Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob.

by Francis Selwyn

  He was locked into the last reception cell on ground level. Only the two condemned cells lay beyond his. The iron door slammed and the lock turned. They left him to himself in the high cramped space, the lower wall painted with green disinfectant lime, the upper half whitewashed.

  From time to time he heard the shuffle of feet in the yard outside, the rattle of iron, and the warder's voice, 'Step out there! Will you step out!' Hoisting himself to the bars, he saw the slow circling of figures. These were convicted criminals, dressed in coarse brown uniform. The 'Scotch cap' covered their faces, as well as heads, leaving only two circles for the eyes. Each man was identified solely by the numbered disc sewn on the breast of the woollen tunic.

  Day by day, O'Meara swore that he would not give way to despair. Old Mole and Mr Kite might do something for him. At least they would find a lawyer to present his case. There would be times when escape, or even rescue, was possible. A prison van transferring men to the hulks at Woolwich or Portland might be successfully attacked. But the memory of betrayal at Wannock Hundred and the mystery of the Shah Jehan clasp began to sour his hope.

  One morning, in the week before his trial, he heard the marching tread of several warders and their rhythmic shout of 'Governor-r-r!' calling the prisoners to attention on the governor's approach. The footsteps seemed to halt outside his own door. But it was the condemned cell next to his which was opened. He heard the governor's voice reading a document to the convicted man.

  'James Jacob Fowler, your case has received Her Majesty's most gracious consideration. However, the circumstances of your crime utterly preclude the possibility of mercy being extended to so hardened a criminal. You are therefore ordered for execution in fourteen days from the present, by Her Majesty's gracious command.'

  There was a pause as the condemned man recovered his composure, and then a roar from him as the warders slammed the door shut.

  'She can kiss my bloody bum, blast her eyes!'

  It was less than ten minutes after this when two warders opened the door of Stunning Joe's cell.

  'O'Meara! Consulting room! Quick-sharp!

  Old Mole had got him a counsel for the trial! He followed the passageway with the warders beside him, his heart pounding at the thought that he had not been abandoned after all. As each iron gate was unlocked, its keeper shouted, 'One off!' when Joe left the near side, and then 'One on!' when he entered the next area of the prison.

  The consulting room was at the centre of the administration buildings in an area of double pillars and vaults, like a cathedral crypt. The little room itself almost resembled a private chapel, with low walls to waist height and glass above. The warders could watch the lawyer and his client without hearing what passed between them.

  There was a table in the room and a painted line about three feet in front of it.

  'Stand on the line, prisoner!'

  Stunning Joe obeyed. The warders stepped outside, watching through the glass, and the man who sat at the table looked up.

  'It won't do, Joseph,' said Sergeant Samson sadly. 'It really won't do at all.'

  'You stinking jack! You got no right coming here! I want a brief!'

  He started forward to the table and the warders stepped to the door. But Samson waved them away.

  'You couldn't have a better brief than me, Joseph. I'm the only one left who could say a good word.'

  'Much chance!'

  'You think I come about that trick of the Shah Jehan clasp? So I have. I want to know, Joseph. I do. But I never come empty-handed. I got a present for you. The name of the party who gave your game away.'

  Stunning Joe swallowed and the little eyes fastened expectantly on Samson.

  'You were bouncing a little trollop called Vicki Hartle,' said Samson cheerily. 'Cigar divan and oriental massage, off Haymarket. After you went down Sussex way, Miss Vicki prigged a toffs watch and notecase. Turned out to be Inspector Garvey, over "C" Division. Anyway, Vicki being lined up for a real smacking from the beak, she lays out the goods on you at Wannock Hundred. Garvey let her go.'

  'She never!'

  'I got no cause to lie to you, Joseph, 'ow else d'you think I happened to be there?' 'The damned bitch!'

  'Yes, Joseph. Now, in course, you'll want Vicki Hartle's hide off her. If we was to find that heathen clasp before your trial came on, why you might be able to knock Miss Vicki one side of Haymarket to t'other in seven years. P’raps five. But if you will be obstinate, my son. I'd say that little whore won't get her licks for another fifteen years.'

  'I never seen any bloody clasp, Mr Samson!'

  'Then tell us who might have done, 'oo put you up to it, Joe?'

  But now they were back to the rules of a game which O'Meara knew well. 'I can't say no more, Mr Samson, nor I won't.' Samson released a long breath.

  'All right, Joseph. Let it be. Any last words for Vicki Hartle, then? 'ere, they reckon Mr Garvey was prodding her when she took his things! Still, you know what minds them jacks down "C Division got!'

  As Stunning Joe lunged vainly at his tormentor, the warders threw open the door and dragged him away. Alone in his cell, he wept with the misery of his plight.

  Sergeant Samson predicted the outcome well. One morning in the following week, Joe O'Meara was put up in the dock of the Central Criminal Court for trial and sentence. From his vantage point he looked down into the well of the little court, the wigs of counsel and clerks below him. Opposite him, the elderly judge, red-faced in robes and wig looked, for all the world, like a little old lady. Somewhere above his head was the public gallery, which he detected only by the smell of orange peel, the rattle of nutshells, and an occasional buzz of conversation. He doubted that there were any faces there which he knew, though he was in no position to see.

  In any case, his trial was of little public interest. There was no chance of an acquittal, no thrill of suspense as to the outcome. Only once was the murmuring in the gallery stilled, when the judge, with the royal arms of England on red leather behind him, looked up to pass sentence. Stunning Joe heard the thin judicial voice deploring the accused's hardened and unrepentant attitude. None of this concerned O'Meara. He listened only for the final words, when they came. 'Transportation to a penal colony for a term of fourteen years.'

  The murmuring in the public gallery began again, and the two warders took him down the steps of the dock. The trial had barely lasted ten minutes.

  So far, Stunning Joe had resisted even the thought of winning favour by betraying Old Mole and Sealskin Kite. Now it was too late for that. Mr Kite was an astute old exchange broker with no criminal record. Any attempt to accuse him at this stage must be dismissed as the last desperate falsehood of a condemned felon. In a few days more, Joe O'Meara and the other transportees would be taken down to the prison hulks in Portland harbour. From there a contractor's vessel with armed guard would convey them to the prison depot at Port Jackson, Australia. A man might live through fourteen years of privation and brutality, but he knew it was not likely.

  Two days after the trial, a pair of escort warders opened his cell again.

  'O'Meara! Visitors' corridor!'

  In his coarse brown uniform he glanced at them suspiciously. ' 'oo'd want to visit me?'

  'Parish priest,' said one of the officers sharply. 'One visit you're allowed. This is it.'

  He walked between them, not understanding. He had no parish priest. The last Irish O'Meara had been his grandfather, who had found his way to Southwark thirty years before. Certainly he had not expected a prison visit from anyone.

  The visitors' corridor was about four feet wide with grilles down either side of it. Prisoner and visitor faced one another through meshed windows, separated by the width of the corridor in which the warders stood, listening to each conversation. Stunning Joe peered across at his visitor, making out First the cassock and biretta, then the plump pale face. For the only time since his arrest, he almost laughed. Now he guessed that Mr Kite had not forgotten him.

  The figure bey
ond the other grille was 'Soapy Samuel', nicknamed after a man whom Joe understood to be a famous bishop. Soapy Samuel's speciality was that of posing as a clergyman — generally of the Church of England — and collecting at the doors of middle-class homes for non-existent overseas missions. Samuel was a past-master in deception, with solemn owlish face, unctuous voice, the dry-washing of the hands, in an impressively realistic performance. With episcopal cross and gaiters, he had effortlessly lightened an archdeacon of twenty-five guineas on two occasions.

  As a Roman priest, he was less convincing. Stunning Joe, taken aback by the vision before him, spoke as though the warders could not hear him.

  'What the hell might you be doing here?'

  'My son!' said Samuel, gently reproving. 'While yet of mortal breath, seek to repent your crime. Such is the message I bring.'

  The tongue licked over the fat lips, the sole indicator of Samuel's nervousness in the prison confines. Stunning Joe furrowed his brow, knowing that Soapy Samuel must have come on Kite's errand, seeking some message in the fatuous platitudes.

  'Remember,' said Samuel, 'that you are now to expiate your offence. You must do so with a glad heart. You will — at all times — obey implicitly, without question, the orders of those put in command of you. That is now your first and most important instruction. Do you understand me?'

  'Yes — father,' said Stunning Joe. If this was the best that Mr Kite could do, he had better have kept his money in his pocket.

  'We are taught,' said Samuel woefully, 'that man must die to live again. Take that message to your heart, my son, for it is the good news I bring you from one who cares for us all.'

  O'Meara took the message to heart and glared uncomprehendingly across the space where the warder stood.

  'And thus,' droned Samuel, 'shall you be reunited at last with your loved ones, and with those who have been your friends in the past,'

  'You tell my friends I ain't forgot 'em!' said Stunning Joe sullenly. 'Specially I ain't forgot my young person!'

  Samuel nodded gently.

  'Sorrow and repentance will be hers to share, my son. There is one who watches over such matters.' O'Meara's eyes brightened,

  'Supposing I could have confession?' he said hopefully. The warder roused himself.

  'Confessions to be heard by Her Majesty's prison chaplains only,' he said. 'No disrespect to your reverence.'

  Soapy Samuel nodded.

  'A very proper arrangement. And now, Joseph O'Meara, I leave you in good hands. Think of my words, and seek to throw off the bonds of sin.'

  It was evident that Samuel had no clear idea of the proper pastoral procedure for a Roman priest in this situation. He began to make a sign in the air, thought better of it, stood up and turned away. The warders led Stunning Joe back to his cell.

  For two more days he lay on the wooden bunk and thought of Soapy Samuel's words. Obeying those in authority. It needed no visit to remind him of that. Dying to be born again was an easy cant term which meant nothing to him. He had every intention of being reunited with his friends but, he thought, they had better be quick about it. The one certain comfort was that Sealskin Kite knew of his betrayal by a young bitch called Vicki Hartle. And Mr Kite was a hard man in such business.

  At last the iron tiers of the cell echoed to the warders' shouts of' ‘Lags away!' and the time had come for the transportees to leave. Stunning Joe's wrists were handcuffed before him and a pair of steel manacles was locked on his ankles. The steel was much lighter than he had imagined it would be, enabling him to move at a shuffling walk. The line of men, like a file of sinister monks in their brown uniforms and caps with eye-holes, moved slowly across the yard. The prison van which was to take them to the train at Waterloo was like a black hearse.

  As the van lurched and jolted over the paved roads, Joe O'Meara waited for the sudden halt and the thunder of wooden staves on the doors, which would signal his rescue. But at Waterloo the doors opened and the prisoners, now linked in pairs by chains between their fetters, moved slowly towards the carriage which had been attached to the waiting train. They occupied every compartment of it, with two warders to each felon. Many hours later the long journey ended under a barn-like structure covering both railway tracks and the platforms on either side. It was the new station at Weymouth.

  Another van carried them out along the narrow Portland isthmus, the great sweep of Chesil Bank curving away to the north-west. Stunning Joe caught a glimpse of blue water glittering in the summer evening. For the first time he realised the change of seasons which had passed during his months of confinement in the unvarying gloom of Newgate.

  The long-boats were waiting at Portland quay. A file of warders armed with rifles marked the way. In the semicircle of the great harbour lay the rotting fleet of hulks. These were the old wooden warships of Nelson's navy. With their rigging cut away, their hulls anchored by rusty mooring chains, they lay like grim and diseased symbols of retribution.

  In groups of six the new prisoners were helped down into the long-boats, the oars manned by good-conduct prisoners under the guns of the warders. Two weeks more and the new arrivals would be transferred to the hired transports, with not even a glimpse of the great limestone rock of Portland to remind them of their country.

  There was a shout of 'Oars away!' and the blades cut the harbour swell with smart precision. Stunning Joe listened to the ripple of the water and the rhythmic creak of the wooden locks. Ahead of him, dripping with weed and encrusted by shells, the hulk of the old 74-gun Indomitable rose like black doom, blotting out the evening sky. He saw now that Soapy Samuel had been used to keep him sweet. Surely, Sealskin Kite had forgotten him after all.

  A TAME JACK

  3

  In the hot July morning there was a stillness over the narrow pavements and the dingy shops of Trafalgar Street. The road ran upward like a canyon between high rendered walls to the dark tunnel of the iron bridge which carried Queens Road overhead from the railway station towards the sea. Beyond the glass-roofed splendour of the platforms with their cast-iron pillars, a dozen engines were coaled-up in the yard, high above the level of the little street. In a few hours more, they would return to London with the excursion trains which offered 'Brighton and back for three shillings and sixpence'.

  The noon silence which hung like a cloud over the cheap summer lodgings and homes above the shops was shrilly broken. First there was a burst of song from the caged birds on the wall outside one of the shops. Black painted letters on the stonework promised: 'Foreign and British Song Birds. Parrots. Canaries. Nightingales.'

  The cause of the disturbance was a pair of ragged boys in torn coats and shabby caps pulled down almost to their eyes. One of them was bouncing an india-rubber ball as they ran out of a side street and up towards the dark iron tunnel of the station bridge. Just before the archway of the bridge a more imposing shop with a painted board announced that Mr Suitor's Emporium 'respectfully solicits an inspection of spring and summer modes'.

  Silks and taffeta with wide sleeves and gold buckles shone in the darker interior beyond the glass. On the pavement outside a row of wax dummies was paraded in the latest male fashions. Some had the faces of young gentlemen, gloved fingers stuck out like bunches of radishes, the wax limbs draped in long Oxonian coats, baggy Sydenham trousers, Talma capes and fancy vests. Beyond these figures of fashion were several stouter effigies of countrymen, whose suits were matched by red plush waistcoats and wide-awake hats. At the far end were the figures of young women in servants' costume or the new 'riding trousers'.

  The two ragged boys drew level with the open doorway of Mr Suitor's Emporium. The one who was bouncing the rubber ball gave it a vigorous slanting pat. With a long bound, the ball disappeared through the opening among the contents of the shop itself. Their caps well down, the youngsters ran after it. In a moment more the shopman and his assistant were intent on finding the ball themselves and preventing the boys from rifling the contents of the shop during their search.


  With hardly a sound another pair of boys, ragged as the first two, ran out from the opposite turning. They moved with their heads kept down, as if below the line of vision of the occupants in the shop. They began at one end of the row of dummies, their quick fingers unbuttoning and stripping off the clothes. Two of the Talma capes came away, then one of the Oxonian coats. Because of their lightness it was easy enough to turn the dummies up and strip off the trousers too. Even if the shopmen had seen them, Mr Suitor's dilemma was pitiful. Either he could remain to guard the valuable silks or go out to prevent the stripping of the dummies. It was impossible that he and his assistant could do both.

  Two more boys ran out into Trafalgar Street from the same turning. Those who were bundling up the dummies' clothes now lobbed the bundles back along the line of what appeared to be a human chain. Coats, trousers, capes and fancy waistcoats passed down the road with incredible dexterity, then turned the corner and were lost to sight.

  Inside the shop, the two boys who were searching for their rubber ball dived here and there, overturning the piles of folded silk, knocking the rolls of worsted to the floor. Suitor and his man struggled to hold them as a female dummy in the shop itself fell across the counter and broke into several pieces. But the lads were far too nimble for the outstretched arms of the men. Ducking and dodging, the ragged boys seemed less intent on finding their ball or even robbing the shop than on creating havoc with its contents.

  Little Billy, the leader of the chain of boys outside had denuded four of the dummies when Mr Suitor looked up and gave a cry of anguish. But it was better to suffer the pavement robbery than to leave the other pair of boys to smash everything in the shop itself. However, he went so far as to stand in the doorway and utter a shrill cry for help to the world at large. At this, one of the boys in the shop leapt upon his back, clamping Suitor's arms to his sides. Little Billy, turning from the dummy upon which he was engaged, then kicked the proprietor deftly between the legs.