Whitechapel Conspiracy

by Anne Perry

  This time the police had come quickly and some form of order was restored, but nothing was solved. Pitt had been startled by how anti-Catholic feeling had erupted within seconds. It must have been only just controlled all the time. Now, as he walked past a row of small shops, narrow-fronted windows piled with boxes and goods, he remembered other remarks he had heard, slang words for papist said not in fun but with vindictiveness driving them.

  And the feeling had been given back with good measure added.

  He remembered also snatches of conversation about business that would not be done on religious grounds, hospitality denied, even the reasonable help to one in trouble withheld, not out of greed but because the one in need was of the other faith.

  The anti-Semitic taunts were less surprising to him simply because he had heard them before: the dehumanizing, the resentment, the blame.

  He went into the first public house he came to, and sat down at a table near the bar nursing a tankard of cider.

  Ten minutes later a thin-shouldered young man came in with a finger tied up in a bloodstained rag.

  “Eh, Charlie!” the barman said curiously. “Wotcher done ter yerself, then?”

  “Bitten by a bloody rat, that’s wot,” Charlie replied angrily. “Gimme a pint. If I were paid ’alf o’ wot I work fer, I’d ’ave a shot o’ whiskey! But wot poor sod in Spitalfields ever got paid wot ’e was worth?”

  “Yer got a job, yer better’n some,” a pale-faced man said bitterly, looking up from his half pint of ale. “Don’ know w’en yer well orff, that’s your trouble.”

  Charlie turned on him angrily, his cheeks flushing. “My trouble is that greedy men work me night an’ day and take wot I make and sell it and grow fat themselves, an’ keep all us poor sods on a pittance.” He drew in his breath with a rasping sound. “An’ bloody gutless cowards like you don’t stand up beside me to fight fer justice … that’s my trouble! That’s everyone’s trouble ’round ’ere! Just roll over an’ play dead every time anyone looks sideways at yer!”

  “Yer’11 get us all out in the gutter, yer stupid sod!” the other man snapped, clinging onto his mug as if it were some kind of protection to him. His eyes were hot with anger struggling to overmaster the fear that haunted him day and night: fear of hunger, fear of cold, fear of being hurt, fear of being despised and excluded.

  A fair-haired man looked from one to the other of them, apparently not noticing Pitt at all. “What d’yer want ter do then, Charlie? If we all stand beside yer, wot then, eh?” he demanded defensively.

  Charlie glared at him, considering his answer carefully, his face still creased in anger.

  “Then, Wally, we’d see a few changes ’round ’ere,” he retorted. “We’d see a day w’en a man gets paid wot ’e’s worth, not what some fat swine chooses ter give ’im, because ’e’s no use if’e starves!”

  Wally coughed into his beer. “Dream on!” he said witheringly. His tone conveyed his boredom with such empty words he had heard too many times.

  Charlie slammed his empty mug on the bar so hard the pewter made a scar on the wood. “Yeah?” he said belligerently. “Well if we ’ad more men wi’ the guts ter be men, instead of a lot o’ sniveling papists an’ Jews creepin’ around the place, we’d get up an’ fight fer wot’s ours! Like the bloody Frogs did in Paris! Cut a few throats an’ we’ll soon see ’ow quick some o’ them fancy bastards can change their minds about ’oo ’as wot!”

  A dark-haired man shivered a little, biting his lips. “Yer shouldn’t say fings like that!” he warned. “Yer dunno ’oo’s listenin’. You’ll only make it worse.”

  “Worse!” Charlie exploded. “Worse? Wot’s worse ’n this, eh? Yer expectin’ bleedin’ crushers ter come in ’ere an’ cart us all orff ter the Tower o’ London, are yer? All of us, like?” His voice rose, frustration raw and throbbing in his words. “There’s ’undreds an’ thousan’s of us trodden down by a few idle, greedy bastards poncin’ around up west, eatin’ ’emselves sick an’ so fat they can’t scarcely ’old their trousers up. An’ the rozzers are in their bleedin’ pockets, an’ all,” he added, swinging around, daring anyone to challenge him. “That’s w’y they never caught the Whitechapel murderer wot killed them poor cows in ’88. You mark my words, ’e’s one o’ them … an’ that’s the Gawd’s truth!”

  There was a sudden chill in the room. At the table next to Pitt three men stopped talking. Even now, nearly four years afterwards, it was not done to speak of the Whitechapel murderer. No one made jokes about him, and there were no songs, no music hall references.

  “Yer shouldn’t say that!” A gray-haired man was the first to speak, his voice hoarse, his face pasty-white.

  “I’ll say wot I want!” Charlie retaliated, the blood high in his cheeks.

  Someone else started to laugh, and then stopped just as suddenly.

  A stoop-shouldered man stood up and held his glass tankard high. “ ’Ere’s ter nothin’!” he said with a grin. “ ’Ere’s ter terday, ’cos termorrer yer could be dead.” He drank down the entire glass without taking it from his lips to draw breath.

  “Shut yer mouth, yer fool!” the man nearest to him hissed, hard anger in his face, his fist clenched on the tabletop.

  The man subsided sullenly, his grin vanished. “I never said nothin’!” he snarled. “Our day’s gonna come! An’ soon.”

  “Then we’ll see ’ow much sugar they can eat!” his companion said between his teeth.

  “Yer say ‘sugar’ again an’ I’ll put yer bleedin’ lights out meself!” the first man threatened, his eyes hot and black, and hideously sober. “I’ll practice on yer, ready fer all them foreigners wot’s poisonin’ this city an’ takin’ wot should be ours.”

  This time there was no reply.

  Pitt hated everything about this public house—the smell of it, the sudden anger in the air, the defeat, the gleam of gaslight on the battered pewter mugs, the stale sawdust—but he knew it was his job to overhear. He hunched lower down into himself and sipped at the cider.

  Half an hour later a couple of street women came in, soliciting business. They looked tired, dirty, overeager, and for a few moments Pitt was as angry as Charlie had been, for the poverty and despair that made women walk alone around streets and public houses trying to sell their bodies to strangers. It was a squalid and often dangerous way to earn a little money. It was also quick, usually certain, and easier to come by than sweatshop or factory labor, and in the short term, far better paid.

  There was a burst of laughter, coarse, overloud.

  A man at the table next to Pitt was drowning his sorrows, afraid to go home and tell his wife he had lost his job. He was probably drinking the little money he had left, next week’s rent, tomorrow’s food. There was a gray hopelessness in his face.

  A youth named Joe was telling his friend Percy how he planned to save enough money to buy his own barrow and start selling brushes farther west, where it was safer and he could make a better profit. One day he would move and find rooms somewhere else, maybe in Kentish Town, or even Pinner.

  Pitt stood up to leave. He had learned all he was going to, and none of it was anything Narraway would not already know. The East End was a place of anger and misery where one incident would be enough to set it alight with rebellion. It would be put down by force, and hundreds would die. The rage would be submerged again, until next time. There would be a few articles about it in the newspapers. Politicians would make statements of regret, and then return to the serious business of making sure that everything stayed as much as possible the same.

  He trudged back towards Heneagle Street with his shoulders hunched and his head down.

  The remarks about sugar had seemed irrelevant to the rest of the conversation, at least on the surface, and yet they had been said with such bitterness of feeling that they stayed in his mind over the next few days. He had realized from snatches of conversation overheard in the various places he called at in the course of his duties just how many people we
re dependent in one way or another on the three sugar factories in Spitalfields. The money that was earned from them was spent in the shops, in the taverns and on the streets.

  Had the remarks made been anything more than a bitterness at such dependence, and the fear that the only source of income might fail them? Or was there something more specific? Was the reference to a day coming when there would be justice only anger and bravado, or based in fact?

  Narraway’s words came back to him that there was a mounting danger, not just the usual underlying resentment. Circumstances had changed; the mix of people had been added to and was more volatile than in the past.

  But what was there to tell him? That he was right? If so, the solution lay in reform, not policing. Society had cultivated its own destruction; the anarchists were merely going to light the fuse.

  Perhaps he should at least look more closely at the sugar factory in Brick Lane, gain some slight knowledge of the place and see the men who worked in it, get a feeling of their temper.

  The best way seemed to be to pretend he was interested in a job there. He had no skill in the processes of making sugar, but there might be something simpler he could do.

  The following morning he went early down Brick Lane towards the seven-story-high building with its squat windows overlooking the entire town. The smell of cane syrup, like rotting potatoes, filled the air.

  It was easy enough to enter at the yard gates. Huge hogshead barrels were piled up and carts were being unloaded, having just come up from the docks. Men hauled and lifted; cranes were maneuvered into position.

  “ ’Oo are yer, then?” a bull-chested man asked abruptly. He was dressed in worn dun-colored trousers and a leather jerkin shiny with constant rubbing. He stood squarely in front of Pitt, blocking his way.

  “Thomas Pitt. I’m looking for any extra work that might be going.” That was almost true.

  “Oh yeah? An’ wot are yer good fer, then?” He looked Pitt up and down disparagingly. “Not local, are yer.” That was an accusation, not a question. “We got all we need ’ere,” he finished.

  Pitt stared around him at the high, flat sides of the building, the cobbled yard, the wide doors open to the ground floor, and men coming and going.

  “Do you work all night?” he asked curiously.

  “Boilers do. Gotter keep ’em alight. Why? Yer wanner work nights?”

  Pitt most assuredly did not want to work at night, but his curiosity impelled him to pursue the matter.

  “Why? Is there night work available?”

  The man squinted at Pitt. “Mebbe. Yer wanner stand in if one o’ the night watchmen goes sick?”

  “Yes,” Pitt said immediately.

  “Where’d yer live, then?”

  “Heneagle Street, on the corner of Brick Lane.”

  “Yeah? Well, mebbe we’ll send fer yer … an’ mebbe we won’t. Leave yer partie’lars at the office.” He pointed towards a small door in the side of the building.

  “Right,” Pitt accepted. “Thank you.”

  For several days there was no word from the sugar factory, but work at Saul’s silk-weaving shop was more interesting than Pitt had expected. He found himself admiring the bright, delicate fibers, and without having intended to, watching how they were woven into brocades, the subtle blending of colors into patterns.

  Saul observed him with amusement, his dark, narrow face relaxed for a change.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” he said in the middle of one Monday afternoon early in June. “Why are you doing this? It’s not your trade!”

  “It’s a living,” Pitt replied, turning his face away. He liked Saul, who had been more than fair to him, but he remembered Narraway’s warning to trust no one. “Isaac said it was hard to get into the sugar factories unless you knew someone.”

  “So it is,” Saul agreed. “Everyone wants work. And selling on the street is hard. You can make enemies easily. Everyone’s got their own patch. Get your throat cut for pinching someone else’s.”

  Pitt wondered what pressures Narraway had used to persuade Saul to take him on. He noticed most of the other Jews he visited employed their own people, as did all the other identifiable groups.

  “I’m sure.” Pitt smiled. “And who in Spitalfields cares about sweeping crossings?”

  Saul grunted. “There’s worse places.”

  Pitt gave him a glance of incredulity.

  “Believe me!” Saul said with sudden fierceness, his dark eyes brilliant. “Spitalfields may be dirty and poor, and smell like a hole in hell … but it’s safer than the places I’ve been … at least for the moment. Here you can say what you think, read what you like, walk out in the street without being arrested.” He leaned forward, his shoulders hunched, his face tense. “Robbed … perhaps? Set on by hooligans and religious bigots … some days.” He gave a little grunt. “But that’s probably so most places. Here at least it’s random, not organized by the state.” He smiled lopsidedly. “Some of the police are corrupt, and most of them are incompetent—but they’re not vicious, bar the odd one or two.”

  “Corrupt?” Pitt could not help asking. He had not meant to, but the words were out before he guarded them.

  Saul shook his head. “You’re really not from around here, are you!”

  Pitt said nothing.

  “There’s all sorts of things going on,” Saul continued gravely. “You just keep your head down, mind your own business and look after your own. If gentlemen come down here from up west, you don’t see them, don’t know them. Understand?”

  “You mean after women?” Pitt was surprised. There were plenty of better-class prostitutes from the Haymarket to the park and anywhere else. No one had need to come this way where it was dark, dirty and quite possibly dangerous as well.

  “And other things.” Saul bit his lip, his eyes anxious. “Mostly things you shouldn’t ask. Like I said, better you don’t know.”

  Pitt’s mind raced. Was Saul talking about private vice or the plans of insurrection that Narraway feared?

  “If it’s going to affect me, it’s my business,” Pitt argued.

  “It won’t, if you look the other way.” Saul’s face was grave; the urgency of his advice was too vivid to deny.

  “Dynamiters affect everyone,” Pitt said quietly, afraid the moment he had said it that he had gone too far.

  Saul was startled. “Dynamiters! I’m talking about gentlemen from up west who drive around Spitalfields at night in big, black coaches and leave the devil’s business behind them.” His voice trembled. “You tend to your work, run your errands and look after your own, and you’ll be all right. If the police ask you about anything, you don’t know. You didn’t hear. Better still, you weren’t there!”

  Pitt did not argue any further, and that evening as he sat over the table with the last of the food, his attention was taken up by a friend of Isaac’s coming to the door bruised and bleeding, his clothes torn.

  “Samuel, whatever happened to you?” Leah said in dismay, starting up from her chair as Isaac led him in. “You look like you were run over by a carriage.” She looked at him with concern puckering her face, judging what she should do to help him.

  “Had a bit of trouble with a bunch of local men,” Samuel answered, dabbing a bloodstained handkerchief to his lip and wincing as he tried to smile.

  “Here! Don’t do that,” Leah ordered. “Let me look at it. Isaac, fetch me some water and ointment.”

  “Did they rob you?” Isaac asked without moving to obey.

  Samuel shrugged. “I’m alive. It could be worse.”

  “How much?” Isaac demanded.

  “Never mind how much,” Leah said sharply. “We’ll deal with that afterwards. Fetch me some water and the ointment. The man’s in pain! And he’s bleeding all over his shirt. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of good cloth?”

  Pitt knew where the pump was, and the ewer. He went out of the back door and came back five minutes later with the ewer full of wa
ter. How clean it was he had no idea.

  He found Leah and Isaac together, heads bent, talking quietly Samuel was sitting back in a chair, his eyes closed. The conversation stopped the moment Pitt came in.

  “Ah, good, good,” Isaac said quickly, taking the ewer. “Thank you very much.” He set it down and poured about a pint into a clean pan and put it on the stove. Leah already had the ointment.

  “It’s too much,” Leah demanded, her voice low and fierce, her fingers clenched on the jar. “If you give all that this time, then what about next time? And there will be a next time, never mistake it!”

  “We’ll deal with next time when it happens,” Isaac said firmly. “God will provide.”

  Leah let out a snort of impatience. “He’s already provided you with brains! Use them.” She moved fractionally to place her back to Pitt. “It’s getting worse, and you can see that as well as anyone,” she urged. “With Catholics and Protestants at each other’s throats, and dynamiters all over the place, each one crazier than the last, and now talk about blowing up the sugar factory …”

  Samuel sat patiently and silently between them. Pitt leaned against the dresser.

  “No one’s going to blow up the sugar factory!” Isaac said tensely, with a warning glance at her.

  “Oh? You know that, do you?” she challenged him, her eyebrows arched, eyes wide.

  “Why would they do such a thing?” He kept his tone calm.

  “They need a reason?” she demanded with amazement. She lifted her shoulders dramatically. “They’re anarchists. They hate everybody.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with us,” he pointed out. “We look after our own.”

  “They blow up the sugar factory, it’ll have to do with everyone!” she retorted.

  “Enough, Leah!” he said, finality in his tone. Now it was an order. “Look after Samuel. I’ll find him some money to tide him over. Everyone else’ll help. Just do your part.”

  She stared at him solemnly for several seconds, on the edge of further argument, then something in his face deterred her, and without saying anything further she obeyed.