Dean Street

Dean Street is a street in Soho, central London, running from Oxford Street south to Shaftesbury Avenue.

In 1764 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then a young boy, gave a recital at 21 Dean Street.

Admiral Nelson stayed in Dean Street the day before setting sail for the Battle of Trafalgar. He spent the night drawing up his final battleplans, including the masterstroke of painting identifiable gold and black checks on the ships. He is said to have spent the early part of the evening at a nearby undertakers selecting the coffin he would like to be buried in were the battle not to go according to plan, which proved to be time well spent, for he died in the battle despite leading the British fleet to victory.

Charles Dickens was also a regular on Dean Street when he was a young actor enthusiastically participating in amateur productions at Fanny Kelly's Royalty Theatre at number 73-74. In 1845 he starred in an adaptation of Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, which met mixed reviews; Dickens' acting was said to be of debatable merit. Dickens's artistic contemporary George Cruikshank was also a resident of Dean Street and it was here that he drew the illustration for Dickens's early works. Cruikshank is perhaps best known as a cutting caricaturist with scant regard for his targets. He was once bribed £100 for his pledge not to "caricature His Majesty (George III) in any immoral situation." He obliged and instead created a humorous caricature of England which came to be known as John Bull.

Furniture maker William Hean lived in Dean Street between 1827 and 1845. Karl Marx lived at 28 Dean Street between 1851 and 1856, above what is now the Hart Brothers restaurant Quo Vadis. The Marxes shared their house in Dean Street with Italian teachers and a cook and were very poor while living in the street. Their rooms were described by one visitor as "One of the worst, therefore one of the cheapest, quarters of London..." Three of their five children died while living here, all in infancy. Marx's collaborator Friedrich Engels also lived in an apartment at 28 Dean Street.

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