People of Abandoned Character

by Clare Whitfield

  I had no idea what this ‘other work’ was, but I was not about to start asking questions. ‘That’s good, isn’t it, if he’s well connected? Isn’t that what you wanted? And you said yourself, this work is handsomely rewarded.’

  ‘But of course you don’t care, as long as I can keep you in furs and dresses.’

  ‘Thomas, it was your idea to buy all these things…’ There, the wine had dulled my senses, and I had walked into his trap, baited and hooked.

  I was still gawping with my mouth open. I didn’t even flinch when he slapped me across the face with his gloved hand; it happened so quickly. The sting spread like fire across my cheek.

  ‘You enjoy humiliating me, don’t you?’ he said, and when I didn’t answer, ‘I said, you enjoy humiliating me, don’t you? I’m asking you a question.’

  I was turned away from him and he was addressing the back of my head. With one hand he gripped my hair, yanked my face towards him and pulled me closer.

  ‘I won’t get drawn into it.’

  ‘Do you have any idea of how you embarrass me? How people laugh because my wife went and picked the fucking Jew as her physician. You did that on purpose! You knew how it would make me look.’

  I fell further into the trap of explaining myself, convinced I could reason with him.

  ‘I didn’t know he was Jewish when I chose him. I didn’t think of it. I only knew him as a good doctor. Why would I care about anything else?’

  ‘You know he hates me with a passion, which is why you selected him, to antagonise me.’

  ‘I didn’t, I swear. All I know is… I know he takes charity cases. I’ve seen him, in Spitalfields, looking for vagrants with skin diseases. I thought he would be a good doctor, that is all.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘You really are a fucking idiot.’ He stopped laughing and leaned close into my face, but he still had hold of my hair so I could not pull away. ‘Poor, simple Susannah. So stupid. You know the real reason he goes there, don’t you? He pays them, he tests his new little surgeries on them. He pays them, because only the most desperate accept money for operations they don’t know whether they’ll wake up from. Sometimes they don’t need operations at all, he just likes to ferret about inside and have a good look, especially with the women. Everyone knows he likes to open them up and tinker around inside his whores. What do you think of your doctor now?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You know what I think?’ he said. ‘I think the man loves his whores. And you are a tired old whore, aren’t you? Do you enjoy fucking Jews, Susannah? Do you moan underneath him, and then act the dead dog with me?’

  He pulled and then pushed me onto the floor by the front of my dress. I lost my breath when my back hit the floor. His hands were everywhere, tearing at the dolman clasp around my neck, trying to rip it off me. His face bulged over mine, his eyes a freezing blue against the livid red of his cheeks. I undid the clasp myself and threw the dolman off my shoulders. It wasn’t white any more but brown from the dirt and spotted with my blood on it. My lip had split where he’d hit me.

  I sat on the floor with my knees bent up to my chest as the coachman shouted, ‘What’s going on down there?’

  ‘Drive on!’ shouted Thomas, and he thumped the roof of the coach. He pushed me onto my back by my neck and slapped me twice round the face. Now I could taste blood.

  The driver shouted again, but Thomas told him to keep driving. I thought he was going to strangle me there, on the floor of the coach, but his hands found what they were looking for: the heart-shaped pendant, and he tore it from my neck. The chain burned my skin where it snapped.

  When we arrived home, I got down from the coach by myself and left the door open for him to follow, but he reached forward and slammed it shut. The driver looked down at me. I met his eyes for a moment before he chose to pretend he’d not seen anything. I could tell from his face that I looked a mess. Then the coach pulled away. Thomas had taken my dolman with the white fur and the pendant, the things that had been my gifts. I was naive to think they had ever really been mine. I was left standing in the fussy dress, blood from my mouth dripping down the front. I ran my tongue over my lip; the skin was smooth and taut where it had already begun to swell. When he’d hit me, I knew he was holding back. There was still so much more to come out.

  When Mrs Wiggs saw my face, she gasped, then, quick as a flash, collected herself and pretended as if nothing more than another silly accident had occurred. She pestered me to take off the pink silk dress, chasing me as I walked up the stairs.

  ‘Quick, quick, Mrs Lancaster! Blood becomes more difficult to get out the longer it is left.’

  The Ghost of Dark Annie

  Timothy Donovan, the deputy manager for Crossingham’s Lodging House on Dorset Street, was by all accounts a grim-faced and unapproachable man. It was widely known that it was never worth asking him for any kind of favour, as his answer was sure to be no. For his part, Donovan avoided all unnecessary engagement with dossers because no matter how often he reminded them of the rules and terms of business, they would always try their luck by pushing for more or paying less. They had no honour or dignity, and this disgusted him.

  It was still fairly light when Dark Annie appeared in the doorway of his office. She was a sloping, apologetic figure and he steeled himself in anticipation of the request that was sure to come. The woman was a regular, a reliable payer for at least three nights a week, but where she got to on the other nights he had no idea; most likely she slept under the night sky like the rest of them.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like Dark Annie – the woman was notably polite, well-mannered, articulate even. He’s heard that her father had been a guardsman and that she’d once been married to a coachman but he’d died. The woman came with an air of ominous melancholy, as if she were already a long-gone soul somehow still trapped in her earthly body. How the woman was still alive was beyond all reasonable comprehension. She was sick and getting sicker, which was apparent each time he encountered her. She was probably in her forties, but she looked older. Her face was long, with sad, down-turned eyes and slow lumbering footsteps. She was a drinker, but a courteous drunk, and so one of the more tolerable. And here she was, haunting his doorway. He knew the reason for her visit.

  ‘Good afternoon, Annie,’ he said.

  ‘Afternoon, Mr Donovan,’ she said, coughing into a yellowing muslin.

  Mr Donovan turned his chair round to face her but would not give her the satisfaction of asking what she wanted.

  ‘Mr Donovan, you know me to be a reliable tenant. I know the terms of business and I always rent a double-bed, but I’m unwell at the moment, Mr Donovan. I’ve been sick.’

  ‘Have you, Annie?’

  ‘I’ve been up the infirmary today. I have pills – look.’ She took out a small paper envelope and shoved it in front of Donovan’s face, at pains to show him the stamp on the envelope: Sussex Regiment, London.

  ‘I see. Well, I hope those do the trick.’ Donovan turned back to his desk, but Annie stepped a little further into his cramped office.

  ‘Would it be all right if I sat in the kitchen awhile, by the fire?’

  ‘Course it would, Annie,’ said Donovan.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said and turned to leave.

  ‘You have a few hours yet, before I send the night-watchman to collect. You make the most of that fire, Annie.’

  Annie stopped walking but didn’t turn around and didn’t say anything. After a pause, she slowly dragged herself back down the stairs towards the kitchen. They both knew she hadn’t had the courage to ask for what she wanted.

  *

  It wasn’t long after midnight when Donovan looked out of the window and saw Dark Annie leaving the kitchen with a couple of others. He was surprised at the relief he felt. He was relieved she’d had the dignity and respect for both of them not to grovel.

  At about two in the morning, Donovan sent the night-watchman into the kitchen to collect the night’s rent. Ther
e was the usual groaning and grumbling, and Donovan tutted and shook his head. Every night, it was a great surprise to them. What he hadn’t expected was to find Dark Annie blocking his doorway again. He nearly leapt out of his skin when he saw her.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Annie, what you doing there?’ he said.

  ‘You know me to be reliable. I always have my bed money, but I’ve been unwell. I would ask if you could trust me only this once, Mr Donovan.’

  ‘Yet you can find money for your beer, can’t you, Annie? How much have you had tonight? Enough for a bed? Enough for your double? You can find money for this, but you can’t find money for your bed.’

  Donovan waited for her to argue, but instead she sighed and said, ‘Keep Number 29 for me, please, if you will, Mr Donovan. I shan’t be long.’ Then she sloped away again.

  *

  Annie trudged towards Christ Church in Spitalfields. She knew where she was heading, had thought of the spot earlier in the afternoon when she’d failed to ask Donovan the first time. She’d known then what the answer would be. She made her way to Hanbury Street. She knew it well, even in the darkness. It was full of poorly kept houses, seven or eight rooms in each one and every one of those occupied by at least one family. The communal areas – stairwells, yards, landings and hallways – were open at all hours and the comings and goings of tramps and vagrants did not arouse attention.

  Annie had consumption. She grew sicker and achier and more feverish by the day, and by God she wished it would hurry and take her. In the next life she dreamed there would be no fear or loneliness and certainly no rum. John would be there, and so would all her babies, and her brothers and sisters. The urge would leave her in death too, and she would finally be free.

  She knew she should have pushed harder for the bed, but, forever the soldier’s daughter, she could not bring herself to beg. Not even now when her bones ached and her limbs shivered, but at least the fever kept out the cold. She pushed on the unlocked yard door in Hanbury Street and was pleased to find her spot empty; it would be all hers for a few hours.

  21

  It was Sarah who woke me from my screaming by banging at my locked bedroom door.

  I had been lying on the floor of a coach. I must have fallen asleep there, or maybe Thomas had hit me too hard and I’d passed out. I didn’t panic, not like I had that first time when Thomas squeezed my neck until I lost consciousness. I was fairly used to it now. I could feel that the blood had dried on my face. I brushed off the flakes with my fingers and prodded the new scab on my swollen lip.

  I was looking at the ceiling of a coach; its walls were black. It was still dark outside. We rolled over a particularly bumpy stretch of road and when I put both hands up against the bottom of the seats to steady myself I realised Thomas wasn’t there any more. He had left me in the coach on my own. But where was I going?

  I sat up and stared out at the navy-blue skies and black branches like crooked fingers. I was being driven out of London, but to where? I pulled myself on to my knees as the coach picked up speed over the rough ground. These were country roads, not city streets. The coach was being thrown from side to side and I struggled to stay upright. The driver was obviously a reckless fool. I had to make him take me back home to Chelsea. I reached up and thumped the ceiling with my balled fist. There was a thump back.

  ‘Hello!’ I shouted, but there was no answer.

  Thomas’s head appeared, upside down at the open coach window, grinning at me, his face livid, his cheeks slack and his blue eyes bloodshot. His hair was long and ungroomed and he held his hat on his head. When he grinned, there was a gold tooth. I screamed. How could I not have seen that before? How could I have missed it?

  I screamed myself awake, and heard Sarah hammering at my bedroom door.

  ‘Missus! Missus! Let me in! What’s going on? Are you hurt?’ she shouted as she rattled the handle. ‘Shall I fetch Mrs Wiggs? Oh, what shall I do?’

  She sounded like Mabel. I told her to go away, but she wouldn’t. So I let her in.

  ‘I was having a nightmare, that’s all. I’m quite all right. What time is it anyway?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s gone eleven, missus.’

  I hadn’t had the chance to look at my face yet, although it was tender, but to her credit Sarah didn’t give anything away. I wondered if domestics received lessons in such things: how to maintain an expressionless face when confronted by the awkward evidence of violence. They used to tell us nurses that when delivering bad news we should be truthful, brief and gone, but to leave out gruesome detail. For example, when a patient had died on the operating table, we were told not to say, ‘He died in agony, half of his leg off,’ but rather, ‘The end came mercifully quickly.’

  I sent Sarah away to get the papers once I’d reassured her I wasn’t dying and there was no need for a doctor, and certainly no need for Mrs Wiggs. When she came back and gave me the Telegraph, I nearly took to my bed again.

  FOURTH WHITECHAPEL WOMAN MUTILATED

  Yet another brutal murder was committed in the Whitechapel area this morning. This is the fourth woman to have been stabbed and mutilated, in circumstances strikingly similar to the others. She was attacked in the same way as Polly Nichols and there is little doubt she too was of the unfortunate class.

  At six o’clock this morning she was found lying on her back in the yard of 29 Hanbury Street. This is a respectable street, but it is only a short distance from Spitalfields Working Men’s Club. Number 29 is let to tenants of the working class.

  DISEMBOWELLED

  Dr Phillips, the Divisional Surgeon of Police, found that the woman’s throat had been cut nearly to the vertebrae and that she had been entirely disembowelled. Her intestines lay next to her. She was removed to the mortuary.

  While not yet officially identified, it is thought that she was known as Sievey and that her real name may have been Annie Chapman. She was last seen drinking with a man at the Ten Bells, five minutes’ walk from the spot where her corpse was found.

  She had lodged at 35 Dorset Street, Spitalfields, on and off for the past eight or nine months, but last night she was unable to pay for her lodging. Recently she was an inmate of the Whitechapel Workhouse, making use of the casual ward.

  EXCITEMENT IN WHITECHAPEL

  The excitement in Whitechapel is high.

  The discovery of this body so soon after the others has paralysed the district with fear. All business in the vicinity of the scene has been stopped and the streets swarmed with people this morning. Many stood about in groups, discussing the murders, and there is a firm opinion that all the murders were committed by the same person. The police have thus far failed to bring anyone to justice and are still hunting for the man they call ‘Leather Apron’.

  He is clearly a madman with uncontrollable homicidal urges. It is widely accepted that lunatics are often more devious and cunning than any sane man. While this murderer is at large, no one in Whitechapel is safe.

  ‘No Englishman could have done this’ was the phrase quoted widely in all the papers. Groups of feral youths were reported to be harassing local Jewish men, trying to bait them into fights, and Jewish families were getting heckled outside their shops and homes. Groups were being followed home from synagogues.

  The police found bloodstains and a piece of water-saturated leather apron in the yard. Annie’s meagre possessions had been scattered about nearby: a pocket of her underskirt had been cut away; a piece of muslin, a comb and paper case lay near her body; and a brass wedding ring and its keeper had been torn from her fingers but left on the ground. An envelope containing two pills had been carefully placed by her head, as if left intentionally by Leather Apron as his calling card. If only the inept police could find this man, the papers screeched, the murders would stop.

  I seemed to be the only person in London who felt differently. When I read the descriptions of how Dark Annie was found, I saw Thomas’s face as it hung down above me in a bloody rage while I lay on the coach floor; I saw its twin appa
rition from my nightmares. Where did he go after he left me and drove off in that cab? Where could he have gone? It was too much of a coincidence now: scratches after Martha, coming home covered in blood after Polly and now this. He would have had ample opportunity to murder Annie. Was he thinking of me when he cut her throat? I took to my drops, if only to steady my nerves.

  Witnesses emerged. A woman said she’d been harassed in the Queen’s Head in Spitalfields by a man fitting the description of Leather Apron. ‘You’re about the same style of woman as the ones that have been murdered,’ he’d leered at her. Given that the murdered women were all prostitutes, that warranted a slap round the face, but instead she’d merely asked what he meant. To which he’d replied, ‘You’re beginning to smell a rat. Foxes hunt geese, but they don’t always find ’em.’ A weird conversation, but the papers loved it, and the woman enjoyed her moment of fame.

  Dark Annie stuck with me, and I spent a lot of hours – whole days – thinking about her, imagining her last evening, filling more pages of my scrapbook with my notes. There were things about her that sliced at me, things that were a little too familiar for me to undertake my macabre observation without guilt. For a start there was her name. ‘Chapman’ was also my mother’s name, and Dark Annie’s story could easily have been my mother’s, if only she’d had the chance to get to forty-two. Like Dark Annie, my mother was a gentle type, quietly spoken, and chose her words carefully. Those were the qualities I remembered.

  It seemed all the more tragic the way the papers wrote about Dark Annie as if she was an ailing, listless vagrant. Yet it was clear she wasn’t always that way. Little details came through, such as the fact she sometimes sold flowers or crochet, and she was known for her love of rum. She lived with a sieve maker, which gave her the nickname: Dark Annie Sievey. She was stout with a thick nose and missing teeth. By all accounts, none of the woman had been considered attractive, even by the standards of the labouring poor.