There was a famous picture painted in c1817 by Henry Perlee Parker, showing 14 of the characters (and a dog), all persons living in the area at the time.
The property in the Groat Market, Newcastle, has since gone through several name changes including "The Princess Hotel" and "The Golden Bengal Indian Restaurant".
She is represented leaning upon the formidable stick which she was carried to keep the precinct of the town's chamber clear of loitering boys or others having no business there.
[1] Drucken Bella Roy was a well-known street trader, selling all kinds of food from fruit and vegetables to fish etc.
Archibald was never married, but once apparently found a young maid who lived on the Quayside and of who he said she was almost as canny a woman as his mother.
Bold Archy appears in several songs including :- One of the Eccentrics in the painting Captain Benjamin Starkey was an inhabitant of the Freeman's Hospital in Newcastle.
He was small in stature but “uncommonly polished in his manners, taking off his hat and kissing his hand with an air of excessive good breeding, and which at the same time bore no resemblance of either affection or buffoonery”.
He was vain in so far as he revelled in being treated royally, and would talk freely about his friends Sir Matthew Ridley and Charles Brandling.
He was fond of being treated to a glass of ale and very grateful for trifling favours and anyone showing him with deference were for ever entitled to a polite bow.
He was known to be honest and would hand any and everything over to the authorities and in return received only a modest sum, described by Thomas Allan in his Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs and Readings as “restored to their owners for a trifling remuneration”.
[9] He was one of the several well-known Newcastle eccentrics who for years walked the streets without hat or shoes, and in scanty and tattered clothes.