Early years The Admiral Duncan has been trading since at least 1832. In June of that year, Dennis Collins, a wooden-legged Irish ex-sailor living at the pub, was charged with
high treason for throwing stones at
King William IV at
Ascot Racecourse. Collins was convicted and sentenced to be
hanged, drawn and quartered, as the medieval punishment for high treason was then still in effect. However, his sentence was quickly commuted to life imprisonment and he was subsequently
transported to Australia. In December 1881, a customer received eight years' penal servitude for various offences in connection with his ejection from the Admiral Duncan public house by keeper William Gordon. In 1887, the
Algerian Coffee Stores was established next door to the Admiral Duncan. During the 1920s, the Admiral Duncan was frequented by mob boss
Charles "Darby" Sabini and was a gathering place for members of his gang. On 4 February 1930 there was a fierce brawl in the pub after six members of the Sabini gang's rivals, the
Hoxton Gang, entered and attacked two of the Sabinis who were drinking there. Both men were slashed with a broken drinking glass; one – George Seawell – was badly beaten by four of the Hoxton gang. Around £200 worth of damage was caused. It has been claimed that in 1953
Dylan Thomas lost the only hand-written copy of his famous radio drama
Under Milk Wood in the pub, leaving it there during the course of a drinking binge. It was later found by his radio producer,
Douglas Cleverdon, who retraced Thomas' steps. However other sources state this happened at
The Swiss Tavern, another pub in Old Compton Street, or
The French House in nearby Dean Street. By the 1980s, the Admiral Duncan had become known as a
gay pub, although it was not exclusively so and was still attracting a diverse clientele.
Bombing At around 6:05 pm on Friday 30 April 1999, a bomb in a sports bag was planted in the Admiral Duncan by
Neo-Nazi,
David Copeland. Copeland's previous bomb attacks, on 17 April in
Brixton and on 24 April in
Hanbury Street in
Whitechapel, had made Londoners wary. The unattended bag aroused the suspicions of people in the pub, but the bag exploded at 6:37 pm just as it was being investigated by the pub manager, Mark Taylor. Three people died and 83 suffered burns and injuries – four of the injured needed amputations. On the evening of Saturday, 1 May 1999, a candlelit vigil was held in Sackville Park in Manchester's Gay Village in memory of the victims of the Admiral Duncan bombing. The event was organised by the Greater Manchester Lesbian & Gay Policing Initiative, an organisation active in both local and national LGBT hate crime responses. Leaflets were distributed throughout the clubs and bars to invite members of the community to attend and pay their respects. The vigil was addressed by gay activists Ian Wilmott and Paul Fairweather. A large open air meeting was spontaneously organised in
Soho Square on the Sunday following the attack, attended by thousands. Among the speeches was one from the
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner who undertook to maintain a crime scene van outside the pub to take witness statements and gather evidence until the perpetrator was found; the van would be staffed entirely with
openly gay and
lesbian police officers. This marked a turning point for the previously often tempestuous relationship between the
LGBT community and the Metropolitan Police. There is a memorial
chandelier with an inscription and a
plaque in the bar to commemorate those killed and injured in the blast. The playwright Jonathan Cash, then working for
Gay Times, was among the injured. Assistant bar manager
David Morley 37, from Chiswick, west London, was one of those injured in the bombing and was murdered in London after a robbery or homophobic attack on the morning of 30 October 2004. He and a friend were badly beaten near London's Hungerford Bridge and
Waterloo station on the South Bank. In December 2005, four youths were found guilty of Morley's
manslaughter. Reece Sargeant (21), Darren Case (18) and David Blenman (17), all from
Kennington,
South London, were sentenced to 12 years each. A fifteen-year-old girl, Chelsea O'Mahoney (aged fourteen at the time of the incident) was sentenced to an 8-year custodial sentence. The
jury had returned a verdict of
manslaughter as they are permitted to do.
Rainbow flags controversy In late 2005,
Westminster City Council ordered the Admiral Duncan and all other LGBT bars and
gay businesses that operated in its jurisdiction, including those in
Soho and
Covent Garden, to remove their
pride flags. The council claimed that the flags constituted advertising, which was forbidden by its
local development plan, and said businesses would need to apply for advertising permits to fly the flags. Some businesses who applied to fly flags had their applications refused. Following media allegations of homophobia in the council, the
I Love Soho campaign and intense pressure from the then
Mayor of London,
Ken Livingstone, the Council reversed its policy, allowing businesses to fly rainbow flags without applying for permission. == Ownership ==