Baden-Powell , and supportive of his efforts in setting up the movement and publishing its magazine The Scout . When Pearson's scheme for publishing in Braille was faltering due to lack of funds, on 2 May 1914 Baden-Powell publicly requested that "all Scouts perform
99-696: A 'good turn' for The Scout magazine publisher Mr C. Arthur Pearson, in order to raise money for his scheme of publishing literature in Braille for the blind." In 1919, Pearson wrote the book Victory Over Blindness: How it Was Won by the Men of St Dunstan's . He founded the Greater London Fund for the Blind in 1921, funded by the establishment of its annual 'Geranium Day' appeal. Pearson died on 9 December 1921 when he drowned in his bath after knocking himself unconscious in
132-635: A 1908 operation, Pearson was progressively forced from 1910 onwards to relinquish his newspaper interests; the Daily Express eventually passed, in November 1916, under the control of the Canadian–British tycoon Sir Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook . Through the British and Foreign Blind Association , Pearson published his Pearson's Easy Dictionary in Braille form in 1912. Later completely blind , Pearson
165-403: A cooperative relationship with Pearson's old employer, George Newnes Ltd , and as Pearson gradually gave up his publishing duties to due to his blindness, by 1914, Pearson had essentially become an imprint of Newnes. With Pearson's death, this arrangement was formalized, and in 1929, Newnes purchased all outstanding shares of Pearson's company. Decades after the founder's death, into the 1960s,
198-644: A fall. He was buried in Hampstead Cemetery after a service to which the Cabinet, the British and Norwegian royal families, and many institutes for the blind all sent official representatives. Two of his pallbearers were blind. He was survived by his wife, son and three daughters. In 1922, a biography, The Life of Sir Arthur Pearson , was written by Sidney Dark and published by Hodder & Stoughton . Pearson's publishing company, C. Arthur Pearson Ltd. , had had
231-668: A friend, a certain Baroness Nernberg, who is one of the leaders of Society in the Swedish capital. This letter explained that my visitor was a well-known civil engineer in Sweden, that he was highly trustworthy, and that he had a very curious disclosure to make to me. We sat down, and certainly what he told me caused my eyes to bulge. Briefly, it was that a friend of his, a certain Professor Afzelius (sic), at Abó University, had discovered in
264-455: A small fortune for Le Queux, eventually being translated into twenty-seven languages and selling over one million copies in book form. The idea for the novel is alleged to have originated from Field Marshal Earl Roberts , who regularly lectured English schoolboys on the need to prepare for war. He was a member of Legion of Frontiersmen . Le Queux was reportedly less than happy about an abridged German translation (with an altered ending) appeared
297-548: A writer, and wrote a number of tourist guides to locations in Britain and Europe. Under the pseudonym of "Professor P. R. S. Foli", he wrote Handwriting as an Index to Character in 1902, as well as works on fortune-telling and dream interpretation . Pearson was a strong supporter of Joseph Chamberlain 's tariff-reform movement, and organised the Tariff Reform League in 1903, becoming its first chairman. In 1904 he purchased
330-457: A young man before supporting himself writing for French newspapers. In the late 1880s he returned to London where he edited the magazines Gossip and Piccadilly before joining the staff of The Globe as a parliamentary reporter in 1891. In 1893 he abandoned journalism to concentrate on writing and travelling. His partial French ancestry did not prevent him from depicting France and the French as
363-566: The Parker Expedition to Jerusalem . Le Queux wrote about it in his autobiography Things I Know about Kings, Celebrities and Crooks (1923). He wrote One day, during the five years I lived at the Hotel Cecil, a waiter brought me a card bearing the name of Broström, with an address in Stockholm. A tall, middle-aged, clean-shaven Swede was ushered in, and handed me a letter of introduction from
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#1732868587111396-556: The anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller. Le Queux was born in London. His father was a French draper 's assistant and his mother was English. He studied art under Ignazio (or Ignace) Spiridon in Paris. He carried out a foot tour of Europe as
429-627: The Hastings, St. Leonard's and District Radio Society, whose inaugural lecture was delivered on 28 April 1924 by John Logie Baird . Le Queux was eager to help Baird with his television experiments but said that all his money was tied up in Switzerland. He did however write an article, Television-a fact which appeared in the Radio Times in April 1924 which praised Baird's efforts. In addition to his providing
462-591: The Kaiser . These works were a common phenomenon in pre-World War I Europe, involving fictionalised stories of possible invasion or infiltration by foreign powers; Le Queux's specialty, much appreciated by Northcliffe, was the German invasion of Britain. He was also the original editor of Lord Northcliffe 's War of the Nations . In 1908 Johan Millen approached William Le Queux about finding funding for what later became known as
495-573: The Order of the British Empire (DBE). The couple had a son, Neville (birth registered in Farnham, Q1 1898), and three daughters. In 1890, after six years of working for Newnes, Pearson left to form his own publishing business and within three weeks had created the periodical journal Pearson's Weekly , the first issue of which sold a quarter of a million copies. A philanthropist, in 1892 he established
528-507: The Strand full of suppressed excitement. When Le Queux informed Millen that he had secured the funding Millen told him that they were not pursuing the matter. This was because they had decided to move forward with the syndicate led by Montagu Parker. However, he did not tell Le Queux this and he was left bemused. The author was not completely frustrated as it gave him the idea for a novel, The Treasure of Israel (known as The Great God Gold in
561-510: The US), which was another international bestseller for him. In it he took much of the cypher information that Millen had given him and then added many of the elements from his earlier work The Tickencote Treasure . The Invasion of 1910 , which originally appeared in serial form in the Daily Mail newspaper from 19 March 1906, was a huge success. The newspaper's circulation increased greatly, and it made
594-497: The charitable Fresh Air Fund, still in operation and now known as Pearson's Holiday Fund, to enable disadvantaged children to partake in outdoor activities. In 1898, he purchased the Morning Herald , and in 1900 merged it into his new creation, the halfpenny Daily Express . The Express was a departure from the papers of its time and created an immediate impact by carrying news instead of only advertisements on its front page. He
627-564: The claim by Le Queux that he saw a manuscript in French written by Rasputin stating that Jack the Ripper was a Russian doctor named Alexander Pedachenko who committed the murders to confuse and ridicule Scotland Yard . Le Queux wrote 150 novels dealing with international intrigue, as well as books warning of Britain's vulnerability to European invasion before World War I: Sir Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet Sir Cyril Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet , (24 February 1866 – 9 December 1921),
660-400: The explorer and adventurer Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard to Patagonia to investigate dramatic reports of a giant hairy mammal inhabiting the forests, and conjectured to be a giant ground sloth , long since extinct. Hesketh-Prichard's reports from 5,000 miles away gripped readers of The Express , despite his finding no trace of the creature. During this same period, Pearson was also active as
693-606: The original text of the Book of Ezekiel preserved in the Imperial Library at Petrograd a cipher message that gave the whereabouts of the concealed treasures from King Solomon's temple. The individual he calls Afzelius was in fact Valter Juvelius. After he was approached Le Queux says that he took the papers to a Dr Adler, a friend who was also the Chief Rabbi, to verify the documents. Le Queux says that Adler came back and said that there
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#1732868587111726-628: The same year: Die Invasion von 1910: Einfall der Deutschen in England translated by Traugott Tamm. In 1914, the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation produced The Raid of 1915 an updated version of The Invasion of 1910 , that was the first British film to feature German spies and invaders. Prior to the commencement of the Great War, the film was banned by the British Board of Film Censors , founded just one month earlier. The film
759-580: The story of The Raid of 1915 , he also wrote the films The White Lie (1914) and The Sons of Satan (19i5); he also wrote and co-directed Sadounah (1915). Apart from fiction, Le Queux also wrote extensively on wireless broadcasting, produced various travel works including An Observer in the Near East and several short books on Switzerland, and wrote an unrevealing and often misleading autobiography, Things I Know about Kings, Celebrities and Crooks (1923). The latter contains, among other fantastic stories,
792-746: The struggling The Standard and its sister paper the Evening Standard for £ 700,000 from the Johnstone family. He merged the Evening Standard with his St James's Gazette and changed the Conservative stance of both papers into a pro- Liberal one, but was unsuccessful in arresting the slide in sales and in 1910 sold them to the MP Sir Davison Dalziel , and Sir Alexander Henderson . Beginning to lose his sight due to glaucoma despite
825-561: The villains in works of the 1890s, though later he assigned this role to Germany. Le Queux mainly wrote in the genres of Romance , mystery , thriller , and espionage , particularly in the years leading up to World War I , when his partnership with British publishing magnate Lord Northcliffe led to the serialised publication and intensive publicising (including actors dressed as German soldiers walking along Regent Street) of pulp-fiction spy stories and invasion literature such as The Invasion of 1910 , The Poisoned Bullet, and Spies of
858-580: The words of Edward Henry (head of the Metropolitan Police) saw him as "not a person to be taken seriously" and saw no need to fulfill his request. Le Queux was interested in radio communication; he was a member of the Institute of Radio Engineers and carried out some radio experiments in 1924 in Switzerland with Dr. Petit Pierre and Max Amstutz . That same year he was elected the first President of
891-604: Was a British newspaper magnate and publisher, who founded the Daily Express . Pearson was born on 24 February 1866 in the village of Wookey , Somerset, a son of Arthur Cyril Pearson and Phillippa Massingberd Maxwell Lyte, who was a granddaughter of the hymn-writer and poet Henry Francis Lyte . He was educated at Winchester College in Hampshire. His father became rector of Drayton Parslow in Buckinghamshire. His first job
924-565: Was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat ( honorary consul for San Marino ), a traveller (in Europe, the Balkans and North Africa), a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are
957-554: Was as a journalist working for the London-based publisher George Newnes on Tit-Bits magazine. Within his first year he had impressed Newnes enough to be made his principal assistant. In December 1887, Pearson married Isobel Sarah Bennett, the daughter of Canon Frederick Bennett, of Maddington, Wiltshire , with whom he had three daughters. In 1897, Pearson married, as his second wife, Ethel , daughter of William John Fraser. Ethel, Lady Pearson, would be appointed Dame Commander of
990-1006: Was made president of the National Institution for the Blind in 1914, raising its income from £8,000 to £360,000 in only eight years. On 29 January 1915, he cofounded The Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Care Committee (later renamed St Dunstan's and now known as Blind Veterans UK ), for soldiers blinded by gas attack or trauma during the First World War . Its goal, radical for the times, was to provide vocational training rather than charity for invalided servicemen, and thus to enable them to carry out independent and productive lives. Not only were blinded soldiers trained in work such as basket weaving or massage, but also in social skills such as dancing, braille reading or sports to give them back self-confidence. Upon releasing them, they were gifted little tokens of independence such as braille watches. Pearson's dedication to this work led to his receiving
1023-610: Was released in October 1914, retitled If England were Invaded . At the beginning of World War I Le Queux became convinced that the Germans were out to get him for "rumbling their schemes" and requested special protection from German agents, leading to a continual struggle with the Metropolitan Police both at his local Sunbury station and through correspondence with its headquarters at New Scotland Yard . The authorities, however, in
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1056-474: Was something to the documents. On the basis of the positive response to the cypher documents Le Queux approached Sir C. Arthur Pearson , the proprietor of the Standard newspaper for funding for the expedition to Jerusalem. He described what happened next: To this he most generously acceded, and an initial sum was agreed between us for its cost. I was to head the expedition to Palestine. That afternoon I walked along
1089-515: Was successful in establishing papers in provincial locations such as the Birmingham Daily Gazette . He came into direct competition with the Daily Mail and in the resulting commercial fight almost took control of The Times , being nominated as its manager, but the deal fell through. In 1898, Pearson founded The Royal Magazine , a monthly literary magazine which remained in publication until 1939. In 1900 Pearson despatched
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