The body of the Italian Boy, Carlo Ferrari, was buried in 1831 in the graveyard of the St Paul’s Covent Garden/Strand Union workhouse in Cleveland Street, London W1 (above). The graveyard was closed in 1853 and afterwards cleared, and Carlo may have ended up in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, or he may still be down there somewhere – the fate of these bodies has never been fully resolved.

Recently, a number of campaigners in my local area succeeded in saving the 18th-century workhouse building from demolition; in fact, it is now Grade II listed. I wrote the letter below back in 2008, and I still feel exactly the same way, as I learn that the later, unlisted, Victorian wings are now under threat of demolition.

Part of the Victorian section of the workhouse, which is now under threat of demolition; the Windeyer Institute, on the right, was being demolished when I took these pictures back in 2013. More detailed shots can be viewed at Peter Higginbotham’s website www.workhouses.org.uk/Strand/

The Victorian buildings are not considered significant, historically, by the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which is pressuring Camden Council to permit demolition.

It’s very odd that an arm of the National Health Service has morphed into a money-grubbing, heritage- destroying property developer – presumably not quite what Nye Bevan had in mind back in 1948. Any new residential units will be marketed directly to investors in the Far East, just as has happened with the hideous block that is being erected on the site of the Middlesex Hospital in Goodge Street.

On a more general note, Griff Rhys Jones wrote brilliantly here http://news.fitzrovia.org.uk/2012/07/24/ fight-this-undemocratic-attempt-to-manipulate-fitzrovia-into-something-it-is-not/ about the interminable battles we face in our area against the dark forces intent on buggering up our lovely, shabby, lively, quirky little corner of London.