The Newgate Jig

by Ann Featherstone

  But I didn't hear any more. I was too struck by her revelation that the Nasty Man had been here. I realized then that he knew where I lived, where I worked, the names of my dogs, my friends. He could find me at any time, rough me over and poison my boys. He could be just around the corner, now. Or creeping up the area steps and waiting for me in the darkness.

  I should jump upon a cart and be far away before the sun rose. I should do it to have an easy mind.

  The air was dropping colder, and with it the pains in my back and chest increased. I gasped. Stumbled. Mrs Twentyfold clicked her tongue, and hurried me inside. Having me collapse upon her front step would do nothing for the respectability of her establishment.

  In my little room, Brutus and Nero snored, the fire glowed. Somewhere in the street, voices were raised and doors slammed. The heavy clump of footsteps and the smell of chops and kippers began to announce the return of my neighbours. In their lodgings, actors would be rousing themselves, eating their bread and butter and drinking their sweet tea, conning a few lines at the last minute. At the Aquarium, Alf Pikemartin would be turning up the lights and giving the entrance hall a sweep. Conn would be inspecting the menagerie, looking to the poorly lion cub, tending to the apes. Moses Dann, the Boneless Man, would be getting up from his mattress in the cellar (where he slept every hour he is able) and calling for his pot of ale. Every day the same.

  But not for me, I thought. Everything is changed now.

  One Day — Tipney's Wonderful Gaff and

  Exhibition — Barney's Plan —Murder

  I should have put on my coat and muffler and left that very night. Strong's Gardens were not so far away. With a steady walk and a couple of stops, I could have been there by morning.

  But I stayed in my bed that night. And the following day. And the one after that. I slept and woke and stared at the wall, but I did not stir. I lay until the sheets stank and I with them, and the mattress was stained into the outline of my body. My boys were anxious, only leaving me to visit the area and then hurrying back to lie at the foot of the bed. Mrs Twentyfold called through the door and Will rattled the handle and begged me to come out, but I did not answer it. I could not bear their company. I wanted nothing to do with the world.

  As my bruises turned from black to purple and the pain eased, I forced myself to get up. I did not want to think about Barney and his troubles, the Nasty Man and his roughs. They were nothing to do with me. I went unwashed and unshaven for days, and if it hadn't been for someone (Will or Trim, I expect) paying Mrs Twentyfold to put bread, tea and milk outside my door, I believe I would have starved. And, with nothing to occupy me, I could have taken to my stew of a bed again, if it hadn't been for a change in the weather. Standing at the window one morning, I saw that there had been a fierce frost during the night, both outside - where the bushes in Mrs Twentyfold's area were dusted white - and inside, where it lay thick upon the glass. My room was bitterly cold too, and I lit a fire (which I never did as a rule before the evening) and wrapped myself in my coat and scarf until the warmth had spread. The stale stink of illness floated in the damp air, the ice on the window began to melt and drip onto the floorboards, and I was fixed by the mournful eyes of my two faithful companions. This would not do! And within a quarter of an hour, I was outside, on Mrs Twentyfold's top step.

  We avoided the wasteland and the Aquarium, and those other familiar places - the chop house, Garraway's, even the Pavilion - and wound our way through squares and back streets in the direction of our country retreat. It would be just a visit, I thought. But if Titus Strong begged me to stay and help with the cabbages and look out for Lord Bedford, then, since he was such a good, old friend, how could I refuse? I hoped he would beg me to stay.

  We made good time, despite my injuries, and I was even enjoying that familiar bite at the back of my throat from the bitter, acrid air. Brutus and Nero trotted in front, eager to inspect the usual posts and walls but, when I stopped to ease my aching ribs, they stood patiently by me, waiting until I was ready to continue. I felt stronger, and more certain that today my fortunes would change. Then, turning a corner, I was brought up sharp when I spied my name, in two-inch capitals of dense black ink, hallooing me from a wall. It seemed like a year ago that I had found Pilgrim in the hallway of the Aquarium waving just such a bill as this at me, but without doubt it was one and the same: the Royal Crown Theatre, otherwise known as Tipney's Gaff on Fish-lane, the very one, next door to my friend Pilgrim's bookshop. It still roared a programme of kingly proportions and startling celebrity. Mr Macready's name was almost as large as mine, and the dramas of Othello, Richelieu and The Miller and His Dogs were given similar bravado. No one who reads these bills is duped. Everyone knows that it is all guff: Mr Macready (if he did but know it) merely 'recommends' the Royal Crown Theatre and Othello will be done and dusted in twenty minutes! In fact, the company consisted of only a handful of performers - Mrs Dearlove, Mr Crowe, Mr Tafflyn, Mr Corney Sage and Miss Lucy Fitch, Les Trois Acrobatiques, Senor Spaniardo and the Infant Prodigy, Little Louisa Penny who, but seven years old, will dance and sing - and, of course, Mr Bob Chapman and his excellent hounds, Brutus and Nero. The street was liberally pasted with these thin bills, which were doing their job and attracting much attention, particularly from crowds of boys.

  And there was my good friend Pilgrim, out upon the step of his establishment, anxiously inspecting his neighbours. The building work seemed to have been completed, and the whole shopfront, even up to the gutter, was covered in bright flapping bills announcing not only the Royal Crown Theatre and Bob Chapman, but also an Exhibition of Waxworks and Novelties and one for which the artist had exercised his brush and a great quantity of red paint. In particular, the execution business of the waxwork show was most carefully attended to, and almost every bill had a picture of a man being stretched, and a grinning madman holding up a bloody cleaver or a rope!

  The shop was transformed. Where its front window had been, was a brick wall and a second entrance (or exit) had been put in on the opposite side to the present door. I've seen these places many times before. They are what the showman calls an 'in-and-out' show, and do exactly that - let people in one door and out the other, swiftly and without a crush. This in-and-outer had a penny theatre at the rear, the Royal Crown no less, and while one slack-jawed youth announced the bloody delights of the waxworks ('The reeel choppin' block, and reeel blood'), another was roaring out the improving drama of 'Maria Marten and 'er 'orrible murder by the willain Corder in the Red Barn! Just about t'begin!' Poor Pilgrim was in a state of terrible agitation. 'You see how it is, Bob Chapman! Thieves and wagrants on my very doorstep!'

  ('Quiet, you! I'll tell him, John Pilgrim!') 'Not you! Day and night that commotion is murdering my ears. And now it's underground.'

  ('I've told you. Buried treasure and pirates.') 'And Bob Chapman appearing next door! What did I tell you? Did you believe me?'

  ('We have the bill to prove it, don't we? Shove him out, you waster! You frog-taster! What're you afraid of, John Pilgrim?') 'Not you, cat-sick-man! Bob Chapman is our friend. No gaff-acting for him. An impostor, that's who it is.'

  He thrashed wildly at himself and pinched his own arm and kicked his shins.

  ('Bob Chapman should smash the man who has been taking his name, damn him!') 'He's right, for once.' ('Smash the man!')

  'Not with those hands,' and mad old Pilgrim nodded at my poor bruised mitts and hooked my two boys into his shop (to feed them sugar and biscuits), slamming the door behind him.

  I was eager to be on my way, and my ribs were aching so that I could hardly breathe, but being, so to speak, in the business, I am never too proud to look into a penny show, nor even a gaff. They are not all as bad as people claim. I have seen conjuring and balancing, as well as singing, dancing and acting in these places that would not disgrace the stages of some of our nobbier theatres. Of course, not all are up to the mark, and many are the last resort of the mummer turned to drink. His cobweb throat and dull
eye single him out, and if he is not looking pale upon the stage, he can be found sweating in the gin-shop or sleeping in his costume on a sack of flour. But, when I see these unfortunate relics of the profession, I remind myself that, if ill-fortune had not been looking the other way when I found my present comfortable shop, I too could have been pumping the harmonium outside such a gaff.

  If you have never been inside a penny exhibition, let me say now that it is not for the faint-hearted. Not that there are fearsome things to be seen, for anyone with half a cup of sense will know that the blood, splashed about like a pie man's gravy, is merely paint and water, and that the figures, all wide-eyed and leering whether they represent royalty or saint, are made of plaster and sawdust. That the 'terrible sharp sword' is fashioned from a roof-timber, and even the hangman's rope is worn to a thread in places, not from long service upon the three-legged mare, as the guide will assure you, but from hauling barrels in and out of Mr Publican's deep cellar at the Two Royal Children over the way. Gloom is the showman's friend. From the entrance, where it is so dark that you are forced to lean upon the greasy wall – greasy from the numbers of shoulders which have leaned there before you – you must grope your way into the nether regions, to a room lit only by a couple of naked gas flames (courtesy of the previous occupant) and a tuppenny tallow. What you cannot see, you must imagine!

  But if it is not a familiar resort of yours, you will not be hardened to the celebration of crime and criminals to be found in a penny show, and it will shock you to see how casually people enjoy scenes of murder and execution. How they will stand for minutes before even the roughest tableau of a man cutting his wife's throat, having already banged his infant's head against the hearth stone. And though the wax- figures are awkward and hardly resemble the living or the dead - a change of costume next week will transform the Empress of Russia into William Tell or Springheel'd Jack – people will still relish, for as long as the showman allows, the scene of outrage and the blood splashed liberally all over. And once outside in the street, they will straightway pay a penny to see it over again!

  Today, a lanky youth, a mere streak of water, described the exhibit's for general edification. "Ere,' he says wearily, 'are the very stones under which poor Mrs Vowles was buried. They was lifted from the 'ouse and brung 'ere with the dust and blood still upon them.'

  A murmur of interest goes around, for the so-called 'Deptford Murder' was of recent and terrible notoriety and the audience of wide-eyed boys shuffle forward to see it better and have to be restrained from dipping their fingers into the gore.

  'And 'ere h'is the wery plaster wall agin which Mr Vowles, h'in 'is fit of h'awful temper, slung 'is beautiful child an' dashed 'er very brains upon. 'Ere you may h'observe the drips of the brains as they run all-a-down the plarster.'

  There certainly was a disagreeable stain upon the wall, on which was also the engraving of a dog begging for a bone, torn from a picture paper, and two tickets for a distant tea-gardens, 'to include band, dancing platform extra'.

  The other waxwork tableau - comprising a scene from Hamlet showing the appearance of the prince's father as a ghost (a very pale figure in a large hat gesturing to heaven) and the murder of the poor little princes in the Tower of London ('Look at that old feller, a-smothering them to pieces!' cried one boy. 'Wouldn't I like to find out where he lives!') - were only part of the show. In another corner was a talking fish that was brought out of its dark and narrow box to blow out a candle and count to five in a strange coughing voice, and rewarded by being shoved roughly back into its box again before anyone could be more interested. In the final, gloomy alcove was a display of antique swords and knives (labelled 'INSTRIMENTS OF TORCHER FROM ITALY' and all very carefully fastened down), after which we were emptied into a passage, one way leading out into the street and the other to the back of the house where, according to a swarthy man lashed by a wide belt into a uniform several sizes too small, 'Here it is! Just about to begin!'

  Ah, here they were! The villain who had taken my name, installed in the gaff theatre and ready to do his show. I handed over another penny and traced another dark and greasy path to the theatre. This had evidently been the back room of the shop, for there were still traces of it left - a fireplace, a cupboard (without its doors), remnants of pictures pasted to the walls, and gas mantles (without their covers) doing service as lights on a stage raised up no more than a couple of feet, and draped with ill-matched curtains. And, what with the heat of the gas, the closely packed audience (we were crowded as tight as herrings in a barrel, standing room only) and the air thick with 'Black Jack' and 'Old Moley', it was a veritable inferno.

  I stood, shoulder to shoulder, with a stern-faced coal- heaver, his hands - if he had any, for I never saw them - thrust into his trouser pockets, and for the duration of the entertainment, he neither moved nor spoke. He was exceptional, however, because the rest of the audience was in a state of excited fury, which erupted at every moment with shouts and roars of laughter. Boys were mostly responsible, and seemed to count it as a point of honour to jump upon the back of their nearest neighbour at every turn, and call, at their utmost volume, obscenities which would make the roughest cazzelty blush.

  A roar of applause greeted the sheeney who crept in and took his place at the piano. When he ran his fingers up and down the keys, you would have thought he had played a symphony with his feet, and when he struck a chord and from the side of the stage a dark, lean mummer in high boots and a mouldy velvet cloak swung out and stood, bandy-legged, with his hand held up for silence, it was as though Mr Macready himself had appeared, just for a day!

  'Gentle friends,' he cried above the tumult, 'today - some tumblin'-an'-balancin'.'

  'Where's the dog-man?' cried someone.

  'Where's Chapman and his dogs?' cried another.

  Yes, I thought, I'd like to see that man too!

  But the mummer was having none of it.

  'Singin'-an'-dancin' - great drammer of King Richard - what lorst 'is 'orse when most inconwenient to 'im.'

  'Chapman!' went up the cry. 'Bring him out now!' was followed by a wholesale stamping of feet and under different circumstances, I might have felt flattered! But the mummer held up his hand and looked mournful. 'I regret - Chapman and dawgs - indisposed - on account of bad meat.'

  And that was that. My namesake was dismissed, the mummer disappeared with a flourish and on shuffled a stout fellow in dirty pink tights, who juggled four ill-matched balls and quickly wore out the patience of the audience, who were still baying for Chapman! Finally, the cry of 'Hook it, macaroni!' was joined loudly in chorus, which immediately unbalanced the juggler, who lost his nerve and the balls. The ivory-thumper filled the interval and then on scuttled three white-faced clowns. Tumblers. Acrobatiques. It was soon apparent that they were only boys, but not half bad, and they started off with some simple balancing and flip-flaps. The smaller lads were unsure of themselves, and looked to their older friend to take the lead, and he was certainly the most impressive, quite a pro, though still young. He stood on his head, balanced on a barrel and turned a somersault with ease. Even the crowd were half-appreciative and the jibbing was replaced by encouraging cheers and then by stamping feet in time to the music, which produced not only little flurries of dust and plaster from up above and a shuddering of the floorboards beneath our feet, but also the lean mummer, who stopped the show by holding up his hand.

  'Appreciative of your goodwill,' came the phrase.

  More stamping and shouting. The mummer's hand went up again.

  'But deee-sist from stampin' - will yer!' He drew a great arc with his arm. 'Bring the 'ole 'ouse down! - all perish in consequence—'

  Laughter rocked the audience, and there were more intervals of wild cheering and stamping, and roars of approval. It was a welcome hiatus for the tumblers: the air was hot and thick, and they were breathing heavily. Sweat melted the whiting on their faces, which were soon streaked and dirty, and when the older one screwed his fist into his
eye much of the paint came away. Then I realized I knew him.

  It was the boy. Barney.

  I watched him with renewed interest as he threw himself into the remainder of the act, and then, standing on his two hands whilst the boys carefully balanced an upturned champagne bottle on the soles of his feet, he walked from the stage to raucous applause. It was a clever trick, one he must have learned whilst on the fairground with his Pa, for it was well- taught and showed a deal of skill. Indeed, he was a boy the circus-folk might have looked twice upon and taken up, but now, here he was, in Tipney's Gaff, a shop no professional would choose unless he was on his uppers. Or unless his Pa had been stretched.

  I mused upon this while the next performer, a little girl in short skirts and wearing a smile that only her mother could have beaten into her, pranced heavily around the stage. Small, dark-eyed and dark-haired, decked out in the ribbons and glass beads that mothers believe enhance their child's beauty, she registered hardly at all with the audience who wearied of her immediately. And I recognized her also. She was the little child so cruelly rejected by the dancing master at the Pavilion and, I suppose, in consequence forced to earn a penny for her family in this place. Another child put to this hard life of labour for little reward. I felt sorry for her, but also for Barney Kevill - that was his name! - alone in the world and playing here in this gaff. The last time I'd seen him, weeks ago it seemed, was from a cab through a rapidly closing eye as he stood on the steps of the Aquarium.

  Enough. Strong's Gardens called me.

  I pressed through the crowd and, feeling a blow of cold air, I followed it. But I turned, not into the street, but the back yard. After the fuggy gloom of the theatre, it took a little time for my eyes to accustom themselves to the glare of light. The yard was small and cobbled, with walls on either side and a building at the back which might once have been a stable. The backs of shops were always a mess, but the outbuildings, if the owners (or tenants) were cute enough, could be rented out to make a pile or more. On one side, beyond the wall and through the gate, were the tumbledown sheds which made up Pilgrim's yard. On the other, behind a shop selling anything from cabbages to candles, were outhouses in which a couple of pigs and a family of four shared equal space.