Robert Hubert Robert Hubert Between 2 and 5 September 1666, a major fire broke out in Pudding Lane in the City of London, and proceeded to destroy around 80 percent of the old city. Hubert's confession, at first, was of starting a fire in Westminster. However, this story proved unsatisfactory, and his confession changed upon learning that the fire never reached Westminster. Having learned that the fire started in Pudding Lane, in the house of the baker Thomas Farriner (or Farynor), he then claimed to have thrown a crude fire grenade through the open window of the Farriner bakery. He claimed to
Pudding Lane by the Company of Bakers in 1986, commemorates the fire. According to the chronicler John Stow, it is named after the "puddings" (a medieval word for offal) which would fall from the carts coming down the lane from the butchers in Eastcheap as they headed for the waste barges on the River Thames. In Stow's words, "the Butchers of Eastcheape have their skalding House for Hog there, and their puddings with other filth of Beasts, are voided down that way to their dung boats on the Thames." The original name of the lane was "Offal Pudding Lane", which changed to