The Cry from Street to Street

by Hilary Bailey

  I said, ‘I’m looking for a lady who lives here. Mary Kelly. Do you know anyone who could help me?’

  Seemingly not hardened to Whitechapel ways, where a child’s first lesson is never to give information to a stranger, the little girl responded, ‘No, miss. Never heard of her, miss.’

  ‘Is your mother in? Could I talk to her?’

  As I said this a tall, thin young woman appeared on the landing, her head tied up in a scarf, white threads on her black skirt. She demanded, ‘What is it?’

  ‘I wonder if you can help me?’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Mary Kelly.’

  ‘Gone,’ she responded. ‘Nearly a year ago. We’ve got her room.’ She gave me a hard look. ‘What do you want with her?’

  I could tell she’d heard tales of her predecessor, from the rent collector or another neighbour, and did not approve of what she had heard.

  ‘Was she Mary Jane Kelly? A fair-haired woman?’ I asked.

  She nodded reluctantly. ‘Sometimes she called herself Marie.’ She added, ‘French,’ with all the disapproval an English person can impart to that word.

  ‘Thank God!’ I found myself crying out. ‘It must be my sister. Can you tell me where she went? Will anyone know?’

  Her mouth closed tightly. She glanced at her children, back at me. She said, ‘She didn’t stop to let anyone know where she was going. She left no address. The rent collector’s still looking for her.’

  ‘Can I speak to him? Where does he live?’

  ‘Mr Brewer. He lives in Doughty Street,’ she told me. She couldn’t wait for me to leave.

  ‘Are you sure there isn’t anyone here she was friendly with?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I keep myself to myself. Try the police station.’ Arms folded, she guarded her landing, her stairs, her children. The battle to stay decent, the daily struggle to avoid hopeless poverty takes its toll. She tensed as I ran upstairs to give the children sixpence each, tucking each coin into a surprised little hand, and then watched me like a dog as I left. I hoped the children would get toys, but thought most of the money would end up in the hands of Mr Brewer in Doughty Street.

  Some shaven-headed boys were playing on the pavement outside with a stick and ball. I asked them if they knew of Mary Kelly. Of course they denied it, would have denied it if she’d been their own sister.

  ‘Say her sister’s looking for her,’ I then told them. In Whitechapel the system of street communications is faster than the telegraph.

  They brightened up. ‘I’ll find her for a shilling,’ asserted one.

  ‘There could be something in it for the person who finds her and tells Mrs Mundy at the alehouse in Brushfield Street,’ I remarked. ‘There might be five shillings.’

  This quickened their interest even more. ‘I know where she is,’ claimed one boy.

  I didn’t believe him. ‘Tell Mrs Mundy,’ I told him and walked away.

  I was pleased. Admittedly, the news of Mary Jane was old, but she’d been here, in Whitechapel, last year, and I thought she might still be. And at all events, she was alive and thriving.

  I spoke to Jack Armitage at the Lamb and Flag down Thames Street, and left word at the herbalist, she called herself Old Mother Hardacre’s, in Aldgate. These were the only two people in all Whitechapel I could trust to keep their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut. To Whitechapel, in my character of the wealthy sister back from Canada, I would look like the answer to everyone’s prayers. The good news would travel swiftly. Within twenty-four hours half the district would be swarming all over me like Cornish-men on a wrecked ship. I’d be besieged with Mary Kellys and tales of Mary Kellys, they’d try to sell me their children, offer to become my servant, errand boy, fancy man, anything I pleased. They’d swear eternal loyalty, and plan to rob me. Even to Jack Armitage and Old Mother Hardacre (by a message to the man she called her husband) I did not reveal my address, just asked them to leave a message with Cora Mundy.

  Tired of walking, I went into a respectable-looking café west of Aldgate, then went by cab to Doughty Street. By now it was about five o’clock. A postman directed me to Mr Brewer’s residence, a lean, three-storeyed house with a plane tree outside. The tree had some brown leaves on it. Autumn was approaching.

  A little maid answered the bell and I looked into a narrow hall with flowered wallpaper. There was an unpleasant smell of old roast lamb and cabbage mingled with something else. I gave my name, Mrs Frazer, and asked if I might see Mr Brewer.

  ‘He’s at his tea,’ the maid reported discouragingly.

  ‘May I wait?’ I asked. She looked me up and down, but I was too ladylike to be summarily ejected on to the pavement.

  ‘I’ll ask,’ she said.

  Brewer then came out, a short, thickset man with a heavy black moustache. He looked like a man with a ready temper, controlled but ready to leap like a tiger. I took an immediate dislike to him there and then. I had seen my mother begging such a man for time to pay the rent and weeping when refused. It is not a pleasant job, taking rents from the very poor, for such housing as they can afford. They do not employ pleasant men to do it.

  I stood calmly in his hall, my bag on my arm, my gloved hands clasped loosely in front of me.

  His manner changed when he saw a pretty, well-dressed woman, bearing about her, as I knew I must, an air of authority normally found only in the womenfolk of the mighty of the land. This air I had achieved by running a bad house, with all the responsibilities and dangers that such a life entails, but he was not to know that. I apologized for interrupting him at an inconvenient time and said I would be glad to return at a more suitable hour.

  He had already adjusted his jacket, which he had plainly put on in order to greet me, and ‘Not at all, not at all,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d care for a cup of tea. But I’m afraid you’ll have to take us as you find us, in the dining-room. There are workmen in the drawing-room and everything’s topsy-turvy.’ He looked cross about this as he led me into his dining-room. As we were entering, two big lads in caps, one with a boat under his arm, and a little girl of about five, her loose hair held back by a ribbon gone awry, came in through the front door, accompanied by a maid.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked in agitation. ‘And you’re putting water on the floor.’ A few drops were falling from the boat on to the tiles.

  ‘We’ve been to the park, papa,’ the older of the boys told him.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘But Maria must take the boat into the kitchen. And’, he told her, ‘get Jane to clear the table quickly.’

  His tone had been sharp, but ‘The cares of a family man,’ he remarked more jovially as we went into the dining-room.

  It was a biggish room with some large, dull paintings in oils on the walls and a window which must have looked out on to the garden, though the thick net curtains obscured any view. At a mahogany table, laid only at one end, sat a young woman, seeming to be in her early twenties, heavily pregnant. Opposite her was a young man with a pale face and red-brown hair dressed in a stiff shirt with a bow tie and a brown jacket, which appeared a little short in the arms for him, as if he’d grown after it had been bought.

  Brewer introduced me. ‘My wife. My clerk, Mr Henry Churchill.’

  Churchill, I supposed, would be one of the chief rent collectors for properties managed by Brewer; Brewer would only step in where there were complications or difficulties. Or something else. Young Churchill, in his stiff collar and starch-laden shirt, had the air of a young man whose laundry was still being looked after by a devoted mother, who sent him off each morning ‘tidy for business’. A pimple on his neck, sign of a poor diet, I thought, threatened to burst, nigh to the collar. A strictly-brought-up widow’s son, I decided. Congregational, probably.

  I looked warily at Brewer, a man who would take advantage of an attractive tenant in trouble with the rent. Comprehending such things by instinct is, after all, part of my trade. Mrs Brewer – the second Mrs Brewer, I assumed, for she was not nearly old enou
gh to be the mother of either of the boys, possibly not even of the little girl – would naturally know nothing of his exploitations. She drooped a little in her chair, perhaps in need of rest.

  The servant who had opened the door came in with a tray and began, hurriedly, to clear the dishes on the table, a cake, bread and butter, a dish of junket and Mr Brewer’s plate. He had partaken of a piece of smoked haddock, I noted, and this accounted for the confusion of smells in the hall.

  ‘Forgive this informality,’ he said. ‘And please sit down.’ He took his own chair at the head of the table. I sat beside Henry Churchill.

  ‘Now, in what way can I help you?’ He hoped, I expect, that I wished him to manage some large property of mine. This, at any rate, was the impression I had tried to convey, otherwise I do not think he would have seen me so quickly. I leaned forward past Churchill to see him better. ‘I’ve come to ask your assistance, in a family matter. I’ve only recently returned from Canada after the death of my husband.’ Condolences were murmured, for which I thanked them. ‘The reason I impose on you so inconveniently is because I’m trying to discover the whereabouts of my sister, lost to me because of some family difficulties. I’ve visited some lodgings of hers which she used to have, and a lady there said that you were trying yourself to find out where she now is. I believe’, I said, dropping my eyes to the lace cloth on the table, ‘there were some arrears of rent due to you which, of course, I would be more than glad to settle on her behalf.’ I returned my eyes to his face. ‘I have come to help her. Can you assist me in finding her?’

  He was looking disturbed. I now came to the difficult part of my story. ‘Her name’, I said steadily, ‘is Mary Jane Kelly. The house I visited is in Goulston Street, Whitechapel.’

  At this, Brewer flinched, scarcely perceptibly, and glanced at his wife as if assuring himself of something – that she did not know of anything like Goulston Street, or the Mary Kellys of the world, their lives and trade, or perhaps merely that she could not read his guilty conscience. His gaze returned to me; a less obliging expression came to his face. ‘She was there last Christmas,’ I said.

  ‘Elizabeth, will you leave us?’ he asked. She stood up immediately, said goodbye to me and left. Brewer leaned back in his chair now, clasped his hands in front of him, became familiar. Churchill followed suit, tipping his own chair back and turning his head towards me. A kind of taproom atmosphere, initiated by Brewer, and picked up by his clerk, began to prevail. Any respect I might have got from them as a lady had evaporated now they knew I was the sister of a common prostitute.

  They say there are above 60,000 prostitutes in London. As it’s a city of three and a half million that’s one in thirty of all the women and girls there, and one in twenty if you exclude those too young or too old for the game, though in Whitechapel it’s hard to be either. They call London the Great Whore, and it’s no wonder, seeing so many of her daughters are practising her trade there. Anyway, by arithmetic there’s a whore for every twenty men in London and though not every man in the city makes use of them, many do – or many a poor woman would be hungrier than she is. This Brewer was a whoremonger – it’s a habit which leaves its mark on a man, for those who can spot it. I was sure he’d introduced his overgrown-schoolboy clerk Churchill to his nice practices. Thus the relaxation of manners in his dining-room, now I had slipped, in his eyes, by my connection with Mary Jane. He could probably smell me, anyway, as I smelled him. I played the ignorant to make him uncertain of the position, knowing that otherwise I’d get no assistance from him, merely insult.

  ‘Have you any information to help me?’ I asked in an even tone. ‘I have offered a reward for anyone who finds her.’

  He looked at me insolently. ‘I shall have to consult my books,’ he told me. ‘They are at my office.’

  ‘May we make an appointment to meet there?’

  ‘I shall be back there at seven this evening, briefly,’ he said. ‘Would that time suit you?’

  ‘Indeed, it would.’ I stood up to leave. He stood also, ready to see me out. He had fallen for me. He desired me, but thought me too proud, thought he couldn’t have me, so he attacked. ‘I must advise you – you must prepare your mind for disturbing news about your sister.’

  ‘What news?’ I cried, turning round in alarm.

  He shook his head. ‘Her life …’ he said. He hesitated, to make me even more anxious. Was Mary Jane ill, I wondered? Diseased? In the workhouse? In prison? ‘Her life’, he repeated, ‘is not a blameless one.’

  I tried not to look too relieved. ‘Whatever her case, I only want to help her,’ I said gravely. ‘This city is dangerous in many ways for a young woman on her own.’

  I hot-footed it then to Whitechapel, taking the Aldgate route, best avoided by the squeamish, for that’s where the slaughterhouses are, the streets full of castaway innards, which the poor pick over for their food. The walls around the slaughterhouses, when they’re killing, are lined with boys and girls, the little fiends, clapping and shouting at the squeals and moos of the scared animals, relishing the throat-slittings and stunnings and the sight and smell of fresh blood. It’s considered cowardly to flinch. Those who don’t enjoy it have to pretend. Then the pious, leaving their own children in their nurseries with their peep-shows and fairy-stories, descend on the East End to lecture us on depravity. What chance could there be of finding virtue, sensibility, Christian charity in children over-stimulated in that way? The miracle is that any grow up decent, as some do.

  I cut through the stalls of Whitechapel Road and went to Mrs Mundy’s to see if there were any messages and to tell her the name and address of my new-found lawyer, Mr Ratcliffe. I was not going to tell Cora where I lived.

  ‘No messages,’ said the fat woman. ‘But a boy came in and told me you’d asked me to give him half a crown for information supplied. I knew he lied, clipped his ear for him and sent him packing.’

  ‘Quite right,’ I told her. ‘Nothing, then?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not a whisper.’ Her little eyes seemed to cloud. ‘God, Mary,’ she said, ‘I don’t half suffer with bad dreams. I’d hardly a wink last night.’ She shook her head again, trying to throw the spectres from her mind. I wasn’t the only one tormented by nightmares. ‘What’s it all about?’ asked this woman, who had, in her time, probably broken every one of the ten commandments, and would break them all again next day for sixpence. ‘Here we are, the Queen’s on her throne, God bless her, the country’s at peace. Yet look about you, there’s misery and want everywhere. Only last night a poor old woman round the corner was half beaten to death in her own room for the little she had. They say she’ll lose an eye for sure. Sad and miserable days, Mary. Thank God I’ve got my Harry to protect me, that’s all. It makes you feel heavy, things are that bad.’ She sighed.

  I knew she was given to these fits of gloom. ‘Soon you’ll hear a shilling ring on your counter,’ I told her. ‘The sound will revive you and make life seem worth living again.’

  She disliked my tone. ‘Jim Bristow got to hear of your return,’ she told me, scanning my face to see how the news affected me. ‘He dashed round here to ask where you were.’

  ‘I don’t want to see him,’ I said. ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she answered, quite annoyed. ‘You indicated you wanted nothing to do with him. Still …’ She sighed a sentimental sigh. ‘Poor Jim. Things haven’t gone well for him recently.’ She stared, to see how I would respond to this news. I took care not to, and saying I had an appointment to meet someone who might tell me where Mary Jane was, I departed politely, leaving five shillings on the counter, to keep her sweet. I could not afford to fall out with her but I did not trust her where Jim Bristow was concerned. Some women, as they grow older, develop a weakness for these cocky young villains, and Cora was one of them.

  For the excitement of it, I descended into the bowels of the earth at Whitechapel, and took the new underground train to Baker Street. I stood on the platform and saw
a train come in through a tunnel from the centre of London, flinging out smoke and disgorging people. And it was not seven o’clock yet, so many offices and shops would not yet have closed and released the workers. Even so, what a gang was rattling through the underground tunnels of London! These were clerks, a street-sweeper, a gaggle of shopgirls, women with packages, a girl with a tray, who had been selling flowers judging by the big red rose in her hat, two women of the streets with painted faces, a couple of old rabbis with beards and big black hats, a group of bad lads you could swear had been pick-pocketing in the West End crowds (one to distract, one to pick the pocket, the rest to pretend to give chase to the villain and trip up the real pursuers as if by accident).

  I ascended my noisy train most nervously considering I was a woman who once found a bear snoozing on her porch in the snow on a winter morning and took it quite for granted. I was then whisked to Baker Street, first in the open, then under London’s streets. I marvelled at the development. From there, being short of time, I took a cab to Sackville Street for my appointment with Mr Brewer. I was received by a clerk, then asked to wait on a chair in the big room where six men in black coats sat working at large ledgers. Half an hour elapsed awkwardly for us all as I sat in the overcrowded, hot room, covertly assessed by the men working there.