The former Russell Hotel is famous for its ties to the Titanic, but also has an extraordinary history

The Kimpton Fitzroy Hotel stands imperiously in Russell Square displaying its Milk tea (“milk tea”) terracotta facade, including statues of four queens – Elizabeth I, Mary II, Victoria and Anne.

From 1900, when it opened, until 2018, when it was relaunched under new owners, it was known by its original name of Hotel Russell, where the first meetings of the group of universities were held Russell. But the Fitzroy part of its current name is a nod to its architect, Charles Fitzroy Doll, from whom the term “dolled up” is derived because of his fondness for decorative facades – in this case using materials from the Doulton Potteries in Lambeth.

Behind this facade hides a sumptuous interior with a story of its own. A feature of the Kimpton is its dining room, which appears to be copied from that of the Titanic. In fact, it’s the opposite: the dining room of the Titanic was copied from that of the hotel by its designer, Fitzroy himself. The hotel also contains a small bronze dragon called Lucky George, which is identical to the one lost on the Titanic. Another connection is that some Titanic passengers spent the night in hotels before boarding.

The site of the hotel has an earlier history, now buried, thanks to Frederick Calvert, who, on his father’s death in 1751, became the sixth Baron Baltimore (an Irish peerage) at the age of 20. you believe it – he inherited Maryland in the United States, which had been in his family since Charles I gave it to his ancestor George Calvert, 1st Baron of Baltimore. The Mary in Maryland refers to Charles’s wife, Henrietta Maria. It was a British colony the size of Belgium, producing rent and tax revenues worth millions today.

In 1759 the young Calvert used some of this income to build a mansion called Baltimore House in the gardens of the lavish Southampton House – later renamed Bedford House – in Great Russell Street, next to Montagu House where today stands the British Museum (see map below). Beyond stretch open fields, marking the end of London. Baltimore House stood where the future Russell Hotel would later appear.

Frederick Calvert was an extraordinary man for whom sin could have been invented. An old Etonian, he presided over Maryland with quasi-feudal powers but never set foot there, preferring to squander his wealth, which came mainly from tobacco and the slave trade. Contrary to certain contemporaries, who saved their conscience by good works, he blew it on the often public debauchery.

And how! Calvert led what has been described as “an extravagant and often scandalous lifestyle” culminating in 1768 with an accusation of kidnapping and rape by Sarah Woodcock, a local beauty who ran a millinery shop in Tower Hill. An all-male jury acquitted him, but few believed the verdict.

He fled the country soon after and traveled through Italy and then Constantinople, which he had to leave after being accused of keeping a private harem. It wasn’t all that private, as he was known to parade his entourage of five white women and one black girl cheekily in public.

Calvert was so fascinated by the Ottoman Turks that when he returned to England, he demolished part of Baltimore House in order to rebuild it in the style of a Turkish harem. After his death in Naples, Maryland was inherited by one of his many illegitimate children, 13-year-old Henry Harford.

After this, Charles Powlett, the 3rd Duke of Bolton and a Whig politician, took a lease on Baltimore House and renamed it Bolton House. This gave him back his prestige, but little. Historian Edward Walford has described Bolton as “just as eccentric” as Baltimore.

Powlett did good deeds – in 1739 he was one of the founding governors of the nearby Foundling Hospital, which did outstanding work for orphaned children. But he is best remembered for a long-standing affair with actress Lavinia Fenton, which began in 1728 and lasted until 1751, when his wife Lady Anne died. He then married Fenton, who by then had already given him three children.

This relationship was immortalized by William Hogarth, whose famous painting in John Gay’s Beggars Opera (above) shows the Duke, seated on the right of the stage, eyeing Lavinia during a performance. Goodness.

This article is 18 of 25 written by Vic Keegan on Places of Historic Interest in Holborn, Farringdon, Clerkenwell, Bloomsbury and St Giles, kindly supported by the Central District Alliance Business Improvement District, which serves these areas. London’s policy on ‘supported content’ can be read here.

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