follows: "In the lower windows, which were decorated with curtains
of a saffron hue, dangled two or three printed cards, bearing
reference to Devonshire cyder and Dantzic spruce, while a large
blackboard, announcing in white letters to an enlightened public
that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout in the cellars of
the establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt
and uncertainty, as to the precise direction in the bowels of the
earth in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When
we add that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-obliterated
semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown
paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider
as the 'stump,' we have said all that need be said of the exterior
of the edifice."

The "Old Black Jack" has been identified as the original of the
"Magpie and Stump" by some topographers, whilst Robert Allbut in his
Rambles in Dickens-land favoured the "Old George the Fourth," adding
that Dickens and Thackeray were well-remembered visitors there.

The Bull Inn, Whitechapel, the starting-place of Tony Weller's coach
which was to take Mr. Pickwick to Ipswich, was actually at No. 25
Aldgate, and was perhaps the most famous of the group of inns of the
neighbourhood whence many of the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk coaches
set out on their journeys. At the time of which we write it was
owned by Mrs. Ann Nelson, whose antecedents had been born and bred
in the business, while she herself had interests in more than one
city hostelry, as well as owned coaches.

Mr. Charles G. Harper has several references to, and interesting
anecdotes about, Mrs. Ann Nelson and her inns in his "Road" books.