Whitechapel

by Bryan Lightbody

  The men all started filing out of the parade room and as they did so Kerby grabbed Robert’s arm. “And by the way, boy, get a bleedin’ shave as well as sorting out your trousers or it’ll be a reprimand in your pocket book.”

  “Yes, sarg, sorry,” replied Robert. He then shuffled off with the rest of them to have a welcome cup of tea and find a needle and cotton. He looked for Liz the cleaning lady at the nick who although unreliable and likely to lose her job as a result of too much drunkenness, had a heart of gold. Robert thought that she would probably be able to help sort out his trousers. Nick-named ‘Long Liz,’ Elizabeth Stride was known to be a part time local prostitute too.

  Robert found Liz in the basement just swilling out a dirty bucket by a sink and coughing loudly. Although plain to look at now at forty-five, she had faired better than most of the others of her age and probably up to ten years previously had been an attractive woman with good facial bone structure and even now a slim physique.

  “Liz, you got any black cotton and a needle, love?” asked Robert in his innocent way. The motherly Liz looked him up and down seeing the tear in his trousers and smiled.

  “Do you want me to stitch it for you too, little wounded soldier?” What did she mean? He looked at his leg again and could see how red raw it was from a nasty graze taking off a large piece of skin.

  “Liz, you are an angel.”

  “Well get ‘em off then, boy, can’t do’em in place, not unless you want wear then permanently,”

  Robert looked at her gulped and decided the embarrassment would be worth it.

  He took his trousers off much to her delight, with Liz laughing and shouting ‘and the rest!’ as he handed them over to her.

  Robert decided to engage her in a bit of conversation, “Liz, did you know Martha?”

  “No, darling,” she replied “but I understand she was someone on the game, all a bit worrying really a killer being out there. Still could be hit by one of them bleedin’ horse drawn bus’s tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Robert wondered if he would be so philosophical later in life. “Liz, why do you do what you do away from here?”

  The tall fair haired woman paused for a moment and then spoke with a hint of shame avoiding any eye contact.

  “Money. That’s all. I’ve got to live and there is little else I can do.” Robert pondered the answer and realised that he was one of the more fortunate locals to have found a career for himself. Five minutes later an his trousers were done, he pulled them on quickly, went up to Liz and kissed her on the cheek and whispered “Thanks,” into her ear and ran off to the mess room to get a cup of tea with the lads on his ‘relief’ or shift.

  The banter between him and his mates began as soon as he entered the room, with suggestions readily being made about his whereabouts for the last five minutes and how good he must be with a needle and cotton.

  “Oi, Bobby boy, I hope you were careful with that needle and didn’t feel a prick?” Came the smug comment from Derek ‘Del boy’ Lake, actually a close friend of Robert’s from the Police Training School of Peel House. Del boy was twenty-five and a resident originally of South London, unlike Robert born in the East. A larger than life character always with something to say, they had enjoyed many good days walking the streets of Whitechapel together.

  “Well then, boyo, that old tart stitch you up good and proper did she?”

  “She is not just an old tart, and besides, is that the best you can come up with then, Taffy?” Robert replied scornfully to the last comment from Taffy Williams an older constable on the relief, some forty years old with lots of service in Central London and now in the East End. He resembled a typical Victorian Bobby, portly with a ruddy complexion, a big bushy moustache and mutton chop sideburns. “Listen, pal, I don’t have to be funny, just nasty. I’ve got more days leave than you’ve got in this job.”

  Robert’s real feelings were to tell Taffy exactly what he was, a nasty, rude, uncaring has-been. Unfortunately, thought Robert, he would probably retaliate with more spiteful abuse. He sat down with Del to enjoy the hot steaming tea pushed in front of him on the table.

  “Well then, son,” began Del, “we’re both posted number two beat together, fancy strolling and enjoying a bit of lively good-natured company?” Robert looked pensive for a minute, scratched his head and then replied with mocking authority and experience.

  “Yeah, okay. Come with me, son and watch and learn!” They laughed heartily at his comment, finished slurping their tea, donned their helmets and headed for the front door of the nick.

  It was now 6.35.a.m. Commercial Street was bustling with activity, cabs travelling up and down taking the bankers and city gents into town, trams full of the regular work force being pulled along by strong brawny horses and the market traders and newspaper vendors shouting as everyone passed by. Few, if any, of the ladies of the night were now to be seen on the streets, having made their money they had found lodgings and a bed to sleep off the night’s excesses of vile and rough sex subdued by alcohol.

  Robert and Del turned right from the nick and headed south-east towards The Ten Bells public house and Spitalfields Flower Market. The aroma of the air was quite bizarre as before, but this time also with a stronger smell of fresh flowers as they neared Spitalfields, horse deposits from all the various forms of transport and the smell of human refuse decaying from some of the local slums all running east from Commercial Street.

  However, it is a time of great social upheaval due to the appalling condition of the East End slums, the lawlessness of the area at times and the rise in Irish or ‘Fenian’ terrorism in London. Despite this it is still a time when those passing constables patrolling in the street acknowledge their presence and wish them a good day. One such person accustomed to greeting ‘The Law’ was Ralph a grubby street urchin of a paper boy.

  Ralph had stumbled from his makeshift bedding in his mother’s rooms at around 5.a.m. He knew he had to be at the offices of ‘The Star’ by 5.30 each day to collect his one hundred copies of the paper to sell on the streets of his home area of Spitalfields. Not having the luxury of a proper bed Ralph slept on the hard wooden floor with the companionship of two rough brown woollen blankets his late father had dragged home from the army and the additional warmth of ‘Bruiser,’ a Welsh border collie now very old and grey being some twelve years old as was young Ralph, but in dog years he was the equivalent of a grandparent not a sibling as the skinny East End boy regarded him.

  Bruiser stirred slightly as Ralph pulled himself from under his covers; dirty and fully clothed except for his ill fitting and worn out boots and a tatty old serge winter coat, two sizes too big for him. Being the old dog that he now was Bruiser licked the boy’s face before he stood and then nestled himself into the warm blankets now being left unattended. Ralph rubbed the sleep from his eyes with characteristic mucky hands and pulled on his boots around feet already covered by two pairs of patch work tatty socks. His coat dragged along the floor as he entered the ramshackle pantry and grabbed a piece of dry bread from the table and slurped some water from a cold iron kettle. He knew he would only need his coat until he started work and got accustomed to the sometimes fresh August early morning air.

  He then exited the half broken door of one of the rundown flats that made up Millers Court along with some single room bed sits. None of these habitations were maintained by their landlords whose sole interest was in rent and not welfare or comfort. Ralph hated this life but he knew nothing different other than East End squalor with the only light from time to time being the smiling face of Mary the auburn haired Irish girl who lived next door and to Ralph had the voice of angel when she sang. To hear her made up for all of the drunken tantrums he would have to tolerate from his alcoholic mother who had caused him from her life style to be born syphilitic after a brief affair with a young infantryman. He knew little of his father who had died when Ralph was only four, but he had seemed like a kind man who had always tried to give the boy
something when he came home on leave. Sometimes it would be a wooden toy or other times old clothes or something like his valued blankets. When she arrived home drunk late at night he would huddle in the corner with Bruiser his only real friend and companion. Bruiser, Mary Kelly and Constable Ford were the only people who showed him any interest in life. Ralph admired Constable Ford as he was a local boy made good by gaining a basic education and joining the Police Force. In so doing he seemed never to forget his roots and was always approachable with any of the local people. He found Ralph a great source of information and everyday bought a paper from the lad who he referred to as a ‘local businessman’ to boost the lad’s self esteem.

  Ralph ran to the offices of The Star and collected his hundred copies from Mr Haddaway the sales manager. In Ralph’s eyes Haddaway was typical of some of the selfish business owning people around the East End, just wanting something out of everyone.

  “Now don’t you forget lad, one hundred papers go and you gets your wages. And I expect to see the proper monetary return before you do.”

  “Yes, Mr Haddaway,” Ralph really had to bite his tongue to be civil to such a man he described to others as a ‘blood sucker’. Still, things could be worse he thought; he could be stuck cleaning chimneys.

  By 6.35.a.m he was at his regular pitch in Commercial Street at the junction with Lamb Street right next to Spitalfields Flower Market.

  “Getchaya Star read all about it, London gripped by a wave of Irish terrorism, Fenians vow revenge…” Ralph bellowed at the top of his voice and he would always get waves of traders from the market and then city gents coming by and buying his papers, but then he could get periods of quiet before the next wave of buyers. As he turned in the direction of the police station he saw Robert and Del on patrol coming towards him. To the young boy they looked so fine and important in their ‘Bobbies’ uniform with their helmets and high necked tunics, lined top to bottom with shiny metal buttons and a whistle chain across the chest.

  Ralph’s attention was taken from his gaze at the two ‘Bobbies’ for a moment as he saw movement in the alley across the way, Red Lion Court. He saw a very furtive figure who he could have sworn was dressed as a priest dart away down the alley at the sight of the police with very sunken eyes and a beard. He was quite familiar with the locals and this was someone he could be almost certain that he had never seen before.

  Robert and Del were almost upon him now and Ralph’s face broadened into a big smile to greet them followed by a hearty ‘Good morning, constables.’

  “Mornin’ to you young Ralph, how’s business?” Replied Robert enquiringly.

  “Brisk, I will say, Constable Ford, very brisk just the way we business people likes it,” said Ralph in the most adult way he could.

  “Well, lad,” said Del “how long ‘til you knock off for the day?”

  “I never knocks off completely as I’ve got the evenin’s to do too, but I’m down to my last twenty this morning before I’m through.”

  “Nineteen now,” said Robert offering Ralph tuppence for a copy of The Star.

  Ralph quickly reciprocated by passing Robert his copy. As he did so he thought about the strange figure he’d seen. A good source of information for the police on occasions, he thought perhaps it should wait, and he’d see if he saw the bearded man again.

  “Thank you, Constable Ford have a good day, sir”

  “And to you, Ralph. You can call me Robert”

  “Can’t get too familiar with the customers now can I?” Del and Robert chuckled with Ralph at that last comment and then walked on. Robert tucked the paper into the inside pocket of his police tunic and turned to Del and said “What a nice lad, hope he makes it away from all this shit one day.”

  Michael Ostrog watched very carefully as the two constables walked off along Commercial Street towards Aldgate. He would have to be cautious as he knew they would be looking for him for jumping bail. He considered he may have to leave London, but he had only just arrived and his work had hardly begun. There had only been the one murder, and death on the streets of London’s East End was not an uncommon occurrence so the streets would not be any busier with the accursed police so maybe he would be all right for a while. He shuffled along Red Lion Court looking for somewhere to get some semblance of food. He had been up all night and now he was tired and hungry, a mere petty thief at times, he eventually found himself in Brick Lane after a few minutes and spied a bakers shop.

  He watched in a very calculating manner through the shop window at the activity inside. It was early with hardly anyone around and inside was just the baker and what he considered was a ‘ripe’ young girl. He looked up and down the street and could see no one in his immediate vicinity. In the gutter he spotted a lump of broken wood, most probably a broken chair leg, what it came from was not important, the fact it was a weapon was. Ostrog bent down and took a hold of the piece of stained and chipped shaped timber and looked it up and down smiling. Looking along the road again he saw no one for a hundred yards or so in either direction and turned and dashed into the shop. The young girl looked up startled, the baker, her father had his back turned and knew nothing as Ostrog clubbed him viciously over the head just once and with immense force knocking him unconscious and drawing blood. Almost before the girl could scream Ostrog dropped the club and lunged at her covering her mouth, all she could now do was shiver and sob, paralysed by fear.

  His left hand covering her mouth and his body pinning her to the back wall of the shop he began a deep resonant laugh revealing foul and decrepit teeth and drooled. She was so young, so innocent, what an opportunity. He thrust his right hand up under her skirt and apron and felt for the inside of her undergarments. He ripped them away from her body violently and she clenched her eyes tightly shut and began sobbing harder. His stubby rough fingers fumbled within her garments and he felt himself begin to shake with excitement, he hissed at her and spoke in a low and sickening tone.

  “You are so fresh and ripe, my lovely, mmm?” Her eyes opened and widened with terror. He continued in a loathsome accent “Now I only want bread, I shall return another time for dessert,” he pushed the now hysterical girl to the floor and grabbed four loaves of bread shoving them under his coat. Almost hyperventilating, the girl watched as he left the shop back into Brick Lane and disappeared. Her gaze then fell to her father, motionless and his head lying in a pool of blood.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Millers Court, 7.30.a.m and the auburn haired Mary Kelly was returning to her slum of what would now be called a bed sit. At twenty-five and being attractive even she could not fathom why she was working the streets of East London as a common whore. She rationalised and realised that for the past four years it was all she had known. Born in Limerick in Ireland, she had come to the mainland in Wales as a child when her father had come to work in an ironworks in Caernarvonshire. Her closest sibling, Henry, had gone off and joined the Scots Guards a matter she had always considered strange with their family heritage, while she had met a lovely young lad called Gareth Davies. Gareth was a miner, and when she was sixteen she married him. Three years later she fell pregnant, and then cruelly, as fate would often have it, Gareth was killed within a matter of months in a pit explosion. The subsequent distress had caused her to lose the child and once recovered from the physical drain of the two catastrophes she fled to Cardiff where she first fell into prostitution. Some say the oldest profession, once into the cycle of it seemed you could never escape.

  After a long illness, caused by the real emotional trauma of her life to date catching up with her and her body trying to fight off infection and disease from the physical and sexual abuse she had found herself receiving, she eloped to Liverpool and eventually to London in hope of a fresh start. She found one initially in domestic service in London’s well to do West End where she had got on with her work well and had made a good impression on the family for whom she worked.

  Unfortunately, this was doomed to come to an end when she took up with a m
an called Bill Morganstone, a thief and a drunk. She fell into ways of drunkenness quickly and became slacking in her work for her employers in Knightsbridge. They asked her to leave as a result and she was forced to move full time to London’s East End where she now found herself struggling to make ends meet. With Morganstone’s drunken and often violent ways she very quickly left him and fell back into prostitution to live. With her looks she was fortunate to be able to be more selective with ‘clients’ and command a better price.

  However, time with Morganstone had left its mark with Mary; she never fully was able to kick the alcohol habit. Living with a succession of men on and off she finally took up with a local man called Joe Barnett. Although they appeared to get on as a friendly couple, Mary, who was also known as ‘Black Mary’ due to her frequent choices of clothing, ‘Fair Emma’, due to her complexion or sometimes just as ‘Ginger’, they also had frequent disagreements and separations. Mary was lucky that the years of abuse had so far not taken their toll on her looks.

  She had parted company with Mary Nichols in Commercial Street not long after seeing Robert Ford and now turned up at 13 Miller’s Court surprisingly sober and was greeted by Barnett just as he was going off to work, a local grave digger.

  “Mary, love, why can’t you give it up? We could move away and make a new start if you did,” pleaded Barnett. He knew only too well of the profession that Mary plied on the filthy streets of Whitechapel. Although uncomfortable, it was not unusual for wives or partners to sell themselves in this way.

  “I like it here and we’ve got to eat. Can you think of what else I could do? I’ll hardly get a reference from that old banshee Mrs Buki now, will I?” Mrs Buki had been her former employer in Knightsbridge.