St James’s Club House
106 Pall Mall July 28th 1825
Sir/
I have the honor to acquaint you that you have this day been Elected a Member of the St James’s Club<1> and am directed to request that you will cause to be paid the annual subscription of six Guineas into the hands of Messrs Hammersleys & Co.<2>
I have also the honor to transmit you the Rules and Regulations of the St James’s Club<3>
I have the honor to be Sir Your Most Obdt Servt
R. Read
To
– Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. Little is known about this club. St. James's (Club House) was listed at 106, Pall Mall, London, in the April 1824 Boyle's Fashionable Court and Country Guide; by January 1826, St. James's Club appeared in The Original Picture of London. Notice of an Extraordinary General Meeting of the United St. James's and Chess Club was in the 10 March 1826 Morning Post. On 26 February 1827, The Morning Post commented on the St. James's Club: "The prodigious celerity exercised on this extensive pile of a building astonishes every body", for the workmen were at it 12 to 15 hours per day, working by torch-light; on 20 March, they reported that the St. James's Clubhouse would open on 15 June. What happened next is unclear. On 5 October 1827, The Morning Chronicle carried an advertisement for a "elegantly furnished" club house to be let, at 106, Pall Mall, "at present in the occupation of the Guard's Club." By 31 December, the advertisement was for "A New Club - No Entrance Fee" about to formed "at 106, Pall Mall, late in the occupation of the Guards" (The Times). A year later, on 6 December 1828, The Morning Chronicle carried an advertisement for the premises, saying that it had been the home of St. James's and other clubs. Tragically, on the afternoon of 3 June 1829, the upper floor of the building collapsed while it was being demolished for salvage building materials, killing two workmen. The Commisioners of Woods and Forests had ordered the sale of the building, along with Carlton Palace and some others, to make way for improvements that led to the current Pall Mall (The Morning Chronicle, 4 June 1829). In 1830, in honor of His Majesty's birthday, "The St. James's Club (Crockford's)" in Pall Mall "excelled all the others in devices and brilliancy. The whole of that extensive front was a blaze of light" (The Morning Post, 24 April 1830). By 1832, the Charles Berry designed building at 106, Pall Mall became the purpose-built home of another of WHFT's clubs, The Travellers; it is still in operation there.
2. Hammersley & Company, bankers, London.
3. Not located.