The Mysteries of London Volume 1

by Reynolds, George W. M.

  “Yes—do tell us!” said the landlady, in a coaxing tone.

  “Do—there’s a good fellow,” cried the landlord.

  “Come, tell us,” exclaimed a dozen voices.

  “No—no—I can’t—I should get myself into a scrape, perhaps,” said the knacker, who was only putting a more keen edge upon the curiosity which he had excited, for he intended to yield all the time.

  “We won’t say a word,” observed the landlady.

  “And I’ll stand a quartern of blue ruin,” added the landlord, “with three outs—for you, me, and the missus.”

  “Well—if I must, I must,” said the knacker, with affected reluctance. “The fact is,” he continued slowly, as if he were weighing every word he uttered, “some of the primest bits of the first-rate flesh that goes out of the knackers’ yards of this wast metropolis is sent to the workuses!”

  “The workhouses!” ejaculated the landlady: “oh, what a horror!”

  “An abomination!” cried the landlord, filling three wine-glasses with gin.

  “It is God’s truth—and now that I’ve said it, I’ll stick to it,” said the knacker.

  “It’s a shame—a burning shame!” screamed a female voice. “My poor old mother’s in the Union, after having paid rates and taxes for forty-two year; and if they make her eat horse’s-flesh, I’d like to know whether this country is governed by savages or not.”

  “And my brother’s in a workus too,” said a poor decrepit old man; “and he once kept his carriage and dined in company with George the Third at Guildhall, where he’d no end of turtle and venison. But, lack-a-daisy! this is a sad falling off, if he’s to come down to horse-flesh in his old age.”

  “What’s the use of all this here whining and nonsense, eh?” exclaimed the knacker. “Don’t I tell you that good horse-flesh answers all the purposes of beef, and is eaten by the rich in the shape of sassages and tongues? What’s the use, then, of making a fuss about it? How do you suppose the sassage-shops can afford to sell solid meat, without bone, at the price they do, if they didn’t mix it with horses’-flesh? They pays two-pence a-pound for the first-class flesh—and so it must be good.”

  “Never mind,” ejaculated a voice: “it’s a shame to give paupers only a few ounces of meat a-week, and let that be horses’-flesh. It’s high time these things was put an end to. Why don’t the people take their own affairs in their own hands?”

  “Come, now,” said the knacker, assuming a dictatorial air, and placing his arms akimbo; “perhaps you ain’t aweer that good first-class horses’-flesh is better than half the meat that is sold in certain markets—I shan’t say which—for the benefit of the poor. Now you toddle out on Sunday night, on the Holloway, Liverpool, Mile End, and Hackney roads, and see the sheep, and oxen, and calves, coming into London for the next morning’s market. Numbers of the poor beasts fall down and die through sheer fatigue. They’re flayed and cut up all the same for the butcher’s market. And what do you think becomes of all the beasts that die of disease and so on, in the fields? Do you suppose they’re wasted? No such a thing! They are all cut up too for consumption. Just take a walk on a Saturday night through a certain market, after the gas is lighted—not before, mind—and look at the meat which is marked cheap. You’ll see beef at two-pence halfpenny a pound, and veal at three-pence. But what sort of stuff is it? Diseased—rotten! The butchers rub it over with fresh suet or fat, and that gives it a brighter appearance and a better smell. Howsomever, they can’t perwent the meat from being quite thin, shrunk, poor, and flabby upon the bone.”

  “I’ll bear witness to the truth of all wot you’ve been saying this last time,” said a butcher’s lad, stepping forward.

  “Of course you can,” exclaimed the knacker, casting a triumphant glance around him. “And do you know,” he continued, “that half the diseases and illnesses which takes hold on us without any visible cause, and which sometimes puzzles the doctors themselves, comes from eating this bad meat that I’ve been talkin’ about. Now, tell me—ain’t a bit out of a good healthy horse, that was killed in a reg’lar way, with the blood flowing, better than a joint off a old cow that dropped down dead of the yallows in a field during the night, and wasn’t found so till the morning?”

  With these words the knacker took his departure, leaving his hearers disgusted, indignant, and astonished at what they had heard.

  As the clock struck nine, the Resurrection Man and the Cracksman entered the “Boozing Ken.” They repaired straight into the parlour, and seemed disappointed at not finding there some one whom they evidently expected.

  “He ain’t come yet, the young spark,” said the Cracksman. “And yet he’s had plenty of time to go home and get a change o’ linen and that like.”

  “May be he has turned into bed and had a good snooze,” observed the Resurrection Man. “He is not so accustomed to remain up all night as we are.”

  “I think his head is reg’lar turned with what he has seen in the great crib yonder. He seemed to give sich exceeding vague answers to the questions we put to him as we walked through the park this morning. I’ve heard say that the conwersation of great people is very gammoning, and that they can’t always understand each other: so, if young Holford has been listening to their fine talk, it’s no wonder he’s got crankey.”

  “Humbug!” ejaculated the Resurrection Man, sulkily. “Let’s have some egg-flip, and we’ll wait for him. If he comes he shall give us all the information we want; and if he doesn’t, we will lay wait for him, carry him off to the crib, and let the Mummy take care of him till he chooses to speak.”

  “Yes—that’ll be the best plan,” said the Cracksman. “But don’t you think it’s a wery likely thing he wants to have the whole business to himself?”

  “That’s just what I do think,” answered the Resurrection Man; “he’ll find himself mistaken, though—I rather fancy.”

  “So do I,” echoed the Cracksman. “But let’s have this egg-flip.”

  With these words he ordered the beverage, and, in due time a quart pot filled with the inviting compound, with a foaming head, and exhaling a strong odour of spices, was brought in by a paralytic waiter, who had succeeded the slip-shod girl mentioned on a former occasion.

  “Good stuff this,” said the Cracksman, smacking his lips. “I wonder whether poor Buffer has got anythink half so good this morning.”

  “What’s to-day? Oh! Friday,” mused the Resurrection Man, as he sipped his quantum of flip from a tumbler, with a relish equal to that evinced by his companion: “let’s see—what’s the fare to-day in Clerkenwell Prison?”

  “Lord! don’t you recollect all that?” cried the Cracksman; and taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, he wrote the Dietary Table of Clerkenwell New Prison upon the wall:—

  “That’s a nice allowance for a strong healthy fellow!” exclaimed the Resurrection Man contemptuously. “One month upon that will make his flesh as soft and flabby as possible. It’s a shame, by heavens! to kill human beings by inches in that way!”

  “What a precious fool the Buffer has made of himself!” said the Cracksman after a pause.

  “The Buffer!” ejaculated the paralytic waiter, who had been affecting to dust a table as an excuse to linger in the room with the chance of obtaining an invitation to partake of the flip: “is any thing wrong with the Buffer?”

  “Safe in lavender,” answered the Cracksman, coolly; “and ten to one he’ll swing for it.”

  “My eyes! I’m very sorry to hear that,” cried the waiter. “He was a capital fellow, and never took the change when he gave me a joey[138] to pay for his three-penn’orth of rum of a morning.”

  “Well, he’s done it brown at last, at all events,” continued the Cracksman.

  “What has he done?” asked the waiter.

  “W
hy—what he isn’t likely to have a chance of doing again,” answered the Cracksman. “I suppose you know that he married Moll Flairer, the sister of her as was killed by Bill Bolter at the Old House in Chick Lane, three years or so ago? Well—he had a child by Moll; and a very pretty little creetur it was. Even a fellow like me that can’t be supposed to have much feeling for that kind of thing, used to love to play with that little child. It was a girl; and I never did see such sweet blue eyes, and soft flaxy hair. The moment she was born, off goes the Buffer and subscribes to half a dozen burying clubs. The secretaries and treasurers was all exceedin’ glad to see him, took his tin, and put down his name. This was about two year ago. He kept up all his payments reg’lar; and he was also precious reg’lar in keeping up such a system of ill-treatment, that the poor little thing seemed sinking under it. Now, as I said before, I’m not the most remarkablest man in London for feeling; but I’m blow’d if I couldn’t have cried sometimes to see the way in which the Buffer and Moll would use that child. I’ve seen it standing in a pail of cold water, stark naked, in the middle of winter, when the ice was floating on the top; and because it cried, its mother would take a rope, half an inch thick, and belabour its poor back. Then they half starved it, and made it sleep on the bare boards. But the little thing loved its parents for all that; and when the Buffer beat Moll, I’ve seen that poor child creep up to her, and say in such a soft tone, ‘Don’t cry, mother?’ Perhaps all the reward it got for that was a good weltering. How the child stood it all so long, I can’t say: the Buffer thought she never would die; so he determined to put an end to it at once. And yet he didn’t want money, for we had had some good things lately, what with one thing and another. All I know is that he first takes the little child and flings it down stairs; he then puts it to bed, and sends his wife to the doctor’s for some medicine, and into the medicine he pours some laudanum. The little creature went to sleep smiling at him; and never woke no more. This was two days ago. Yesterday the Buffer goes round to all the burying clubs, and gives notice of the death of the child. But some how or another the thing got wind; one of the secretaries of a club takes a surgeon along with him to the Buffer’s lodgings, and all’s blown.”

  “Well—I never heard of such a rig as that before,” exclaimed the waiter.

  “As for the rig,” observed the Cracksman, coolly, “that is common enough. Ever since the burial societies and funeral clubs came into existence, nothink has been more common than these child-murders. A man in full work can very well afford to pay a few halfpence a-week to each club that he subscribes to, even supposing he puts his name down to a dozen. Then those that don’t kill their children right out, do it by means of exposure, neglect, and all kinds of horrible treatment; and so it’s easy enough for a man to get forty or fifty pounds in this way at one sweep.”

  “So it is—so it is,” said the waiter: “burial clubs afford a regular premium upon the murder of young children. Ah! London’s a wonderful place—a wonderful place! Every thing of that kind is invented and got up first in London. I really do think that London beats all other cities in the world for matters of that sort. Look, for instance, what a blessed thing it is that the authorities seldom or never attempt to alter what they call the low neighbourhoods: why, it’s the low neighbourhoods that make such gentlemen as you two, and affords you the means of concealment, and existence, and occupation, and every thing else. Supposing there was no boozing-kens, and patter-cribs like this, how would such gentlemen as you two get on? Ah! London is a fine place—a very fine place; and I hope I shall never live to see the day when it will be spoilt by improvement!”

  “Come, there’s a good deal of reason in all that,” exclaimed the Resurrection Man. “Here, my good fellow,” he added, turning to the waiter, “drink this tumbler of egg-hot for your fine speech.”

  The waiter did not require to be asked twice, but imbibed the smoking beverage with infinite satisfaction to himself.

  “I never heard any thing more true than what that fellow has just said,” observed the Resurrection Man to his companion in iniquity. “Only suppose, now, that all Saint Giles’s, Clerkenwell, Bethnal Green, and the Mint were improved, as they call it, where the devil would crime take refuge?—for no one knows better than you and me that we should uncommon soon have to give up business if we hadn’t dark and narrow streets to operate in, cribs like this ken to meet and plan in, and the low courts and alleys to conceal ourselves in. Lord! what indeed would London be to us if it was all like the West-End?”

  “And so the fact is that the authorities very kindly leave in existence and undisturbed, those very places which give birth to you gentlemen in the first instance,” said the waiter, “and sustain you afterwards.”

  “Well, you ain’t very far wrong, old feller,” exclaimed the Cracksman. “But, blow me, if this ever struck me before.”

  “Nor me, neither,” said the Resurrection Man, “till the flunkey started the subject.”

  “Ah! there’s a many things that has struck me since I’ve been in the waiter-line in flash houses of this kind,” observed the paralytic attendant, shaking his head solemnly; “but one curious fact I’ve noticed,—which is, that in nine cases out of ten the laws themselves make men take to bad ways, and then punish them for acting under their influence.”

  “I don’t understand that,” said the Cracksman.

  “I do, though,” exclaimed the Resurrection Man; “and I mean to say that the flunkey is quite right. We ain’t born bad: something then must have made us bad. If I had been in the Duke of Wellington’s place, I should be an honourable and upright man like him; and if he had been in my place, he would be—what I am.”

  “Of course he would,” echoed the waiter.

  “Now I understand,” cried the Cracksman.

  “I tell you what we’ll do,” said the Resurrection Man, after a few moments’ reflection; “this devil of a Holford doesn’t appear to hurry himself, and the rain has just begun to fall in torrents;—so we’ll have another quart of flip, and the flunkey shall sit down with us and enjoy it; and I will just tell you the history of my own life, by way of passing away the time. Perhaps you may find,” added the Resurrection Man, “that it helps to bear out the flunkey’s remark, that in nine cases out of ten the laws themselves make us take to bad ways, and then punish us for acting under their influence.”

  The second supply of flip was procured; the door of the parlour was shut; room was made for the paralytic waiter near the fire; and the Resurrection Man commenced his narrative in the following manner.

  CHAPTER LXII.

  THE RESURRECTION MAN’S HISTORY.

  “I WAS born thirty-eight years ago, near the village of Walmer, in Kent. My father and mother occupied a small cottage—or rather hovel, made of the wreck of a ship, upon the sea-coast. Their ostensible employment was that of fishing: but it would appear that smuggling and body-snatching also formed a portion of my father’s avocations. The rich inhabitants of Walmer and Deal encouraged him in his contraband pursuits, by purchasing French silks, gloves, and scents of him: the gentlemen, moreover, were excellent customers for French brandy, and the ladies for dresses and perfumes. The clergyman of Walmer and his wife were our best patrons in this way; and in consequence of the frequent visits they paid our cottage, they took a sort of liking to me. The parson made me attend the national school regularly every Sunday; and when I was nine years old he took me into his service to clean the boots and knives, brush the clothes, and so forth. I was then very fond of reading, and used to pass all my leisure time in studying books which he allowed me to take out of his library. This lasted till I was twelve years old, when my father was one morning arrested on a charge of smuggling, and taken to Dover Castle. The whole neighbourhood expressed their surprise that a man who appeared to be so respectable, should turn out such a villain. The gentlemen who used to buy brandy of him talked loudly of the necess
ity of making an example of him: the ladies, who were accustomed to purchase gloves, silks, and eau-de-cologne, wondered that such a desperate ruffian should have allowed them to sleep safe in their beds; and of course the clergyman and his wife kicked me ignominiously out of doors. As all things of this nature create a sensation in a small community, the parson preached a sermon upon the subject on the following Sunday, choosing for his text ‘Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,’ and earnestly enjoining all his congregation to unite in deprecating the conduct of a man who had brought disgrace upon a neighbourhood till then famed for its loyalty, its morality, and its devotion to the laws of the country.

  “My father was acquitted for want of evidence, and returned home after having been in prison six months waiting for his trial. In the mean time my mother and myself were compelled to receive parish relief: not one of the fine ladies and gentlemen who had been the indirect means of getting my father into a scrape by encouraging him in his illegal pursuits, would notice us. My mother called upon several; but their doors were banged in her face. When I appeared at the Sunday School, the parson expelled me, declaring that I was only calculated to pollute honest and good boys; and the beadle thrashed me soundly for daring to attempt to enter the church. All this gave me a very strange idea of human nature, and set me a-thinking upon the state of society. Just at that period a baronet in the neighbourhood was proved to be the owner of a smuggling vessel, and to be pretty deep in the contraband business himself. He was compelled to run away: an Exchequer process, I think they call it, issued against his property; and every thing he possessed was swept away. It appeared that he had been smuggling for years, and had defrauded the revenue to an immense amount. He was a widower: but he had three children—two boys and a girl, at school in the neighbourhood. Oh! then what sympathy was created for these ‘poor dear bereaved little ones,’ as the parson called them in a charity sermon which he preached for their benefit. And there they were, marshalled into the parson’s own pew, by the beadle; and the parson’s wife wept over them. Subscriptions were got up for them;—the mayor of Deal took one boy, the banker another, and the clergyman’s wife took charge of the girl; and never was seen so much weeping, and consoling, and compassion before!