Piccadilly Circus: 1910

This is a postcard printed and published by H.G. Pearce & Company in the City of London. The view is of Piccadilly Circus looking east down Coventry Street. This is a very animated scene, it is July 1910 and playing at the London Pavilion in a Music Hall bill is Elsie Southgate also known as the Royal Violinist. Elsie was born in 1880 and appeared at the Queen’s Hall with Sir Henry Wood in the 1905 promenade concert. She appeared at the London Pavilion with James Coward on the Mustel organ which was a type of Harmonium, Coward was Noel Coward’s uncle. There are three buses in the photograph from different companies although by 1910 they were all amalgamated into a loose confederation. The fleet name “Union Jack” was employed by the London Road Car Company, the fleet name “Vanguard” was used by the London Motor Omnibus Co. Ltd and the fleet name “General” was used by the London General Omnibus Company. The Road Car Company had originally used “Union Jack” as a dig at the LGOC who had their origins as a French company in the 1850s. I am not sure of the make and model of the buses, but I think one at least is a Milnes-Daimler, perhaps a bus expert could help. The advertisements on the two buses on the left refer to the Hamptons furniture store in Pall Mall East which was destroyed in the blitz during the second world war, the site of which was used to extend the National Gallery during the early 1990s.

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