In 1863, a young medical student at King’s College Hospital in the Strand spent his free time walking the streets of central London sketching the patterns of coal plates that he saw. Although not a trained artist he managed to sketch at least 150 different designs. Some of the plates would have had text on them but Taylor chose to capture the pattern on each plate only.
After his medical career was over, and in extreme old age he managed to publish under the pseudonym of Aesculapius Junier (Aesculapius was the Roman god of medicine) 150 of his sketches in a book entitled ‘Opercula (London Coal Plates), operculum being Latin for ‘lid’ or ‘cover’. The book was originally published in 1926, and republished in 1965 with an introduction by Raymond Lister.
It is doubtful whether any of the plates actually sketched by Taylor survive today but many of the patterns are still recognisable on coal plates to be seen in London streets, today.
Below are the 150 sketches that I have loosely grouped by basic design:
