Mid 18th century, recorded as the Coal Yard with an access in Alfred Place.
Recorded as the Swan With Two Necks since at least 1777.
Some suggest that the Swan With Two ‘Necks’ should mean ‘nicks’ as it was used to note the ownership of Royal swans by ‘nicking their beaks twice’, also used by victuallers on their trade identification.
The Swan With Two Necks seems to have been a very major coaching inn as at the end of the 18th century. It was listed as having forty-one beds, plus yards and stables that could accommodate many coaches and over one hundred horses. It also had its own brewhouse.
The Manchester to London coach would stop at the Swan overnight.
Many cattle auctions were held here in the mid 19th century.
Owned by Cock & Langmore. In 1897, later became All Saints Brewery.
The pub closed May 1959.
‘Jack O the Line’
The Swan With Two Necks was frequented by during the 1850s by a somewhat notorious character, Jack O the Line (real name John Hurdis), a habitual drunkard who came before the courts on no less than 120 times for drunkenness and assaulting the police. The Swan wasn’t his only watering hole but on one occasion in 1855 he was causing a disturbance in the yard of the pub and the police were called. They then they all wore top hats and carried a stick or cane, and beat Jack O the Line over the head so as to render him senseless. Some Dragoons who were washing their horses in the yard came to his aid, bathing his head from their buckets.
This attack by the police outraged public opinion and the carrying of sticks by rank and file officers was soon forbidden – only sergeants were now allowed. To what extent the assault on Jack O Line contributed to this is not clear.
John was born in Stoughton, circa 1808. He was a farm labourer who worked with horses and was recorded as being an unusually strong and ugly man with a leering look. Described as being ‘evil eyed,’ he was possibly just cross eyed. He got his name from rarely sleeping in a bed, the line or hay in a stable was his want. He was usually pursued by crowds of boys who thought him a hero as well as a tormenter.
He was credited with being the first prisoner (he spent much time in Leicester prison) to be sentenced to hard labour on the ‘crank’.
14,00 revs per day on the crank had to be performed so as to receive any food. The governor’s maxim was If a man will not work, neither shall he eat’. This task broke most men, although how Jack O the Line fared is not recorded. He spent that much time in prison that it is claimed the warders bought him Christmas presents. Swearing, bawling, dancing in the streets – rarely steady – he was even known in court as Jack O the Line. He would sometime sleep in a stonemason’s yard in Rutland Street. So famous did he become that the mason, Mr. White, carved a bust of Jack which hung on the wall in Rutland Street for many years after Jack’s death, said to frighten the kids.
Jack O the Line died in 1861 in the workhouse aged about fifty-four.
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