171
Spiers and Pond
While visiting corkscrew
collector Herb Danziger in
Birmingham, Michigan, I
spotted a
“
Gaiety Restaurant
”
bulletin on Herb
‟
s wall. Herb
had matched it up with a small
“
Spiers & Pond
‟
s
”
corkscrew
from his collection. Herb also
owns a four finger pull with
the mark on the top of the handle. Herb
says
“
The advertisement came from the
wall of one of the pubs we went to one
evening during an International
Correspondence of Corkscrew Addicts
meeting. The director of the company that
owned the pub allowed me to unscrew it
from the wall and go make a photocopy of
it. My wife, Camille remained as hostage
while I went to do the copying.
”
A little research led to Ron Spiers from London who had done extensive research
on his family.
“
Felix William Spiers was born in London in 1832. He went to Australia in 1851
in search of gold. While there he met Christopher Pond, an Englishman from
Essex. The pair rented a room at the Melbourne National Hotel, set it up as a
catering establishment and named it
„
The Shakespeare Grill Room
‟
. Later they
bought the Cafe de Paris in Melbourne. They
brought over to Melbourne an English cricket
team and they organized the first balloon
flight in Australia.
When Spiers and Pond returned to London
they noted the poor food service in London
‟
s
railway stations and they soon secured
contracts to have restaurants and cafes at railway stations. They built the
Criterion Restaurant and Theatre in Piccadilly Circus in 1874 and the Gaiety
Theatre Restaurant in The Strand in 1894 and they catered at the Regents Park
Zoo and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
