White's Club
The White's is the oldest and one of the most prestigious British clubs . It has its roots in the chocolate house Francis Whites, founded in 1693 on St. James Street in London . After it burned down in 1711, Johann Jacob Heidegger set up a ticket sales point in the restaurant for his balls and masquerades, which soon became a meeting place for upscale London society. The White's has only been functioning as a club in the true sense of the word since 1736. It moved several times within St. James Street until it finally settled in the Regency building at number 38 in 1778 . Martindale built in 1811 the famous arched window that gave White's its distinctive facade.
White's Club is just across from Brooks's Club . Just as it was the unofficial headquarters of the Whigs , White's exercised the same function for the Tories from 1783 at the latest . Nevertheless, there were occasional double memberships in both clubs. The White's owned u. a. the famous dandy Beau Brummell , who regularly held court with his confidants in front of the aforementioned arched window and, as arbiter elegantiarum , used to give his dreaded judgments on the posture and fashion of the passers-by. Today the most famous members include the former Conservative party leader and Prime Minister David Cameron as well as Prince Charles , who also celebrated his bachelorette party at White's in 1981 .
The club was also notorious for its members' passion for betting. The bets were mainly placed on sporting or political events, the latter particularly during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars , as well as on the personal future of mutual acquaintances.
As in the betting book of the Brooks's Club opposite (see Girl in the Balloon Bet ), there is also all sorts of eccentricities in White's Betting Book : a certain Lord Alvanley once bet £ 3,000 that a certain raindrop would reach the window frame sooner than another .
literature
- Anthony Lejeune: White's: The First Three Hundred Years. A&C Black Publishers, London 1993, ISBN 978-0-713-63738-0 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 28 " N , 0 ° 8 ′ 24" W.