Frith Street was laid out in the late 1670s and early 1680s and evidently named after Richard Frith, a wealthy builder. In the 18th and early 19th centuries many artistic and literary people came to live in Soho, and several of them settled in this street. The painter John Alexander Gresse was here in 1784, the year of his death. John Horne Tooke, philologist and politician, lived here in about 1804; John Constable lived here in 1810–11; John Bell, the sculptor, in 1832–33; and William Hazlitt wrote his last essays while he was lodging at no. 6 Frith Street prior to his death there in 1830. The lithographic artist Alfred Concanen had a studio at no. 12 for many years.