The Golden Boy of Pye Corner is a small late-17th-century monument located on the corner of

Giltspur Street Giltspur Street is a street in Smithfield in the City of London, running north–south from the junction of Newgate Street, Holborn Viaduct and Old Bailey, up to West Smithfield, and it is bounded to the east by St Bartholomew's Hospital. I ...

and

Cock Lane Cock Lane is a small street in Smithfield in the City of London, leading from Giltspur Street in the east to Snow Hill in the west. In the medieval period, it was known as ''Cokkes Lane'' and was the site of legal brothels. 25 Cock Lane is t ...

in Smithfield, central London. It marks the spot where the 1666 Great Fire of London was stopped, whereas the

Monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...

indicates the place where it started. The statue of a naked boy is made of wood and is covered with gold; the figure was formerly winged. The late 19th-century building that incorporates it is a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

but listed only for the figure. It bears the following small inscription below it:

This Boy is in Memmory Put up for the late FIRE of LONDON Occasion'd by the Sin of Gluttony 1666.

Cock Lane and the Golden Boy of Pye Corner (22242299639)

The lower inscription, approximately below the boy, reads as follows:

The boy at Pye Corner was erected to commemorate the staying of the Great Fire, which, beginning at Pudding Lane, was ascribed to the sin of gluttony when not attributed to the papists as on the Monument, and the boy was made prodigiously fat to enforce the moral. He was originally built into the front of a public-house called "
The Fortune of War ''The Fortune of War'' is the sixth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by British author Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1979. It is set during the War of 1812. HMS ''Leopard'' made its way to Botany Bay, left its prisoners, ...
" which used to occupy this site and was pulled down in 1910. "The Fortune of War" was the chief house of call north of the river for resurrectionists in
body snatching Body snatching is the illicit removal of corpses from graves, morgues, and other burial sites. Body snatching is distinct from the act of grave robbery as grave robbing does not explicitly involve the removal of the corpse, but rather theft from ...
days. Years ago the landlord used to show the room where on benches round the walls the bodies were placed labelled with the snatchers' names, waiting till the surgeons at
Saint Bartholomew Bartholomew (Aramaic: ; grc, Βαρθολομαῖος, translit=Bartholomaîos; la, Bartholomaeus; arm, Բարթողիմէոս; cop, ⲃⲁⲣⲑⲟⲗⲟⲙⲉⲟⲥ; he, בר-תולמי, translit=bar-Tôlmay; ar, بَرثُولَماو� ...
's could run round and appraise them.

References

See also