by Roger Wood
Sir Thomas, I gather, has given you the circumstances in which I contracted my illness. He, I know, blames my client. Myself, I blame the squalor of the English penal system. We claim to be civilizing the world yet even to this day we keep minor offenders and those whose only sin is to have run out of funds in conditions that would outrage the keeper of a flea circus.
Typhus is a coquette among diseases. It lets you go about your business for several weeks, passing the contagion to your colleagues, friends and family. I was fortunate, I suppose, in that I had few of the former, a surprisingly low number of true friends, and no family whatever here in London. To begin with I thought I had caught cold. My head and my joints ached. I sneezed and sweated a good deal. Then I broke out in spots. Another caprice in the modus operandi of typhus is that the rash tends to spare the visible parts – the face, the hands. Thus one can fasten one’s cuffs, take to wearing a higher collar, and continue to walk the streets promulgating the poison.
There is, of course, a price to be paid – eventually. For me it began with a sudden acute sensitivity to light. One morning, not an especially sunny one, I stepped out from my lodgings in Angel Street, glanced up at the sky as one does, and… It was as if that shaft of watery sunlight was a lance that speared me through the eye and pierced right through to the back of my brain. I swear I felt it thud against the inside of my cranium. I fell. Passers-by – old ladies with tiny spaniels – helped me back up. They asked me what the matter was. I could not find words. I daresay they assumed I was the victim of strong spirits, which in point of fact has never been my vice. They helped me negotiate the door back into my lodgings, for I dared not open my eyes for fear I was blind. But once in that shadowy space at the foot of those benighted stairs I was again free of pain and able to see.
For a time I tried to arrange my affairs so that I only ventured forth at night. Clients, I found, do not like an attorney who keeps the same nocturnal round that they do. Soon there was no business to drag me out of doors and I was glad of it. Within a week of that first lightning bolt I found even lamplight too strong for my comfort. It is, as you may have surmised, a symptom of my disease that has persisted to the present.
The next, which I suppose also continues to an extent, was loss of appetite. I could not face the prospect of eating. My neck had seized up to the extent that I could not move my head at all, and I had some fevered fancy that my gullet had ceased to function. When the woman I paid to meet my domestic needs protested at the state of me I dismissed her forthwith. I kept to my rooms thereafter, sweltering day and night, assailed by all manner of wild notions, not eating or sleeping. At some point – I don’t know when – I took to my bed and resolved to either die or recover. That was how Doctor McCulloch found me.
My former housekeeper had taken my boorish behavior as a symptom of my disease and had contacted my grandfather in Ayrshire who, as a matter of strict fact, was her actual employer. He sent his personal physician, McCulloch, post-haste from Kilmarnock. This was before the advent of the railway, so Lord knows how long it took him to reach London. All I knew – or believed that I knew – was that he was there, in my room, peering down at me from under the most extravagant set of eyebrows. I should tell you that by this point my whole body was seized solid, like a pocket-watch in sand. All I saw was an area of perhaps three feet square directly above my pillow. Thus what I saw first was the face of my housekeeper, her eyes reddened, lips compressed, her cheeks sunken. Then those eyebrows, a thicket of gorse-coloured hair set low on the forehead, a nose like a coal shovel, and a mouth that writhed and grimaced almost silently. That was the first I knew that my hearing was affected like every other physical function. I wasn’t totally deaf – it was like listening with my head under water. I heard sounds, but they were muffled, virtually undecipherable, and seemed to reach me from a great distance. On that basis I concluded that the owner of the wind-weathered face floating over me was mumbling to himself. Grumbling was probably nearer the mark, knowing McCulloch as I came to. After a while he straightened, thereby moving to the extreme periphery of my vision. I saw him speaking, presumably to my housekeeper – giving instructions, I surmised. Moments passed, perhaps minutes. The woman must have gone about her errands, for the next thing I knew he was leaning over me again, closer this time, too close, I thought. He was talking at me, making every effort to be heard. This is what I believe he said:
“You’re not hearing right, is that it? Watch my lips. I’ll speak as loud as I decently can. Understood?”
Yes, I understood, but how could I convey my understanding? I had not spoken for a good while. I knew the faculty would fail me. I tried blinking. I rolled my eyes. It was good enough, evidently, because he nodded his massive head. He swooped even closer to my face. I blinked madly – I thought he was going to kiss me – but in truth his target was my right ear. He spoke therein. I heard him, not as the cliché has it as clear as a bell but as if my head was inside the bell. His voice rang and boomed and resonated. He said to me, “You, my lad, are done for. If I were you, I’d prepare to meet my maker.”
Here I had to interrupt. It is, after all, a question we have all considered. “How did it feel, sir, to be told you were about to die?”
He pondered a while, then: “In my case – in the condition I then was – it was a matter of supreme indifference.”
I nodded thoughtfully. What else could I do? Personally, I would hope to go with regret, resignation, reluctance – anything, really, so long as it’s not apathy.
My moment of reflection gave him chance to do the same. He asked, “I take it you are familiar with the reason we needed an Anatomy Act back then?”
I was. “On account of the Burkers, I believe.”
“Indeed. They were a thriving trade in London at that time. No one – no place of interment – was safe from their depredations. It made no difference if you laid in a pauper’s grave or a family mausoleum. Your loved ones might hire guards or set watchdogs, but the Burkers were so flush, so determined, that they would bribe the former and dope the latter. The anatomists, of course, were complicit.”
A thought occurred. “I say!” I started. “You don’t maintain that this Scots fellow McCulloch---”
“I know so for a fact.”
“You mean he certified death while you were still---”
“This was before certification was a requirement, but he certainly declared life extinct. Whether he did so knowing that the spark still flickered – that I cannot say. In truth I doubt it, for he went to heroic lengths to keep me going, at least until my mother arrived.”
“From India?”
“Certainly.”
“How long does that take?”
“I have no idea. There are various routes, various rates. It is an extremely long time since I made the journey and I took the cheapest possible packet. Is it important?”
“No,” I admitted. “I just wondered.”
I also wondered. Wondered why McCulloch went to such lengths to preserve the little life that remained in me. I had not eaten in an age. He spoonfed me broth and porridge. A spoonful was all I could take. He moistened my lips with cordial. I do not know the flavor. I had no taste, no sensation anywhere in my body. I breathed so shallowly that my sense of smell was fleeting and at best only really registered man-made, artificial scents.
I felt no pain or discomfort, which I suppose was a blessing. My muscles had wasted away to nothing. I could not move. Every so often McCulloch would raise my eyelids to study my pupils. For those few seconds I could see perfectly well, albeit in the limited frame I mentioned before. In those moments I felt a certain pleasure, coupled with a measure of dread that all too soon he would let my lids fall again. And I retained that muffled vestige of hearing. By now I had worked out why my ears were blocked. My head was sunk so deep into my pillows that my ears were covered. There was no way I could ask for an adjustment. In truth the muffling did not trouble me unduly. What did they have to say that was of any consequ
ence to me?
One time my eyes were opened and I beheld my mother leaning over me. I knew she was not a dream – I had also lost the ability to dream, another defect that persists today. She looked older, desperately weary, and understandably distressed. I heard her far-off voice saying my name. I tried to show that I recognized her, that I was pleased to see her, sorry to cause her so much upset. My idea was to contract my pupils. Have you ever tried consciously to do that, Mr Tumbley? I fancy it is impossible. Mankind professes to rule the world, to understand every process of life, but we cannot command the most miniscule of muscles.
I heard them talking many times thereafter. Only rarely could I determine what they were saying. It seemed to me they conversed in undertones. Presumably sparing the feelings I no longer had. On one occasion my mother raised her voice sufficient for me to hear her clearly. “Never!” she declared. “Do you hear me, sir? I will never allow---” Her voice faded. I did not hear what she would not allow. But I suspect I know. Then, sometime later – it might have been days or mere hours – McCulloch lifted my lids, looked down upon me, inhaled fiercely, lowered those thunderous brows and turned to my mother. “Madam,” he said. I heard him clearly. “Your son is gone.”
Then I felt something. Sheer, stark panic, Mr Tumbley. I wanted to scream. No, no – you are mistaken, you miserable quack. I’m still here. Listen! Feel my chest. Put a mirror to my lips. I’m here! But, of course---
“I have asked many times since,” Stapleton said. “Is it possible for the breathing to be so suppressed that it is imperceptible?” The doctors tell me, ‘Such cases have been reported.’ ‘And likewise the pulse?’ I ask. ‘The pulse likewise,’ they assure me. ‘But the eye,’ they add, ‘the eye is not only the mirror of the soul, it is the sure indication that life is or is not present.’ They say this with certainty, despite the disproof positive standing before them. ‘There can be no mistaking the cast of death.’”
“The fellow McCulloch mistook it,” I said, stating the obvious. “He should have been indicted for murder. Manslaughter at the very least!”
“Dr McCulloch escaped earthly justice. Whether he faced a greater justice elsewhere…”
Did I discern the flicker of a smile? Impossible to say for sure. Stapleton’s features, even thrown into relief by the candlelight, seemed immobile.
“It was, of course, part of the reasoning for my appointment under the Act. That I would serve as a living warning to the anatomists. They underestimated the resilience of the profession. McCulloch’s determination of death was passed off as an unfortunate oversight. What could one expect from a rural generalist? No London surgeon would have made the error. Indeed, far from consigning me to a premature and unnecessary death, the elite of metropolitan practice had saved me!”
This time there could be no mistake. That dry throaty crackle was definitely an expression of amusement. The face, however, remained frozen.
You assume, naturally, that I would be terrified by my situation. I was startled. I panicked – but only for a matter of moments. After all, what sort of life did I retain? I was effectively blind, intermittently deaf, and incapable of the slightest movement. I was by any yardstick as good as dead. I remember wondering if I had in fact passed over. I was raised with an absolute faith in the afterlife. Was this it? If so, it wasn’t so bad. I was free of pain and my mind was as clear as it had ever been. Overall, I was intrigued to discover what happened next.
At some juncture the undertakers came. I heard muttered conversation, the voices all male. I was lifted from the bed and carried across the room. I did not feel the touch of hands upon my body, I certainly did not see the room passing by, yet I sensed the movement very clearly, first vertical, then horizontal. I have discussed it with professors of anatomy. The general opinion is that the faculty of balance was involved. Something to do with the inner ear, as I understand it.
Evidently I was placed in my coffin. I heard the lid go on but no nailing. I very much hoped that didn’t suggest the possibility of embalming. I have always found that a ludicrous and sentimental practice. I mean, have you ever seen anything as pathetic and undignified as the desiccated remains of a mummified pharaoh? I was then carried downstairs, loaded onto a wagon of some kind, and processed through the streets to the mortuary. Again, all this I experienced through the inner ear. I confess I enjoyed it. It was a long time since I had experienced in any way the bustle and hum of a busy London street.
I lay undisturbed in what they like to call nowadays the chapel of rest. In my day it was the mortuary, plain and simple. No one tried to embalm me. No one even opened the coffin. I realised during that period something I had never considered during my illness. I had ‘died’ of an infectious disease. Contact with my remains, back then, was considered an unnecessary risk. The tang of carbolic was especially strong during my time there.
I have since established that I was pronounced dead around seven in the evening. I was taken to the mortuary the following day and buried the day after that. My mother and Dr McCulloch were the only mourners. Apparently my friends and colleagues had been warned off for fear of the typhus. Tommy Chambers likes to claim he was there but if he came at all I expect it was no closer than the lych gate. It was a perfectly respectable graveyard – St Sepulchre’s, no less. I still own the grave, I fancy, though the churchyard is closed now and I will never again use it. But in those days you could lie in St George’s Chapel Windsor and not be safe from the Burkers. The failure of the Anatomy Act in Parliament had emboldened them. Bodysnatching was only ever a misdemeanour. Without an act to definite it, was it even that?
They came for me on the third night of my supposed death. They knew I was fresh, reasonably young and supposedly quite clever. My wasted body might not have been worth very much, but my brain… McCulloch had tipped them off, of course. The Burkers knew as well as any medical man that typhus dies with the body.
What is the sound of a spade cutting through earth when heard from below? We never hear it because we are always on the air side. I heard it, though, on the third night. To me it sounded like a razor being sharpened on a worn-out strop. It was metallic but also percussive. I had no idea what it was at first. Then I identified it and jumped to the conclusion that McCulloch had realised his mistake and sent the sexton to recover me.
Then I sensed the coffin jolt under the assault from above. I heard the lid crack and splinter and finally shatter. I sensed myself being hauled, bodily, from the grave. Again I was moved, though I could not make sense of how it was done. After many years of consideration I have concluded I was thrown like a sack over the shoulder of the strongest Burker, my rear parts by his cheek, my face hanging down by his backside. After a few moments of that I was spun over and dumped into what I think was a costermonger’s barrow. Again I rattled through the streets of London, sensing every cobble and gutter. This time though the streets were silent, deserted.
The movement finally ceased. I heard conversation. Two men, one much older than the other.
“This is him,” the younger said. “The one we was sent for.”
“Show me the face.”
“Why, friend of yours, is he?”
“There are people here who will know him.”
“I wish ‘em joy of the reunion. But you keep me hanging round any longer, Jack, and I’ll take my custom elsewhere.”
Some grumbling ensued, then money changed hands with a clink that rang like a handbell in the night. I was dragged from the barrow and bundled into what I sensed was a substantial building. I was toted hither and thither – upstairs and along long passages. With only hearing and balance at my disposal I quickly lost sense of place or position.
Finally I was laid on some sort of table. I heard the retreat of workmen’s boots, then the stealthy approach of soft-soled shoes, the footwear of gentlemen, professional men.
“I must say, McCulloch, you didn’t exaggerate the condition.”
I could hear clearly now. No pillow to muffle the i
ncoming sound. I lay wholly exposed. I heard the wheeze of breath, the tick of pocket-watches, the straining of stitching in trousers that were too tight. I smelled cigar smoke, hair lotion, men’s feet in silken stockings.
“Well, gentlemen, shall we begin?”
Now I knew panic, Mr Tumbley, panic as never before, not even when McCulloch pronounced me. Death is one thing - these villains were proposing dissection and dismemberment. I heard the production of surgical implements. I smelled an overpowering waft of alcohol. I heard coats removed, sleeves rolled. I sensed them crowd around me. I prayed with all my heart, not for rescue or reprieve, but for a simple everyday sneeze. A sneeze would save me, and if it gave my tormentors an apoplexy, so much the better.
No sneeze came. My prayers fell on deaf ears or went spinning off into the eternal abyss. Since that moment I have not wasted a fraction of a second on religion. I have empirical evidence that faith goes unrewarded.
They stripped my clothes from me, the suit in which I had been dressed for the grave sliced into rags and discarded. No one had seen me naked since my Hindu nurse in Calcutta. I was not embarrassed. I was shamed. They had shamed me. Someone tittered. Had I retained but a hundredth of the vigour I had enjoyed in life I would have happily snapped his neck.
Someone said, “Very fine.” More a growl than a murmur. “Very fine indeed.”
What manner of monsters were these? I realised I was being touched, my skin appraised, what little flesh I had evaluated. I could not feel their touch, of course. I heard it – the squeak and susurration of my own skin. Then they set about me. It was, I suppose, a scientific process but it seemed to me no more disciplined than ravens falling upon a newborn lamb. And all the time snatches of conversation – no, smug gratification – filled my ears.
