No. 35 - Wars at the Warrington Hotel

When people come together to drink there is a change in them, a loss of inhibition, some call it ‘Dutch courage’. Conversation thrives, offering sympathy, empathy, and a good deal of humour. Ideas abound - art is conceived, businesses spawned, romance blossoms. But sadly, only misfortunes are considered newsworthy. The Warrington Hotel (1857), an opulently decorated Victorian palace in Maida Vale, often used as a location for television and films, has endured many such misfortunes over the years.

The Warrington Hotel in December 2025

In April 1970, 34-year-old seaman Archie Robertson entered The Warrington and he really wanted a drink. Having been refused one on credit, he picked up a beer pump handle and beat barman Geoffrey Hill over the head with it. He left, but returned shortly with a metal sign snatched from a nearby garage, which he threw at the bar, smashing many glasses. The presiding magistrate was prompted to say, “I don’t see why people who serve the public, even if they’re known to them, should be treated in this way.”

It was an occupational hazard.

Savagery

The Warrington stands at the end of a sweeping crescent of white-stuccoed town houses with columned entrances - all very genteel-looking. In Victorian times a Hansom cab rank ran outside the hotel, with another in Sutherland Avenue, but these became less than genteel by the beginning of the 20th Century. Whips were often raised in anger as the Hansom drivers fought an acrimonious but ultimately losing battle against the growing number of motor cabs. Inside the hotel, it was occasionally no more civilised.

In November 1871, at approaching eleven one evening, a barmaid warned manager Charles Moore that a young butcher named Broughall and his three companions were becoming rumbustious and using bad language. He ordered them to drink up, but they demanded more ale and his refusal incensed them. Broughall picked a fight with another customer and when Moore went around the bar to separate them, the miscreant blacked his eye. The police were called and, with difficulty, they dragged the culprit away.

Moore had to be tough to run a pub. In 1880 he was himself charged with assault on customer William Sumner. He didn't approve of women in the hotel’s coffee room, but Sumner had taken one in around midnight on 14 November. When Sumner next visited, Moore took him to task about it, but Sumner insisted that although his companion was of ‘the unfortunate class,’ she wasn’t doing ‘the circuit’. He protested that women were served in the coffee room all the time anyway. Moore struck him on the mouth, making it difficult for him to eat for days.

Moore’s counsel argued that the woman had been ‘objectionable’ and that Sumner had raised an umbrella to him. Though accepting that the landlord was duty bound to ‘conduct his house in a respectable manner and keep improper characters out,’ the magistrate didn’t consider that justified the assault.

On 28 February 1892, close to closing time on Sunday evening, stablemen, George and Alfred Pocock and Walter Lock, entered The Warrington and ordered drinks from manager Edmund Bull. They refused to pay, so Bull retrieved their drinks and asked them to leave. They wouldn’t, but he managed to physically eject them.

When Bull left for home, they were lying in wait. They snatched his walking stick and beat him with it, leaving him bruised and bloody. In court, they claimed he had struck them first in the pub and later sneaked up behind them and attacked them with his stick. The magistrate found this incredible. He understood two men having a stand-up fight, but for three to beat up one, he considered “cowardly and un-English.”

In October 1897, horse-keeper Joseph Holder of Kilburn was ordered to leave the hotel for being noisy and abusive. He returned five minutes later, telling Frederick Barton, the pot man, “I will have your blood.” He seized Barton by the shoulder and bit right through his cheek. Barton raised a hand to protect his face, but Holder bit his fingers to the bone. The potman spent two weeks in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. At first, Holder evaded arrest, but he was eventually nabbed at work in January 1898. The magistrate called him ‘a savage’ and sent him to prison for two months, with hard labour, despite his wife and six children.

Edwardian Road Accident

Darracq advert in Country Life, 5 Sept 1903 (British Newspaper Archive.

The tension between horse-drawn and horseless carriage drivers became a feature of Edwardian London. On 19th March 1906, Warrington proprietor Cubitt Cook, was driving along Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead in his horse and buggy when a 20 horsepower Darracq motor car, was driven towards him at ‘a very rapid pace’. The driver was Louis Sinclair, former MP for Romford. Cook alleged the car had been in the middle of the road, but then moved over to the wrong side. Assuming it was pulling up outside a house, he manoeuvred the buggy out into the middle of the road to allow room. But the car swerved and collided with it at pace, smashing it to pieces. Cook was thrown onto the pavement, the harness was wrecked and the terrified horse bolted.

Cook was unable to work for three months and claimed compensation for this, the damaged buggy and harness, and injuries to the horse. Defence counsel argued that the buggy had been unlit and that both parties were to blame. In court, Sinclair claimed that the car was so old it couldn’t manage more than 8 mph up a hill, but his license had been endorsed before ‘for driving in a manner dangerous to the public’. The Warrington proprietor was awarded £350 damages - that's roughly £36,480 in 2026 money.

A Cautionary Tale

On Saturday 31 March 1912, Duke George Crouch, a 35-year-old live-in Warrington bar man complained of a bad toothache. Early Monday morning, his room-mate James Shepherd fetched a doctor, because Crouch was shivering and complained of a sore throat. The Doctor advised him to have his teeth seen to at once. Later that day, a dentist attended The Warrington, extracted a wisdom tooth from the lower jaw, draining the abscess beneath it. Crouch seemed relieved after the extraction and was given carbolic disinfectant to gargle.

He seemed better on Monday evening, but he was restless in bed that night and went to St George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, the following morning. They admitted him at noon, running a high temperature. There was swelling around his face and the inside of his mouth was very sore. Doctors reported that “the floor of the mouth was in a septic condition and the breath was exceedingly offensive.” In some places, the mouth had become gangrenous and the source of the infection was undoubtedly the bad tooth. By Tuesday evening, 2nd April, breathing became laboured, and an hour later, he was dead.

Wartime Restrictions

During the Great War, the crowd in the hotel was laced with men in uniform making the most of their leisure. At 2:45 one December afternoon in 1915, time had been called when the manageress, Amy Barnet, heard a noise from the saloon bar. She found 19-year-old John Harnett kneeling on the counter, with a jug containing rum in his hand. She snatched it away and he immediately jumped off the bar and fled. The licensee's brother-in-law pursued and caught him.

In court, Harnett said that he’d been drunk and that he had no thought of stealing. Turning the rum tap on had been a freak accident, he claimed, and he’d helped himself to the rum, not knowing what it was. He was found guilty of an ‘impudent theft’.

In December 1917, full of Christmas spirit, John Perry spent 7½d on three glasses of ale at The Warrington bar, for himself and two friends. Unfortunately, a ‘no treating’ order had covered London since October 1915, so his generosity got all three summoned to court, along with Hilda Aylmore, the barmaid, and Henry Hartnell, the licensee.

Hartnell was let off with 2/- costs because he hadn’t been present at the time and there had been no other legal action against him in his 23 years in the trade. Aylmore said she had been busy and ‘just didn’t think’, but she was fined £5 and the three drinkers each £2.

On 15 April 1918, 39-year-old barmaid Ellen Vernier allegedly stole 14/1 from the till. She had started at The Warrington at noon that day, a trial subject to satisfactory references. After an hour an a half a customer told Hartnell that she was up to no good. He himself observed her pocketing silver and sent her upstairs while he called the police. On arrival, Detective Sergeant Grace found the accused ‘very much the worse for drink’. Vernier handed back the money with an apology, but she didn’t get the job.

The Twenties

Advert in St Marylebone & Paddington Recorder, 27 Oct 1928 (British Newspaper Archive.

On 17 February 1921, Amy Barnet, by then the Warrington manageress, was fined 15/- and 15/- costs for assaulting a Major Dickenson at the dinner table. He had been taking luncheon but insisted that his potatoes had been served before. “I refused to eat them, and the manageress burst into the room, called me a thief and other names, and lashed me across the face seven times with the back of her hand, damaging my false teeth.”

FA Cup Final 1923

In April 1923, Arthur Webster and Charles Chouler were two of the lucky spectators who got to see the first cup final at the new Empire Stadium, Wembley, where Bolton Wanderers beat West Ham 2-0. Webster had driven them there, the crowds making it hard-going in both directions. They stopped for ‘a small whisky’ at The Crown in Cricklewood, and for another at The Warrington, where they hoped to have supper. This proved impossible, so they settled for more whiskies. About 150 yards from The Warrington, Webster claimed that “something seemed to go wrong with the steering” and the car collided with a shelter. Webster reckoned the fork or tie rod had a flaw in it and insisted that he was dazed by the collision, rather than drunk. He was disqualified from driving.

Damn Memories

In 1941, The Warrington will once again have been crowded with uniforms. Marie Phipps had a few drinks in the hotel with some friends, without getting drunk she reckoned. Phyllis Harris on the other hand had been on the whiskies and according to Phipps, was looking for trouble.

“She was singing ‘Memories Live Longer Than Dreams’ and looking at me to indicate that it was meant for me. She does not like me and I don’t like her. I said to my friends, ‘damn memories’. She caught hold of my arms and my friends pulled her away. When I left The Warrington I was struck on the eye with something, and fell down. There was a big cut on my eye which was bleeding all over me.”

She did not see Harris hit her, but as she was otherwise among friends she felt it reasonable to assume she had. The magistrate had no doubt that Miss Phipps had received a painful blow to the eye but he was not satisfied about who had delivered it, so the case was dismissed.

I should conclude that I have often visited The Warrington and have always found it a peaceful pub in which to talk, drink and think.