Little Bones

by Janette Jenkins

  Thirteen

  Letters From Outside

  Dear Jane Stretch,

  I have heard you can read and write as well as I can. I have read all about your misdoings and I have seen your name all over town. I can hardly believe it. I don’t suppose you remember me? I used to know your sister, Agnes, though we fell out over a scarf of all things, and we haven’t spoken since. She always thought she was better than most. Mind you, with a criminal in the family, she won’t be so high and mighty now, will she?

  I remember you from those days. Agnes once sent you to buy some apples, and on your way back a couple of shoeblacks pinched them and used them to hit you with. Agnes nearly fell over from laughing.

  Your father sang at my brother’s wake. For such a thin man he had a very big voice. He nearly broke my mother’s heart. My brother was called Jackson, but everyone called him Jacks. You might remember him. He was a great one for fighting. He was famous for it. He could beat the hide off anyone. Apart from Tommy Wicks who went and killed him.

  I am writing to you because I have never known a famous person before. My Uncle Wallace once said hello to Captain Webb, the man who swam all the way to France. He signed his name in pencil on an envelope. My uncle said he had very big arms.

  What is prison like? I saw a very good likeness of you in the Mail. It showed you looking very sad and crooked in your prison cell. Do you remember me at all? I hope you do. I once gave you a quarter of my orange. It was a hot day and you looked very thirsty.

  Please write back and sign your name on the letter.

  I hope to hear from you soon.

  Yr old friend,

  Emma Hunt

  Dear Miss Stretch,

  I am on the whole a level-headed woman, and I do not believe in calling people criminals or worse before they have stood a fair trial, however, for you I make an exception. My poor sister K went to see a woman in Clerkenwell, who gave her a dose of the tincture you happily provided. She doled it out as if it were nothing more than cough syrup. My sister was desperate. She was a respectable married woman, simply tired, with five small children to keep. After a dose of the tincture, nothing happened. A further dose was given. Then another. Later that night, the woman doused her insides with carbolic and disinfectant. She did not live to see the morning. Her children are motherless. The woman’s name was Frances Potter. She is now serving two years in prison. It isn’t long enough. I hope you get worse.

  Anon.

  Dear Jane Stretch,

  I am a retired schoolmaster with time on my hands. My wife encourages me to take up hobbies, but none of them seem to suit. I have tried carpentry, a painful occupation, moth collecting, billiards and poetry. Mr Tennyson I am not.

  In between times, I have been following your crime in the newspapers, most of the stories being repetitive, and in my opinion full of surmise, as your case has not been heard inside a court of law. I understand that you are an intelligent cripple who, due to lack of schooling, fell into a life of devious crime. I am sure if you had attended to your lessons you would have made a useful life for yourself and you would not be in Newgate today.

  My school was attached to a small Anglican church in the county of Suffolk, a countrified place with a scattering of Quakers. One of these Quaker families had a son, who was just as crooked as you appear in the artist’s sketches, but he was a good boy, with a mind as bright as a button. Every morning his father carried him to the seat at the front of the classroom, where he would spend the day learning his letters. Years later, he is setting metal letters in a printer’s shop, which is an honest way of life.

  What I suppose I am trying to say, is that people need an honest occupation, whether it is working in a grocer’s shop or making clay pots. If you had used your little education in the way God had intended it to be used, then perhaps you would not have helped those wicked girls.

  I hope you get another chance.

  Sincerely,

  John (Jack) Wilcox

  Dear Miss Stretch,

  I am a barren woman and I think you should burn in hell for what you did to those unborn children of God. I am a barren woman but I have a husband and a home filled with happy children. My children are all well beloved, and though they did not come as my own flesh and blood, they feel just like my own. If their poor unfortunate mothers had met you and taken your poison, I would not have my sons and daughters. You would have murdered them.

  Agatha Monk

  Dear Jane Stretch,

  Many years ago, I was a girl like you. I worked for a man who called himself a doctor, but he was really an injured coal miner. Sometimes he wore a white butcher’s coat. Everyone believed him.

  The doctor treated girls in his deceased mother’s kitchen. If they were pretty he might have relations with them. He was a very wicked man.

  I had to work for him. I hated the devil but my dad owed him money. I was lucky. I escaped. One night when he was in the kitchen with a girl, I slipped through the front door and I never went back. I slept in mission houses and although they were filthy rough places, for once I felt safe. I found work in a factory salting beef. I met a good man and I have never been happier. He doesn’t know that I ever worked for that peg-leg of a coal miner. Or that I was one of the girls he treated with his knitting hook.

  I am sorry you are in prison. I am sorry you got caught. I know what it’s like to be trapped. You are not wicked. You are not the only one.

  All my best wishes,

  J. E.

  Fourteen

  Showing Twice Daily

  ‘HERE, TAKE THIS,’ said Mr Henshaw, holding out a small silver hip flask. ‘It’s good stuff, expensive, it’s French.’

  ‘I couldn’t, sir.’

  ‘You will regret it,’ he said. ‘I have already seen what’s waiting outside, and that’s before we even reach the Old Bailey’s back door.’

  ‘What is waiting, sir?’

  ‘A crowd, ten deep, they don’t look too happy and I think it’s starting to rain.’

  Jane took the flask. The brandy burned her throat but she felt a little lighter for it. Since four that morning she had been pacing her prison cell, imagining the courtroom. The rows of upturned faces. The doctor. Her past life re-enacted and embellished like a melodrama. They would hate her.

  She had been given a plain grey dress from Our Lady of Fatima, a charitable institution that helped prisoners and mistakenly believed Jane to be a Catholic. After dressing, she had read Mr Henshaw’s list until she’d had enough of it. Later, Miss Linley had kindly sprinkled sugar over her gruel. The gruel had looked disgusting, but Jane managed to force it down, not wanting to bore the judge with breaking Mr Henshaw’s rule No. 10: fainting.

  Mr Henshaw had introduced Jane to Mr Collins, the barrister, who repeated everything Henshaw had told her, but in a sharper tone. ‘He’s good,’ Mr Henshaw whispered. ‘You’re lucky.’

  Yet Jane felt anything but lucky as Mr Henshaw checked his watch and told her it was time to leave for the court. They parted company at the end of the corridor. ‘You will be taken in the Black Maria for your own safety,’ he told her.

  ‘Will the doctor be inside it?’ she worried.

  ‘No,’ Mr Henshaw shook his head. ‘He’ll have a Black Maria of his own.’

  ‘And take no concern over the stones, or whatever else gets thrown at you,’ said the driver. ‘These horses are used to it.’

  Standing behind the gates, shivering in the fine mist of rain, waiting for the horses to turn, Jane could already hear the baying crowd. Beneath the flimsy soles of her boots she could feel the ground shaking. ‘Listen,’ she breathed, to no one in particular. ‘They would like to kill me.’

  Inside the carriage, she could hear the stones being pelted on all sides. The crowd were turbulent. Roaring. Jane was grateful she was hidden from their faces, though one or two ran alongside the cab, jumping up and looking in. When they arrived at the Old Bailey, the warden ushered Jane inside. ‘Quick as you can,’ he said, �
��before any real damage is done.’

  She was shown into a great wide office, where the warden released her grateful wrists from the handcuffs. Mr Henshaw appeared holding a fat sheaf of papers.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘You’ve made it.’

  On all sides shelves crammed with leather-bound books rose to the ceiling. Jane stared at the black and gold lettering, the Latin, the stuffed eagle owl, and the painting of the courtroom itself.

  ‘Nervous?’ asked Mr Henshaw, buttoning his waistcoat.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘But I want it to be over.’

  ‘Of course you do. And it will be over soon enough. Today the papers are full of it. There are plenty of scathing comic sketches showing Swift the Magician.’

  ‘With Mamie, sir?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His voluptuous assistant.’

  ‘I don’t know about Mamie,’ he said, ‘but there were lots of silk hats breeding lots of little rabbits.’

  Mr Henshaw poured them both a glass of water. ‘It is going to be a very long day,’ he said, pushing a glass towards her. ‘Perhaps the longest of your life.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to tell my story, sir.’

  He smiled at her sadly. ‘For the most part,’ he said, ‘you will have to sit on your hands and listen.’

  Fidgeting in her chair, Jane could see into the corridor. Men in wigs and gowns passed in a tight, orderly procession.

  ‘It’s raining harder,’ said Jane. ‘I can hear it.’

  Twenty minutes later, Jane ascended to the dock. For weeks she had pictured this scene, but she had never imagined it to look quite so theatrical, with its galleries, balconies and aisles. There were faces everywhere. Even as the judge started speaking, she scanned the room searching for Ivy, Arthur or Agnes, because if they had heard about her plight, then surely they would be there for her. At first only Mr Henshaw was familiar. Then she saw the barrister. When she lifted her eyes to the gallery, she could see Jeremiah Beam and three of his flower girls. She smiled. The girl he called Rose covered her mouth with a handkerchief.

  Jane wanted to concentrate. It was difficult. Her head was full of the people in front of her. She heard herself saying her name. That she was guilty. It made her feel ashamed. And then she felt the doctor, not a few feet from her side. She glanced at him. The familiarity of his face made her lurch and she gripped the bar tighter. Then his voice startled her. He was not a doctor, he was a prisoner, but his voice was just the same.

  Looking ahead, she could hear the sergeant talking about the exhibits; the bottles of tincture had labels around their tiny necks. The doctor’s bag was there, its contents displayed on a table for all the world to see. There were scraps of addresses. Receipts. A piece of soap. A small folded towel. And, oh, the shame of the Sporting Life and the pair of nail scissors, which, Jane wanted to clarify straight away to the court, were never used on the girls, but only on the doctor’s broken fingernails.

  The certificate was produced. It caused a craning of necks. Jane could hear the voice of the sergeant talking about correspondence courses. America. How the certificate had been supposedly stamped and legitimised in Baltimore, but a man had come forward, a Mr Jonathan Campbell, who admitted printing the certificate at his workshop in High Holborn, having been told it would be used as nothing more than a stage prop.

  Jane was sitting by the warden. The seat was very hard and her vision was impaired by the bar. Listening to Swift spout his excuses, she looked for Mrs Swift. She wondered if the authorities had managed to get her through the front door and into the courtroom. Had they pulled her into the station for questioning?

  Swift was now shuffling on the spot. Jane could hear the creaking of his shoes. ‘I did nothing to the women they did not ask me to do,’ he was saying. ‘I called myself “doctor” but it was made quite clear to them I was not a medical doctor. I was simply helping them out. They liked to say the word “doctor”. It made them feel more comfortable.’

  ‘And safe?’

  ‘I did the girls no harm,’ he said.

  The women in the courtroom took to swooning and gasping. The judge had warned them that the case was unsavoury. He had advised the more delicate to leave. It appeared that Swift had admitted the business with Miss Lincoln, though he still called her Miss Brown, and although he had confessed about the tincture, he had not disclosed how differently it was used. ‘Mr Treble brought her to me,’ he said. ‘I was made to help. They both wanted help. The man was very threatening.’

  The crowd in the gallery rose. Threatening? No! They had all loved the late Johnny Treble. They would not hear a bad word against him. ‘Liar!’ one man shouted. ‘Liar!’

  By the end of the morning, the voices were little more than a humming in Jane’s ears. George and Imogen Butler appeared to say yes, that definitely was the man who had given her the tincture, and yes, that definitely was the man who had produced silk handkerchiefs from his sleeves at the Elephant and Castle. Jane was exhausted. When a voice said ‘All rise’, she didn’t move and was pulled to her feet by the warden. This time she was not taken into a book-lined room, but into what appeared to be a holding cell.

  ‘You are doing very well,’ said Mr Henshaw, wiping his forehead.

  ‘I have said nothing yet.’

  ‘You are well behaved. A model prisoner,’ he told her.

  ‘I hope they believe me,’ she said. ‘I know I am guilty, but I did what I was told.’

  ‘It will be taken into account,’ said Mr Henshaw. ‘Unlike Mr Swift, who thinks he’s Henry Irving.’

  ‘But whatever we say, sir, and whatever they believe, I know the truth. The girls wanted it, sir. They wanted to take the tincture. They were in trouble and he helped them. They were always glad of it.’

  ‘What he did was plainly unlawful. Still, you must eat,’ he urged, when a warden appeared with some food. ‘It really is important that you eat.’

  Mr Henshaw disappeared to his own lunch. She imagined Swift in his cell. In the dock he had looked like the doctor of old. He had dressed well. She had seen oil in his hair. He had shaved.

  The afternoon moved slowly. The tincture was discussed in the most scientific language. Jane wondered if the Frenchman would appear, and when at two o’clock he did, she could not help smiling towards him. The sergeant had the apothecary’s receipts. Jane could see his sharp handwriting. His voice was lilting, musical – though plenty in the courtroom screwed their foreheads and stroked their chins as if they could not understand a blessed word he was saying.

  ‘You had no idea what the tincture would be used for?’

  ‘I had an idea,’ said the Frenchman.

  ‘Yet you sold it all the same?’

  ‘It is my business to sell my products. The tincture is not illegal, sir. It has always been popular. It has all sorts of uses.’

  ‘Such as?’

  The Frenchman moved his lips, twitching his moustache. ‘It can clear blockages of the bowels, or the intestines. It can be used to purge the stomach. Induce a bout of vomiting.’

  ‘But it can also be used to bring on a miscarriage?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  A woman towards the back of the court was led away. Smelling salts were found.

  ‘And had you any idea that Swift was working in this line of business?’

  ‘Business, sir?’

  ‘The business of helping women to miscarry.’

  ‘It had crossed my mind, once or twice.’

  ‘Yet you did not report him?’

  ‘No, sir. It was just an idea. I did not know the truth of it.’

  The Frenchman told the court that the tincture was bought in the name of Dr Swift. The word ‘doctor’ had appeared on all the orders and receipts. It had been printed on the writing paper he had ordered from a stationer’s in Oxford Street. ‘You believed he was a doctor?’

  ‘I did,’ said the Frenchman.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Boutin.’

  By the end of the afternoo
n, Jane could barely remember how to breathe. Back inside her cell, the silence was startling. The words of the day circled her head and she knew she would have to go through the same thing again tomorrow – only tomorrow she would have to open her mouth and speak.

  She tried not to think about the crowd outside the courthouse. They didn’t know her, Mr Henshaw had explained. Not really. And though he had told her that these crowds appeared every time there was a case they had read about, it was hard not to take it personally. The name calling. Hissing. The stones.

  When night came, Jane dreamt of her family. Agnes was running from the dressmaker’s, her tape measure flying like a ribbon from her neck. She had left the dress she was working on, not caring that the sleeves were missing or that she had knocked a cup of tea across its bodice in her hurry to be free. Her apron was patterned with curls of coloured cotton. Silver pins sat shivering in her pockets. Running past the news-stands, losing the tape measure to the wind, pushing through crowds of gormless tourists, she ran faster, shouting for her sister, screaming, Jane! Jane! Jane!

  In a rainy field in Kent, dodging sloppy cow pats and hummocks, her parents were shooing away the herd, those nudging brown faces now specks in the distance. They clambered over splintered posts and hedges, ankles wobbling on loose stony lanes, the man with the sack of sour apples laughing as they careered into a carthorse, but as luck would have it the driver encouraged them up, and suddenly they were catching their breath behind yeasty barrels of cider, which they did not like to take advantage of, the man upfront being so kind-hearted, and ignoring their thirst (oh the agony!) they sat watching the rain changing the fields to emeralds. Like Ireland, said Arthur, and Ivy had laughed saying, what would you know, you great lummock, you only ever sing their sentimental clap-trap. He waved at a scarecrow. They watched buildings growing wider. The sky getting shorter. They passed crushed terraced rows with their banks and offices. Fish-supper restaurants. A man on a doorstep was sleeping curled into his dog. Factory girls poured through open gates. And then the chimneys came from nowhere. And the traffic. Boards were propped on every street corner, proudly announcing Miss Jane Stretch, For A Limited Engagement Only! Now Appearing In Court! Showing Twice Daily!