Editing River Fleet (section)

==Cultural references==
[[File:Here strip my Children! here at once leap in,.... (1971.17.932).jpg|thumb|right|upright|Bridge over the New Canal at [[Holborn]]: illustration from [[Alexander Pope]]'s ''[[Dunciad]]'' (1728). The bathers are included in satirical allusion to the poor quality of the water.]]
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|[[Ben Jonson]]'s poem "On the Famous Voyage" provides a mock-epic account of a journey along the excrement-lined ditch during the early 17th century.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sewerhistory.org/misc/jonson2.htm|title=On the Famous Voyage|last=Jonson|first=Ben|author-link=ben Jonson|publisher=sewerhistory.org|access-date=9 April 2013|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130423193609/http://www.sewerhistory.org/misc/jonson2.htm|archive-date=23 April 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=McRae |first=Andrew |title='On the Famous Voyage': Ben Jonson and Civic Space |journal=Early Modern Literary Studies |volume=4 |issue=Special Issue 3 |date=1998 |url=http://purl.oclc.org/emls/04-2/mcraonth.htm }}</ref>
|[[Jonathan Swift]] (author of ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'') mentions the filth in the Fleet during a storm in a poem of 1710:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.londonslostrivers.com/river-fleet.html|first=Paul |last=Talling |title=London's Lost Rivers: River Fleet |access-date=24 January 2016}}</ref>
{{blockquote|<poem>Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood, 
Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud, 
Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.</poem>}}
|In [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]]' ''[[Oliver Twist]]'' (1837–39), [[Fagin]]'s lair is on [[Saffron Hill]], adjacent to the Fleet (and in some adaptations, reached by a footbridge across it, which collapses under the weight of pursuers).
|In the [[Lord Peter Wimsey]] detective novel ''[[Thrones, Dominations]]'', set in 1936 London and begun by [[Dorothy L. Sayers]], but completed by [[Jill Paton Walsh]] and published in 1998, Wimsey and Police Superintendent [[Charles Parker (detective)|Charles Parker]] descend into the Fleet and nearby subterranean rivers, in search of the body of a murder victim – and barely escape drowning when a sudden heavy rain causes a flood underground.
|In ''[[The Door in the Wall (novel)|The Door in the Wall]]'' (1949), [[Marguerite de Angeli]]'s juvenile fiction set in early-14th-century England, Brother Luke soothes lame Robin's anger at being called Crookshanks by explaining to him that they are all named for some quality unique to themselves.  He gives as an example Geoffry Atte-Water "because he lives by the River Fleet and tends the conduit there with his father".
|The 1966 ''[[Modesty Blaise]]'' strip cartoon story "The Head Girls" features the underground section of the Fleet, where Modesty and Willie Garvin are tethered by the villainous Gabriel in the expectation that the rising tide will drown them.
|The 19th-century Fleet is part of one of the settings a story of the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial "[[The Talons of Weng-Chiang]]" (1977), starring [[Tom Baker]]: in one episode the Doctor claims he once caught a large [[salmon]] in the Fleet, which he shared with the [[Venerable Bede]]. It is also mentioned in the [[Eighth Doctor]] audio adventure ''[[Dead London]]''.
|In Neil Gaiman's television serial and novel ''[[Neverwhere]]'' (1996), the Great Beast of London is said to be a feral boar hog that ran into the Fleet while it was still partially open to the air, and vanished underground into the depths of London Below, growing huge and fat off the sewage.
|The 2003–2004 ''[[The Baroque Cycle|Baroque Cycle]]'', [[Neal Stephenson]]'s three volumes series set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, has many references to the Fleet Ditch, including discussion of the polluted state of the waterway.
|The [[Christopher Fowler]] crime thriller ''The Water Room'' (2004) uses the Fleet as a major setting.
|In Guy Ritchie's [[Sherlock Holmes (2009 film)|''Sherlock Holmes'']] (2009), a blindfolded Sherlock (played by [[Robert Downey Jr.]]) uses the presence of the bump at the 'Fleet Conduit' in order to gain his bearings: "After that, the carriage forked left, then right, and then the tell-tale bump at the Fleet Conduit." 
|In John Twelve Hawks "The Golden City" (The Fourth Realm Trilogy) 2010, the Fleet is an important part of the chapters 29 and 30.
|The Fleet is mentioned in the novel ''[[Rivers of London (novel)|Rivers of London]]'' (2011) by [[Ben Aaronovitch]]; and in ''Blue Monday'' (2011) by crime novelist [[Nicci French]].
|"London Underground", a 2014 episode (Season 11 episode 5) of BBC One drama ''[[New Tricks]]'', features a storyline about a murder by an occult group in the 1970s who believed that the Fleet demanded human sacrifices.  Airdate 15 September 2014
|The novel ''Goodnight, John-Boy'' (2017) by [[Pat Mills]] depicts the disposal of a murder victim's body through an access hatch into the Fleet sewer pipe, where it is washed out into the Thames.
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*''Fleet'', a sequence of poems by [[Paul O'Prey]] published in 2021, traces the course of the buried river.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Zakir-Hussain |first1=Maryam |title=Hampstead Poet Paul O'Prey |url=https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/lifestyle/hampstead-heath-poet-paul-oprey-fleet-8197988 |website=Ham and High |date=30 July 2021 |access-date=15 September 2021}}</ref>