Babbicam

by Rod Madocks

  Doctor Kaiser: You were looking ahead?

  —For the first time in my life I had something to lose. I sat up long into the nights puzzling over how much money I had left. Them great black moths they called “Old Ladies” came in from the night and used to bump around the lamp. Ma used to cry out to me to burn them because they were bad luck to enter the house. I wrote a gert many letters to well-wishers and replied to adverts that had businesses to sell. I thought about being a tobacconist. I also wrote a lot to the Home Office asking for permission to exhibit myself but they always said ‘no’. I had a letter war with Mr Norris, the Queen Street photographer, for copying photos of myself that he had no right to and generally I tried to push myself forward, but my money was draining away and I had no idea what I would do in life. My best plan was to find some fat widow with money but even the plainest of my lady letter writers seem to think that I was the one with a fortune.

  Jessie Bulled came along about then. My fame was white-hot and I’d been courting a girl in Brighton until her parents finally forced her away. Jessie was kin; we were second cousins, we found out later. There were Lees in her family from Witheridge way.

  “Let us sing of the days when we were young, Maggie.” That was the Henry Burr song then, you’d always be hearing it in the penny phonograph shops. Well, she was young or seemed so to me in her white nurse’s uniform with those puffed-out sleeves. We met at a tea at the Congregational on Wolborough Street. I had been asked by the pastor to talk to them on God and prayer in prison. I had been happy to witness for them as I was still full of prayer then and liked to talk of how God had intervened mightily to save me. Jessie was introduced to me and told me about her work for the Guardians looking after the weak-minded women in the workhouse. Jessie called them “imbeciles”.

  She was no draggle-tail village girl. She had prospects and was ’andsum too. I liked her mild grey eyes and her smooth fingers when they touched mine when she handed me a hymn book. Smooth as grapes her fingers were.

  Many from the village had gone to the workhouse—the sick, the old and the idiots. Once in you were never out until they buried you, apart from the casuals—the baggabones tramps and men on the mooch. Jessie showed me round the wards once but I soon wanted to get out of those long dark rooms with their iron cots. Gaol has a smell to it, of dampness, sour bread and piss, and Newton Workhouse smelt like that too. What with the key jangling and all and those imbeciles I couldn’t wait to get out. They kept creeping up to me with their moon faces and reeky breath, calling, “Maister, maister.” I told Jessie that them craiturs were better off dead but she said they just needed kindness.

  Later, much later, Jessie told me about her own ma. Dead twenty years before in an asylum in Kent. She had died when Jessie was a little girl. Her pa was now onto his third wife. Later still I began to think about Jessie’s mother dead in the asylum for incurables, about how bad blood might have hid in her family.

  I saw a bit more of Jessie in the hot summer of ought eight, although I was chasing other maids as well. I kept her on a string, she was my little piece close to home. Once, we went to the wishing well at Bradley Woods where they say the spring there never runs dry. I looked into the dark pool and asked her for a pin. She took one from her hat and I bent it and threw it in. I told her to make a wish. She said that she wished that all would turn out happy for us both.

  In spite of all my chasing around I liked coming back to see Jessie. I also liked that we were blood family in a way. Jessie seemed a strong woman. I could also see she would be true to me. I needed someone on my side. It was good that she had employment although I did not like the smell of the workhouse on her. Sometimes the fingers of the past crept close, like when she came late to see me one day. I asked her what had stopped her and she talked about how two sisters at the workhouse called Fey had both fallen ill, and Doc Wiggins knew not what to do with them. I asked if she said “Fey” and she wanted to know why I knew the name. Her two were called Mary and Ann, two old Bishopsteignton housemaids gone weak in the ’aid. They must have been aunts or something to my two girls. It’s strange how names run in families. I told Jessie that I knew some Feys once, but long dead now. Mary Ann Fey might have been long gone but she came back to me when I closed my eyes sometimes, still does, washed out far to sea and a-waving to me. Well, not long after that I asked Jessie to marry me and she said in answer that she would walk together with me always.

  Doctor Kaiser: Wasn’t she worried about your reputation?

  —She believed in me but there were many that did not. We had a quick wedding that January. There were not many at the Congregational that early morning who actually knew us. Her father, a prudential agent in Plymouth, did not approve and refused to come. I didn’t tell Ma, I only said I was going away for a while. Doctor Wiggins, the workhouse physician, had tried hard to argue Jessie away from the marriage but her mind was made up, although she looked whopper-eyed when making her vows. One sharp reporter from the Western Daily News had got wind of it and as we made off to the station asked me whereabouts we were heading. I said that we were going to Durham by way of Bristol. I had bought a business, a little tobacconist store, I said. But that was a lie. We did steam north but not to Durham, although we passed it. Instead we went all day by rail right up to Newcastle.

  Ten at night by the Town Hall clock found us rattling in a cab in the deep gully streets and high buildings of that faraway Northern town. We came up Newgate Street in a sharp wind. The windows of the pub had handbills saying that Mr Wears presents John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee, The Man They Could Not Hang. When I saw my name there it gave me a shake and I knew I had really pushed the boat out good ’n prapper. They gave us a party that night at the Chancellor’s Head. We were still in our wedding clothes. Mr Wears had already got a good crowd to meet his new attraction. He gave me £7 a week in advance and told me to be myself and all would be dandy. He was a merry soul, a big noise in the town and full of money-making schemes. Jessie and I were to live in the upstairs rooms. That first night we could still hear Wear’s loud voice calling out “Howway, lads.” They carried on late into the night with a bobs-a-daisy party downstairs. Jessie was already in bed waiting for me, her hair spread out on the pillow. To have another zaul lawfully part of my life and depending on me; this body to be close to another’s; to belong to another. How odd, after all my lonely adventures.

  It was a new world for us in those sunshiny first days. We were happy to stroll around and gawk at all the new things. Jessie liked Bigg Market. I bought her new hats and things at Fenwicks. The street sellers had funny sayings that made us laugh, they’d sing out, “Dandy candy, three sticks a penny,” and the fishsellers went “Harrin! Harrin!” Jessie was happy for a while after she got over the strangeness and it seemed we could do anything we set our minds on then.

  I began to exhibit myself to earn my £7 wage. I pulled pints and spoke to any that came up to me. At the start, they just stood and stared. I certainly seemed to be a draw with the howkies from the pit, the keelmen and the market porters all crowding in to take a keek at me. Wears was pleased, kept crowing that “The hoos was crowded oot.” He gave me an extra pound on my wage because things were going so well. I was on show lunchtimes and evenings. The men were content to shake my hands and to stare in a good-hearted way; their women sometimes ran off, faces covered by their shawls, when I appeared. They kept going on about my “aaful hard eyes.” I told them my eyes looked hard on account of what I had seen.

  Some would call me “Jonty” and asked to see my neck as if the rope had left a scar, but mainly they were very civil to me, always pushing me to take a thumping drink and to whet my kneb with them. Wears also ran the Bull and Mouth further down Newgate Street. This was a rougher place where they played billiards and men bet on the hoyling matches that were held on Saturdays on Town Moor. I was their hero and mascot. Three times lucky, Lee. Some of the men there liked to rub their hands on me for luck before making a bet. I bore it with patience for it
was paying very well.

  The only way to get some quiet was to go out and walk those winter streets. There was a gert big monument in the centre there, like Nelson’s in London. The townsfolk called it Grey’s. Anyway you couldn’t often see the figure on top because of all that mist from the Tyne. I spent a lot of time on the elevated bridge watching the naval shipping go gliding out to sea. The girls that filled Castle Garth and Dog Leap stairs on my way back used to call to me to be a canny lad and go with them for a shilling, but they’d fall to silence when they looked into my eyes as I went past.

  Doctor Kaiser: Why were they scared of you?

  —Something about me frit them. Maybe I carried it with me always. I was death’s man come back to life.

  Doctor Kaiser: How did Jessie manage while you were exhibiting yourself?

  —It didn’t take long to find out Jessie’s true nature. I guess the same went for her finding out about me. She started to show a sad and skittery disposition. She was lost without her nurse’s job and spent her days sitting up in our cramped rooms while I plied the roaring crowds below. I fancied that she had become a little more plump and after a few months she stopped wanting to lift her nightie for me and began asking whether I loved her or not. She seemed to be frit of everything. She complained that the customers all wanted a piece of me but what about her? I’d find her crying or moaning that she was getting fat and there was nort she could do about it. Other times she seemed angry and addle-aided, railing at me for walking across a new-scrubbed floor. Once or twice I thought I smelt drink on her, but she denied it.

  Ess, poor Jessie, she in turn had to put up with me staying as quiet as a crab all day. Sometimes I couldn’t speak to her. I’d just wake up like that. My shut-mouth moods could last all day. She grew frightened of asking me questions about anything. I liked keeping the light on at night, for in gaol you were punished for hiding your face. Some nights I would wander around the rooms in my sleep like some dummy come alive. Jessie was too frit to do anything. I woke screaming from nightmares, thinking Berry was coming for me. Once I screamed at a vision of something horrible eating at me to find my own teeth grinning at me in a glass by my bedside. I tried to explain to Jessie that I was getting into a stewer worrying that everything would go scat but mainly I didn’t tell her much. I was too used to living with secrets. If she found me sitting at the window looking out at Newgate Street I’d just tell her not to fash, not to worry about thinking because I’d do it all for the both of us.

  Doctor Kaiser: Did the newspaper men not track you down given you were so famous before?

  —The local press got to hear that I was in town but I did not encourage their attentions. A Newcastle Evening Chronicle man called Commons used to push his pug face over the Chancellor’s Head bar counter to ask me foolish questions, like what I made of the new-fangled electric chair that the Americans were using for executions, or what did I think of that Indian being hung in the Pent for shooting Colonel Wylie. I said that condemned men should be treated with respect for some might be innocent like me and as for the others, well, God had decided to take them. I used to pace about all in a diz on those nights after that Commons had been bothering me. His blow-fly questions reminded me of that bugger Dr Hood, there was something sneery about him as if he believed in nort I said. I told Wears that I didn’t want him coming into the Chancellor’s Head no more.

  Wears came bustling up to see me one day looking pleased with something. He told me that now was our chance to make a killin’. He had heard that James Berry was in town—Berry, the old hangman. He was putting on a show at the old music hall on Nelson Street that’d been taken over by the temperance people. He showed me a handbill that went on about sensational lectures and how you could make the hangman’s acquaintance. I said ‘no’ to Wear’s idea of a double bill, me and Berry. I said I still afraid of the Home Office finding out about me exhibiting myself but really it was Berry that frit me. Appearing in the pub was one thing but going on the stage was a step too far. I could not risk a return to prison. I kept the handbill though for it had a dreadful pull. To think that things had swung round in this arsey-versey world for both me and Berry to be entertaining the public.

  Doctor Kaiser: You were not tempted to see him?

  —I did go at the last moment, taking Jessie with me. Don’t know why I did it, I just did. There was quite a bustle in the old music hall. The audience was mainly women. We squeezed in three rows from the front and looked up at a big banner that said, ‘The Lord Healeth’, or some such. Berry came onto the stage while the piano played the tune, ‘Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow’. Then, there he was. A gert block of a man eaten out by age and illness. He had on evening clothes with a cape. There was no mistaking the cold codfish eyes in the big melon ’aid. He spoke as if it was all a joke. Said he wanted to be called ‘executioner ‘because ‘hangman’ was for Jack Ketch, butchers and low folk, said he liked to deal with his ‘customers’ in a civil way.

  That voice clawed me back to when I had last heard it. I was a mump ’aid to have put myself through it. Berry’s voice seemed to reach inside me and scratch at my innards. He launched into his talk going on about how he couldn’t stop executions but he tried to do them in a merciful way. He said that prisoners didn’t mind hanging and being out the road compared to penal sentences for life. He was right about that. His main thing was drink. How it supported the gallows and created the crime. He mopped at his red sweaty face while the temperance crowd clapped like mad. After speechifying on his doubts about capital punishment Berry then turned to his lantern slides. I mainly remember the crowd moaning and groaning over the pictures. They fair turned my stomach, drawings of salt box cells, condemned men, hoods and nooses. Berry kept saying that this is what you get for breaking the laws of this country. He started to show pictures of the people he’d hanged. He said that Mary Pearcey was the prettiest woman he ever hanged and Moses Shrimpton was the most brave. About then I began to whisper to Jessie I couldn’t stand it no more but then he showed a picture of the shed in Exeter with them all arranged—Berry, Pitkin, Cowtan and the warders and me in the middle, the white bag over my head. Berry said it was a strange case early in his career. How the rain at night had swelled the leaves of the drop and bound them despite the most careful preparation. There was a muttering in the audience, for many knew I was in town. Jessie told me not to make a fuss because people would see. It came to an end at last and the lights were raised to show Berry looking uneasy as if he had showed us something shaming about himself.

  There were a few questions from the audience about temperance and the evils of drink and about hanging. One woman asked Berry how he escaped the convicts’ friends and family who might be seeking revenge and he got a laugh by saying that he shaved off his whiskers and put on a dress when leaving prison.

  Then he was gone, the strange old devil. Or I thought that was it but a voice called him back. I saw with a jump that it was Commons, that runty journalist from the Chronicle. He took Berry by the arm and led him to me by the side of the stage there.

  “Mr Berry I present, Mr Lee. I believe you have previous acquaintance,” said Commons.

  You could see he was all cock-a-hoop. Berry looked uneasy and told me he’d seen me and thought I was a ghost out there in the audience. He said he saw them all the time, their sad sorrowful faces, all them he’d hanged. He told me he regretted his terrible work. Said he was glad to see me. Who’d have thought it? I exchanged a few words with him ’n could see that journalist writing it all down on a pad. I told Berry I was tolerable well. He said it was the reverse of when we last met and that now he was mortal sick with heart trouble. He needed the money for his family and that’s why he did these talks. He told me he had done well out of me although there was a fearful amount of trouble after he failed to hang me. And that was it. He gave us a copy of his book ‘Thoughts About the Gallows’ and held Jessie’s hand and told her to look after me because I had been through a lot. Jessie said later what
an awful wet clammy hand he had. It was like shaking hands with a beefsteak. I felt dirtied by the meeting, it was as if I had been rubbing up against the dead.

  It was about at this time that Jessie told me that she was with child.

  She was already two months on. She had not wanted to tell me before she was sure. It meant changes, new arrangements. We moved out of the pub and rented a house on South View near to the western road out to Hexham. It was on a hill, out of town, almost in the country. I missed the close-packed streets of Newcastle. Perhaps I felt more hidden and safer there. On walks near to our new house I came upon the grey gert blocks of Hadrian’s Wall. The old Wall started there and marched away west over the hills. I took it as a good omen, like them Romans I wanted to outlast all. I was sure that Jessie was carrying a son. There would also be Lees to carry on, I thought.

  Commons wrote a small piece about my meeting with Berry but the nationals did not pick it up and I wondered if my fame was dying away as sudden as it had risen up. After meeting Berry, I thought I should try and be more business-like about exhibiting myself. I saw an expensive law man about it who advised me that it I should be careful not to go against the terms of my release. Wears paid me well but the new house was expensive, there were doctor’s bills for Jessie and I was frit that sooner or later I would outstay my welcome at the Chancellor’s Head. Jessie’s nerves seemed to improve although she was often ill and her legs all swelled up and became painful. I passed the time thinking of what my new son would be like. I would call him John like me. I thought perhaps he would do even greater things than me.

  Doctor Kaiser: The confinement was successful I take it?