The Newgate Jig

by Ann Featherstone

  The young policeman looked shamefaced and said in a quiet voice that he was most sorry, but he wanted to remove the child from that awful place and he couldn't think of anything else. It was a response which met with general approval, and there were nods at him and at the Coroner, who was then more inclined to let the matter go and move on from the business of the 'where' and 'when' to the 'how'. Here the medical man was summoned, Skinner, the police doctor, who was irritable and in a hurry to have it over with for he had 'four suicides and a public hanging to deal with before I can hope to eat my dinner tonight'.

  The medical questioning necessitated the jury, followed by the other spectators, trooping out into the yard 'to view the deceased'. If there was a little crush and a few remonstrations of'Mind yer elbow!' and 'Watch it! My plates!', it was all done quietly.

  Skinner cleared his throat. 'The child is female, eight years of age, of fair general health. Not overly underweight.'

  He drew back the white cloth - the landlady's third-best tablecloth - and looked around the assembly of crusty, tired faces and then, in an unusually hushed and gentle voice, said, 'Mr Coroner, I say this because there are no females within earshot, and what I have to say is not for female ears. This child was violated and strangled. I cannot tell which, at this stage, was the cause of death.'

  There was silence, broken only by the squealing of pigs in the nearby abattoir.

  'I examined the body earlier, as you requested, and the evidence seems pretty clear to me. I will, of course, need to perform a more extensive examination at the mortuary, but I cannot imagine that my findings will alter materially.'

  Mr Coroner nodded sagely, and the jurors, with serious faces and some licking their lips nervously, followed his lead.

  There are,' said the doctor, 'signs of a struggle, pathetic though that probably was. She has, for example, broken fingernails.' He frowned. 'I would hesitate to suggest that this injury was sustained in an attempt to fight off an attacker. It is difficult to be precise. One might arrest a suspect on the evidence of claw marks, perhaps to the face or arm, but a conviction on those alone would be difficult to secure. Let us say that the victim struggled in an effort to escape the outrage and in that struggle sustained some damage to the phalangeal extremities.'

  There was an angry murmur and shaking of heads, and an almost wholesale attempt to retreat within the Two Spies, for we all knew the child was dead and how, and anything else which the doctor was moved to offer seemed unnecessary. But Mr Coroner would brook no retreat and waved Mr Skinner on.

  'The extent of the injuries, gentlemen, both - er - within - and - er - without, are consistent with that of a mature individual applying - er - considerable force.' He hesitated. 'Do I need to elaborate, Mr Coroner? This will all be detailed in my report. It seems superfluous in the present circumstances ... Very well. Suffice it to say that the deceased met her death in a violent manner due to substantial internal injuries which were inflicted by an as yet unknown assailant. And, I would hazard, against her will.'

  Again we tried to put the horror behind us, and again we were called back. 'One last thing,' said Mr Skinner, 'which I believe should be drawn to the jury's attention. The manner of strangulation. The child was young, small, not at all robust. A grown man would have no difficulty in extinguishing life with his hands. And yet the mark upon the throat suggests to me - and I confess I have only ever seen it upon adult victims - the application of a garrotte.'

  A red handkerchief flashed before my eyes like a curse. We filed into the parlour and I took my seat next to a pale man, perhaps a wharf-man or a street-porter. He turned his hat in his hands for some minutes and then, along with others, could be heard to swear, to the foreman and to anyone else who might care to listen, that he could not endure any more of the doctor's medical talk, and that it was enough to know what he knew without some jumped-up medico telling him in a hundred different ways. Then the conversation turned to the manner of the child's death and while the violation was sickening, they were most terribly angered by the garrotting. It was a punishment from which women and children were exempt. It was a vile and cowardly crime. There was talk, from the collection of lumpers and haulers at the window, of calling up some assistance - there was no shortage of volunteers - to 'find the devil what done it and do for him, well and good'.

  Mr Coroner seemed to have some sympathy with us, for he allowed the company to speak out their anger and threaten parliament and the 'upper ten' (for having caused it) and the police (for not having prevented it). Then, in the hiatus and having ordered his papers into piles and single sheets in front of him, Mr Coroner cleared his throat and began again.

  'Thank you, Doctor Skinner, for that illuminating account. Gentlemen, I think we need little occasion to debate the cause of death and, indeed, that subject is beyond our resource at present. Yet there are still matters to be dealt with. We have heard from the police and the medical profession. But we have not heard a word from witnesses who might know the child. Who have seen her playing in the street, perhaps, or walking to church with her parents. This child - a pretty child, as yet unnamed and unclaimed - is a mystery. Surely someone has missed her? Some mother has surely been searching the streets for her and enquiring at hospitals and police stations?'

  And so it went on until the Coroner declared the business concluded, pronounced 'Unnatural murder, by persons unknown' and the room emptied. I had not disclosed what I knew. Had sat in a corner, listened and held my peace. But now that everyone had left and I was alone with the doctor or the Coroner, perhaps now I could do it. Not in front of a crowd of strangers, but in the quiet of the parlour or the yard.

  The doctor was still there, lathering his hands vigorously in a bucket of water and talking to a small party of clerks in rusty black, all eager to be gone, but too polite to leave.

  'A tragic case,' he said. 'It's no secret that these young ones are sold for the purpose of violating them, though one would hope that few come to grief in this manner.' He shook his head. 'What mother could sell her child to this? I would give my fortune to discover who did it and bring him to justice. And those who are behind it. As would all decent men,' and he frowned and scrubbed his hands dry on the landlady's towel.

  Then he drew back the cover and I looked upon the child's face for the first time. Dark curls, matted now, and a begrimed face, the blue eyes half open, the mouth fallen into a smile in that strange way the dead have of reminding us of life. A sweet face, limbs still full and round, baby features made more childlike by those cheap glass beads and ribbons with which poor mothers deck out their child because it earns money.

  I didn't know her real name. It might have been The Little Wonder, Miss Topsy Truelove. She might have been sister to Little Louisa Penny and Happy Rosy Banks, and cousin to Sweet Carrie Honeydew and The Mother's Favourite Jenny Brighteye. There were so many. The supply was endless. Daughters of poor families, with a grain of talent and a winning smile and, if they are lucky, join the ranks of a children's ballet. Those less fortunate haunt low concert rooms and travelling shows, little mites with bare arms and thin dresses, dragged about this city to find one night's work in the pleasure gardens and two at the gaff so that the family can eat. This child was perhaps the only one keeping the rent-man at bay and her father in the gin-shop.

  I must have been staring at the child's face, for the doctor touched my arm and the clerks drew closer.

  'Do you know her? It is your duty, man, to say if you do, and a crime if you don't say what you know. Withholding evidence, it's called, and the law will send you down if you're discovered.'

  He rolled down his sleeves and a clerk held his coat for him. They bustled back into the parlour and I saw him have a word in the ear of Mr Coroner, who looked hard in my direction, and I think they were about to summon me, but their attention was drawn to the dark-coated gentleman who had come into the room and was taking a glass with the landlord. It was his horse and wagon drawn up in that tight little square to fetch the chil
d to the mortuary where the doctor would attend to her again. She had been violated and killed in that cold and shabby place; she was bundled into a scrap of mouldy carpet, filthy with the dirt of the street, had been left in the cold and dark. She was stared at, not as in life, prancing and singing and smiling, but lying cold and still on a table in the yard of a tavern. And finally, she was to be rattled and tumbled about upon the back of a cart and then laid upon a cold, hard bed.

  I should have waited, I should have made them understand what I know.

  But alone, I could not.

  I would find Will and Trim, and together we would go to the magistrate where he would learn of the Nasty Man. I would point out the shed at the back of Tipney's-gaff, I would show them the carpet and the hole in the floor where the body of the child was stuffed. I would take them to every place I have ever seen the Nasty Man and, with the resources of the police and their agents, they would track him down. Barney need not fear him any more. Nor poor, pretty children.

  I hurried from the yard, glad of the company of my two dogs and hating my own fear and cowardice more than I have ever hated the world for its careless cruelty. I hardly noticed when I shouldered someone and I didn't hear the abuse they roared at me. For I was locked in my silent world, with only the beat of my own footsteps in my head and as I walked, head down, unwilling to meet the eye of anyone, I was once again a child. But for good fortune, my dead body could have lain upon a table in a tavern yard whilst well-meaning but indifferent strangers gazed upon me and wondered who I was and if anyone cared for me. For if my mother had felt love or concern, she never spoke it and rarely showed it. She was a gypsy woman who never mastered anything but the rudiments of the English tongue, and spent all her days trailing after my father and waiting for him outside taverns and shops, club rooms and dens. Even keeping watch whilst he worked at tending the kilns, keeping them stoked and the fire alive. Whilst he followed the flames and made them roar or simmer, she followed him, making sure that she got some of the money he pocketed before he drank it away, and I followed her. Our only connection, it seemed, was her shadow. As a child, I was always in someone's shadow. My mother's. My father's. Never in the sunlight myself, seeing an open road and wondering where it might take me. But always in the wake of my mother's ragged skirts or my father's clumsy boots. Always with my head down, waiting for that skirt or those boots to stop. And always ready to retreat when those boots turned upon me.

  Then one day, my mother didn't get up. Every night for the best part of a week we had lain down to sleep against the low wall of a brickworks. The kilns were close by, and the earth and the walls were warmed by the constant heat. It was a comfortable spot, though the ground was hard. I was a little chap, no more than six years old, but I think I looked much younger. When I woke, I nudged my mother, but she didn't stir, and I thought it must be too early to rise, so I curled up next to her, like a little grub, and waited. And watched the sun climb higher. It was very quiet, only church bells ringing. And when I couldn't wait any longer, when I was bursting to piddle and my stomach was aching with hunger, and my mother was still, as I thought, fast asleep, I got up and walked about a little. It felt strange, for I was used, as I have said, to following, and now the world seemed great and grand and wide. I explored the street and a little patch of rough ground, keeping my mother always in my eye. Finally, I was adventurous and climbed into gardens and peered into windows, and watched birds bathing in a puddle. I had never before felt the luxury of simply watching.

  But when I was caught peeping through a window to watch a family eat their dinner, and chased over a fence with the cries of'Piker!' in my ears, I was driven, shaking and terrified, back to the wall and the still form of my mother. And there I stayed, and she grew stiff and cold. I passed one night there until hunger forced me to go out early to find food and drink and when I returned, saw a crowd had gathered around her. I hid and watched her wrapped in a blanket and taken away. I wanted to cry out, but thought better of it and instead trailed, again, in the wake of the party, to a little public house. She was put in the stable, I think.

  I was sure my father would know what to do, but I couldn't find him. I knew we had been waiting for him in that warm place because he was at work within the furnaces, and so I went back to the wall and sat, day and night, and once even peered through the gate, but he never came. A week passed. My mother was buried, and I followed at a distance, and hid behind a gravestone to see her, wrapped in cloth, lowered into the ground, along with five others. A pauper's grave, and nothing wrong in that. Going to eternity in company.

  Every night, after my wanderings, I returned to the furnaces, always hopeful that my father would be there, and I became a familiar sight to those who lived around and worked in the brickyard, for there were no more cries of 'Piker!' and one day a blanket was left upon the wall. I didn't take it straight away, in case it belonged to someone. But after a few days, I realized that it was meant for me. Little packets of food also appeared and were placed on the wall, and one day a pair of boots. I never discovered who left them, but I am always grateful to those kind people, and hope that life has dealt fairly with them, as they did with me.

  One morning, returning to my makeshift home, there was a change. The gate to the brickyard stood open and the yard was full of people, all clustered about one of the kilns. I was curious and someone, turning round, saw me and nudged his neighbour. They strolled over and, being always wary of strangers, I was ready to run.

  'Now then, young 'un,' said one, 'where's yer pa, d'ye think?'

  I remember he was an old man, with no teeth and a very red mouth.

  'At work,' I said, and wondered at the sound of my own voice, which I hadn't heard for a long time. 'In the kiln.'

  They looked at each other, the old man and his neighbour, a smart journeyman, with a round hat and a blue kerchief.

  'In the kiln, ye say? And when did you see him go in there?'

  'I didn't see him, but that is where he works. His name's Mr Frederick Chapman, if you want to know.'

  They nodded gravely and strolled back again, and went up to a man in a dark coat, who turned to look at me, and then at the kiln. I wondered if my father was in trouble. My mother had always 'got him out of bother' (one of her few phrases), and that generally meant that he had fallen down drunk and was a danger to himself. Or had been brawling. Now, since my mother was gone, it fell to me to 'get him out of bother'. So, when no one was looking, I crouched low, I followed the wall round -1 was clever at following! - and turned up behind the kilns. A scramble, a bruised knee and I was over the wall and scuttling, like a dusty crab, in the baked earth alongside it. There were four kilns, but I knew the one my father had been minding, for he had pointed it out to me. It was small and, because of that, not often used. He told me it had been especially built to make a batch of fine tiles - for the Queen's bathroom in one of her great palaces, my father said - and was known as the 'Royal Oven' and now it was only used for special jobs. Throughout his life, he had bragged that he was well-connected, and perhaps he was in the end, crawling in to lie amongst the Queen's tiles, and not discovered until a week later when the kiln was cooled and opened. That was the story I learned many years later. But as a child all I learned was what I saw.

  A side flue stood open, letting out the final draught of warm air, so I scrambled in easily and, on knees and elbows, pulled myself into the chamber. It had been almost emptied of tiles, otherwise I could not have got so far, and only a bed of broken pieces remained and, in the dim, foggy light of the open door, a sack, left I supposed, to put them in. I looked about me and saw burnished brick and floating motes of brick dust, and breathed in the thick, hot air and wondered where my father was and what he could have done, for I was sure now that he must be 'in bother'. But there was nowhere in here he could be hiding, though to make sure, I inspected the shallow alcoves of the kiln and finally put my foot under the sack of broken pieces. Then I realized that it wasn't a sack at all, but a man for,
now I was closer, I could see a coat and hair. It was someone lying asleep, and when I cast my eyes over him I saw that the man was wearing my father's boots! I was in no doubt that they were his, for I was very familiar with them and knew them, if not as old friends, certainly as close acquaintances. They were drawn up, one on top of the other, just like my father's boots when he was asleep. And I knew then that it was my father, lying fast asleep. The kiln had been carefully searched, and yet they had mistaken my sleeping father for an old sack, just as I had done. How fortunate it was, I thought, that I recognised him and could wake him up, for no doubt he would be in bother over it. I put my hand on his shoulder and shook it gently.

  'Pa?' I said, quietly, for although I didn't want those outside to hear, neither did I want to wake him up suddenly and be clouted for my trouble. 'Wake up, Pa.'

  There was still no sound.

  I shook him again, a little harder, and, though I feared his wrath and terrible boots, I rocked him by the shoulder.

  He turned over, light as a cinder. His skin was drawn and brown, stretched tight over his nose and cheeks. His eyes were tight shut, but his mouth was wide open, black as a tunnel, and shouting - or screaming - silently.

  I was paralyzed with terror.

  I screamed. But although my mouth was open, not a sound came out. I screamed and screamed, and the noise in my head was deafening, though in the thick air of the kiln there was only the hum of voices drifting in from outside.

  I was terrified that the doors would be shut and bolted and that I'd be unable to get out, so I backed away and posted myself down one of the flues. The last thing I saw was that black mouth, screaming, as the sides of the flue closed in upon me. Feeling their closeness, like arms tightly enfolding me, I wanted to turn round, but I couldn't. The flue was too narrow. Forwards took me back into the place of terror and, scrabbling backwards, I was almost insensible with panic.