by Mick Finlay
Chinese stereotypes
There were a number of racist stereotypes about Chinese people in Victorian times, depicting them as dirty, carriers of diseases, criminal and dangerous. One myth was that they ate rats. The tin of rat poison in the book is based on an American brand ‘Rough on Rats’, which can be seen here:
https://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources/texts/rough-on-rats
Other real characters
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain (in 1865). She set up the New Hospital for Women in London, and, in 1874, the London School of Medicine for Women. Charles de Vere Beauclerck, who sued his father, the Duke of St Albans, for his baldness, was described in Andrew Scull’s Madness in Civilization.
Typhus
Typhus was three times as deadly as typhoid fever. It was predominantly a disease of the poor, although those caring for the sick could also become infected. There was no known treatment at the time, and doctors could only recommend rest, fresh air and good diet. On the suggestion of my editor, Finn Cotton, I invented an expensive fake remedy for typhus that people might have been tempted to buy in the absence of any proven medicine. My remedy was made of Jesuit bark and Jimson weed, plants used in traditional Peruvian medicine and which therefore might well have been expensive. Jesuit bark was used to treat malaria and Jimson weed for inflammation and convulsions, although to my knowledge they were not used for typhus.
Song lyrics
‘The Fishermen Hung the Monkey, O!’ – the lyrics to Ned Corvan’s nineteenth-century music hall song were found on the songfacts.com website.
‘The Violet I Plucked from Mother’s Grave’ – Mary Jane Kelly (Black Mary) is widely believed to be the last victim of Jack the Ripper. She was heard singing this song by the last witness who saw her on the night she was killed. The lyrics were found on the traditionalmusic.co.uk site.
Sources
Many thanks to the British Newspaper Archive in the British Library. I relied on many other sources for the historical detail. The main ones were:
Alfred Binet, Animal Magnetism. 1887. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race. 1971. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Havelock Ellis, The Criminal. 1890. Walter Scott Publishers.
Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. 1984. Pluto Press.
Judith Flanders, Victorian Christmas. 2014. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/victorian-christmas
Lee Jackson, A Dictionary of Victorian London. 2006. Anthem Press.
Lee Jackson, Palaces of Pleasure. From the Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How the Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment. 2020. Yale University Press.
Lee Jackson, The Victorian Dictionary. http://www.victorian-london.org/index-2012htm
Paul La Hausse, ‘The Cows of Nongoloza’: Youth, Crime and Amalaita Gangs in Durban, 1900-1936. Journal of Southern African Studies, 1990, 16, 1, 79-111.
Gregory B. Lee. Dirty, Diseased and Demented: The Irish, the Chinese and Racist Representation. Journal of Global Cultural Studies, 12, 2017.
Michael R. Mahoney, The Other Zulus: The Spread of Zulu Ethnicity in Colonial South Africa. 2012. Duke University Press.
David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History. 2017. Pan Books.
Charles van Onselen, The Small Matter of a Horse: The Life of ‘Nongoloza Mathebula 1867-1948. 1984. Ravan Press.
Charles van Onselen, ‘The Regiment of the Hills’: South Africa’s Lumpenproletarian Army 1890-1920. Past & Present, No. 80 (Aug., 1978), pp. 91-121.
William Osler, Typhoid Fever and Typhus Fever. 1901. W.B. Saunders & Co.
D. Renshaw, ‘Prejudice and paranoia: a comparative study of antisemitism and Sinophobia in turn-of-the-century Britain’ Patterns of Prejudice, 2016, 50 (1), 38-60.
Matthew Sweet, Inventing the Victorians. 2002. Faber & Faber.
John Woolf, The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age. 2019. Michael O’Mara Books.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the people who have made this book possible. To Vincent Wells for his comments on an earlier draft, to my editor, Finn Cotton, for his close reading of the book, his insightful comments and his help in negotiating tricky issues, to the sensitivity consultant for raising important issues, and to Jon Appleton for his careful copy-editing. My huge gratitude to my agent, Jo Unwin, for all she has done and continues to do for the Arrowood books, for her advice, grounding and unfailing encouragement. Thanks also to Joe Thomas and all those at HQ for their hard work behind the scenes, to the British Library, and to all those readers who have been so kind in their support of the series.
Read on for an extract from Mick Finlay’s brilliant novel, Arrowood and The Thames Corpses…
Chapter One
South London, Summer, 1896
We were playing cards in the parlour when the captain and his daughter arrived. It was late morning, the flies drifting around the guvnor’s knuckle head in the midsummer heat. For the last few days we’d been waiting on a case from the lawyer Scrapes, but he kept delaying and the longer it went on the longer we weren’t earning. Arrowood was vexed: he hadn’t been sleeping too well since his sister Ettie returned from Birmingham with the baby, and he was suffering a rash under his arm. Each hour that passed worsened his temper.
‘A bit of breeze, is that too much to ask?’ he grumbled, throwing his cards on the table in frustration. As he pushed himself up, the back of his britches clung for a moment to the damp chair. He stuck a finger in his waistcoat pocket and hooked out a coin. ‘Get me a kidney pudding will you, Barnett? You won’t be hungry, I suppose. It’s only eleven.’
I got to my feet. It was an errand I’d run hundreds of times before, and I knew how it went with him. Money was tight between cases. Always was. Maybe one day it’d be easier, but I wasn’t holding any hope on it.
The guvnor’s rooms were behind the pudding shop on Coin Street. It was hot as a foundry in there, the long black range baking with all its might, pots boiling away on the top. A couple of sweaty customers stood in line waiting to get served by Albert, who seemed to be the only one in the family still working. Mrs Pudding was bent double over the counter, her face resting on a cloth. Little Albert stood wheezing on the doorstep, staring at his boots in a fug. Next to him on the pavement sat a couple of little monkeys, no more than six or seven years old, their hands out in the hope some punter might give them a bit of food.
‘Lucky you come in just now, Norman,’ said Albert in his usual glum voice. ‘These folk were just asking for Mr Arrowood.’
The captain was solid and square-faced, about forty or fifty I supposed, his eyes shaded by a battered riverboat cap. He grasped a small packet of meat in both hands. Behind him was a girl of fourteen or fifteen, her shoulders wide and strong, her face covered in freckles. A thin bonnet, its edges dark with sweat, was tied tight over her head.
‘I’m his assistant,’ I said, offering each my hand. ‘Come through.’
I led them back up the dusty corridor lined with sacks of sugar and flour and into the parlour. The guvnor looked at us in horror as we stepped through the door. A little groan came from the girl.
In the short time I’d been away he’d taken off his britches and shirt, and now sat at the table wearing nothing but his drawers and vest, a piece of bread and butter in his hand. His stumpy legs were white as lard, hairy here and bald there, and his drawers were stained in the most shameful way, the sagging lump between his legs like a clutch of baby mussels.
‘Oh, Lord,’ he muttered, grabbing his britches from the floor and trying to shove his bloated feet through. ‘Excuse me, please. I was just …’
As he fumbled with his shirt, the man and the freckled girl stood in the doorway, silent and still.
‘This is Mr Arrowood,’ I told them.
The boatman nodded, a grim look on his square face. Doing her best not to see the writhing spe
ctacle before her, the girl’s eyes travelled over the gloomy little parlour, the flies circling in the centre of the room, the bare floor, the stacks of newspaper against the walls. By the open window was a shelf holding his books on emotions and the psychology of the mind, but her eyes lingered longest on the orange cat sat like a sentry on the mantel. The man seemed to fix on the sticky tabletop with its melting packet of butter, its ragged Allinson’s loaf, its wild scatter of crumbs.
‘I’m so very sorry, miss,’ said Arrowood, tucking in his shirt. ‘I can only hope the sight of the good Lord’s creation hasn’t caused you any spiritual distress.’
The young woman dropped her eyes and smiled.
‘Now,’ he said when all was right again. ‘Please have a seat. What did you want to see me about?’
‘Name’s Captain Moon,’ said the bloke when they were sat down at the table. He twitched his head at the girl. ‘This here’s my daughter, Suzie. We’ve a problem and hoped you could help.’
The captain pulled off his cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. His eyes were small, his jaw and mouth hid beneath a bush of orange and grey hair. His suit was too thick for such a warm July, its elbows a little over-polished.
‘We run a little pleasure steamer, sir. The Gravesend Queen. Take folk up to Gravesend every Saturday and Sunday for the pleasure gardens. Anyways, there’s a fellow been damaging the boat when she’s moored overnight. It’ll put us out of business if it keeps on. Summer’s when we make our money, see.’
‘Polgreen’s his name,’ said Suzie. ‘Ain’t it, Dad?’
Moon gave a nod.
‘What sort of damage have you suffered?’ asked the guvnor.
‘First it was rocks through the windows,’ answered Moon. ‘Next thing I turn up one morning and me lamps is all gone.’
‘The fish guts, Dad,’ said Suzie. She looked at me stood by the door, her eyes strong and hard.
‘Aye. That was the first, the windows was after.’ He jumped up from the chair, pacing over to the door, his hands in his pockets. ‘He dumped a load of old fish guts in the saloon! Disgusting it was, like the devil himself’d spewed all over the place.’
‘Where’s the boat moored, Captain?’
‘We had her just off the old pier by Victoria Bridge when it started. We moved her since.’
‘Any other boats there?’
‘Five or six, but he’s careful. Nobody’s seen anything.’ He pointed at the guvnor’s pile of books. ‘You read all that?’
‘They help me do my work. Are you interested in the psychology of the mind, Captain?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Dad went to the police but they won’t do nothing,’ said Suzie. ‘Told us to moor her somewhere else. Hide her, like. So we move her up to Bermondsey and what happens, we turn up this morning and the awning’s sliced to ribbons!’
‘We paid four quid for that awning,’ said Moon.
‘Can’t afford to get another, not right now, and the customers ain’t going to be too happy with no shelter on deck,’ said Suzie.
‘The Old Bill told us to put the deckhand on board overnight,’ Moon went on. ‘But what if they scuttle her? He’d be killed. That you, is it?’
Moon was pointing at the photographic portrait of the guvnor above the little fireplace.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the guvnor, a contented smile coming over his face. The photographer’d told him he looked like Moses and he couldn’t help but think that maybe there was something in it. He gave the hot rash under his arm a rub.
‘Very striking,’ said Moon. ‘Very good.’
‘Thank you, Captain. Now, are you sure it’s this fellow Polgreen?’
‘We know it’s him, sir,’ said Suzie. She sat forward, her arms on the table. ‘He’s the only one runs a steamer on our route to Gravesend. Takes the day-trippers, same as us. He’s trying to drive us out, ain’t he, Dad?’
Her old man nodded.
‘But you’re not so sure, Captain?’ asked the guvnor.
‘No. Yes. Yes, I am sure.’ He nodded. ‘I am sure.’
‘We been running up there since more ’n thirteen, fourteen year,’ said Suzie. ‘Tell him, Dad.’
‘Used to be quite a few boats on the route afore they built the railway out that far. We was the last one left and what happens this time last year? Only this blooming foreigner Polgreen comes along with an old bucket of a boat and starts taking passengers. Same piers, same route.’
‘Which piers d’you use?’ asked the guvnor.
‘We pick up at Old Swan Pier by London Bridge and take them to Terrace Pier in Gravesend.’
‘You don’t use the pier at Rosherville?’
‘Too dear, Mr Arrowood. The customers don’t mind walking to the pleasure gardens if it saves them a few coins. I told Polgreen Gravesend can’t support two boats, but he won’t listen.’
‘So now we’re taking half the money we took before,’ cried Suzie, her face red with it all. ‘We can’t hardly get by, but those foreigners seem to live on half what we need.’
‘Eat rats, I heard,’ declared the Captain. ‘Live on the boat too, like bargees.’
‘He’s trying to make it that bad for us we pack it in.’
‘Have you actually seen Polgreen damaging your boat?’ asked the guvnor.
‘We ain’t seen him, but it’s him all right,’ answered Suzie. ‘Ain’t it, Dad?’
Moon nodded.
‘Who else works on your boat?’ asked Arrowood.
‘Only Belasco, the deckhand,’ said Moon.
‘D’you trust him?’
‘He’d never harm the boat. Been with us since the start.’
Just then, the guvnor’s sister Ettie called out from the bedroom upstairs. ‘William! I need some help!’
Arrowood winced. ‘Carry on, sir,’ he said, rubbing his forehead. ‘What else can you tell us?’
‘I ain’t so sure Polgreen’s a captain neither,’ said Moon. ‘Don’t seem to know the rules of the water.’
Now the baby started to cry. A moment later we heard the door at the top of the stairs creak open, and Ettie’s feet coming down the steps.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,’ she said, startled to see the Captain and his daughter there. She looked worn out, her face pale, her hair loose and falling over her shoulders. There were baby stains on her blouse. She wasn’t used to caring for a child, wasn’t the sort of woman who could be contained inside a little place like this for long, and it was getting to her.
‘I’m in a consultation,’ said the guvnor.
She shot me a tired smile, then nodded at our two guests.
‘I won’t disturb you.’ She looked at the guvnor. ‘The curtain’s come down again, William,’ she said, turning to climb the narrow staircase at the back of the parlour. ‘The child won’t settle.’
The guvnor raised his eyes to the ceiling, muttering to himself as the crying continued. There was only one bedroom up there, and Arrowood shared it with his sister. He pushed himself to his feet with a groan and waddled over to the mantel, where he collected his pipe. He smiled at Moon. ‘Please, sir, continue.’
‘When he turned up, his boat was Barley Belle,’ said Moon. ‘Then, a week after he starts taking our custom, he goes and names his boat the same as ours. Rosherville Queen she was then. I tried to get him to change it. The Company of Watermen tried, and the Conservancy officials, but he wouldn’t do it so we had to change our name! Didn’t want the punters confusing his old bucket with ours, did we? Our boat, what’d been there first! That’s how she became the Gravesend Queen.’
The guvnor shook his head as he lit his pipe. ‘The fellow sounds difficult. He’s determined.’
Moon sighed. ‘It has wore me out, Mr Arrowood. I own it.’
‘Have you considered changing your destination? Hampton Court or Southend or somewhere?’
‘But it’s our route.’
‘All those other routes got bigger boats than ours,’ said Suzie. ‘With food an
d music and such. We can’t take them on. Gravesend’s the only place we can go with a little old boat like ours. The punters who still like Rosherville Gardens ain’t too choosey, and that’s the truth of it, sir.’
‘I’m sorry for you,’ said the guvnor, shaking his great ox’s head. ‘This isn’t right. Tell me, how did you hear of us? Was it the Catford Inquiry?’
‘The salt thieves,’ answered Moon. ‘That’s what we heard about.’
‘Salt thieves?’
‘From the barges,’ said Moon. ‘Deptford, was it?’
The guvnor looked at me, a puzzle in his eyes.
‘That’s not one of our cases,’ I said.
‘Perhaps you read of the Fenian case?’ asked the guvnor.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Moon, shaking his head. ‘I ain’t a reader.’
‘The gas pipe affair?’
‘You never caught the salt thieves?’ asked Moon.
‘No. You’re not confusing me with Sherlock Holmes, are you?’ asked the guvnor.
‘Well, now I ain’t sure about those cases, Mr Arrowood, but I can’t see anyone confusing you with him.’
‘Can we help him, sir?’ I asked, seeing the guvnor starting to lose his good temper. He always thought we should be known more than we were, and it upset him to find almost nobody’d ever heard of us. The only private enquiry agent the papers ever seemed to cover was Sherlock Holmes, and just reading about the fellow’s cases upset the guvnor worse than sour beer. Arrowood was an emotional fellow, and it was one of my jobs to keep him on the level. That and a bit of strong-arm business from time to time.
Upstairs, the baby’s crying got quieter, till it was only a whimper. Arrowood glanced up at the ceiling and sighed.
‘I’d like to do something for you, Captain,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid we’re about to start on an important case with a lawyer. I’m not sure we’ve enough time to do yours justice.’
Moon looked at the guvnor like he didn’t understand.
‘Why didn’t you tell us that at the start?’ asked Suzie, her eyes lit up. ‘Is it because we never heard of your cases?’
