by Chris James
My father’s wholesaler remembered me well and gave me some casual work helping in his warehouse. I also drew caricatures of every one of his staff, selling them for a few coppers to bolster my meagre income. Customers were soon to catch on. I raised the price five-fold yet they continued to come eagerly for sketches of their family members. When one of the warehouse’s employees decided to go and take his chances in America, I was offered his full-time position, working sixty hours at a starting wage of six shillings and nine-pence a week, measuring and packing orders for chemicals. My aunt said she would keep up the allowance for a month or two longer and I couldn’t have been happier.
But on a chilly morning in early April that year, my life was turned upside down completely. I was setting off to work when a shy urchin, no more than eight and shivering in little more than a ragged shawl, begged I visited her ailing mother. When I apologised and explained that I was neither an apothecary nor a doctor she pulled at my jacket and pointed to the grimy sign still affixed above the boarded-up shop window: ‘S. Silver & Sons ~ Apothecaries.’
I tried to explain but she either did not understand or simply refused to accept that I could not help her, pulling at my coat-tails until I went with her. I begged she wait until I packed my father’s old Gladstone bag, and coming back to the front door, seeing she wore so little to combat the cold, I went back inside and fetched her a warm jacket of my mother’s. Inside the hall she marvelled at seeing her full length reflection in the hall mirror, the jacket touching the floor, her arms somewhere up inside the long sleeves. Wrapping a woollen scarf tightly around her neck, I told her to lead the way.
Clasping my hand the whole way, she led me eastward towards the docks. The squalor that lay less than a mile from my front door was a different world, the noise and bustle always exciting.
We dodged past scavengers outside the fish market at Billingsgate as they fought over bloodied fish heads in the gutter and pressed on through a throng entertained by street peddlers and jugglers. Tents by the Tower offered private sessions with prostitutes. Tents alongside those were equally busy; quacks offering cures against ailments the prostitutes next door gave their clientele. A multitude of huge sailing ships were tied alongside the dock. On the dock itself, crews of all nationalities manned stalls that offered animals I’d not seen before; monkeys of every shape and size and caged birds, their feathers every colour imaginable. But the slight girl in front of me was not distracted, pulling me on with much determination.
We proceeded on to narrower, darker streets, into a more deprived area of the East End, where a cloak of misery appeared on almost every face we passed. A sign told me we were in Wapping. At a narrow alleyway, my young guide muttered, ‘Here,’ and standing on a wooden crate, reached into a letterbox and hauled out an iron key on a length of string. She unlocked the door and led me inside.
‘Hello?’ I called out in the pitch black inside, covering my nose from the stench. The girl led me upstairs and into a squalid bedroom where a woman lay quite still. Her face was covered in black pustules. I recognised them, and the fear of God ran through my bones. ‘You go back downstairs,’ I said to the girl, but she shook her head and remained at my side, clinging onto my coat.
Trembling, I touched the dead woman’s brow, expecting it to be cold as stone. I was startled as her eyes opened.
‘Save Nell,’ she gasped. ‘Too late for me.’
I grabbed the girl and rushed from that room.
‘Nell? You must come with me. It’s not safe here.’ Reluctant to move, I tried to reassure her. ‘I have to get some medicines for your mama. But you cannot stay. You–’
She pointed to an adjacent room, its door closed.
‘It’s not safe, Nell,’ I said kneeling down beside her. ‘Come with me, you can help me find the right medicines.’
She jabbed her finger at that other door again. I had no idea what to expect as I slowly turned the handle. How I would regret not sending the child away before opening that door.
The room was dark; thick sacking draped across the window. What little light there was came from the landing where I stood. On an iron bedstead I could make out a shape, the bedclothes pulled completely over it. I heard my leg braces vibrating as I trembled; not through cold but through abject fear of what lay under those covers. I went to the window, pulled down the sacks. The room was flooded with light streaming through the grimy glass, and at once, the buzz of flies filled the room. Thousands of flies.
‘Nell?’ I called out. I didn’t want her near. I couldn’t see her. Had she gone downstairs? I approached the bed, the stench overwhelming. I held a handkerchief tightly over my nose and took hold of the top corner of a grubby blanket, inhaled and quickly pulled the covers back.
My God!
A deafening, high-pitched scream shattered the silence. There was a tug at my leg as Nell slid to the floor behind me.
I grabbed her and rattled down the stairs on my leg irons as fast as I could, slamming the front door behind me. Nell was unconscious, and white as a sheet. My legs gave way and I slid down the door to the frozen step, clinging onto the child. I feared we had only a short time to live.
‘Brought me a customer, Nellie?’ The voice startled me as Nell shook me. I looked up to see a woman, nineteen or twenty, standing over me, her petticoats tickling my nose. ‘Ain’t had one in leg irons before,’ she laughed. ‘There’s a novelty.’ She reached over me and fished the key out of the letterbox, my head smothered in her undergarments. ‘Lookin’ an’ smellin’s free, chum,’ she laughed, uncovering my red face. ‘Gotcha pecker up, ’as it?’ She shoved the key in the lock. ‘Shift your arse, then.’
‘You live here?’ I asked, struggling to my feet. She nodded. ‘Sorry, but you can’t go back inside. It’s not safe.’
She laughed in my face. ‘Want one on the doorstep, ducky?’ she giggled. ‘Catch me deaf out ’ere, for sure.’
I drew her aside and checked we couldn’t be overheard.
‘In there, madam,’ I said sternly, ‘is certain death. Plague, madam. D’you hear me?’ As the colour drained from her face, it was quite obvious she had heard.
She screamed inwardly, like a muffled bleating lamb.
I slammed my hand over her mouth, pulled her back into the doorway. ‘Keep it between us. Until I’ve spoken to a constable. They’ll need to isolate you all. Keep Nell safe. You have somewhere to go?’
‘It’s me ’ome, innit,’ she replied. ‘Ain’t got nowhere else.’
‘A friend, maybe?’ She shook her head. ‘Anyone?’ I pleaded. She shook her head again.
Of course, I knew of one safe place, one uninfected and isolated and well away from there. ‘Then you’d best come with me. We’ll stop at a doctor’s on the way.’
‘No doctor’s willing to come. Ma tried. For the lodger,’ she said, rolling up the sleeves on Nell’s new jacket. ‘An apothecary at Blackfriars helped her out once, gave her credit. She never forgot him.’
‘That would be my father,’ I said. ‘This lodger? Where had he come from?’
‘Merchantman, landed a month ago. From India he said.’
‘He was from India or his ship was from India?’ I pressed.
‘No, ’is ship. ’E’s an Eastender. Brought up ’ere. Ma knew his ol’ man. Why, what’s ’appened to ’im?’
I spoke quietly. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ She began to think. ‘Saw him alive,’ I pressed.
‘Christ!’ she blurted out. ‘Oh, my fucking Christ, Nellie.’ She broke down into tears and hugged Nell.
‘He’s been dead for at least two weeks,’ I told her quietly.
‘Ma said he wasn’t to be disturbed. A shipmate of ’is paid ’is lodgings, all the time ’e’s ’ere. Ev’ry Mond’y.’
‘Follow me,’ I instructed her, as Nell took my hand. ‘With any luck it can be contained. But we’ll not know who’s infected, or otherwise, for a week or two. I’ll send medicine for your mama. The council will have to pay. They wo
n’t want this spreading.’
Her name was Polly – and she was stunningly attractive; her hair black and long with ringlets. The woman she called her mother, Ma to be precise, had taken her in as a baby after finding her abandoned on the chapel steps near Billingsgate fish market.
‘From that step to Wapping pier,’ she explained to me, sitting near a blazing fire in my father’s home. ‘I ain’t got far. Nothing so grand as this.’
‘I’ve lit the fire under the copper in the scullery. I’ll draw you a bath,’ I offered, ‘soon as the water is hot.’
‘An ’ot barf? In the ’ouse?’ she said, tugging at Nell’s jacket. ‘Ain’t never seen that before, ’ave we Nell?’
‘Then you can choose which bedrooms you’d like.’
‘A bedroom to meself?’ Polly exclaimed. ‘Wait ’til I tell the gels. They’ll all wanna come.’ She giggled, and hugged Nell.
After their bath I found them night clothes from my mother’s wardrobe and showed them their bedrooms. Nell, without the grime on her face, truly was an angel; a cherub if ever I saw one. She had light, blond hair, dimples to each cheek and large, round bright-blue eyes. While she sensed something untoward so far as her mother was concerned, she smiled almost constantly, and that always brought me good cheer. With her fair hair and pale skin she did so remind me of my lost love. But right then, I had the distraction of plague taking my mind off Emily.
Polly made a point of coming to thank me immediately she stepped out of her bath, completely naked as she spread the towels on a rack in front of the kitchen stove. Long wet black hair stretching halfway down her back, she was a picture of femininity, a nymph. But I would neither admit nor give in to the feelings she aroused, even after she curled up at my feet and asked me to comb her hair.
‘I find you very attractive,’ I said to her quietly and strode over to the sideboard. She appeared quite disappointed when I took a sketch pad and crayon from a drawer, drew the curtains and sat down in an armchair opposite. ‘May I draw you?’
As I was finishing the outline there was a knock at the front door. I passed Polly a dressing gown and went to answer it.
It was a constable. He stood at a distance, back at the kerb. ‘They identified the illness, sir,’ he called out. ‘Bubonic plague, like you suggested. Fleas, sir. Spread by fleas. You should be safe here. But we need you to remain isolated for a month or two at least. Just in case, like.’ He came forward and reached out to me with a sheet of paper. ‘Write down the names of all the occupants and their ages and pin it on the front door. I’ll collect it later. Then I’ve got to seal the place up. Nobody goes in or out. Got that?’. I nodded.
The officer kindly agreed to the safe delivery of a note to my aunt, explaining my predicament and the need to be brought regular food supplies; and another to my employer apologising for my absence. I closed the door and returned to Polly. She slid the dressing gown off her shoulders so provocatively that I readily accepted the terrible situation in which I found myself.
‘A month or two?’ Polly giggled, throwing her arms around my neck, the dressing gown falling to the floor. ‘What on earth shall we find to do, kind sir?’
Nell was fascinated by Papa’s many books in the library. In particular she loved anything with animal pictures and Darwin’s drawings in one precious volume occupied her for hours on end. I decided Polly and I should use the opportunity of our enforced imprisonment next to a library to teach Nell to read and write. It was quite a surprise to hear Polly’s reaction.
‘Well, I ain’t no good wiv letters, meself,’ she admitted, looking a little embarrassed. ‘I fink the pair of us should knuckle under and take them lessons.’
And so it began. Day and night. By day, I taught Nell and Polly to read and write the alphabet and improve their diction. I also sketched both girls as they studied, and, in the attic room with the skylight, that my father had converted into a studio, made portraits from the sketches in oils. Fortunately, there was a good supply of pigments and ample linseed oil and turpentine. My aunt kindly supplied a roll of artist’s canvas after I sent word to her. By night, after Nell was tucked in bed, Polly tried her hardest to return my teaching favours, offering to give me instruction of a more personal nature, in the bedroom.
‘The bestest lessons money can buy,’ she promised, adopting such provocative poses that I would often have to leave the room to hide the discomfort in my trousers. However, I fought against the temptation – although she never ceased to surprise me with her tales and descriptions of the imaginative games other folk were playing in this same city.
As difficult as it was, I resisted temptation and made no approaches towards Polly. One woman, Rebecca Muxlow, had already taken my virginity. And were it not for her badgering me with continual references to the age of consent being just thirteen only a few years earlier, I’m sure I would have struggled harder to hang onto it. I vowed from that day I would abstain and save myself for my one true love, Emily. Ever in the forefront of my mind, I knew that somehow, no matter what stood in my way, I would find Emily and bring her back into my life.
I soon had quite a collection of paintings, my favourite being one of Nell whom I’d dressed in a guardsman’s bright-red jacket. It was a souvenir of my great-grandfather’s, dating back to Waterloo. Having seen in the newspapers, before our incarceration, which art was currently fashionable, my portraits of Polly had her posing in various states of undress to compete with the high volume of similar, titillating works arriving from Paris. Once I gave Polly an idea of any pose I intended, she soon understood, and would sprawl out on the chaise longue in the most provocative manner. I knew then that all I had to do was capture that look, that temptation, and my work would easily sell.
It was four months before Nell demanded she see her mother, soon, having asked after her almost every day and been given vague reasons why it was not possible.
After a doctor attended us and the constable agreed our quarantine period was over, the three of us made our way to Wapping and to their home, or more precisely, the charred remains of what had been their home. The borough councillors had thought fit to control the outbreak of plague as best they knew how – they burned down the whole squalid terrace. Former neighbours confirmed to Polly that Ma and her lodger had been carted away and cremated. Nell was heartbroken, Polly uncertain of where their future lay.
‘We can’t impose on your kindness no longer, Jacob. Leave us ’ere – here,’ she corrected herself. ‘We’ll find something, I’m sure.’
‘No,’ I insisted. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it. Come back with me. Nell and I both need looking after. I couldn’t think of a nicer lady to do it.’ I really didn’t want to see her go.
‘Jacob,’ she said, taking both my hands. ‘We’s from a different class. It won’t do. You’ll never be proper comfortable pretendin’ to live in our world. You– We don’t live like a couple. Don’t– Y’know? One day you’ll find a nice young lady and then where will we be? On the street again, I ’spect. And it’ll be much ’arder then, ’aving got used to a nice ’ouse and stuff.’
‘Polly, please. Don’t do this,’ I pleaded earnestly. ‘I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to either of you.’
‘No. We’ve decided, Jacob,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll ask around and find somewhere safe and come for our things in a coupla days.’
Nothing I said would dissuade Polly from leaving. When she returned at the weekend I gave her two large bags full of mother’s best clothes and something I thought she could sell to help her on her way – the portrait of Nell in the red guardsman’s jacket and one of herself. Polly explained that she had found a room for them to share with a friend in Whitechapel, just a mile or two from their former home.
It was mid-August, 1888, when they left; a very bleak day for me as I watched them drag their bags down onto the pavement out the front, a day I was sure to remember in view of what followed.
Aunt Alice said she would continue with my allowance for a little
longer and I returned to the warehouse, although they could now only offer a couple of hours a day instead of ten, my position having been filled. Down in the dusty laboratory at home, I found significant quantities of ingredients which I intended selling back to the warehouse – but that was before Polly’s acquaintances called. They claimed she had recommended me after saving her life. Every one of them suffered ailments associated with poor living conditions or malnutrition and most left my dispensary carrying as much food as medicine. I was willing to wager that the food was soon exchanged for gin or some form of alcohol before they arrived back in the East End. The small payments they were able to offer barely covered the cost of the food and soon ran out.
I knew then I had to offer my portraits for sale; sell them or starve. Selling what remained of my parent’s clothes enabled me to purchase another roll of artist’s canvas and some stretchers, for framing it.
Two weeks after Polly and Nell departed, on the last day of August, 1888, I ventured along the Embankment to the offices of the Evening Standard in order to invest in a small advertisement. A bustling crowd were clambering over each other for copies of that evening’s edition. I become alarmed when I caught a glimpse of the headline: ‘Brutal Murder in Whitechapel’.
I bought a copy and scanned the front page. My heart stopped upon reading that the victim, a Mary Ann Nicholls, was also known as Polly. I found myself in a blind panic.
I spent my last shilling taking a hackney to Whitechapel where I made enquiries as to the whereabouts of the murder. I had with me sketches of Polly and upon arrival in the repulsive neighbourhood of Buck’s Row I entered an ale house.
‘The murdered lady,’ I asked the landlord, showing him a sketch of Polly, ‘was this her?’