Dead Born

by Joan Lock

Suddenly, she stopped – right alongside the tradesman’s side entrance of the rather grand Northampton Lodge. Best was taken unawares and had no choice but to keep on going despite the fact that she seemed too preoccupied to have noticed him.

  Glancing back, he saw that she had made no effort to gain entrance to the Lodge back gates but was standing on the edge of the pavement looking north. Then Best, stopping to light a cigarette, saw her stretch out her hand. Of course – she’d been waiting for the omnibus!

  As its horses clattered past him and came to a halt, another woman came up behind her. Best ran back to join them. Drat it. There were only two seats downstairs and the ladies took those as ladies tended to do. Climbing the steep ladder was difficult in their long dresses and there was always the risk of exposing a leg or even underwear. As he put his foot on the platform the conductor barred his way.

  ‘Sorry mate. Full up.’

  Best was aghast. ‘Oh, but I must get on,’ he exclaimed in the manner of a distraught and fussy gentleman. ‘I have to see my mother who is ill!’

  ‘There’ll be another along in a minute,’ murmured the conductor unmoved as he reached for his bell.

  ‘But it might be too late!’ Best insisted in a panicky voice. ‘They telegraphed me and … ’

  The conductor gave him an old-fashioned look, but was sweetened by the coin which was being tucked discreetly into his pocket.

  ‘Well, you can stand on the platform – if you hold on tight and keep out of my way. We don’t want to lose our licence for being overloaded, do we?’

  Best stayed there, hanging on as the bus jerked and swayed on down the Canonbury Road to where it metamorphosed into the New North Road. Not a move from Martha.

  At the third stop there was an exodus from the top deck and the conductor waved him up there. Best tried to resist, but the man was adamant. Any more fuss and all eyes would have been upon him, so up he went. Fortunately, there was room on the bench facing the pavement where he could keep anxious watch on those alighting. Should Martha be among them, he hoped he would have time to leap up, fling himself down those steep stairs and off – before the omnibus started again or Martha did another of her disappearing tricks.

  But she wasn’t getting off. Every time they juddered to a halt Best strained to see over the low barrier keeping his eyes skinned for the bobbing Marguerite atop the primrose straw. Once, when they started up without warning he nearly fell over the side and just righted himself in time. He could see by their glances and tut-tutting that he was beginning to irritate his fellow passengers who had probably decided he was at the least eccentric, or worse.

  They continued on past Moorfields Eye Hospital, Old Street and on down the City Road. Still no emerging yellow daisy. Could she have alighted with a crowd at some point? Had she realized he was shadowing her and deliberately given him the slip?

  He dragged out his watch. It was ten past ten. At this rate he might miss meeting Helen! His heart sank and he felt like crying with frustration. He just didn’t know what to do. Should he stay on the bus even if she got off? It would turn westwards at London Bridge towards Westminster. He should still have time to get a cab or another omnibus or tram to Victoria Station if he did that.

  Helen’s train could even be late. They sometimes were, and that terrible train crash at Sittingbourne might still be causing delays. But if he did jump ship now he would be putting the whole case in jeopardy. More babies’ lives could be at risk. This could be an important breakthrough. He knew he should keep on following Martha and meet Helen later. She would understand. Somehow that thought didn’t comfort him. He wanted to see her now.

  When they approached London Wall and Bishopsgate, the streets began to fill with City gents wearing silk toppers and carrying tightly rolled umbrellas.

  The arrival at London Bridge was the signal for a mass exodus which took Best completely by surprise. Frantically, he tried to keep watch on all the disembarking passengers as he pushed his way to the top of the stairs and climbed down. Now convinced that he was mentally unstable the other passengers gave way nervously.

  There was no sign of Martha anywhere. Not on the omnibus nor among those now joining those alighting from other buses and heading up Swan Lane in a crowd. Best had no choice but to follow the flow.

  Just as he became certain that he must have lost Martha altogether and that his self-sacrificing journey had been completely in vain, there she was, joining the queue at the top of the gangway which led down to the old Swan Pier. She was engaged in earnest conversation with a heavy-set man with tightly curled fair hair and a red face. Good grief! Murphy!

  Chapter Six

  Martha was buying a ticket from the booth of the Woolwich Steam Packet Company. She must be going on that pleasure boat moored alongside! Best was paralysed. What should he do? He knew what he should do: he should keep following Martha come what may. But Helen? What about Helen? He had to be there to meet her!

  Martha was now being swept along by the happy crowd towards the flag-bedecked craft. Best felt an urge to rush up to her and demand to see what was in her bag. Obviously she would dispose of her burden in the waters of the Thames as so many had before and – oh hell! – he had to be there to see her do it. He bunched his fists in frustration. Then, slowly and forlornly, he walked up to the ticket booth and paid out two shillings and sixpence for a return ticket to the Princess Alice’s final destination, Sheerness. No use risking booking for any of the intermediate stops such as Greenwich or North Woolwich.

  Once on board, Best set about locating Martha. He glanced quickly fore and aft, decided on fore, changed his mind and headed for the back of the the boat. His instinct proved correct. He almost cannoned into the woman but, fortunately, at that moment her attention was fixed firmly on the sturdy figure on the quayside – Murphy.

  The throb of the engines increased, the paddles began to thump and swish and the boat sidled out into the river to begin its journey eastwards towards the coast. As it did so Murphy suddenly saw Best and looked puzzled and perplexed. He stared as his simple face became creased in a worried frown. Oh, Lord, Best realized, he thinks I’m after his girl. If he only knew!

  In contrast to the solid unbroken blocks on the south side, the tall warehouses on the north bank of the Thames near London Bridge offered glimpses of grander buildings beyond. Peeping over and between were the spire of a Wren church and the monument to the Great Fire of London; in front, a jumble of staiths and pontoons with their criss-crossing wooden supports, cranes which dipped and swung up and down to businesslike ships and barges. Around them scurried lighters, tugs and dinghies.

  Much of the riverside scene was grubby and dreary, particularly where the ebb tide had left exposed the muddy, rubbish-filled river bank below the waterline. But Best didn’t usually mind. He loved the sheer energy and life of the river. Soon, the grand white edifice of Custom House was gazing down on them enquiringly, then the brooding Tower of London fixed them with its sinister stare.

  They were entering the busiest part of the bustling Pool of London. Reefed sails, masts and sprits of sailing ships and blackened funnels of steam vessels all thickened into a forest as the boats lined up to gain entrance to the enclosed docks: St Katherine’s, the London and West India. Such seeming chaos. Such excitement. Even the names on the wharves conjured up exotic places: the Baltic, Orient and Morocco.

  The sun warmed Best’s face, glinted dully off dusty wharf windows and brightly on the crests of ripples thrown out by their paddles. He was almost enjoying himself, having determinedly pushed to the back of his mind the awful disappointment of not meeting Helen. It was almost something of a relief to be free from decision-making for a while and away from the back garden of 9 John Street.

  Being a weekday, most of his fellow passengers were women and children, many of the latter running and shrieking with delight, all round the decks and up and down the stairways. He was grateful that the noise they generated was largely drowned out by the steady thump of the pad
dles and the band which was now enthusiastically striking up a rousing ‘Life on the Ocean Wave’. It was a happy scene.

  A white-aproned, John George Smith assumed a nonchalant demeanour as he wheeled Alfredo Marroni’s colourful ice-cream cart along the west side of Liverpool Road. He brought it to a juddering halt by the end of John Street. From here the doorway of number seven, the suspect house and number nine, Mrs O’Connor’s residence, were in view.

  Alfredo, who was Best’s second cousin, had given Smith some guidance in the art of serving penny and halfpenny licks. But Smith, not being a dextrous young man, had found it difficult to prevent the precious ice-cream missing the small glass receptacles and plopping on to the ground instead. With practice he had improved a little, but would have dearly liked to have another run through himself before he got any customers. But what would he do with the results? He could hardly throw them in the gutter or stand there eating them.

  As well as improving his aim, he had to take the money and, at the same time, keep an eye on numbers seven and nine John Street. Particularly difficult, in fact, as the natural stance of the hokey-pokey man would be on the pavement facing his cart and looking out into Liverpool Road – away from John Street. Maybe he should cross to the other side? But then he would risk the traffic blocking his view.

  As it happened, business was slow to start with so he was able to stand at one end of the cart without appearing suspicious, keeping an eye out for any movement from number seven or Best leaving number nine. He smiled to himself. Perhaps he would offer the sergeant a penny lick when he walked by.

  *

  Being forced into inactivity while passing through an everchanging scene divorced one from reality, Best thought. It was hypnotic. One witnessed activity whilst not part of it, nor was one expected to participate. A restful state of affairs. Best had decided that, at the first opportunity, he would send Cheadle a telegraph explaining the situation, but as he had no idea when that opportunity would occur he gave up thinking about it.

  He’d also given up trying to keep a surreptitious eye on Martha while they were on the move, concluding that she was hardly likely to go throwing a valise into the water with all these people watching and if he kept following her around she would spot him and become suspicious. He would merely locate her every now and then.

  Suddenly he realized he was ravenously hungry so he found himself a pint of ale and a steak and oyster pie and sat enjoying it and allowing his mind to drift. Drift on to Nella, recalling how he had become so concerned at her wan look that he had considered buying her some eggs and real milk from Laycock’s Dairy – but had been unable to work out how he could sneak it to her without arousing suspicion and causing her trouble.

  He thought about her dress. She had probably thrown it aside after giving birth, being sick of it and it being no longer wearable. That was the answer. If the one left at the drapers in Upper Street was hers, that is, and he could not be sure. The band switched to a selection from HMS Pinafore and a rotund and florid gentleman passenger began to sing along with determined jollity. His baritone voice swelled as he threw himself into one of Buttercup’s ditties:

  A many years ago,

  When I was young and charming,

  As some of you may know,

  I practised baby-farming.

  Several of the more lively looking passengers took up the chanting chorus:

  Now this is most alarming!

  When she was young and charming,

  She practised baby-farming.

  When Best had first heard the song in a half-empty theatre on an unpleasantly hot and sticky night three months earlier he had thought that it was hardly a suitable subject for a jolly song. But his misgivings had been tempered by the thought that few people were likely to hear it anyway. The opera was a flop.

  Later, however, the weather cooled, the audiences grew and suddenly HMS Pinafore had become wildly popular. The songs were now on everyone’s lips.

  But when he came to think about it, there was baby-farming and baby-farming; some far more lethal than others. Strictly speaking, it only meant looking after babies for payment; in practice, causing some of them to die from neglect, starvation and disease – in some instances, quite deliberately.

  There were those who claimed that the Camberwell women were merely ignorant. Nine babies had been found in one room and in such circumstances, some deaths were inevitable through infection and natural causes. Didn’t many well-loved and cared-for babies also die? The infant mortality rate was high. Perhaps the hanged Mrs Waters and her imprisoned sister had been merely scapegoats?

  Helen had pointed out that if poor women, often servants in households with predatory masters, were not left to cope alone they would not be so desperate to get someone else to look after their babies, leaving them scraping to pay for their care out of their meagre wages, or worse, finding someone to take them off their hands permanently, with all that could entail. If they didn’t do something they would be dismissed without references and end up destitute in the workhouse.

  The Infant Life Protection Act was supposed to cure the problem allowing, as it did, local authorities to employ inspectors who could prosecute unregistered baby-farmers. In addition, came the amendment to the Bastardy law, with the intention of forcing men to pay for their dirty deeds. But neither solution was working very well. The local authorities were largely inactive and the women had little hope of taking their masters to court to get maintenance and, even if they had the courage to do so, there was scant effort to enforce any order to pay.

  In consequence, not only baby-farming but lying-in houses thrived. The latter would, for a lump sum, see a woman through pregnancy, then take charge of the baby – supposedly for adoption by wealthy couples. But, too often, smothering the infant at birth was the solution. Which was probably what was going on at number seven, John Street.

  That most unlikely of Italian ice-cream vendors, John George Smith, was doing a brisk trade in halfpenny licks.

  His first scoop, for an impatient four-year-old boy wearing a scarlet dress with navy trims, had been gratifyingly successful. The second, for a flower-sprigged little girl, had slipped off the glass at the last minute and fallen on to the cart. In response he had acted the carefree Italian, laughed and shrugged in an appropriately foreign manner and given her a penny lick instead.

  After that, it had all been plain sailing. He had mastered the knack and was now flicking his wooden paddle to the manner born. He was even managing the quick squeezes of fruit syrup with a natty twist of the wrist and a little joking aside to the mothers and nursemaids.

  Indeed, a small queue had soon formed alongside his gaily painted cart. Taking the money hadn’t proved such a problem either as most children delighted in plonking down their sticky halfpennies making change-giving unnecessary.

  A little less satisfactory, as anticipated, was the business of keeping an eye on numbers seven and nine John Street. But, by giving rapid glances in that direction every now and then, Smith felt fairly sure that no one had emerged from either dwelling without him seeing them.

  He had not, however, seen Best leaving. That worried and perplexed him.

  The green, tree-fringed rise of Greenwich Park came as something of a relief after three-quarters of an hour of endless wharves and docks. Crowned by the brick and stone turreted Royal Observatory and framed by the magnificent riverside twin edifices of the Royal Naval College and Hospital, the park made a splendid sight, thought Best proudly. To the right – jolly Greenwich Pier with its many pleasurable diversions and, alongside, the picturesque riverside taverns noted for their delicious whitebait dinners.

  At Blackwall, at the top of the loop formed by the Isle of Dogs, they stopped to pick up more pleasure seekers. This place had seen many tears, being the departure point for emigrant ships, but today’s passengers were full of good cheer and jolly expectations.

  Around another loop where the river broadened and straightened, Best’s nose was assaile
d by a pungent mix of odours from the Silvertown factories which produced or refined sugar, flour, dyes, india-rubber, Peruvian guano, chemicals – and electricity.

  Soon, Woolwich came into view. It, too, was backed by green slopes, but where Greenwich had the elegance of a Royal Naval College, Woolwich catered for the business end of war. These substantial buildings belonged to the vast Royal Arsenal and barracks housing thousands of soldiers. Despite the work this provided there was an air of decay and despondency about this once-thriving riverside town. The place had certainly gone downhill since he had last seen it, Best thought, probably due to the closure of the Royal Docks.

  The steamer stopped on the opposite bank to decant those people heading for the nearby pleasure gardens and to take on more passengers arriving at North Woolwich by train. Best endeavoured to position himself so as to see whether Martha was among those preparing to leave. Not too near to be seen, but close enough to make a sudden dash if necessary.

  And there she was, stepping on to dry land this very minute! Frantically, he pushed through the oncoming throng, no holds barred, flashing his tipstaff and shouting, ‘Police!’, at the startled young man who was about to pull up the gangway.

  Best thundered down the wooden planking and was placing his foot on dry land when the retreating figure turned to wave at someone on board and he saw that she wasn’t Martha, merely someone as dumpy as her and similarly dressed.

  He shot up his hand to stay the confused lad who was again about to retract the gangway. As he climbed back up Best nodded his head thoughtfully as though satisfied with the closer view of the shore and the disembarking passengers that his manic dash had allowed him. He just hoped that Martha had not seen his performance and been alerted.

  Just boarded were several smartly uniformed soldiers and their ladies, bent on a day out at the coast. The boat was becoming crowded now. Best propped himself up against the guard rail while he got his breath back and retrieved his dignity. Smith would be in situ and wondering where he was. If only he had one of those marvellous Belgian carrier pigeons advertised as being as efficient as the electric telegraph!