Today Is...The Berners Street Hoax

On a drunken night out once, a friend bet me £10 that she could jump over a park bench and when she got out of hospital with her wrist in plaster i did pay up because she may have gone arse over tit and landed in a crumpled heap wailing in pain, she did actually jump over it and a bet is a bet but it isn't anywhere near the bet Theodore Hook made with his friend today in 1810.   Theodore bet his friend one-guinea that he could transform any house his friend chose into the most talked-about address in a week and with 54 Berners Street chosen, Hook went to work.
At 5am a sweep arrived to sweep the chimney, then a few moments later, another sweep presented himself and then 10 more. As the sweeps were being dismissed a fleet of carts carrying large deliveries of coal began to arrive, followed by a series of cakemakers delivering large wedding cakes, then doctors, lawyers,vicars and priests summoned to minister to someone in the house they had been told was dying.
Following them to the house was fishmongers, shoemakers and over a dozen pianos and an organ and the Governor of the Bank of England, the Duke of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of London, also arrived.
The narrow streets soon became severely congested with tradesmen and onlookers and every Police Officer available was brought in to disperse the people and stop further trades people arriving and just as things seemed to be calming down, at 5pm hundreds of servants arrived for a non existent job which paid an extortionately high wage.
To win the bet, Hook had sent out thousands of letters requesting deliveries, services, visitors, and all manner of services all on the same day and the mayhem led to authorities and newspapers offering a reward for the capture of the trickster behind the 54 Berners Street Hoax.
He was never named and ended the day a Guinea better off.