Kate Meyrick 43 Club

Kate Meyrick was an Irish club owner in the 1920's, she opened 43 Club which was her most famous in Soho, London. She catered for both the nobility and underworld elite and suffered for it with five prison sentences, numerous fines for selling after-hours liquor and was sentenced to 15 months in 1929 for bribing a Metropolitan Police Sergeant. 






The 'Queen' said : "I shall never forget my first sight of the cellars of 43 Gerrard Street.. My mind travelled into the future... I saw no longer the mildewed walls of a dingy cellar, but the bright interior of the most famous night resort the world has seen in any land or age. I beheld royalties, peers, millionaires and celebrities... gathered together in a glittering throng.”

Club “43”, depicted as the Old Hundreth by Evelyn Waugh in A Handful of Dust, was soon attracting exactly the sort of clientele she envisaged. Although Mrs Meyrick’s disregard for the relatively new licensing laws brought in during the First World War meant that she soon got into trouble with the authorities. In November 1924, after several police raids, Meyrick, despite her determination not to submit to the ‘kill-joys’, was sentenced to six months for selling alcohol without a licence.



h