The Mysteries of London Volume 1

by Reynolds, George W. M.

  We must now request our readers to accompany us to a district of London, which is most probably altogether unknown to the aristocrat, even by name, and with which many of that class whose occupations lead them into an intimate acquaintance with the metropolis, are by no means familiar.

  Situate to the east of Bethnal Green,—bounded on the north by Bonner’s Fields, on the south by the Mile End Road, and on the east by the Regent’s Canal,—and intersected by the line of the Eastern Counties Railway, is an assemblage of narrow streets and filthy lanes, bearing the denomination of Globe Town.

  When compared with even the worst districts of the metropolis,—when placed in contrast with Saint Giles’s or Saffron Hill,—Globe Town still appears a sink of human misery which civilization, in its progress, has forgotten to visit.

  The majority of the streets are unpaved, rugged, and broken. The individual who traverses them in the summer is blinded by the dust, or disgusted by heaps of putrescent offal, the rotting remains of vegetables and filth of every description, which meet the eye at short intervals; and, in winter, he wallows, knee-deep, in black mud and stagnant water. But even in the summer itself, and in the very midst of the dog-days, there are swamps of mire in many of the streets of Globe Town, which exhale a nauseating and sickly odour, like that of decomposing dead bodies.

  In the winter time Globe Town is a complete marsh. Lying low, in the vicinity of the canal, and on a naturally swampy soil, the district is unhealthy in the extreme. Nor do its inhabitants endeavour, by any efforts of their own, to mitigate the consequences of these local disadvantages. They seem, for the most part, to cling with a sort of natural tenacity, to their rags and filth. Perhaps it is the bitterness of their poverty which makes them thus neglectful of the first duties of cleanliness: perhaps their pinching indigence reduces them to a state of despair that allows them no spirit and no heart to do any thing that may conduce to their comfort. Whatever be the cause, it is nevertheless a fact that, with the exception of one or two streets, Globe Town is a district which necessity alone could compel a person of cleanly habits and domestic propriety to reside in.

  And yet Globe Town contains streets delighting in aristocratic names. There is Grosvenor Place, in which a carriage and pair would have some trouble to turn; there is Parade Street, where a corporal’s guard could not find space to manœuvre; there is Park Street, whose most gorgeous establishment is the sign of a mangle; there is Chester Place, formed by two rows of miserable shops; and, there are Essex Street and Digby Street, where single men may obtain lodgings at the rate of threepence a night.

  How strange is this affection for fine names to distinguish horrible neighbourhoods! In the lowest parts of Whitechapel we find Pleasant Row, Queen Street, Flower Street, Duke Street, and Rose Lane. In Bethnal Green, a place inhabited by the poorest of the poor is denominated Silver Street; and, in the same district, a filthy thoroughfare is christened Pleasant Street.

  Globe Town and its immediate vicinity abound in cemeteries. To the north there is the Eastern London Cemetery; and to the south there are two Jews’ burial grounds, and two other places of sepulture. With the exception of the first-mentioned one, which has only been recently opened, and is a large airy space neatly planted with shrubs, those cemeteries are so crowded with the remains of mortality, that it is impossible to drive a spade into the ground without striking against human bones.

  When you once merge from the Cambridge Road, pass the new church in Bethnal Green, and plunge into Globe Town, it seems as if you had left London altogether,—as if you were no longer within the limits of the metropolis, but had suddenly dropped from the clouds into a strange village strangely peopled. You encounter but few persons in the streets; and those whom you do meet are, for the most part, squalid, emaciated, pale, and drooping. The only sounds of mirth which meet your ear, emanate from the casements of the public-houses, or from the urchins that play half-naked in the mud. With these exceptions, Globe Town is silent, gloomy, and sombre.

  The shop-windows are indicative of the poverty of the inhabitants. The butcher’s shed displays a few slices of liver stretched upon a board, sheep’s heads of no very inviting appearance, and hearts, lungs, and lights, all hanging together, like a Dutch clock with its weights against a wall. The poor make stews of this offal. The fish-stalls present “for public competition,” as George Robins would say, nothing but the most coarse and the cheapest articles—such as huge Dutch plaice, haddocks, &c. In the season the itinerant venders of fresh-herrings and sprats drive a good trade in Globe Town. In a word, every thing in that district denotes poverty—poverty—nothing but pinching poverty.

  The inhabitants of Globe Town are of two kinds; being weavers, and persons who earn their livelihood by working at the docks or on the canal, on the one hand; and thieves, prostitutes, and vagrants, on the other. When a burglar or a pickpocket finds St. Giles’s, Clerkenwell, the Mint, or Bethnal Green too hot to hold him, he betakes himself to Globe Town, where he buries himself in some obscure garret until the storms that menaced him be blown over. Globe Town has thus acquired amongst the fraternity of rogues of all classes, the expressive denomination of the “Happy Valley.”

  In one of the narrowest, dirtiest, and most lonely streets at the eastern extremity of Globe Town, there was a house of an appearance more dilapidated than the rest. It was only two storeys high, and was built in a very singular manner. From the very threshold of the front door a precipitate staircase, more nearly resembling a ladder, led to the upper apartments; so that when any one entered that house from the street, he had to thread no passage nor corridor, but immediately began to ascend those steep steps. The staircase led to a landing, from which two doors opened into small, dirty, and dark chambers. These rooms had a door of communication pierced in the wall that separated them; but there were no stairs leading down into the lower apartments of the house. The only way of obtaining access to the rooms on the ground-floor, was by means of a door up an alley leading from the street, and running along one side of the house into a court formed by other dwellings. Thus the upper and lower parts of this strange building might be said to constitute two distinct tenements. The windows of the ground-floor rooms were darkened with shutters, at the upper part of which holes in the shape of hearts had been cut to admit a few straggling rays of light.

  The rooms on the upper floor were furnished in a tolerably comfortable manner; but every article was wretchedly begrimed with dirt. The front apartment served as a sitting-room for the inmates of this strangely-built house; and the back chamber was fitted up as a bed-room.

  It was evening, as we before said; and thick curtains were drawn over the two windows of the front-room to which we have alluded. A candle with a long flaring wick, stood upon the table. On a good fire a kettle was just beginning to boil. The table was set out with glasses, bottles, sugar, lemons, pipes, and tobacco. The inmates of that room were evidently preparing for a carouse, while the rain beat in torrents, against the windows, and the wind swept down the street like a hurricane.

  But who were the inmates of that room?

  We will proceed to inform our readers.

  Lolling in an arm-chair, the covering of which was torn in many places, and spotted all over with grease, was a female, who in reality had scarcely numbered five-and-twenty years, but to whom the ravages of dissipation and evil passions gave the appearance of five-and-thirty. She had once been good-looking; and her features still retained the traces of beauty: but there was a deep blue tint, beneath the eyes, which joined the dark thick brows, and thus seemed to inclose the orbs themselves in a dingy circle. The faded cheeks were coloured with rouge; but the dye had been so clumsily plastered on, that the effect could not deceive the most ignorant in such matters. This woman wore a faded light silk gown, cut very low in front, and disclosing a considerable portion of a thin and shrivelled neck. In a word, she had the air of being what she really was—a faded
courtezan of a low order. Her proper name was Margaret Flathers; but her acquaintance, for brevity’s sake, called her Meg; and, in addition to these appellations, the name of The Rattlesnake had been conferred upon her, from the circumstance that she was fond of dressing in silks or satins, which she had a habit of rustling as much as possible when she walked.

  On the other side of the fire-place was seated a man of cadaverous countenance, which was over-shadowed by a quantity of tangled black hair, and whose expression was vile and sinister to a degree.

  “Half-past eight,” said the woman, glancing towards a huge silver-watch which hung by a faded blue riband to a nail over the mantel.

  “Yes—they can’t be long now,” returned her companion, who was no other than the Resurrection Man. “But because they’re late, Meg, it’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a drop of blue ruin. The night’s precious cold; and the kettle’s just on the boil. Pour out the daffy, Meg.”

  The woman drew two tumblers towards her, and half filled each with gin. She then added sugar and lemon; and in a few moments the Resurrection Man poured the boiling element upon the liquor.

  “Good, isn’t it, Tony?” said the Rattlesnake.

  “Capital, Meg. You’re an excellent girl to judge of the proportions in a glass of lush.”

  “And I think, Tony,” said the woman coaxingly, “that you have had no reason to complain of me in other respects. Twelve months all but a few days that we’ve been together, and I have done all I could to make you comfortable.”

  “And so you ought,” answered the Resurrection Man. “Didn’t I take you out of the street and make an independent lady of you? Ain’t you the mistress of this crib of mine? and don’t you live upon the fat of the land?”

  “Very true, Tony,” said the Rattlesnake. “But what would you have done without me? When that business took place down by the Bird-cage Walk, and you was obliged to come and hide yourself in the Happy Valley, you wanted some one you could rely upon to go out and buy your things, take care of the place, and get information whether the blue-bottles had fallen on any scent.”

  “All right, my girl,” cried the Resurrection Man. “I did want such a person, and the moment after I escaped that night when I blew the old crib up, I went to you and told you just what I required. You agreed to come and live with me, and I agreed to treat you well. We have both kept our bargain; and I am satisfied if you are.”

  “Oh! you know I am, Tony dear,” exclaimed the Rattlesnake. “But sometimes you have been so cross and quarrelsome, that I didn’t know what to make of it.”

  “And was there no excuse, Meg?” cried the Resurrection Man. “Did I not see my old mother and the Cracksman perish before my very eyes—and by my own hand too? But I do not accuse myself of having wilfully caused their death. There was no help for it. We should have all three been taken to Newgate, and never have come out of the jug again but twice—once to be tried, and the second time to be hung.”

  “Could they have proved any thing against you?” demanded the Rattlesnake.

  “Yes, Meg,” answered the Resurrection Man—“there was a stiff ’un in the front room at the very moment when the police broke into the house. We had burked him on the preceding evening; and he was still hanging head downwards to the ceiling.”

  “It was much better, then, to blow the place up, as you did,” observed the Rattlesnake.

  “Of course it was, Meg. Don’t you see,” continued the Resurrection Man, after a pause, during which he imbibed a considerable quantity of the exhilarating fluid in his glass,—“don’t you see that I was too old a bird not to be always prepared for such an event as that which happened at last? I had got together a great quantity of gunpowder in the back-room of the crib, and had stowed it away in brown paper parcels in a cupboard. This cupboard stood between the fire-place and the back wall of the house. So I had made a hole through the wall, and had introduced a long iron pipe into the cupboard. This pipe was ten or twelve feet in length, and ran all along the wall that divided my yard from the next. The pipe, so placed, was protected by a wooden cover or case; and any one who saw it, must have thought it was only a water-pipe. It was, however, filled with excellent gunpowder, and there was nothing to do but to put a match to the farthest end of the pipe to blow up the whole place.”

  “Capital contrivance!” exclaimed the Rattlesnake. “Had you put up that pipe long before the police broke into the house?”

  “Oh! yes—some months,” answered the Resurrection Man; “and very lucky it was, too, that the pipe was water-tight, so that the rain had never moistened the powder in the least. Well, when the blue-bottles broke in, I rushed into the back-room, locked the door, leapt through the window, flew to the end of the pipe, tore out the plug, applied the match, and in a moment all was over.”

  “And for a long time even your old pals at the Boozing-ken on Saffron Hill, fancied you had been blown up with the rest,” said the Rattlesnake.

  “Of course they did, because the newspapers, which you always used to go and fetch me to read, said there was no doubt that every one of the gang in the house at the time had perished.”

  “And they also spoke of the way in which the police had followed you and the Cracksman to the house,” said the Rattlesnake.

  “Yes—and that was how I came to learn that the man who had hunted me almost to death, was Richard Markham,” exclaimed the Resurrection Man, his countenance suddenly wearing an expression of such concentrated—vile—malignant rage, as to render him perfectly hideous.

  “Now don’t begin to brood over that,” cried the Rattlesnake hastily; “for I am almost afraid of you when you get into one of those humours, dear Tony.”

  “No—I shan’t give way now,” said the villain: “I have prepared the means for revenge; and then I shall be happy. Ah! Meg, you cannot conceive how I gloated over the wretch the other night when I denounced him in the theatre! That man has been the means of making me stay in this infernal prison—for it has been nothing better—for weeks and months; he was the cause of the loss of my best friend, the Cracksman, and of my old mother, who was very useful in her way: and he prevented me from getting that young fellow into my power, who went and explored the Palace. When I think of all that I have suffered through this infernal Richard Markham, I am ready to go mad;—and I should have gone mad, too, if it hadn’t been that I always thought the day of vengeance would come!”

  “And my little attentions helped to console you, Tony,” said the Rattlesnake, in a wheedling manner that seemed peculiar to her.

  “Oh! as for that, Meg, a man like me can be consoled by nothing short of revenge in such a case. I have told you the history of my life over and over again; and I think you must have learnt from it, that I am not a person to put up with an injury. I have often thought of doing to Markham as I did to the justice of the peace and the baronet—setting his house on fire; but then he might not learn who was the incendiary, or he might even think that it was an accident. My object is for him to know who strikes him, that he may writhe the more.”

  “And do you think that the Buffer and Moll are to be depended upon?” asked Margaret Flathers.

  “To the back-bone,” replied the Resurrection Man. “How could the Buffer possibly betray me, when he was one of the gang, as the newspapers called it? Besides, wasn’t he laid by the heels in Clerkenwell Gaol for making away with the bantling to cheat the Burying Society? and didn’t he escape? How could he go and place himself in contact with the police by giving information against me? And what good would it be to him to deceive me? He knows that I have got plenty of tin, and can pay him well. Indeed, how has he lived in the Happy Valley for the last eleven months and more, since he escaped out of Clerkenwell? Haven’t I been as good as a brother to him, and lent him money over and over again?”

  “Very true,” said the Rattlesnake. “I only spoke on your account
.”

  “I shall be able to let the Buffer in for several good things, now that I am determined to commence an active life again,” continued the Resurrection Man. “I have been idle quite long enough; and I am not going to remain so any more. Why, Greenwood alone ought to be as good as an annuity to me. He can always find employment for a skilful and daring fellow like me.”

  “And he pays like a prince, doesn’t he?” demanded the Rattlesnake.

  “Like a prince,” repeated the Resurrection Man. “Five guineas the other night for just attending the carrying off of the young actress. That is the way to make money, Meg.”

  “And you have got plenty, Tony, I know?” said the woman, in a tone more than half interrogatively, and only partially expressing a conviction.

  “What’s that to you?” cried the Resurrection Man, brutally; at the same time eyeing his mistress in a somewhat suspicious manner.

  “Oh! only because you needn’t have any secrets from me, Tony,” returned the Rattlesnake, affecting a tone of indifference. “You have been out every night lately—and only for a short time—”

  “Now I tell you what it is, Meg,” exclaimed Tidkins, striking his fist upon the table, “you have asked me about my money a great many times lately; and I tell you very candidly, I don’t like it. It looks suspicious; but, by heavens! if you attempt to play me false—”

  “Why should you say that, Tony? Have I not given you every proof of fidelity?”

  “Yes—you have; or else I should have known what to do in a very few moments. But why do you bother yourself about the money that I have got? It is very little, I can tell you; but where it is, it’s safe enough; and if I ever catch you attempting to follow me or spy upon me when I go into the rooms down stairs, I’ll make you repent it.”