Queen Anne's Gate was formerly Queen Square. At a corner stands a statue of Queen Anne without date. Many of the houses show quaintly carved porches with wooden brackets and pendants, and are obviously of the date which the name implies. Jeremy Bentham lived in Queen Square Place, now covered by part of Queen Anne's Mansions, for fifty years of his life, and here he died in 1832. His skeleton, clothed as in life, is now possessed by University College, London. His house was called The Hermitage. His friend and disciple, James Mill, came to be his tenant in 1814, in what was then 1 Queen's Square, now 40 Queen Anne's Gate. Here he completed his great History of India, published in 1818.
After Mill, Sir John Bowring, first editor of the _Westminster Review_, established by Bentham, occupied the house now numbered 40. Peg Woffington also lived in Queen Square, which was a fashionable place of residence in the last century, a reputation it still retains. Both Great and Little Queen Streets partake of the old-world look of the seventeenth century, and show quaint keystones and carving of various designs over the doorways.
The Broadway formerly included the part now occupied by Great Chapel Street, and reached to Strutton Ground. In James I.'s reign a license was granted for a haymarket to be held here, which license was renewed from time to time. Dick Turpin, the highwayman, is said to have lived in one of the small courts off the Broadway, and to have issued from thence on his marauding expeditions. Perhaps this was Black Horse Yard, which name still appears. There is on every side evidence of that mingling of poverty and riches which has been in all ages so characteristic of Westminster, a parish which contains at the same time splendid Government buildings and squalid slums, one of the most magnificent cathedrals in the world and some of the foulest courts.
In Newcourt's map of 1658 Tothill Street is completely built, while there are very few streets to the south of the present Victoria Street. Walcott says of this street that it "was inhabited by noblemen and the flower of the gentry in Westminster." In Elizabeth's time the houses had large gardens attached. Edmund Burke lived in Tothill Street, also Thomas Southerne, the dramatist, who was a constant attendant at the Abbey; and Thomas Betterton was born here about 1635. His father was an under-cook in the service of Charles I. Betterton wrote a number of plays, but is best remembered as an actor.