Life and loves of Victorian Soho clerk go online - Nathaniel Bryceson’s diary from 1846 to be serialised

THE private diary of a 19th-century Soho clerk is being serialised online more than 160 years after it was written.
Westminster Council paid £115 for Nathaniel Bryceson’s diary which he wrote in 1846, but for the past 40 years it has only been available in a dusty archive.
The 19-year-old, who lived on what is now the site of the Soho Hotel in Richmond Mews, gives an insight into Victorian London, describing public hangings, his tumultuous love life and, of course, the weather. Now its 260 entries have been transcribed and sections will be published online throughout the year.
One of the earliest copperplate entries on January 5 describes the hanging of a young woman.
It reads: “Martha Browning expiated her crime on the scaffold in the Old Bailey, for the murder of Elizabeth Mundell on the 1st of December last. 
“The culprit showed great presence of mind on the occasion and ascended the gallows with a firm and steady step, and without any assistance. The body was cut down at 9 o’clock.”
Much of the diary is concerned with the young man’s girlfriend. 
On February 22 the pair took a walk over Primrose Hill and Hampstead Heath. Mr Bryceson writes: “Rain fell in torrents, rather wetted. Ann got very wet, self fared better... Sheltered ourselves under arch. Got to wicked tricks.”
Mr Bryceson, was born in Marylebone on June 5 1826 and died in 1911, aged 85.
To read the diary visit www.westminster.gov.uk/ archives/victorian-clerk