The Slum Reaper_Murder and corruption in Victorian London

by David Field

  ‘Sorry,’ Esther whispered as they reached the safety of Hackney Road and left The Old Nichol behind them.

  ‘That’s alright,’ Percy assured her, ‘I think she told us all she knew, but it doesn’t really get us any further.’

  ‘Sorry it wasn’t of any more value,’ Esther replied, ‘but you still owe me a gold sovereign.’

  ‘You mean that Alice Bridges does.’ Percy smiled. ‘Perhaps she can work it off with extra babysitting.’

  The following evening Jack was surprised to find Percy back on his doorstep when he answered the knock on the front door.

  ‘Always a pleasure, Uncle Percy,’ Jack assured him as he opened the door, ‘but I’m afraid we ate earlier.’

  ‘So did I, at that chophouse round the corner. But I’m pretty sure the lamb was cooked in seawater, so I’d appreciate a cup of tea.’

  ‘How’s it going?’ Esther asked as she poured. ‘Sorry again for getting Daisy all outraged.’

  ‘That’s alright,’ Percy assured her. ‘From what she was able to confirm, it looks as if my initial suspicions were correct, and that I’m dealing with a well organised team.’ He nodded his head for the biscuit that Esther was offering him from the open tin.

  ‘And you’re no nearer to locating Alice’s niece?’ she enquired as she closed the tin quickly before Jack could help himself.

  ‘Regrettably not,’ he conceded.

  ‘So, what now?’ Jack asked.

  ‘How’s your leg coming along?’ Percy asked.

  ‘Pretty good, actually,’ Jack replied with a broad smile. ‘We went as far as Coram’s Fields today and had a picnic lunch on a bench.’

  ‘You presumably didn’t walk all the way?’

  ‘No, we took a bus,’ Esther explained. ‘Provided he doesn’t have to go upstairs, Jack can manage getting on and off a bus platform and that’s after only a month or so.’

  ‘That’s good news for me, but bad news for you two, hero and wife.’ Percy grinned in that irritatingly knowing way of his.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Jack asked, half prepared for the answer.

  ‘Because, dear nephew, it’s time you went back to work. The holiday’s over and I need you behind a desk.’

  Chapter Six

  After two changes of horse bus, Jack felt as if he’d already done a day’s work as he reported for duty at the front desk inside the impressive building on Victoria Embankment that housed the Scotland Yard headquarters.

  At least he’d stopped looking like Long John Silver and could get around, somewhat painfully and hesitantly with the aid of a walking stick. The desk sergeant sent for his supervisor, who in turn sent for the Chief Superintendent, who immediately delegated the task of what to do with Jack to an Inspector Grierson, who looked Jack up and down appraisingly.

  ‘Can you walk up and down stairs, son?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector,’ Jack lied, since he’d been sitting in the front entrance for well over an hour and would rather attempt to run a mile down the Embankment than remain there any longer.

  ‘That’s alright, then,’ the Inspector said, nodding approvingly, ‘since I’ve been told that you’ve been allocated to Records, so your first task will be to get your arse up two flights and report to Sergeant Ballantyne. Off you go, peg-leg.’

  If Jack was hoping that this would prove to be the one and only taunt for the day he was sadly disappointed as he was introduced to his new colleagues in a large room with far too many desks and a view out over the rear of the premises to what looked like a stable block.

  ‘Here’s the latest walking wounded,’ Sergeant Ballantyne announced to those already sitting at the remaining desks. ‘As yer can see,’ he said to Jack, ‘yer not the only one who’s suffered in the service of Her Majesty.’

  Jack stopped feeling sorry for himself as he looked round at the all-too-visible injuries to his fellow exiles in the land of perpetual paper. There were several with walking sticks like his own propped up precariously at the side of a desk, and many others who were clearly being required to work one-handed, to judge by the slings and the Plaster of Paris casts that they were supporting. There was even one poor soul with his head and neck encased in a wire cage of some sort, which made the simple act of looking around a full-body operation.

  ‘That’s yer desk, over there.’ The sergeant motioned towards a table in the corner already piled high with files, folders and assorted documents.

  ‘We saved you a few,’ said the man with the metal headframe, smiling. ‘Nothing personal, but blokes come and go so fast through here that we take the opportunity of dumping the hard or boring ones onto a spare desk for the next poor sod through the door. Today, that’s you, I’m afraid. I’m Tim Kilmore, by the way, and I wasn’t born with this ivy latticework round my head. I copped that in an argument with a Peterman armed with a neddy. How did you come to disqualify yourself from arse-kicking contests?’

  ‘Jack Enright,’ Jack chuckled. ‘I fell under a horse in Limehouse.’

  ‘You that ’ero cove that’s gonna be given a gong by Her Royal Misery?’ another of them enquired.

  Jack nodded reluctantly.

  ‘So I was told, but that was over a month ago, so probably not.’

  ‘You’ll deserve a medal if you get through that lot,’ Tim grinned with a nod at the pile on Jack’s desk.

  ‘I’d better make a start then, hadn’t I?’ Jack replied with a sigh as he propped his walking stick against the side of his new desk and sat down.

  Two hours later he’d signed off on several ‘Crime Summary’ reports that involved comparing the original incident documents with the edited versions of them on the Summary and ensuring that nothing significant had been left out. The only one to vaguely excite his interest was the one from his old station, Leman Street in ‘H Division, Whitechapel’. It was while stationed there that he’d first met Esther, during that now infamous series of prostitute murders, and he was gratified to note that the grimy confines of his old beat had now reverted to being simply the haunt of thieves, con-men and prostitutes who only got arrested because they hadn’t chosen an alley dark enough to conceal their working activities.

  Given his late start, it seemed a very short working morning before colleagues began to rise from their desks, stretching and announcing the identity of the local food vendor who was being graced with their custom that day. Jack had come armed with sandwiches filled with the leftovers of yesterday’s Sunday roast and as he sat munching them happily in the tearoom at the end of the corridor, he reminded himself that Uncle Percy had a particular reason for wanting Jack back at work and he sent for the criminal history of Michael Maguire.

  Or, as it turned out, most likely the criminal history of the late Michael Maguire, since the previous year the man in question had been sentenced to death for murder. Jack tutted in exasperation as he rose and walked down the long hallway back to the Records front desk, or the ‘sweetie counter’ as his new-found colleagues had dubbed it. He consulted the brief note he’d scribbled on some scrap paper back at his desk and enquired, ‘How soon after an execution do we get the hanging records from Newgate?’

  ‘It varies,’ came the less than helpful reply. ‘Who are you after?’

  ‘Michael Maguire, Newgate, 6th March last year.’

  Eventually the man on the desk came back into view holding a small file, for which Jack was required to sign before he was able to take it back to his desk, by which time his healing leg was calling for a rest from all the walking and standing.

  Jack felt slightly nauseous as he read the detailed record of Maguire’s final few days in the condemned cell, where he’d been weighed and measured for height. At slightly over six feet in height and weighing one hundred and ninety two pounds he must have been a fearsome sight, even without the heavy facial scarring that completed the description.

  A quick look at the accompanying crime report described how he’d acquired those scars; burn marks from a botched attempt to torch a canal-side warehou
se whose proprietor had declined to pay for the necessary fire insurance. A nightwatchman had died in the course of attempting to douse the flames, but Maguire had copped a blazing face full of whatever liquid he’d been handling to start the fire. Given the innocent man’s death, Maguire and a co-offender called Charles Grieves, who’d been unwise enough to remain in order to extinguish Maguire, had been found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang. Their executions had been set for the same day, Monday the sixth of March, a “hanging day” on the jail’s calendar.

  Back to hangman James Berry’s completed report and a bit of a disappointment in the sense that only one of them had hanged that day. But at least it was Maguire, according to the detailed record. Then Jack was pulled up with a start.

  The man who’d been ‘launched into eternity’, to use the euphemism popular at the time, had received a fairly lengthy drop of around six feet, calculated to end his life instantly and deliberately on the long side since he’d only weighed one hundred and forty-five pounds. Even allowing for prison food, Maguire had lost a lot of weight during his time in the condemned cell. Still, Jack reasoned, it was guaranteed to stunt your appetite, sitting there waiting for the dreaded day. But could that also account for the fact that the man on the trapdoor had been only five feet seven in height?

  Almost certainly, the man certified as dead an hour or so later (Dear God, did it take him that long to die?) had not been Michael Maguire, although according to the prison record it had been. And why had Charles Grieves not been hanged at the same time?

  Jack had two choices. He could either call for more Newgate records, thereby incurring another long wait, or he could go down to Newgate himself and examine what they had available, which meant being absent from his desk for half a day and a somewhat lengthy bus ride. Then he remembered the huge leg of lamb that Esther had bought only the other day and sent a wire to Uncle Percy down in Bethnal Green.

  ‘I don’t believe for one moment that Jack’s motivation was to give you a pleasant evening off from your many enquiries,’ Esther advised Percy as she tipped a handful of salt into the pan of potatoes on the stove, ‘so let’s get the case discussions out of the way now, over a glass of that wine that you kindly brought with you.’

  ‘Just like old times,’ Percy reflected as he pulled the cork. ‘I was often round here with a bottle of wine in the early days of your marriage.’

  ‘Usually as a bribe,’ Esther grimaced. ‘I hope that you and Jack aren’t planning to involve me in another of your cases. The last one was the last one, as I told you at the time.’

  ‘Relax,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘I really do want to give Uncle Percy a pleasant evening off from all that he’s dealing with down in Hell’s Kitchen, but I also need his advice.’

  ‘Fire away,’ Percy invited him and Jack gave him the full chapter and verse on the suspicious circumstances of Michael Maguire’s alleged hanging.

  ‘Do they really go into all that detail?’ Esher shuddered. ‘It’s so — so — so callous and unfeeling. Just like they were weighing cattle in an abattoir!’

  ‘Believe me, it’s an improvement on the previous practices,’ Percy assured her. ‘At least this way they can guarantee a quick death.’

  ‘Can we change the subject?’ Esther pleaded.

  ‘Not entirely,’ Jack insisted. ‘It clearly wasn’t Maguire who took the drop and I wouldn’t be surprised if the executed man turned out to be his partner in crime Charles Grieves. But there’s no record of a second hanging, so what exactly went on?’

  ‘Even more importantly,’ Percy observed, ‘where’s Maguire now, if he didn’t hang?’

  ‘He should be easy to identify,’ Jack pointed out, ‘with those burn scars down his face.’

  ‘Unless he disguised them in some way when he got out of jail,’ Percy mused. ‘Maybe grew a beard or something. And I know just such a man, who answers the general description of “He who escaped the gallows”. Either that or his ghost has taken to collecting rents in Bethnal Green.’

  ‘Let’s just hope that the price of his freedom wasn’t to silence poor Emily Broome.’

  Percy nodded.

  ‘I think a visit to Newgate’s in order. But leave that to me — I’ll probably enjoy it more than feeling like a condemned man every time I walk through the door of Bethnal Green Police Station. In the meantime, I need all you can get on “Gregory Properties”. We can meet up again when you’ve got them; wire me down at Bethnal Green and hopefully we can sample that new eating place across the road from the Yard.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Which one of you’s Constable Enright?’ the young boy from the Records Office asked as he stood in the doorway with a thin file under his arm.

  ‘Over here,’ Jack instructed him, as he extracted a shilling from his trouser pocket and handed it to the boy when he placed the file on Jack’s desk. ‘Do you do returns as well as deliveries?’

  ‘I does fer a shillin’,’ the boy replied with a grin.

  Jack pointed to the stack on the outer edge of his desk.

  ‘This pile of “Crime Summary” reports needs to go back to the Sergeant. Are you by any chance hoping to become a police officer yourself one day?’

  ‘Sure am.’

  ‘Well here’s a little careers advice,’ Jack replied, grinning. ‘One — grow another four inches. Two — don’t take bribes, even from other police officers.’

  The boy went out with a cheerful whistle and Tim Kilmore tutted from the adjoining desk.

  ‘He’ll expect that every time now, thanks to you.’

  ‘Only from me and it’s better than a long walk down the hall. You should try it, with a busted leg and a walking stick.’

  ‘Ever tried eating through a wire cage?’ Tim retorted bitterly.

  Jack let the matter drop and concentrated on the recently delivered file. It was the company records for ‘Gregory Properties Ltd’, part of the compendious archive of company registration documents held by the Yard for use by those investigating the countless frauds being perpetrated across the nation during England’s unrivalled industrial prosperity and world trade dominance. The Memorandum of Association listed its two founding members, who were also its majority shareholders and directors. The names were not familiar to Jack, so he made a note of them, before copying out its Objectives, exclusively the ‘provision and erection of housing tenements to alleviate the suffering of the poor in selected areas of the County of London.’ Its annual report meant nothing to Jack other than columns of figures, although its latest annual report — the one for the previous year — contained an assurance that once the company completed its current acquisition and demolition programme and began to sell back the land it had recently purchased, it would no longer be in such heavy debt to the bank.

  Jack looked up in some alarm as Sergeant Ballantyne entered the busy office and headed straight for him with a solemn expression on his face.

  ‘I’ve just bin told that yer’ve taken it upon yerself ter order files what wasn’t allocated ter you in the first place. But accordin’ ter my list, yer overdue at least thirty Crime Summary reports and I want ’em by four o’clock, ter give me time ter sign off on ’em afore I goes ’ome. And if I don’t get ’em by then, yer’ll be goin’ ’ome fer the final time from ’ere. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Jack confirmed as he lowered his head down over his desk.

  Sergeant Ballantyne looked round the room with a satisfied smirk.

  ‘An’ that goes fer the rest o’ you lot in ’ere. Yer may all’ve bin injured in the course o’ duty, but this is the Scotland Yard Central Records Office, not Victoria bleedin’ Park. Get yer ’eads down an’ yer arses up!’

  ‘How was your day?’ Esther asked eagerly as Jack let himself through the front door to find her waiting with a smile and a welcome home kiss. ‘I hope it wasn’t too tiring or painful.’

  ‘Neither,’ he replied, smiling, ‘just boring. It’s always the same in Records and I’ll go slowl
y insane if I have to stay in there for more than a month, even if I am able to run some sort of courier service for Uncle Percy while I’m in there. But they haven’t kept the promise about promotion to Sergeant. Not yet anyway.’

  Esther’s eyes twinkled with excitement as she pointed to the hall stand.

  ‘Looks like they kept the other promise, though. There’s a letter addressed to you with “Buckingham Palace” written on the envelope.’

  Percy hammered on the Newgate front gate knocker wearing the facial expression of a Grim Reaper and demanded to speak to the Keeper.

  ‘He’s having tea in his private rooms at the moment,’ the Senior Turnkey advised Percy once he had been through several admission processes and several sets of gates.

  ‘I don’t care if he’s having a baby in there,’ Percy growled back. ‘This is a matter of the utmost gravity, but if the organ grinder’s not available, I’ll speak to his monkey instead. Now.’

  The Deputy Keeper was advised that a very irate and forceful gentleman from Scotland Yard awaited his displeasure and Percy was invited to take a seat in front of a desk the size of a shop counter, but minus any papers or other indications of work that might be in progress.

  ‘I’m Edmund Tillotson — what can I do for you?’

  ‘You can confirm that on the sixth of March last year — that is, 1893 — you hanged a man named Michael Maguire. You can then explain what happened to his co-accused Charles Grieves, who was scheduled to hang on the same day.’

  ‘Surely you’ve consulted our records?’

  ‘Of course I have, or rather one of my men has. The ‘drop’ weight for the man hanged under the name of Maguire doesn’t match Maguire’s physical description.’

  ‘They do vary a little from the date when they’re first weighed,’ Tillotson advised him.

  Percy’s face set even harder.

  ‘I’m well aware of that, my friend. But in my experience and contrary to what people might think, prisoners in condemned cells tend to put on weight. So how did Mr Maguire manage to lose forty-seven pounds in less than a week, not to mention five inches in height?’