Forty minutes out of London, passing through the rolling green fields and cherry orchards of Kent, the morning train of the South Eastern Railway attained its maximum speed of fifty-four miles an hour. Riding the bright blue-painted engine, the driver in his red uniform could be seen standing upright in the open air, unshielded by any cab or windscreen, while at his feet the engineer crouched, shoveling coal into the glowing furnaces of the engine. Behind the chugging engine and tender were three yellow first-class coaches, followed by seven green second-class carriages; and at the very end, a gray, windowless luggage van.
As the train clattered down the track on its way to the coast, the sliding door of the luggage van opened suddenly, revealing a desperate struggle inside. The contest was most unevenly matched: a slender youth in tattered clothing, striking out against a burly, blue-uniformed railway guard. Although weaker, the youth made a good showing, landing one or two telling blows against his hulking opponent. Indeed, it was only by accident that the guard, having been knocked to his knees, should spring forward in such a way that the youth was caught unprepared and flung clear of the train through the open door, so that he landed tumbling and bouncing like a rag doll upon the ground.
The guard, gasping for breath, looked back at the fast-receding figure of the fallen youth. Then he closed the sliding door. The train sped on, its whistle shrieking. Soon it was gone round a gentle curve, and all that remained was the faint sound of the chugging engine, and the lingering drifting gray smoke that slowly settled over the tracks and the body of the motionless youth.
After a minute or two, the youth stirred. In great pain, he raised himself up on one elbow, and seemed about to rise to his feet. But his efforts were to no avail; he instantly collapsed back to the ground, gave a final convulsive shudder, and lay wholly still.
Half an hour later, an elegant black brougham coach with rich crimson wheels came down the dirt road that ran parallel to the railway tracks. The coach came to a hill, and the driver drew up his horse. A most singular gentleman emerged, fashionably dressed in a dark green velvet frock coat and high beaver hat. The gentleman climbed the hill, pressed binoculars to his eyes, and swept the length of the tracks. Immediately he fixed on the body of the prostrate youth. But the gentleman made no attempt to approach him, or to aid him in any way. On the contrary, he remained standing on the hill until he was certain the lad was dead. Only then did he turn aside, climb into his waiting coach, and drive back in the direction he had come, northward toward London.
This singular gentleman was Edward Pierce, and for a man destined to become so notorious that Queen Victoria herself expressed a desire to meet him-- or, barring that, to attend his hanging-- he remains an oddly mysterious figure. In appearance, Pierce was a tall, handsome man in his early thirties who wore a full red beard in the fashion that had recently become popular, particularly among government employees. In his speech, manner, and dress he seemed to be a gentleman, and well-to-do; he was apparently very charming, and possessed of "a captivating address." He himself claimed to be an orphan of Midlands gentry, to have attended Winchester and then Cambridge. He was a familiar figure in many London social circles and counted among his acquaintances Ministers, Members of Parliament, foreign ambassadors, bankers, and others of substantial standing. Although a bachelor, he maintained a house at No. 12 Harrow Road, in a fashionable part of London. But he spent much of the year traveling, and was said to have visited not only the Continent but New York as well.
Contemporary observers clearly believed his aristocratic origins; journalistic accounts often referred to Pierce as a "rogue," using the term in the sense of a male animal gone bad. The very idea of a highborn gentleman adopting a life of crime was so startling and titillating that nobody really wanted to disprove it.
Yet there is no firm evidence that Pierce came from the upper classes; indeed, almost nothing of his background prior to 1850 is known with any certainty. Modern readers, accustomed to the concept of "positive identification" as an ordinary fact of life, may be puzzled by the ambiguities of Pierce's past. But in an era when birth certificates were an innovation, photography a nascent art, and fingerprinting wholly unknown, it was difficult to identify any man with certainty, and Pierce took special care to be elusive. Even his name is doubtful: during the trial, various witnesses claimed to have known him as John Simms, or Andrew Miller, or Robert Jeffers.
The source of his obviously ample income. was equally disputed. Some said he was a silent partner with Jukes in the highly successful firm that manufactured croquet equipment. Croquet-- pronounced "croaky"-- was the overnight rage among athletically inclined young ladies, and it was perfectly reasonable that a sharp young businessman, investing a modest inheritance in such an enterprise, should come off very well.
Others said that Pierce owned several publican houses, and a smallish fleet of cabs, headed by 'a particularly sinister-appearing cabby, named Barlow, with a white scar across his forehead. This was more likely true, for the ownership of pubs and cabs was an occupation where underworld connections were useful.
Of course, it is not impossible that Pierce was a wellborn man with a background of aristocratic education. One must remember that Winchester and Cambridge were in those days more often characterized by lewd and drunken behavior than serious and sober scholarship. The most profound scientific mind of the Victorian era, Charles Darwin, devoted most of his youth to gambling and horses; and the majority of wellborn young men were more interested in acquiring "a university bearing" than a university degree.
It is also true that the Victorian underworld supported many educated figures down on their luck. They were usually screevers, or writers of false letters of recommendation, or they were counterfeiters, "doing a bit of soft." Sometimes they became magsmen, or con artists. But in general these educated men were petty criminals of a pathetic sort, more deserving of public pity than condemnation.
Edward Pierce, on the other hand, was positively exuberant in his approach to crime. Whatever his soues of income, whatever the truth of his background, one thing is certain: he was a master cracksman, or burglar, who over the years had accumulated sufficient capital to finance large-scale criminal operations, thus becoming what was called "a patter-up." And toward the middle of 1854, he was already well into an elaborate plan to pull the greatest theft of his career, The Great Train Robbery.
Robert Agar-- a known screwsman, or specialist in keys and safe-breaking-- testified in court that when he met Edward Pierce in late May, 1854, he had not seen him for two years previously. Agar was twenty-six years old, and in fair health except for a bad cough, the legacy of his years as a child working for a match manufacturer on Wharf Road, Bethnal Green. The premises of the firm were poorly ventilated, and the white vapor of phosphorous filled the air at all times. Phosphorous was known to be poisonous, but there were plenty of people eager to work at any job, even one that might cause a person's lungs to decay, or his jaw to rot off-- sometimes in a matter of months.
Agar was a matchstick dipper. He had nimble fingers, and he eventually took up his trade as screwsman, where he was immediately successful. He worked as a screwsman for six years and was never apprehended.
Agar had never had any direct dealings with Pierce in the past, but he knew of him as a master cracksman who worked other towns, thus accounting for his long absences from London. Agar had also heard that Pierce had the money to put up a lay from time to time.
Agar testified that their first meeting occurred at the Bull and Bear publican house, on Hounslow Road. Located at the periphery of the notorious criminal slum of Seven Dials, this well-known flash house was, in the words of one observer, "a gathering place for all manner of females dressed to represent ladies, as well as members of the criminal class; who could be seen at every turning."
Given the infamous nature of the place, it was almost certain that a plainclothes constable from the Metropolitan Police was lurking somewhere on the premises. But the Bull and Bear was frequented by gentlemen of quality with a taste for low life, and the conversation of two fashionably dressed young bloods lounging at the bar while they surveyed the women in the room attracted no particular attention.
The meeting was unplanned, Agar said, but he was not surprised when Pierce arrived. Agar had heard some talk about Pierce lately, and it sounded as though hg might be putting up. Agar recalled that the conversation began without greetings or preliminaries.
Agar said, "I heard that Spring Heel Jack's left Westminster."
"I heard that," Pierce agreed, rapping with his silverheaded cane to draw the attention of the barman. Pierce ordered two glasses of the best whiskey, which Agar took as proof that this was to be a business discussion.
"I heard," Agar said, "that Jack was going on a south swing to dip the holiday crowd." In those days, London pickpockets left in late spring, traveling north or south to other cities. A pickpocket's stock in trade was anonymity, and one could not dip a particular locale for long without being spotted by the crusher on the beat.
"I didn't hear his plans," Pierce said.
"I also heard," Agar continued, "that he took the train."
"He might have done."
"I heard," Agar said, his eyes on Pierces face, "that on this train he was doing some crow's peeping for a particular gent who is putting up."
"He might have done," Pierce said again.
"I also heard," Agar said with a sudden grin, "that you are putting up."
"I may," Pierce said. He sipped his whiskey, and stared at the glass. "It used to be better here," he said reflectively. "Neddy must be watering his stock. What have you heard I am putting up for?"
"A robbery," Agar said. "For a ream flash pull, if truth be told."
"If truth be told," Pierce repeated. He seemed to find the phrase amusing. He turned away from the bar and looked at the women in the room. Several returned his glances warmly. "Everybody hears the pull bigger than life," he said finally.
"Aye, that's so," Agar admitted, and sighed. (In his testimony, Agar was very clear about the histrionics involved. "Now I goes and gives a big sigh, you see; like to say my patience is wearing thin, because he's a cautious one, Pierce is, but I want to get down to it, so I gives a big sigh.")
There was a brief silence. Finally Agar said, "It's two years gone since I saw you. Been busy?"
"Traveling," Pierce said.
"The Continent?"
Pierce shrugged. He looked at the glass of whiskey in Agar's hands, and the half-finished glass of gin and water Agar had been drinking before Pierce arrived. "How's the touch?"
"Ever so nice," Agar said. To demonstrate, he held out his hands, palms flat, fingers wide: there was no tremor.
"I may have one or two little things," Pierce said.
"Spring Heel Jack held his cards close," Agar said. "I know that for a ream fact. He was all swelled mighty and important, but he kept it to his chest."
"Jack's put in lavender," Pierce said curtly.
This was, as Agar later explained it, an ambiguous phrase. It might mean that Spring Heel Jack had gone into hiding; more often it meant that he was dead; it depended. Agar didn't inquire further. "These one or two little things, could they be crib jobs?"
"They could."
"Dicey, are they?"
"Very dicey," Pierce said.
"Inside or outside?"
"I don't know. You may need a canary or two when the time comes. And you will want a tight lip. If the first lay goes right enough, there will be more."
Agar downed the rest of his whiskey, and waited. Pierce ordered him another.
"Is it keys, then?" Agar asked.
"It is."
"Wax, or straightaway haul?"
"Wax."
"On the fly, or is there time?"
"On the fly."
"Right, then," Agar said. "I'm your man. I can do a wax on the fly faster than you can light your cigar."
"I know that," Pierce said, striking a match on the counter top and holding it to the tip of his cigar. Agar gave a slight shudder; he did not himself smoke-- indeed, smoking had just recently returned to fashion after eighty years-- and every time he smelled the phosphorous and sulfur of a match, it gave Agar a twinge, from his days in the match factory.
He watched Pierce puff on the cigar until it caught. "What's the lay to be, then?"
Pierce looked at him coldly. "You'll know when the time comes."
"You're a tight one."
"That," Pierce said, "is why I have never been in," meaning that he had no prison record. At the trial, other witnesses disputed this claim, saying that Pierce had served three and a half years in Manchester for cracking, under the name of Arthur Wills.
Agar said that Pierce gave him a final word of caution about keeping silent, and then moved away from the bar, crossing the smoky, noisy Bull and Bear to bend briefly and whisper into a pretty woman's ear. The woman laughed; Agar turned away, and recalls nothing further from the evening.
Mr. Henry Fowler, forty-seven, knew Edward Pierce in rather different circumstances. Fowler admitted freely that he had little knowledge of Pierces background: the man had said he was an orphan, and he was clearly educated, and well-to-do, keeping a most excellent house, which was always fitted out with the latest appurtenances, some of them exceedingly clever.
Mr Fowler remembered particularly an ingenious hallway stove for warming the entrance to the house. This stove was in the shape of a suit of armor, and functioned admirably. Mr. Fowler also recalled seeing a pair of beautifully constructed aluminum field glasses covered in Moroccan leather; these had so intrigued Mr. Fowler that he had sought a pair of his own and was astounded to discover that they were eighty shillings, an exorbitant price. Clearly, Pierce was well-heeled, and Henry Fowler found him amusing for an occasional dinner.
He recalled, with difficulty, an episode at Pierce's home in late May, 1854. It had been a dinner of eight gentlemen; the conversation chiefly concerned a new proposal for an underground railway within London itself. Fowler found the idea tedious, and he was disappointed when it was still discussed over brandy in the smoking room.
Then the topic of conversation turned to cholera, of late an epidemic in certain parts of London, where the disease was snatching up one person in a hundred. The dispute over the proposals of Mr. Edwin Chadwick, one of the Sanitary Commissioners, for new sewer systems in the city and for a cleaning-up of the polluted Thames, was profoundly boring to Mr. Fowler. Besides, Mr. Fowler had it on good authority that old "Drain Brain" Chadwick was soon to be discharged, but he was sworn not to divulge this information. He drank his coffee with a growing sense of fatigue. Indeed, he was thinking of taking his leave when the host, Mr. Pierce, asked him about a recent attempt to rob a gold shipment from a train.
It was only natural that Pierce should ask Fowler, for Henry Fowler was the brother-in-law of Sir Edgar Huddleston, of the banking firm of Huddleston amp; Bradford, Westminster. Mr. Fowler was the general manager of that prosperous enterprise, which had specialized in dealings in foreign currency since its founding in 1833.
This was a time of extraordinary English domination of world commerce. England mined more than half the world's coal, and her output of pig iron was greater than that of the rest of the world combined. She produced three-quarters of the world's cotton cloth. Her foreign trade was valued at ?700,000,000 annually, twice that of her leading competitors, the United States and Germany. Her overseas empire was the greatest in world history and still expanding, until ultimately it accounted for almost a quarter of the earth's surface and a third of her population.
Thus it was only natural that foreign business concerns of all sorts made London their financial center, and the London banks thrived. Henry Fowler and his bank profited from the general economic trends, but their emphasis on foreign-currency transactions brought them additional business as well. Thus, when England and France had declared war on Russia two months previously, in March, 1854, the firm of Huddleston amp; Bradford was designated to arrange for the payment of British troops fighting the Crimean campaign. It was precisely such a consignment of gold for troop payments that had been the object of a recent attempted theft.
"A trivial endeavor," Fowler declared, conscious he was speaking on behalf of the bank. The other men in the room, smoking cigars and drinking brandy, were substantial gentlemen who knew other substantial gentlemen. Mr. Fowler felt obliged to put down any suspicion of the bank's inadequacy in the strongest possible terms. "Yes, indeed," he said, "trivial and amateurish. There was not the slightest chance of success."
"The villain expired?" asked Mr. Pierce, seated opposite him, puffing his cigar.
"Quite," Mr. Fowler said. "The railroad guard threw him from the train at a goodly speed. The shock must have killed him instantly." And he added, "Poor devil."
"Has he been identified?"
"Oh, I shouldn't think so," Fowler said. "The manner of his departure was such that his features were considerably-- ah, disarrayed. At one time it was said he was named Jack Perkins, but one doesn't know. The police have taken no great interest in the matter, as is, I think, only wise. The whole manner of the robbery speaks of the rankest amateurism. It could never have succeeded."
"I suppose," Pierce said, "that the bank must take considerable precautions."
"My dear fellow," Fowler said, "considerable precautions indeed! I assure you, one doesn't transport twelve thousand pounds in bullion to France each month without the most extensive safeguards."
"So the blackguard was after the Crimean payments?" asked another gentleman, Mr. Harrison Bendix. Bendix was a well-known opponent of the Crimean campaign, and Fowler had no wish to engage in political disputes at this late hour.
"Apparently so," he said shortly, and was relieved when Pierce spoke again.
"We should all be curious to know the nature of your precautions," he said. "Or is that a secret of the firm?"
"No secret at all," Fowler said, taking the opportunity to withdraw his gold watch from the pocket of his waistcoat, flick open the cover, and glance at the dial. It was past eleven; he should retire; only the necessity to uphold the bank's reputation kept him there. "In point of fact, the precautions are of my own devising. And if I may say so, I invite you to point out any weakness in the established plan." He glanced from one face to the next as he talked.
"Each gold bullion shipment is loaded within the confines of the bank itself, which I hardly need mention is wholly impregnable. The bullion is placed in a number of ironbound strongboxes, which are then sealed. A sensible man might regard this as protection enough, but of course we go much further." He paused to sip his brandy.
"Now, then. The sealed strongboxes are taken by armed guard to the railway station. The convoy follows no established route, nor any established timetable; it keeps to populous thoroughfares, and thus there is no chance that it may be waylaid on the road to the station. Never do we employ fewer than ten guards, all trusted and longstanding servants of the firm, and all heavily armed.
"Now, then. At the station, the strongboxes are loaded into the luggage van of the Folkestone railway, where we place them into two of the latest Chubb safes."
"Indeed, Chubb safes?" Pierce said, raising an eyebrow. Chubb manufactured the finest safes in the world, and was universally recognized for skill and workmanship.
"Nor are these the ordinary line of Chubb safes," Fowler continued, "for they have been specially built to the bank's specifications. Gentlemen, they are on all sides constructed of one-quarter-inch tempered steel, and the doors are hung with interior hinges which offer no external purchase for tampering. Why, the very weight of these safes is an impediment to theft, for they each weigh in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds."
"Most impressive," Pierce said.
"So much so," Fowler said, "that one might in good conscience consider this to be adequate safeguard for the bullion shipment. And yet we have added still further refinements. Each of the safes is fitted with not one but two locks, requiring two keys."
"Two keys? How ingenious:"
"Not only that," Fowler said, "but each of the foot keys-- two to each safe-- is individually protected. Two are stored in the railway office itself. A third is in the custody of the bank's president, Mr. Trent, whom some of you may know to be a most reliable gentleman. I confess I do not know precisely where Mr. Trent has sequestered his key. But I know of the fourth key, for I myself am entrusted with guarding it."
"How extraordinary," Pierce said. "A considerable responsibility, I should think."
"I must admit I felt a certain need for invention in the matter," Fowler admitted, and then he lapsed into a dramatic pause.
It was Mr. Wyndham, a bit stiff with drink, who finally spoke up. "Well, damn it all, Henry, will you tell us where you have hidden your bloody key?"
Mr. Fowler took no offense, but smiled benignly. He was not a serious drinking man himself, and he viewed the foibles of those who overindulged with a certain modest satisfaction. "I keep it," he said, "about my neck." And he patted his starched shirt front with a flat hand. "I wear it at all times, even while bathing-- indeed, even in my sleep. It is never off my person."
He smiled broadly. "So, gentlemen, you see that the crude attempt of a mere child from the dangerous classes can hardly be of concern to Huddleston amp; Bradford, for the little ruffian had no more chance of stealing that bullion than I have of-- well, of flying to the moon."
Here Mr. Fowler allowed himself a chuckle at the absurdity of it all. "Now, then," he said, "can you discern any flaw in our arrangements?"
"None whatsoever," said Mr. Bendix coldly.
But Mr. Pierce was warmer. "I must congratulate you, Henry," he said. "It is really quite the most ingenious strategy I have ever heard for protecting a consignment of valuables."
"I rather think so myself," Mr. Fowler said.
Soon thereafter, Mr. Fowler took his leave, arising with the comment that if he were not soon home to his wife, she should think him dallying with a judy-- "and I should hate to suffer the pains of chastisement without the antecedent reward." His comment drew laughter from the assembled gentlemen; it was, he thought, just the right note on which to depart. Gentlemen wanted their bankers prudent but not prudish; it was a fine line.
"I shall see you out," Pierce said, also rising.
England's railroads grew at such a phenomenal rate that the city of London was overwhelmed, and never managed to build a central station. Instead, each of the lines, built by private firms, ran their tracks as far into London as they could manage, and then erected a terminus. But in the mid-century this pattern was coming under attack. The dislocation of poor people, whose dwellings were demolished to make way for the incoming lines, was one argument; another focused on the inconvenience to travelers forced to cross London by coach to make connections from one station to another in order to continue their journey.
In 1846, Charles Pearson proposed, and drew plans for, an enormous Central Railway Terminus to be located at Ludgate Hill, but the idea was never adopted. Instead, after the construction of several stations-- the most recent being Victoria Station and King's Cross, in 1851-- there was a moratorium on further construction because of the fury of public debate.
Eventually, the concept of a central London terminus was completely abandoned, and new outlying stations were built. When the last, Marylebone Station, was finished in 1899, London had fifteen railroad terminals, more than twice that of any other major city in Europe; and the bewildering array of lines and schedules was apparently never mastered by any Londoner except Sherlock Holmes, who knew it all by heart.
The mid-century halt in construction left several of the new lines at a disadvantage, and one of these was the South Eastern Railway, which ran from London to the coastal town of Folkestone, some eighty miles away. The South Eastern had no access to central London until 1851, when the London Bridge Terminus was rebuilt.
Located on the south shore of the Thames River near its namesake, London Bridge was the oldest railway station in the city. It was originally constructed in 1836 by the London amp; Greenwich Railway. Never popular, the station was attacked as "inferior in design and conception" to such later stations as Paddington and King's Cross. Yet when the station was rebuilt in 1851, the Illustrated London News recalled that the old station had been "remarkable for the neatness, artistic character, and reality of its facade. We regret, therefore, that this has disappeared, to make room, apparently, for one of less merit."
This is precisely the kind of critical turnabout that has always frustrated and infuriated architects. No less a figure than Sir Christopher Wren, writing two hundred years earlier, complained that "the peoples of London may despise some eyesore until it is demolished, whereupon by magick the replacement is deemed inferior to the former edifice, now eulogized in high and glowing reference."
Yet one must admit that the new London Bridge Terminus was most unsatisfactory. Victorians regarded the train stations as the "cathedrals of the age"; they expected them to blend the highest principles of aesthetics and technological achievement, and many stations fulfill that expectation with their high, arching, elegant glass vaults. But the new London Bridge Station was depressing in every way. An L-shaped two-story structure, it had a flat and utilitarian appearance, with a row of dreary shops under an arcade to the left, and the main station straight ahead, unadorned except for a clock mounted on the roof. Most serious, its interior floor plan-- the focus of most earlier criticism-- remained wholly unaltered.
It was during the reconstruction of the station that the South Eastern Railway arranged to use the London Bridge Terminus as the starting point for its routes to the coast This was done on a leasing arrangement; South Eastern leased tracks, platforms, and office space from the London amp; Greenwich line, whose owners were not disposed to give South Eastern any better facilities than necessary.
The traffic supervisor's offices consisted of four rooms in a remote section of the terminal-- two rooms for clerks, one storage area for valuable checked items, and a larger office for the supervisor himself. All the rooms had glass frontings. The whole suite was located on the second floor of the terminus and accessible only by an ironwork staircase leading up from the station platform. Anyone climbing or descending the stairs would be in plain view of the office workers, as well as all the passengers, porters, and guards on the platforms'below.
The traffic supervisor was named McPherson. He was an elderly Scotsman who kept a close eye on his clerks, seeing to it that they did no daydreaming out the window. Thus no one in the office noticed when, in early July, 1854, two travelers took up a position on a bench on the platform, and remained there the entire day, frequently consulting their watches, as if impatient for their journey to begin. Nor did anyone notice when the same two gentlemen returned the following week, and again spent a day on the same bench, watching the activity in the station while they awaited their train, and frequently checking their pocketwatches.
In fact, Pierce and Agar were not employing pocketwatches, but rather stopwatches. Pierce had an elegant one, a chronograph with two stopwatch faces, with a case of 18-karat gold. It was considered a marvel of the latest engineering, sold for racing and other purposes. But he held it cupped in his hand, and it attracted no notice.
After the second day of watching the routine of the office clerks, the changes of the railway guards, the arrival and departure of visitors to the office, and other matters of importance to them, Agar finally looked up the iron staircase to the office and announced, "It's bloody murder. She's too wide open. What's your pogue up there, anyway?"
"Two keys."
"What two keys is that?"
"Two keys I happen to want," Pierce said.
Agar squinted up at the offices. If he was disappointed in Pierces answer he gave no indication. "Well," he said, in a professional tone, "if it's two bettys you want, I reckon they are in that storage room"-- he nodded, not daring to point a finger-- "just past the space for the clerks. You see the cupboard?"
Pierce nodded. Through the glass fronting, he could see all the office. In the storage area was a shallow, wall-mounted lime green cupboard. It looked like the sort of place keys might be stored. "I see it."
"There's my money, on that cupboard. Now you'll cool she has a lock on her, but that will give us no great trouble. Cheap lock."
"What about the front door?" Pierce said, shifting his gaze. Not only was the cupboard inside locked, but the door to the suite of offices-- a frosted door, with SER stenciled on it, and underneath, TRAFFIC SUPERVISOR DIVISION-- had a large brass lock above the knob.
"Appearances," Agar snorted. "She'll crack open with any cheap twirl to tickle her innards. I could open her with a ragged fingernail. We've no problems there. The problem is the bloody crowds."
Pierce nodded, but said nothing. This was essentially Agar's operation, and he would have to figure it out. "The pogue is two keys, you say?"
"Yes," Pierce said. "Two keys."
"Two keys is four waxes. Four waxes is nigh on a minute, to do it proper. But that doesn't count cracking the outside, or the inside cabinet. That's more time again." Agar looked around at the crowded platform, and the clerks in the office. "Bloody flummet to try and crack her by day," he said "Too many people about."
"Night?"
"Aye, at night, when she's empty, and a proper deadlurk. I think the night is best."
"At night, the crushers make rounds," Pierce reminded him. They had already learned that during the evening, when the station was deserted, the policemen patrolled it at four- or five-minute intervals throughout the night. "Will you have time?"
Agar frowned, and squinted up at the office. "No," he said finally. "Unless…"
"Yes?"
"Unless the offices were already open. Then I can make my entrance neat as you please, and I do the waxes quicklike, and I'm gone in less than two minutes flat."
"But the offices will be locked," Pierce said.
"I'm thinking of a snakesman," Agar said, and he nodded to the supervisor's office.
Pierce looked up. The supervisor's office had a broad glass window; through it, he could see Mr. McPherson, in his shirtsleeves, with white hair and a green shade over his forehead. And behind McPherson was a window for ventilation, a window approximately a foot square. "I see it," Pierce said. And he added, "Damn small."
"A proper snakesman can make it through," Agar said. A snakesman was a child adept at wriggling through small spaces. Usually he was a former chimney sweep's apprentice. "And once he's in the office, he unlocks the cupboard, and he unlocks the door from the inside, and he sets it all up proper for me. That will make this job a bone lay, and no mistake," he said, nodding in satisfaction.
"If there's a snakesman."
"Aye."
"And he must be the devil's own," Pierce said, looking again at the window, "if we are to break that drum. Who's the best?"
"The best?" Agar said, looking surprised. "The best is Clean Willy, but he's in."
"Where's he in?"
"Newgate Prison, and there's no escaping that. He'll do his days on the cockchafer, and be a good lad, and wait for his ticket-of-leave if it comes. But there's no escape. Not from Newgate."
"Perhaps Clean Willy can find a way."
"Nobody can find a way," Agar said heavily. "It's been tried before."
"I'll get a word to Willy," Pierce said, "and we shall see."
Agar nodded. "I'll hope," he said, "but not too excessive."
The two men resumed watching the offices. Pierce stared at the storage room of the offices, at the little cupboard mounted on the wall It occurred to him that he had never seen it opened. He had a thought: what if there were more keys-- perhaps dozens of keys-- in that little closet? How would Agar know which ones to copy?
"Here comes the escop," Agar said.
Pierce looked, and saw that the police constable was making his rounds. He flicked his chronometer: seven minutes forty-seven seconds since the last circuit. But the constable's routine would be more rapid at night.
"You see a lurk?" Pierce said.
Agar nodded to a baggage stand in a corner, not more than a dozen paces from the staircase. "There'd do."
"Well enough," Pierce said.
The two men remained seated until seven o'clock, when the clerks left the office to return home. At seven-twenty, the supervisor departed, locking the outside door after him. Agar had a look at the key, from a distance.
"What kind of a key?" Pierce asked.
"Cheap twirl will manage," Agar said.
The two men remained another hour, until it became inconvenient for them to stay in the station. The last train had departed, and they were now too conspicuous. They remained just long enough to clock the constable on night duty as he made his rounds of the station. The constable passed the traffic manager's office once every five minutes and three seconds.
Pierce snapped the button on his chronometer and glanced at the second hand. "Five and three," he said.
"Dub lay," Agar said.
"Can you do it?"
"Of course I can do it," Agar said. "I can get a judy preggers in less-- a dub lay is all I said. Five and three?"
"I can light a cigar faster," Pierce reminded him.
"I can do it," Agar said firmly, "if I have a snakesman such like Clean Willy."
The two men left the railway station. As they stepped into the fading twilight, Pierce signaled his cab. The cabby with a scar across his forehead whipped up his horse and clattered toward the station entrance.
"When do we knock it over?" Agar said.
Pierce gave him a gold guinea. "When I inform you," he said. And then he got into the cab and rode off into the deepening night darkness.
By the middle of July, 1854, Edward Pierce knew the location of three of the four keys he needed to rob the safes. Two keys were in the green cupboard of the traffic supervisor's office of the South Eastern Railway. A third hung around the neck of Henry Fowler. To Pierce, these three keys presented no major problem.
There was, of course, the question of opportune timing in making a clandestine break to obtain a wax impression. There was also the problem of finding a good snakesman to aid in the break at the railway offices. But these were all easily surmountable obstacles.
The real difficulty centered around the fourth key. Pierce knew that the fourth key was in the possession of the bank's president, Mr. Trent, but he did not know where- and this lack of knowledge represented a formidable challenge indeed, and one that occupied his attention for the next four months.
A few words of explanation may be useful here. In 1854, Alfred Nobel was just beginning his career; the Swedish chemist would not discover dynamite for another decade, and the availability of nitroglycerin "soup" lay still further in the future. Thus, in the mid-nineteenth century, any decently constructed metal safe represented a genuine barrier to theft.
This truth was so widely acknowledged that safe manufacturers devoted most of their energies to the problem of making safes fireproof, since loss of money and documents through incineration was a much more serious hazard than loss through theft. During this period, a variety of patents were issued for ferromanganese, clay, marble dust, and plaster of Paris as fireproof linings for safes.
A thief confronted with a safe had three options. The first was to steal the whole safe outright, carrying it off to break open at his leisure. This was impossible if the safe was of any size or weight, and manufacturers were careful to employ the heaviest and most unwieldy construction materials to discourage this maneuver.
Alternatively, a thief could employ a "petter-cutter," a drill that clamped to the keyhole of the safe and permitted a hole to be bored over the lock. Through this hole, the lock mechanism could be manipulated and the lock opened. But the petter-cutter was a specialist's tool; it was noisy, slow, and uncertain; and it was expensive to purchase and bulky to carry on a job.
The third choice was to look at the safe and give up. This was the most common outcome of events. In another twenty years, the safe would be transformed from an impregnable obstacle to a mere irritant in the minds of burglars, but for the moment it was virtually unbeatable.
Unless, that is, one had a key to the safe. Combination locks had not yet been invented; all locks were operated by key, and the most reliable way to break a safe was to come prepared with a previously obtained key. This truth lies behind the nineteenth-century criminal's preoccupation with keys. Victorian crime literature, official and popular, often seems obsessed with keys, as if nothing else mattered. But in those days, as the master safe-cracker Neddy Sykes said in his trial in 1848, "The key is everything in the lay, the problem and the solution."
Thus it was Edward Pierce's unquestioned assumption in planning the train robbery that he must first obtain copies of all the necessary keys. And he must do this by gaining access to the keys themselves, for although there was a new method of using wax "blanks" and inserting them into the locks of the actual safes, this technique was undependable. Safes of the period were usually left unguarded for this reason.
The true criminal focus was upon the keys to the safe, wherever they might be. The copying process presented no difficulty: wax impressions of the key could be made in a few moments. And any premises containing a key could be cracked with relative ease.
But, if one stops to think of it, a key is really rather small. It can be concealed in the most unlikely places; it can be hidden almost anywhere on a person's body, or in a room. Particularly a Victorian room, where even so ordinary an item of furniture as a wastebasket was likely to be covered in cloth, layers of fringes, and decorative rings of tassels.
We forget how extraordinarily cluttered Victorian rooms were. Innumerable hiding places were provided by the prevailing decor of the period. Furthermore, the Victorians themselves adored secret compartments and concealed spaces; a mid-century writing desk was advertised as "containing 110 compartments, including many most artfully concealed from detection." Even the ornate hearths, found in every room of a house, offered dozens of places to hide an object as small as a key.
Thus, in the mid-Victorian period, information about the location of a key was almost as useful as an actual copy of the key itself. A thief seeking a wax impression might break into a house if he knew exactly where the key was hidden, or even if he knew in which room it was hidden. But if he did not know where in the house it was, the difficulty of making a thorough search-- silently, in a house full of residents and servants, using a single shaded lantern that threw only a "bull's-eye" spot of light-- was so great as to be not worth the attempt in the first instance.
Therefore, Pierce directed his attention to discovering where Mr. Edgar Trent, president of the firm of Huddleston amp; Bradford, kept his key.
____________________
The first question was whether Mr. Trent kept his key in the bank. Junior clerks of Huddleston amp; Bradford took their dinner at one o'clock at a pub called the Horse and Rider, across the street from the firm. This was a smallish establishment, crowded and warm at the noon dinner hour. Pierce struck up an acquaintance with one of the clerks, a young man named Rivers.
Normally, the servants and junior clerks of the bank were wary of casual acquaintances, for one never knew when one was talking to a criminal out of twig; but Rivers was relaxed, in the knowledge that the bank was impregnable to burglary-- and recognizing, perhaps, that he had a deal of resentment toward the source of his employment.
In this regard, one may profitably record the revised "Rules for Office Staff" posted by Mr. Trent in early 1854. These were as follows:
1. Godliness, cleanliness and punctuality are the necessities of a good business.
2. The firm has reduced the working day to the hours from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
3. Daily prayers will be held each morning in the main office. The clerical staff will be present.
4. Clothing will be of a sober nature. The clerical staff will not disport themselves in raiment of bright color.
5. A stove is provided for the benefit of the clerical staff. It is recommended that each member of the clerical staff bring 4 lbs. of coal each day during cold weather.
6. No member of the clerical staff may leave the room without permission from Mr. Roberts. The calls of nature are permitted and clerical staff may use the garden beyond the second gate. This area must be kept clean in good order.
7. No talking is allowed during business hours.
8. The craving of tobacco, wines or spirits is a human weakness, and as such is forbidden to the clerical staff.
9. Members of the clerical staff will provide their own pens.
10. The managers of the firm will expect a great rise in the output of work to compensate for these near Utopian conditions.
However Utopian, the working conditions of Huddleston amp; Bradford led the clerk Rivers to speak freely about Mr. Trent. And with less enthusiasm than one might expect for a Utopian employer.
"Bit of a stiff, he is," Rivers said. "Snapping his watch at eight thirty sharp, and checking all to see they are at their places, no excuses. God help the man whose omnibus is late in the traffic of the rush."
"Demands his routine, does he?"
"With a vengeance, he does. He's a stiff one-- the job must be done, and that's all he cares for. He's getting on in years," Rivers said. "And vain, too: grew whiskers longer than yours, he did, on account of the fact he's losing the hair up top."
During this period, there was considerable debate about the propriety of whiskers on gentlemen. It was a new fashion, and opinion was divided on its benefits. Similarly, there was a new fashion in smoking, called cigarettes, just introduced, but the most conservative men did not smoke-- certainly not in public, or even at home. And the most conservative men were clean-shaven.
"He has this brush, I hear," Rivers went on. "Dr. Scott's electric hairbrush, comes from Paris. You know how dear it is? Twelve shillings sixpence, that's what it is."
Rivers would find this expensive: he was paid twelve shillings a week.
"What's it do?" Pierce inquired.
"Cures headaches, dandruff, and baldness, too," Rivers said, "or so it's claimed. Queer little brush. He locks himself into his office and brushes once an hour, punctual." Here Rivers laughed at the foibles of his employer.
"He must have a large office."
"Aye, large and comfortable, too. He's an important man, Mr. Trent is."
"Keeps it tidy?"
"Aye, the sweeper's in every night, dusting and arranging just so, and every night as he leaves, Mr. Trent says to the sweeper, 'A place for everything, and everything in its place,' and then he leaves, seven o'clock punctual."
Pierce did not recall the rest of the conversation, for it was of no interest to him. He already knew what he wanted-- that Trent did not keep the key in his office. If he did, he would never leave the place to be cleaned in his absence, for sweepers were notoriously easy to bribe, and to the casual eye there was little difference between a thorough cleaning and a thorough search.
But even if the key was not in the office, it might still be kept in the bank. Mr. Trent might choose to lock it in one of the vaults. To determine if this was so, Pierce could strike up a conversation with a different clerk, but he was anxious to avoid this. Instead, he chose another method
Teddy Burke, twenty-four, was working the Strand at two in the afternoon, the most fashionable hour. Like the other gentlemen, Teddy Burke was decked out, wearing a high hat, a dark frock coat, narrow trousers, and a dark silk choker. This outfit had cost him a pretty, but it was essential to his business, for Teddy Burke was one of the swellest of the swell mobsmen.
In the throng of gentlemen and ladies who browsed among the elegant shops of this thoroughfare, which Disraeli called "the first street in Europe," no one would notice that Teddy Burke was not alone. In fact, he was working his usual operation, with himself as dipper, a stickman at his side, and two stalls front and back-- altogether, four men, each as well-dressed as the next. These four slipped through the crowd, attracting no attention. There was plenty of diversion.
On this fine early summer day, the air was warm and redolent of horse dung, despite the busy working of a dozen street-urchin sweepers. There was heavy traffic of carts, drays, brightly lettered rattling omnibuses, four-wheel and hansom cabs, and from time to time an elegant chariot rode past, with a uniformed coachman in front and liveried servants standing behind. Ragged children darted among the traffic and turned cartwheels under the horses' hoofs for the amusement of the crowd, some of whom threw a few coppers in their direction.
Teddy Burke was oblivious to the excitement, and to the rich array of goods on display in the shopwindows. His attention was wholly fixed upon the quarry, a fine lady wearing a heavy flounced crinoline skirt of deep purple. In a few moments he would dip her as she walked along the street.
His gang was in formation. One stall had taken up a position three paces ahead; another was five paces back. True to their title, the stalls would create disorder and confusion should anything go wrong with the intended dip.
The quarry was moving, but that did not worry Teddy Burke. He planned to work her on the fly, the most difficult kind of dip, as she moved from one shop to the next.
"Right, here we go," he said, and the stickman moved alongside him. It was the stickman's job to take the pogue once Teddy had snaffled it, thus leaving Teddy clean, should there be hue and cry and a constable to stop him.
Together with the stickman, he moved so close to the woman he could smell her perfume. He was moving along her right side, for a woman's dress had only one pocket, and that was on the right.
Teddy carried an overcoat draped across his left arm. A sensible person might have asked why a gentleman would carry an overcoat on such a warm day; but the coat looked new, and he could have conceivably just picked it up from a fitting at one of the nearby shops. In any case, the overcoat concealed the movement of his right arm across his body to the woman's skirt. He fanned the dress delicately, to determine if a purse was there. His fingers touched it; he took a deep breath, praying that the coins would not clink, and lifted it out of the pocket.
Immediately he eased away from the woman, shifted his overcoat to his other arm, and in the course of that movement passed the purse to the stickman. The stickman drifted off. Ahead and behind, the stalls moved out in different directions. Only Teddy Burke, now clean, continued to walk along the Strand, pausing before a shop that displayed cut-glass and crystal decanters imported from France.
A tall gent with a red beard was admiring the wares in the window. He did not look at Teddy Burke. "Nice pull," he said.
Teddy Burke blinked.
The speaker was too well-dressed, too square-rigged, to be a plainclothes crusher, and he certainly wasn't a nose, or informer. Teddy Burke said carefully, "Are you addressing me, sir?"
"Yes," the man said. "I said that was a very nice pull. You tool her off?"
Teddy Burke was profoundly insulted. A tool was a wire hook that inferior dippers employed to snare a purse if their fingers were too shaky for the job. "Beg your pardon, sir. I don't know your meaning, sir."
"I think you do, well enough," the man said. "Shall we walk awhile?"
Teddy Burke shrugged and fell into step alongside the stranger. After all, he was clean; he had nothing to fear. "Lovely day," he said.
The stranger did not answer. They walked for some minutes in silence. "Do you think you can be less effective?" the man asked after a time.
"How do you mean, sir?"
"I mean," the man said, "can you buzz a customer and come out dry?"
"On purpose?" Teddy Burke laughed. "It happens often enough without trying, I can tell you that."
"There's five quid for you, if you can prove yourself a prize bungler."
Teddy Burke's eyes narrowed. There were plenty of magsmen about, sharp con men who often employed an unwitting accomplice, setting him up to take a fall in some elaborate scheme. Teddy Burke was nobody's fool. "Five quid's no great matter."
"Ten," the man said, in a weary voice.
"I have to think of me boys."
"No," the man said, "this is you, alone."
"What's the lay, then?" Teddy Burke said.
"Lots of bustle, a ruck touch, just enough to set the quarry to worry, make him pat his pockets."
"And you want me to come up dry?"
"Dry as dust," the man said.
"Who's the quarry, then?" Teddy Burke said.
"A gent named Trent. You'll touch him with a bungler's dip in front of his offices, just a roughing-up, like."
"Where's the office, then?"
"Huddleston amp; Bradford Bank."
Teddy Burke whistled. "Westminster. Sticky, that is. There's enough crushers about to make a bloody army."
"But you'll be dry. All you've to do is worry him."
Teddy Burke walked a few moments, looking this way and that, taking the air and thinking things over. "When will it be, then?"
"Tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock sharp."
"All right."
The red-bearded gentleman gave him a five-pound bill, and informed him he would get the rest when the job was done.
"What's it all about, then?" Teddy Burke asked.
"Personal matter," the man replied, and slipped away into the crowd.
Between 1801 and 1851, London tripled in size. With a population of two and a half million, it was by far the largest city in the world, and every foreign observer was astonished at its dimensions. Nathaniel Hawthorne was speechless; Henry James was fascinated and appalled at its "horrible numerosity"; Dostoevsky found it "as vast as an ocean… a Biblical sight, some prophecy out of the Apocalypse being fulfilled before your very eyes."
And yet London continued to grow. At the mid-century, four thousand new dwellings were under construction at any one time, and the city was literally exploding outward. Already, the now familiar pattern of expansion was termed "the flight to the suburbs." Outlying areas that at the turn of the century had been villages and hamlets-- Marylebone, Islington, Camden, St. John's Wood, and Bethnal Green-- were thoroughly built up, and the newly affluent middle classes were deserting the central city for these areas, where the air was better, the noise less bothersome, and the atmosphere in general more pleasant and "countrified."
Of course, some older sections of London retained a character of great elegance and wealth, but these were often cheek to jowl with the most dismal and shocking slums. The proximity of great riches and profound squalor also impressed foreign observers, particularly since the slums, or rookeries, were refuges and breeding places for "the criminal class." There were sections of London where a thief might rob a mansion and literally cross a street to disappear into a tangled maze of alleyways and dilapidated buildings crammed with humanity and so dangerous that even an armed policeman did not dare pursue the culprit.
The genesis of slums was poorly understood at the time; indeed, the very term "slums" did not become widely accepted until 1890. But in a vague way the now familiar pattern was recognized: a region of the city would be cut off from circulation by newly constructed thoroughfares that bypassed it; businesses would depart; disagreeable industries would move in, creating local noise and air pollution and further reducing the attractiveness of the area; ultimately, no one with the means to live elsewhere would choose to reside in such a place, and the region would become decrepit, badly maintained, and overpopulated by the lowest classes.
Then, as now, these slums existed in part because they were profitable for landlords. A lodging house of eight rooms might take on a hundred boarders, each paying a shilling or two a week to live in "hugger-mugger promiscuity," sleeping with as many as twenty members of the same or opposite sex in the same room. (Perhaps the most bizarre example of lodgings of the period was the famous waterfront sailors' "penny hangs." Here a drunken seaman slept the night for a penny, draping himself across chest-high ropes, and hanging like clothes on a line.)
While some proprietors of lodging houses, or netherskens, lived in the area-- and often accepted stolen goods in lieu of rent-- many owners were substantial citizens, landlords in absentia who employed a tough deputy to collect the rents and keep some semblance of order.
During this period there were several notorious rookeries, at Seven Dials, Rosemary Lane, Jacob's Island, and Ratcliffe Highway, but none was more famous than the six acres in central London that comprised the rookery of St. Giles, called "the Holy Land." Located near the theatre district of Leicester Square, the prostitute center of the Haymarket, and the fashionable shops of Regent Street, the St. Giles rookery was strategically located for any criminal who wanted to "go to ground."
Contemporary accounts describe the Holy Land as "a dense mass of houses so old they only seem not to fall, through which narrow and tortuous lanes curve and wind. There is no privacy here, and whoever ventures in this region finds the streets-- by courtesy so called-- thronged with loiterers, and sees, through half-glazed windows, rooms crowded to suffocation." There are references to "the stagnant gutters… the filth choking up dark passages… the walls of bleached soot, and doors falling from their hinges… and children swarming everywhere, relieving themselves as they please."
Such a squalid, malodorous and dangerous tenement was no place for a gentleman, particularly after nightfall on a foggy summer evening. Yet in late July, 1854, a red-bearded man in fashionable attire walked fearlessly through the smoke-filled, cramped and narrow lanes. The loiterers and vagrants watching him no doubt observed that his silver-headed cane looked ominously heavy, and might conceal a blade. There was also a bulge about the trousers that implied a barker tucked in the waistband. And the very boldness of such a foolhardy incursion probably intimidated many of those who might be tempted to waylay him.
Pierce himself later said, "It is the demeanor which is respected among these people. They know the look of fear, and likewise its absence, and any man who is not afraid makes them afraid in turn."
Pierce went from street to stinking street, inquiring after a certain woman. Finally he found a lounging soak who knew her.
"It's Maggie you want? Little Maggie?" the man asked, leaning against a yellow gas lamppost, his face deep shadows in the fog.
"She's a judy, Clean Willy's doll."
"I know of her. Pinches laundry, doesn't she? Aye, she does a bit of snow, I'm sure of it." Here the man paused significantly, squinting.
Pierce gave him a coin. "Where shall I find her?"
"First passing up, first door to yer right," the man said.
Pierce continued on.
"But it's no use your bothering," the man called after him. "Willy's in the stir now-- in Newgate, no less-- and he has only the cockchafer on his mind."
Pierce did not look back. He walked down the street, passing vague shadows in the fog, and here and there a woman whose clothing glowed in the night-- matchstick dippers with patches of phosphorous on their garments. Dogs barked; children cried; whispers and groans and laughter were conveyed to him through the fog. Finally he arrived at the nethersken, with its bright rectangle of yellow light at the entrance, shining on a crudely hand-painted sign which read:
LOGINS FOR
THRAVELERS
Pierce glanced at the sign, then entered the building, pushing his way past the throng of dirty, ragged children clustered about the stairs; he cuffed one briskly, to show them there was to be no plucking at his pockets. He climbed the creaking stairs to the second floor, and asked after the woman named Maggie. He was told she was in the kitchen, and so he descended again, to the basement.
The kitchen was the center of every lodging house, and at this hour it was a warm and friendly place, a focus of heat and rich smells, while the fog curled gray and cold outside the windows. A half-dozen men stood by the fire, talking and drinking; at a side table, several men and women played cards while others sipped bowls of steaming soup; tucked away in the corners were musical instruments, beggars' crutches, hawkers' baskets, and peddlers' boxes. He found Maggie, a dirty child of twelve, and drew her to one side. He gave her a gold guinea, which she bit. She flashed a half-smile.
"What is it, then, guv?" She looked appraisingly at his fine clothes, a calculating glance far beyond her years. "A bit of a tickle for you?"
Pierce ignored the suggestion. "You dab it up with Clean Willy?"
She shrugged. "I did. Willy's in."
"Newgate?"
"Aye."
"You see him?"
"I do, once and again. I goes as his sister, see."
Pierce pointed to the coin she clutched in her hand. "There's another one of those if you can downy him a message."
For a moment, the girl's eyes glowed with interest. Then they went blank again. "What's the lay?"
"Tell Willy, he should break at the next topping. It's to be Emma Barnes, the murderess. They'll hang her in public for sure. Tell him: break at the topping."
She laughed. It was an odd laugh, harsh and rough. 'Willy's in Newgate," she said, "and there's no breaks from Newgate-- topping or no."
"Tell him he can," Pierce said. "Tell him to go to the house where he first met John Simms, and all will be well enough."
"Are you John Simms?"
"I am a friend," Pierce said. "Tell him the next topping and he's over the side, or he's not Clean Willy."
She shook her head "How can he break from Newgate?"
"Just tell him," Pierce said, and turned to leave.
At the door to the kitchen, he looked back at her, a skinny child, stoop-shouldered in a ragged secondhand dress spattered with mud, her hair matted and filthy.
"I'll tell," she said, and slipped the gold coin into her shoe. He turned away from her and retraced his steps, leaving the Holy Land. He came out of a narrow alley, turned into Leicester Square, and joined the crowd in front of the Mayberry Theatre, blending in, disappearing.
Respectable London was quiet at night. In the era before the internal combustion engine, the business and financial districts at the center of the town were deserted and silent except for the quiet footsteps of the Metropolitan Police constables making their twenty-minute rounds.
As dawn came, the silence was broken by the crowing of roosters and the mooing of cows, barnyard sounds incongruous in an urban setting. But in those days there plenty of livestock in the central city, and animal husbandry was still a major London industry-- and indeed, during the day, a major source of traffic congestion. It was not uncommon for a fine gentleman to be delayed in his coach by a shepherd with his flock moving through the streets of the city. London was the largest urban concentration in the world at that time, but by modern standards the division between city and country life was blurred.
Blurred, that is, until the Horse Guards clock chimed seven o'clock, and the first of that peculiarly urban phenomenon-- commuters-- appeared on their way to work, conveyed by "the Marrowbone stage"; that is, on foot. These were the armies of women and girls employed as seamstresses in the sweatshops of West End dress factories, where they worked twelve hours a day for a few shillings a week.
At eight o'clock, the shops along the great thoroughfares took down their shutters; apprentices and assistants dressed the windows in preparation for the day's commerce, setting out what one sarcastic observer called "the innumerable whim-whams and frible-frabble of fashion."
Between eight and nine o'clock was rush hour, and the streets became crowded with men. Everyone from government clerks to bank cashiers, from stockbrokers to sugar-bakers and soap-oilers, made their way to work on foot, in omnibuses, tandems, dogcarts-- altogether a rattling, noisy, thickly jammed traffic of vehicles and drivers who cursed and swore and lashed at their horses.
In the midst of this, the street sweepers began their day's labors. In the ammonia-rich air, they collected the first droppings of horse dung, dashing among the carts and omnibuses. And they were busy: an ordinary London horse, according to Henry Mayhew, deposited six tons of dung on the streets each year, and there were at least a million horses in the city.
Gliding through the midst of this confusion, a few elegant broughams, with gleaming dark polished wood carriages and delicately sprung, lacy-spoked wheels, conveyed their substantial citizens in utter comfort to the day's employment.
Pierce and Agar, crouched on a rooftop overlooking the imposing facade of the Huddleston amp; Bradford Bank across the way, watched as one such brougham came down the street toward them.
"There he is now," Agar said.
Pierce nodded. "Well, we shall know soon enough." He checked his watch. "Eight-twenty-nine. Punctual, as usual."
Pierce and Agar had been on the rooftop since dawn. They had watched the early arrival of the tellers and clerks; they had seen the traffic in the street and on the sidewalks grow more brisk and hurried with each passing minute.
Now the brougham pulled up to the door of the bank, and the driver jumped down to open the door. The president of Huddleston amp; Bradford stepped down to the pavement. Mr. Edgar Trent was near sixty, his beard was gray, and he had a considerable paunch; whether he was balding or not, Pierce could not discern, for a high top hat covered his head.
"He's a fat one, isn't he," Agar said.
"Watch, now," Pierce said.
At the very moment that Mr. Trent stepped to the ground, a well-dressed young man jostled him roughly, muttered a brief apology over his shoulder, and moved on in the rush-hour crowd. Mr. Trent ignored the incident. He walked the few steps forward to the impressive oak doors of the bank.
Then he stopped, halting in mid-stride.
"He's realized," Pierce said.
On the street below, Trent looked after the well-dressed young man, and immediately patted his side coat pocket, feeling for some article. Apparently, what he sought was still in its place; his shoulders dropped in relief, and he continued on into the bank.
The brougham clattered off; the bank doors swung shut.
Pierce grinned and turned to Agar. "Well," he said, "that's that."
"That's what?" Agar said.
"That's what we need to know."
"What do we need to know, then?" Agar said.,
"We need to know," Pierce said slowly, "that Mr. Trent brought his key with him today, for this is the day of-" He broke off abruptly. He had not yet informed Agar of the plan, and he saw no reason to do so until the last minute. A man with a tendency to be a soak, like Agar, could loosen his tongue at an unlikely time. But no drunk could split what he did not know.
"The day of what?" Agar persisted.
"The day of reckoning," Pierce said.
"You're a tight one," Agar said. And then he added, "Wasn't that Teddy Burke, trying a pull?"
"Who's Teddy Burke?" Pierce said
"A swell, works the Strand."
"I wouldn't know," Pierce said, and the two men left the building rooftop.
"Cor, you're a tight one," Agar said again. "That was Teddy Burke."
Pierce just smiled.
____________________
In the coming weeks, Pierce learned a great deal about Mr. Edgar Trent and his daily routine. Mr. Trent was a rather severe and devout gentleman; he rarely drank, never smoked or played at cards. He was the father of five children; his first wife had died in childbirth some years before and his second wife, Emily, was thirty years his junior and an acknowledged beauty, but she was as severe in disposition as her husband.
The Trent family resided at No. 17 Highwater Road, Mayfair, in a large Georgian mansion with twenty-three rooms, not including servants' quarters. Altogether, twelve servants were employed: a coach driver, two liverymen, a gardener, a doorman, a butler, a cook and two kitchen assistants, and three maids. There was also a governess for the three youngest children.
The children ranged in age from a four-year-old son to a twenty-nine-year-old daughter. All lived in the house. The youngest child had a tendency to somnambulation, so that there were often commotions at night that roused the entire household.
Mr. Trent kept two bulldogs, which were walked twice a day, at seven in the morning and at eight-fifteen at night, by the cook's assistants. The dogs were penned in run at the back of the house, not far from the tradesmen's entrance.
Mr. Trent himself followed a rigid routine. Each day, he arose at 7 am., breakfasted at 7:30, and departed for work at 8:10, arriving at 8:29. He invariably lunched at Simpson's at one o'clock, for one hour. He left the bank promptly at 7 p.m., returning home no later than 7:20. Although he was a member of several clubs in town, he rarely frequented them. Mr. Trent and his wife went out of an evening twice in the course of a week; they generally gave a dinner once a week and occasionally a large party. On such evenings, an extra maid and manservant would be laid on, but these people were obtained from adjacent households; they were very reliable and could not be bribed.
The tradesmen who came each day to the side entrance of the house worked the entire street, and they were careful never to associate with a potential thief. For a fruit or vegetable hawker, a "polite street" was not easily come by, and they were all a close-mouthed lot.
A chimney sweep named Marks worked the same area. He was known to inform the police of any approach by a lurker seeking information. The sweep's boy was a simpleton; nothing could be got from him.
The constable patrolling the street, Lewis, made his rounds once every seventeen minutes. The shift changed at midnight; the night man, Howell, made his rounds once every sixteen minutes. Both men were highly reliable, never sick or drunk, and not susceptible to bribes.
The servants were content. None had been recently hired, nor had any been recently discharged; they were all well-treated and loyal to the household, particularly to Mrs. Trent. The coach driver was married to the cook; one of the liverymen was sleeping with one of the upstairs maids; the other two maids were comely and did not, apparently, lack for male companionship-- they had found lovers among the serving staff of nearby households.
The Trent family took an annual seaside holiday during the month of August, but they would not do so this year, for Mr. Trent's business obligations were such that he was required to remain in town the whole of the summer. The family occasionally weekended in the country at the home of Mrs. Trent's parents, but during these outings most of the servants remained in the mansion. At no time, it seemed, were there fewer than eight people residing in the house.
All this information Pierce accumulated slowly and carefully, and often at some risk. Apparently he adopted various disguises when he talked with servants in pubs and on the street; he must also have loitered in the neighborhood, observing the patterns of the house, but this was a dangerous practice. He could, of course, hire a number of "crows" to scout the area for him, but the more people he hired, the more likely it was that rumors of an impending burglary of the Trent mansion would get out. In that case, the already formidable problems of cracking the house would be increased. So he did most of the reconnaissance himself, with some help from Agar.
According to his own testimony, by the end of August Pierce was no further ahead than he had been a month before. "The man afforded no purchase," Pierce said, speaking of Trent. "No vices, no weaknesses, no eccentricities, and a wife straight from the pages of a handbook on dutiful attention to the running of a happy household."
Clearly, there was no point in breaking into a twenty-three-room mansion on the off chance of coming upon the hidden key. Pierce had to have more information, and as he continued his surveillance it became evident that this information could be obtained only from Mr. Trent himself, who alone would know the location of the key.
Pierce had failed in every attempt to strike up a personal acquaintance with Mr. Trent. Henry Fowler, who shared with Pierce an occasional gentleman's evening on the town, had been approached on the subject of Trent, but Fowler had said the man was religious, proper, and rather a bore in conversation; and he added that his wife, though pretty, was equally tedious. (These comments, when brought forward in trial testimony, caused Mr. Fowler considerable embarrassment, but then Mr. Fowler was confronted with much greater embarrassments later.)
Pierce could hardly press for an introduction to such an unappetizing couple. Nor could he approach Trent directly, pretending business with the bank; Henry Fowler would rightly expect that Pierce would bring any business to him. Nor did Pierce know anyone except Fowler who was acquainted with Trent.
In short, Pierce had no gammon to play, and by the first of August he was considering several desperate ploys-- such as staging an accident in which he would be run down by a cab in front of the Trent household, or a similar episode in front of the bank. But these were cheap tricks and, to be effective, they would require some degree of genuine injury to Pierce. Understandably, he was not happy at the prospect, and kept postponing the matter.
Then, on the evening of August 3rd, Mr. Trent suddenly changed his established routine. He returned home at his usual time, 7:20, but he did not go indoors. Instead, he went directly to the dog run at the back of the house, and put one of his bulldogs on a leash. Petting the animal elaborately, he climbed back into his waiting carriage and drove off.
When Pierce saw that, he knew he had his man.
Not far from Southwark Mint was the livery stable of Jeremy Johnson amp; Son. It was a smallish establishment, quartering perhaps two dozen horses in three wooden barns, with hay, saddles, bridles, and other apparatus hanging from rafters. A casual visitor to this stable might be surprised to hear, instead of the whinny of horses, the predominant sound of barking, growling, snarling dogs. But the meaning of those sounds was clear enough to frequenters of the place, and no cause for particular comment. Throughout London, there were many reputable establishments that operated a side business of training fighting dogs.
Mr. Jeremy Johnson, Sr., led his red-bearded customer back through the stables. He was a jovial old man with most of his teeth missing. "Bit of an old gummer myself," he said, chuckling. "Doesn't hurt the drinking, though, I'll tell you that." He slapped the hindquarters of a horse to push it out of the way. "Move on, move on," he said, then looked back at Pierce. "Now what is it you'll be wanting?"
"Your best," Pierce said.
"That's what all the gentlemen are wanting," Mr. Johnson said, with a sigh. "None wants else than the best."
"I am very particular."
"Oh, I can see that," Johnson said. "I can see that, indeed. You're seeking a learner, so as to polish him yourself?"
"No," Pierce said, "I want a fully made dog."
"That's dear, you know."
"I know."
"Very dear, very dear," Johnson mumbled, moving back through the stable. He pushed open a creaking door, and they came into a small courtyard at the rear. Here were three wood-boarded circular pits, each perhaps six feet in diameter, and caged dogs on all sides. The dogs yelped and barked as they saw the men.
"Very dear, a made dog," Johnson said. "Takes a proper long training to have a good made dog. Here's how we do. First we gives the dog to a coster, and he jogs the dog day and day again-- to toughen him, you know."
"I understand," Pierce said impatiently, "but I--"
"Then," Johnson continued, "then we puts the learner in with an old gummer-- or a young gummer, as the case is now. Lost our gummer a fortnight past, so we took this one"-- he pointed to a caged dog-- "and yanked all the teeth, so he's the gummer now. Very good summer he is, too. Knows how to worry a learner-- very agile, this gummer is."
Pierce looked at the gummer. It was a young and healthy dog, barking vigorously. All its teeth were gone, yet it continued to snarl and gull back its lips menacingly. The sight made Pierce laugh.
"Yes, yes, 'tis a bit of a joke," Johnson said, moving around the enclosure, "but not when you get to this one here. Not here, there's no joking. Here's the finest taste dog in all London, I warrant."
This was a mongrel, larger than a bulldog, and parts of its body had been shaved. Pierce knew the routine: a young dog was first trained in sparring bouts with as old and toothless-veteran; then it was put into the pit with a "taste dog," which was expendable but had good spirit. It was in the course of sparring with the taste dog that the learner acquired the final skills to go for the kill. The usual practice was to shave the vulnerable parts of the taste dog, encouraging the learner to attack those areas.
"This taster," Johnson said, "this taster has put the touches on more champions than you can name. You know Mr. Benderby's dog, the one that bested the Manchester killer last month? Well, this taster here trained Mr. Benderby's dog. And also Mr. Starrett's dog, and-- oh, a dozen others, all top fighting dogs. Now Mr. Starrett himself, he comes back to me and wants to buy this very taster. Says he wants to have him to worry a badger or two. You know what he offers me? Fifty quid, he offers me. And you know what I say? Not on your life, I say, not fifty quid for this taster."
Johnson shook his head a little sadly.
"Not for badgers, anyhow," he said. "Badgers are no proper worry for any fighting dog. No, no. A proper fighting dog is for your dogs, or, if need be, for your rats." He squinted at Pierce. "You want your dog for ratting? We have special trained ratters," Mr. Johnson said. "A touch less dear, is why I mention it."
"I want your very best made dog."
"And you shall have it, I warrant. Here is the devil's own, right here." Johnson paused before a cage. Inside, Pierce saw a bulldog that weighed about forty pounds. The dog growled but did not move. "See that? He's a confident one. He's had a good mouthful or two, and he's well made. Vicious as ever I saw. Some dogs have the instinct, you know-- can't be taught 'em, they just have the instinct to get a good mouthful straightaway. This here one, he's got the instinct"
"How much?" Pierce said.
"Twenty quid."
Pierce hesitated.
"With the studded leash, and the collar and muzzle, all in," Johnson added
Pierce still waited.
"He'll do you proud, I warrant, very proud."
After a lengthy silence, Pierce said, "I want your best dog." He pointed to the cage. "This dog has never fought. He has no scars. I want a trained veteran."
"And you shall have him," Johnson said, not blinking. He moved two cages down. "This one here has the killer instinct, the taste of blood, and quick? Why, quicker than your eye, he is, this one. Took the neck off old Whitington's charger a week past, at the pub tourney-- perhaps you was there and saw him."
Pierce said, "How much?"
"Twenty-five quid, all in."
Pierce stared at the animal for a moment, then said, "I want the best dog you have."
"This is the very same, I swear it-- the very dog that's best of the lot"
Pierce crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot on the ground.
"I swear it, sir, twenty-five quid, a gentleman's fancy and most excellent in all respects."
Pierce just stared at him.
"Well, then," Johnson said, looking away as if embarrassed, "there is one more animal, but he's very special. He has the killer instinct, the taste of blood, the quick move, and a tough hide. This way."
He led Pierce out of the enclosed courtyard to another area, where there were three dogs in somewhat larger pens. They were all heavier than the others; Pierce guessed they must weigh fifty pounds, perhaps more. Johnson tapped the middle cage.
"This'un," he said. "This'un turned felon on me," he said. "Thought I'd have to top him off-- he was a felon, pure and simple." Johnson rolled up his sleeve to reveal a set of jagged white scars. "This'un did this to me," he said, "when he turned felon. But I brought him back, nursed him, and trained him special, because he has the spirit, see, and the spirit's everything."
"How much?" Pierce said.
Johnson glanced at the scars on his arm. "This'un I was saving--"
"How much?"
"Couldn't let him go for less'n fifty quid, beg pardon."
"I will give you forty."
"Sold," Johnson said quickly. "You'll take 'im now?"
"No," Pierce said. "I'll call for him soon. For the moment, hold him."
"Then you'll be putting a little something down?"
"I will," Pierce said, and gave the man ten pounds. Then he had him pry open the dog's jaws, and he checked the teeth; and then he departed.
"Damn me," Johnson said after he had gone. "Man buys a made dog, then leaves him. What're we up to today?"
Captain Jimmy Shaw, a retired pugilist, ran the most famous of the sporting pubs, the Queen's Head, off Windmill Street. A visitor to that pub on the evening of August 10, 1854, would be greeted by a most peculiar spectacle, for although the pub was notably low-ceilinged, dingy, and cheap, it was filled with all manner of well-dressed gentlemen who rubbed shoulders with hawkers, costers, navvies, and others of the lowest social station. Yet nobody seemed to mind, for everyone shared a state of excited, noisy anticipation. Furthermore, nearly everyone had brought a dog. There were dogs of all sorts: bulldogs, Skye terriers, brown English terriers, and various mongrels. Some nestled in the arms of their owners; others were tied to the legs of tables or to the footrail of the bar. All were the subject of intense discussion and scrutiny: they were hefted into the air to gauge their weight, their limbs were felt for the strength of bones, their jaws opened for a look at the teeth.
A visitor might then observe that the few decorative features of the Queen's Head reflected this same interest in dogs. Studded leather collars hung from the rafters; there were stuffed dogs in dirty glass boxes mounted over the bar; there were prints of dogs by the hearth, including a famous drawing of Tiny, "the wonder dog," a white bulldog whose legendary exploits were known to every man present.
Jimmy Shaw, a burly figure with a broken nose, moved about the room calling, "Give your orders, gentlemen," in a loud voice. At the Queen's Head, even the best gentlemen drank hot gin without complaint. Indeed, no one seemed to notice the tawdry surroundings at all. Nor, for that matter, did anyone seem to mind that most of the dogs were heavily scarred on the face, body, and limbs.
Above the bar, a soot-covered sign read:
EVERY MAN HAS HIS FANCY
RATTING SPORTS IN REALITY
And if people should be uncertain as to the meaning of that sign, their doubts ended at nine o'clock, when Captain Jimmy gave the order to "light up the pit" and the entire assembled company began to file toward the upstairs room, each man carrying his dog, and each man dropping a shilling into the hand of a waiting assistant before ascending the stairs.
The second floor of the Queen's Head was a large room, as low-ceilinged as the ground floor. This room was wholly devoid of furnishings, and dominated by the pit-- a circular arena six feet in diameter, enclosed by slat boards four feet high. The floor of the pit was whitewashed, freshly applied each evening.
As the spectators arrived on the second floor, their dogs immediately came alive, jumping in their owners' arms, barking vigorously, and straining on the leashes. Captain Jimmy said sternly, "Now you gentlemen that have fancies-- shut 'em up," and there was some attempt to do this, but it was hardly successful, especially when the first cage of rats was brought forth.
At the sight of the rats, the dogs barked and snarled fiercely. Captain Jimmy held the rusty wire cage over his head, waving it in the air; it contained perhaps fifty scampering rats. "Nothing. but the finest, gentlemen," he announced. "Every one country born, and not a water-ditch among 'em. Who wants to try a rat?"
By now, fifty or sixty people had crammed into the narrow room. Many leaned over the wooden boards of the pit. There was money in every hand, and lively bargaining. Over the general din, a voice from the back spoke up. "I'll have a try at twenty. Twenty of your best for my fancy."
"Weigh the fancy of Mr. T.," Captain Jimmy said, for he knew the speaker. The assistants rushed up and took the bulldog from the arms of a gray-bearded, balding gentleman. The dog was weighed.
"Twenty-seven pounds!" came the cry, and the dog was returned to its owner.
"That's it, then, gents," Captain Jimmy said. "Twenty-seven pounds is Mr. T.'s fancy dog, and he has called for a try at twenty rats. Shall it be four minutes?"
Mr. T. nodded in agreement.
"Four minutes it is, gentlemen, and you may wager as you see fit. Make room for Mr. T."
The gray-bearded gentleman moved up to the edge of the pit, still cradling his dog in his arms. The animal was spotted black and white, and it snarled at the rats opposite. Mr. T. urged his dog on by making snarling and growling noises himself.
"Let's see them," Mr. T. said.
The assistant opened the cage and reached in to grab the rats with his bare hand. This was important, for it proved that the rats were indeed country animals, and not infected with any disease. The assistant picked out "twenty of the finest" and tossed them down into the pit. The animals scampered around the perimeter, then finally huddled together in one corner, in a furry mass.
"Are we ready?" called Captain Jimmy, brandishing a stopwatch in his hand.
"Ready," said Mr. T., making growling and snarling sounds to his dog.
"Blow on 'em! Blow on 'em!" came the cry from the spectators, and various otherwise quite dignified gentlemen puffed and blew toward the rats, raising the fur and sending them into a frenzy.
"Aaannnddd… go!" shouted Captain Jimmy, and Mr. T. flung his dog into the pit. Immediately, Mr. T. crouched down until his head was just above the wooden rim, and from this position he urged his dog on with shouted instructions and canine growls.
The dog leapt forward into the mass of rats, striking out at them, snapping at the necks like the true and well-blooded sport that he was. In an instant he had killed three or four.
The betting spectators screamed and yelled no less than the owner, who never took his eyes from the combat. "That's it!" shouted Mr. T. "That's a dead one, drop 'im, now go! Grrrrrrr! Good, that's another, drop 'im. Go! Grrr-rugh!"
The dog moved quickly from one furry body to the next. Then one rat caught hold of his nose and clung tightly; the dog could not shake the rat free.
"Twister! Twister!" shrieked the crowd.
The dog writhed, got free, and raced after the others. Now there were six rats killed, their bodies lying on the blood-streaked pit floor.
"Two minutes past," called Captain Jimmy.
"Hi, Lover, good Lover," screamed Mr. T. "Go, boy. Grrrrh! That's one, now drop 'im. Go, Lover!"
The dog raced around the arena, pursuing its quarry; the crowd screamed and pounded the wooden slats to keep the animals in a frenzy. At one point Lover had four rats clinging to his face and body, and still he kept going, crunching a fifth in his strong haws. In the midst of all this furious excitement, no one noticed a red-bearded gentleman of dignified bearing who pushed his way through the crowd until he was standing alongside Mr. T., whose attention remained wholly focused on the dog.
"Three minutes," Captain Jimmy called. There was a groan from several in the crowd. Three minutes gone and only twelve rats dead; those who had bet on Mr. T.'s fancy were going to lose their money.
Mr. T. himself did not seem to hear the time. His eyes never left the dog; he barked and yelped; he twisted his body, writhing with the dog he owned; he snapped his jaws and screamed orders until he was hoarse.
"Time!" shouted Captain Jimmy, waving the stopwatch. The crowd sighed and relaxed. Lover was pulled from the arena; the three remaining rats were deftly scooped up by the assistants.
The ratting match was over; Mr. T. had lost.
"Bloody good try," said the red-bearded man, in consolation.
____________________
The paradoxes inherent in Mr. Edgar Trent's behavior at the Queen's Head pub-- indeed, in his very presence in such surroundings-- require some explanation.
In the first place, a man who was the president of a bank, a devout Christian, and a pillar of the respectable community would never think to associate himself with members of the lower orders. Quite the contrary: Mr. Trent devoted considerable time and energy to keeping these people in their proper place, and he did so with the firm and certain knowledge that he was helping to maintain good social order.
Yet there were a few places in Victorian society where members of all classes mingled freely, and chief among these were sporting events-- the prize ring, the turf and, of course, the baiting sports. All these activities were either disreputable or flatly illegal, and their supporters, derived from every stratum of society, shared a common interest that permitted them to overlook the breakdown of social convention upon such occasions. And if Mr. Trent saw no incongruity in his presence among the lowest street hawkers and costers, it is also true that the hawkers and costers, usually tongue-tied and uneasy in the presence of gentlemen, were equally relaxed at these sporting events, laughing and nudging freely men whom they would not dare to touch under ordinary circumstances.
Their common interest-- animal baiting-- had been a cherished form of amusement throughout Western Europe since medieval times. But in Victorian England animal sports were dying out rapidly, the victim of legislation and changing public tastes. The baiting of bulls or bears, common at the turn of the century, was now quite rare; cockfighting was found only in rural centers. In London in 1854, only three animal sports remained popular, and all concerned dogs.
Nearly every foreign observer since Elizabethan times has commented on the affection Englishmen lavish upon their dogs, and it is odd that the very creature most dear to English hearts should be the focus of these flagrantly sadistic "sporting events."
Of the three dog sports, dogs set against other dogs was considered the highest "art" of animal sports. This sport was sufficiently widespread that many London criminals made a good living working exclusively as dog thieves, or "fur-pullers." But dogfights were relatively uncommon, since they were ordinarily battles to the death, and a good fighting dog was an expensive article.
Even less common was badger-baiting. Here a badger would be chained in an arena, and a dog or two set loose to worry the animal. The badger's tough hide and sharp bite made the spectacle particularly tense and highly popular, but a scarcity of badgers limited the sport.
Ratting was the most common dog sport, particularly at the mid-century. Although technically illegal, it was conducted for decades with flagrant disregard for the law. Throughout London there were signs reading, "Rats Wanted" and "Rats Bought and Sold"; there was, in fact, a minor industry in ratcatching, with its own specialized rules of the trade. Country rats were most prized, for their fighting vigor and their absence of infection. The more common sewer rats, readily identified by their smell, were timid and their bites more likely to infect a valuable fighting dog. When one recognizes that the owner of a sporting pub with a well-attended rat pit might buy two thousand rats a week-- and a good country rat could fetch as much as a shilling-- it is not surprising that many individuals made a living as ratcatchers. The most famous was "Black Jack" Hanson, who went about in a hearse-like wagon, offering to rid fashionable mansions of pests for absurdly low rates, so long as he could "take the critters live."
There is no good explanation for why Victorians at all levels of society looked away from the sport of ratting, but they were conveniently blind. Most humane writing of the period deplores and condemns cockfighting-- which was already very rare-- without mentioning dog sports at all. Nor is there any indication that reputable gentlemen felt any unease at participating in ratting sports; for these gentlemen considered themselves "staunch supporters of the destruction of vermin," and nothing more.
____________________
One such staunch supporter, Mr. T., retired to the downstairs rooms of the Queen's Head pub, which was now virtually deserted. Signaling the solitary barman, he called for a glass of gin for himself and some peppermint for his fancy.
Mr. T. was in the process of washing his dog's mouth out with peppermint-- to prevent canker-- when the red-bearded gentleman came down the stairs and said, "May I join you for a glass?"
"By all means," Mr. T. said, continuing to minister to his dog.
Upstairs, the sound of stomping feet and shouting indicated the beginning of another episode of the destruction of vermin. The red-bearded stranger had to shout over the din. "I perceive you are a gentleman of sporting instinct," he said.
"And unlucky," Mr. T. said, equally loudly. He stroked his dog. "Lover was not at her best this evening. When she is in a state, there is none to match her, but at times she lacks bustle." Mr. T. sighed regretfully. "Tonight was such a one." He ran his hands over the dog's body, probing for deep bites, and wiped the blood of several cuts from his fingers with his handkerchief. "But she came off well enough. My Lover will fight again."
"Indeed," the red-bearded man said, "and I shall wager upon her again when she does."
Mr. T. showed a trace of concern. "Did you lose?"
"A trifle. Ten guineas, it was nothing."
Mr. T. was a conservative man, and well enough off, but not disposed to think of ten guineas as "a trifle." He looked again at his drinking companion, noticing the fine cut of his coat and the excellent white silk of his neckcloth.
"I am pleased you take it so lightly," he said. "Permit me to buy you a glass, as a token of your ill fortune."
"Never," returned the red-bearded man, "for I count it no ill fortune at all. Indeed, I admire a man who may keep a fancy and sport her. I should do so myself, were I not so often abroad on business."
"Oh, yes?" said Mr. T., signaling to the batman for another round.
"Quite," said the stranger. "Why, only the other day, I was offered a most excellently made dog, close upon a felon, with the tastes of a true fighter. I could not make the purchase, for I have no time myself to look after the animal."
"Most unfortunate," said Mr. T. "What was the price asked?"
"Fifty guineas."
"Excellent price."
"Indeed."
The waiter brought more drinks. "I am myself in search of a made dog," Mr. T. said.
"Indeed?"
"Yes," Mr. T. said. "I should like a third to complement my stable, with Lover and Shantung-- that is the other dog. But I don't suppose…"
The red-bearded gentleman paused discreetly before answering. The training, buying, and selling of fighting dogs was, after all, illegal. "If you wish," Pierce said at last, "I could inquire whether the animal is still available."
"Oh, yes? That would be very good of you. Very good indeed." Mr. T. had a sudden thought. "But were I you, I should buy it myself. After all, while you were abroad, your wife could instruct the servants in the care of the beast."
"I fear," replied the red-bearded man, "that I have devoted too much of my energies these past years to the pursuit of business concerns. I have never married." And then he added, "But of course I should like to."
"Of course," Mr. T. said, with a most peculiar look coming over his face.
Victorian England was the first society to constantly gather statistics on itself, and generally these figures were a source of unabashed pride. Beginning in 1840, however, one trend worried the leading thinkers of the day: there were increasingly more single women than men. By 1851, the number of single women of marriageable age was reliably put at 2,765,000-- and a large proportion of these women were the daughters of the middle and upper classes.
Here was a problem of considerable dimension and gravity. Women of lower stations in life could take jobs as seamstresses, flower girls, field workers, or any of a dozen lowly occupations. These women were of no pressing concern; they were slovenly creatures lacking in education and a discriminating view of the world. A. H. White reports, in tones of astonishment, that he interviewed a young girl who worked as a matchbox maker, who "never went to church or chapel. Never heard of 'England' or 'London' or the 'sea' or 'ships.' Never heard of God. Does not know what He does. Does not know whether it is better to be good or bad."
Obviously, in the face of such massive ignorance, one must simply be grateful that the poor child had discovered some way to survive in society at all. But the problem presented by the daughters of middle- and upper-class households was different. These young ladies possessed education and a taste for genteel living. And they had been raised from birth for no other purpose than to be "perfect wives."
It was terribly important that such women should marry. The failure to marry-- spinsterhood-- implied a kind of dreadful crippling, for it was universally acknowledged that "a woman's true position was that of administratrix, mainspring, guiding star of the home," and if she was unable to perform this function, she became a sort of pitiful social misfit, an oddity.
The problem was made more acute by the fact that well-born women had few alternatives to wifehood. After all, as one contemporary observer noted, what occupations could they find "without losing their position in society? A lady, to be such, must be a mere lady, and nothing else. She must not work for profit, or engage in any occupation that money can command, lest she invade the rights of the working classes, who live by their labor…"
In practice, an unmarried upper-class woman could use the one unique attribute of her position, education, and become a governess. But by 1851, twenty-five thousand women were already employed as governesses and there was, to say the least, no need for more. Her other choices were much less appealing: she might be a shop assistant, a clerk, a telegraphist, or a nurse, but all these occupations were more suitable for an ambitious lower-class woman than a firmly established gentlewoman of quality.
If a young woman refused such demeaning work, her spinsterhood implied a considerable financial burden upon the household. Miss Emily Downing observed that "the daughters of professional men… cannot but feel themselves a burden and a drag on the hard-won earnings of their fathers; they must know-- if they allow themselves to think at all-- that they are a constant cause of anxiety, and that should they not get married, there is every probability of their being, sooner or later, obliged to enter the battle of life utterly unprepared and unfitted for the fight."
In short, there was intense pressure for marriage-- any sort of decent marriage-- felt by fathers and daughters alike. The Victorians tended to marry relatively late, in their twenties or thirties, but Mr. Edgar Trent had a daughter Elizabeth, now twenty-nine and of "wholly marriageable condition"-- meaning somewhat past her prime. It could not have escaped Mr. Trent's attention that the red-bearded gentleman might be in need of a wife. The gentleman himself expressed no reluctance to marry, but rather had indicated that the exigencies of business had kept him from pursuing personal happiness. Thus there was no reason to believe that this well-dressed, evidently well-to-do young man with a sporting instinct might not be drawn to Elizabeth. With this in mind, Mr. Trent contrived to invite Mr. Pierce to his house on Highwater Road for Sunday tea, on the pretext of discussing the purchase of a fighting dog from Mr. Pierce. Mr. Pierce, somewhat reluctantly, accepted the invitation.
____________________
Elizabeth Trent was not called as a witness at the trial of Pierce, out of deference to her finer sensibilities. But popular accounts of the time give us an accurate picture of her. She was of medium height, rather darker in complexion than was the fashion, and her features were, in the words of one observer, "regular enough without being what one might call pretty." Then, as now, journalists were inclined to exaggerate the beauty of any woman involved in a scandalous event, so that the absence of compliments about Miss Trent's appearance probably implies "an unfortunate aspect."
She apparently had few suitors, save for those openly ambitious fellows eager to marry a bank president's daughter, and these she staunchly rejected, with her father's undoubtedly mixed blessing. But she must surely have been impressed with Pierce, that "dashing, intrepid, fine figure of a man. with charm to burn."
By all accounts, Pierce was equally impressed by the young lady. A servant's testimony records their initial meeting, which reads as if it came from the pages of a Victorian novel.
Mr. Pierce was taking tea on the rear lawn with Mr. Trent and Mrs. Trent, an "acknowledged beauty of the town." They watched as bricklayers in the back yard patiently erected a ruined building, while nearby a gardener planted picturesque weeds. This was the last gasp of a nearly one-hundred-year English fascination with ruins; they were still so fashionable that everyone who could afford a decent ruin installed one on his grounds.
Pierce watched the workmen for a while. "What is it to be?" he inquired.
"We thought a water mill," Mrs. Trent said. "It will be so delightful, especially if there is the rusted curve of the waterwheel itself. Don't you think so?"
"We are building the rusted wheel at a goodly expense," Mr. Trent grumbled.
"It is being constructed of previously rusted metal, saving us a good deal of bother," Mrs. Trent added. "But of course we must wait for the weeds to grow up around the site before it takes on the proper appearance."
At that moment Elizabeth arrived, wearing white crinoline. "Ah, my darling daughter," Mr. Trent said, rising, and Mr. Pierce rose with him. "May I present Mr. Edward Pierce, my daughter Elizabeth."
"I confess I did not know you had a daughter," Pierce said. He bowed deeply at the waist, took her hand, and seemed about to kiss it but hesitated. He appeared greatly flustered by the young woman's arrival on the scene.
"Miss Trent," he said, releasing her hand awkwardly. "You take me quite by surprise."
"I cannot tell if that is to my advantage or no," Elizabeth Trent replied, quickly taking a seat at the tea table and holding out her hand until a filled cup was put in it.
"I assure you, it is wholly to your advantage," Mr. Pierce replied. And he was reported to have colored deeply at this remark.
Miss Trent fanned herself; Mr. Trent cleared his throat; Mrs. Trent, the perfect wife, picked up a tray of biscuits and said, "Will you try one of these, Mr. Pierce?"
"With gratitude, Madam," Mr. Pierce replied, and no one present doubted the sincerity of his words.
"We are just discussing the ruins," Mr. Trent said, in a somewhat overloud voice. "But prior to that Mr. Pierce was telling us of his travels abroad. He has recently returned from New York, in point of fact."
It was a cue; his daughter picked it up neatly. "Really?" she said, fanning herself briskly. "How utterly fascinating."
"I fear it is more so in the prospect than the telling," Mr. Pierce replied, avoiding the glance of the young woman to such a degree that all observed his abashed reticence. He was clearly taken with her; and the final proof was that he addressed his remarks to Mrs. Trent. "It is a city like any other in the world, if truth be told, and chiefly distinguished by the lack of niceties which we residents of London take for granted."
"I have been informed," Miss Trent ventured, still fanning, "that there are native predators in the region."
"I should be delighted if I regale you," Mr. Pierce said, "with endless adventures with the Indians-- for so they are called, in America as in the East-- but I fear I have no adventures to report. The wilderness of America does not begin until the Mississippi is crossed."
"Have you done so?" asked Mrs. Trent.
"I have," Mr. Pierce replied. "It is a vast river, many times more broad than the Thames, and it marks the boundary in America between civilization and savagery. Although lately they are constructing a railway across that vast colony"-- he permitted himself the condescending reference to America, and Mr. Trent guffawed "and I expect with the coming of the railway, the savagery will soon vanish."
"How quaint," Miss Trent said, apparently unable to think of anything else to say.
"What business took you to New York?" Mr. Trent asked
"If I may be so bold," Mr. Pierce continued, ignoring the question, "and if the delicate ears of the ladies present shall not be offended, I shall give an example of the savagery which persists in the American lands, and the rude way of life which many persons there think nothing remarkable. Do you know of buffaloes?"
"I have read of them," said Mrs. Trent, her eyes flashing. According to some of the testimony of the servants, she was as taken with Mr. Pierce as was her stepdaughter, and her demeanor created a minor scandal within the Trent household. Mrs. Trent said, "These buffaloes are large beasts, like wild cows, and shaggy."
"Precisely so," Mr. Pierce said. "The western portion of the American country is widely populated with these buffalo creatures, and many persons make their livelihood-- such as it is-- in hunting them."
"Have you been to California, where there is gold?" asked Miss Trent abruptly.
"Yes," Pierce said.
"Let the man finish his tale," Mrs. Trent said, rather too sharply.
"Well," Pierce said, "the buffalo hunters, as they are known, sometimes seek the flesh of the animals, which is reckoned like venison, and sometimes the hide,, which also has value."
"They lack tusks," Mr. Trent said. Mr. Trent had lately financed an elephant-killing expedition on behalf of the bank, and at this very moment an enormous warehouse at dockside was filled with five thousand ivory tusks. Mr. Trent had gone to inspect these goods for himself, a vast room of white curving tusks, most impressive.
"No, they have no tusks, although the male of the species possesses horns."
"Horns, I see. But not of ivory."
"No, not ivory."
"I see."
"Please go on," Mrs. Trent said, her eyes still flashing.
"Well," Pierce said, "the men who ki-- who dispatch these buffalos are called buffalo hunters, and they utilize rifles for their purposes. On occasion they organize themselves into a line to drive the beasts over some cliff in a mass. But that is not common. Most frequently, the beast is dispatched singly. In any event-- and here I must beg excuses for the crudity of what I must report of this crude countryside-- once the beast has terminated existence, its innards are removed."
"Very sensible," Mr. Trent said.
"To be sure," Pierce said, "but here is the peculiar part. These buffalo hunters prize as the greatest of delicacies one portion of the innards, that being the small intestines of the beast."
"How are they prepared?" Miss Trent asked. "By roasting over a fire, I expect."
"No, Madam," Pierce said, "for I am telling you a tale of abject savagery. These intestines which are so prized, so much considered a delicacy, are consumed upon the spot, in a state wholly uncooked."
"Do you mean raw?" asked Mrs. Trent, wrinkling her nose.
"Indeed, Madam, as we would consume a raw oyster, so do the hunters consume the intestine, and that while it is still warm from the newly expired beast."
"Dear God," said Mrs. Trent.
"Now, then," Pierce continued, "it happens upon occasion that two men may have joined in the killing, and immediately afterward each falls upon one end of the prized intestines. Each hunter races the other, trying to gobble up this delicacy faster than his opponent."
"Gracious," Miss Trent said, fanning herself more briskly.
"Not only that," Pierce said, "but in their greedy haste, the buffalo hunter often swallows the portions whole. This is a known trick. But his opponent, recognizing the trick, may in the course of eating pull from the other the undigested portion straightaway from his mouth, as I might pull a string through my fingers. And thus one man may gobble up what another has earlier eaten, in a manner of speaking."
"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Trent, turning quite pale.
Mr. Trent cleared his throat. "Remarkable."
"How quaint," said Miss Trent bravely, with a quivering voice.
"You really must excuse me," said Mrs. Trent, rising.
"My dear," Mr. Trent said.
"Madam, I hope I have not distressed you," said Mr. Pierce, also rising.
"Your tales are quite remarkable," Mrs. Trent said, turning to leave.
"My dear," Mr. Trent said again, and hastened after her.
Thus Mr. Edward Pierce and Miss Elizabeth Trent were briefly alone on the back lawn of the mansion; and they were seen to exchange a few words. The content of their conversation is not known. But Miss Trent later admitted to a servant that she found Mr. Pierce "quite fascinating in a rough-and-ready way," and it was generally agreed in the Trent household that young Elizabeth was now in possession of that most valuable of all acquisitions, a "prospect."
The execution of the notorious axe murderess Emma Barnes on August 28, 1854, was a well-publicized affair. On the evening prior to the execution, the first of the crowds began to gather outside the high granite walls of Newgate Prison, where they would spend the night in order to be assured of a good view of the spectacle the following morning. That same evening, the gallows was brought out and assembled by the executioner's assistants. The sound of hammering would continue long into the night.
The owners of nearby rooming houses that overlooked Newgate square were pleased to rent their rooms for the evening to the better class of ladies and gents eager to get a room with a good view over the site for a "hanging party." Mrs. Edna Molloy, a virtuous widow, knew perfectly well the value of her rooms, and when a well spoken gentleman named Pierce asked to hire the best of them for the night, she struck a hard bargain: twenty-five guineas for a single evening.
That was a considerable sum of money. Mrs. Molloy could live comfortably for a year on that amount, but she did not let the fact influence her, for she knew what it was worth to Mr. Pierce himself-- the cost of a butler for six months, or the price of one or two good ladies' dresses, and nothing more substantial than that. The very proof of his indifference lay in the ready way he paid her, on the spot, in gold guineas. Mrs. Molloy did not wish to risk offending him by biting the coins in front of him, but she would bite them as soon as she was alone. One couldn't be too careful with gold guineas, and she had been fooled more than once, even by gentlemen.
The coins were genuine, and she was much relieved. Thus she paid little attention when, later in the day, Mr. Pierce and his party filed upstairs to the hired room. The party consisted of two other men and two women, all smartly turned out in good clothes. She could tell by their accents that the men were not gentlemen, and the women were no better than they looked, despite the wicker baskets and bottles of wine they carried.
When the party entered the room and closed the door behind them, she did not bother to listen at the keyhole. She'd have no trouble from them, she was sure of it.
____________________
Pierce stepped to the window and looked down at the crowd, which gathered size with each passing minute. The square was dark, lit only by the glare of torches around the scaffolding; by that hot, baleful light he could see the crossbar and trap taking shape.
"Never make it," Agar said behind him.
Pierce turned. "He has to make it, laddie."
"He's the best snakesman in the business, the best anybody ever heard speak of, but he can't get out of there," Agar said, jerking his thumb toward Newgate Prison.
The second man now spoke. The second man was Barlow, a stocky, rugged man with a white knife scar across his forehead, which he usually concealed beneath the brim of his hat. Barlow was a reformed buzzer turned rampsman-- a pickpocket who had degenerated to plain mugging-- whom Pierce had hired, some years back, as a buck cabby. All rampsmen were thugs at heart, and that was precisely what a cracksman like Pierce wanted for a buck cabby, a man holding the reins to the cab, ready to make the getaway-- or ready for a bit of a shindy, if it came to that. And Barlow was loyal; he had worked for Pierce for nearly five years now.
Barlow frowned and said, "If it can be done, he'll do it. Clean Willy can do it if it can be done." He spoke slowly, and gave the impression of a man who formed his thoughts with slowness. Pierce knew he could be quick in action, however.
Pierce looked at the women. They were the mistresses of Agar and Barlow, which meant they were also their accomplices. He did not know their names and he did not want to know. He regretted the very idea that they must be present at this occasion-- in five years, he had never seen Barlow's woman-- but there was no way to avoid it. Barlow's woman was an obvious soak; you could smell the gin breath across the room. Agar's woman was little better, but at least she was sober.
"Did you bring the trimmings?" Pierce asked.
Agar's woman opened a picnic basket. In it, he saw a sponge, medicinal powders, and bandages. There was also a carefully folded dress. "All I was told, sir."
"The dress is small?"
"Aye, sir. Barely more'n a child's frock, sir."
"Well enough," Pierce said, and turned back to look at the square once more. He paid no attention to the gallows or the swelling crowd. Instead he stared at the walls of Newgate Prison.
"Here's the supper, sir," said Barlow's woman. Pierce looked back at the supplies of cold fowl, jars of pickled onion, lobster claws, and a packet of dark cigars.
"Very food, very good," he said.
Agar said, "Are you playing the noble, sir?" This was a reference to a well-known magsman's con. It was said sarcastically, and Agar later testified that Pierce didn't care for the comment. He turned back with his long coat open at the waist to reveal a revolver jammed into the waistband of his trousers.
"If any of you steps aside," he said, "you'll have a barker up your nose, and I'll see you in lavender." He smiled thinly. "There are worse things, you know, than transportation to Australia."
"No offense," Agar said, looking at the gun. "No offense at all, no offense-- it was only in the manner of a joke."
Barlow said, "Why'd we need a snakesman?"
Pierce was not sidetracked. "Bear my words carefully," he said. "Any of you steps aside and you'll stop a shot before you can say Jack Robin. I mean every word." He sat down at the table. "Now then," he said, "I'll have a leg of that chicken, and we shall disport ourselves as best we can while we wait."
____________________
Pierce slept part of the night; he was awakened at daybreak by the crowd that jammed the square below. The crowd had now swollen to more than fifteen thousand noisy, rough people, and Pierce knew that the streets would be filled with ten or fifteen thousand more, making their way to see the hanging on their route to work. Employers hardly bothered to keep up a pretense of strictness on any Monday morning when there was a hanging; it was an accepted fact that everybody would be late to work, and especially today, with a woman to be hanged.
The gallows itself was now finished; the rope dangled in the air above the trap. Pierce glanced at his pocketwatch. It was 7:45, just a short time before the execution itself.
In the square below, the crowd began to chant: "Oh, my, think I'm going to die! Oh, my, think I'm going to die!" There was a good deal of laughter and shouting and stamping of feet. One or two fights broke out, but they could not be sustained in the tightly packed crush of the crowd.
They all went to the window to watch.
Agar said, "When do you think he'll make his move?"
"Right at eight, I should think."
"I'd do it a bit sooner, myself."
Pierce said, "He'll make his move whenever he thinks best."
The minutes passed slowly. No one in the room spoke. Finally, Barlow said, "I knew Emma Barnes-- never thought she'd come to this."
Pierce said nothing.
At eight o'clock, the chimes of St. Sepulchre signaled the hour, and the crowd roared in anticipation. There was the soft jingle of a prison bell, and then a door in Newgate opened and the prisoner was led out, her wrists strapped behind her. In front was a chaplain, reciting from the Bible. Behind was the city executioner, dressed in black.
The crowd saw the prisoner and shouted "Hats off!" Every man's hat was removed as the prisoner slowly stepped up the scaffolding. Then there were cries of "Down in front! Down in front!" They were, for the most part, unheeded.
Pierce kept his gaze on the condemned woman. Emma Barnes was in her thirties, and looked vigorous enough. The firm lines and muscles of her neck were clearly visible through her open-necked dress. But her eyes were distant and glazed; she did not really seem to see anything. She took up her position and the city executioner turned to her, making slight adjustments, as if he were a seamstress positioning a dressmaker's dummy. Emma Barnes stared above the crowd. The rope was fitted to a chain around her neck.
The clergyman read loudly, keeping his eyes fixed on the Bible. The city executioner strapped the woman's legs together with a leather strap; this occasioned a good deal of fumbling beneath her skirts; the crowd made raucous comments.
Then the executioner stood, and slipped a black hood over the woman's head. And then, at a signal, the trap opened with a wooden crack! that Pierce heard with startling distinctness; and the body fell, and caught, and hung instantly motionless.
"He's getting better at it," Agar said. The city executioner was known for botching in executions, leaving the hanged prisoner to writhe and dangle for several minutes before he died. "Crowd won't like it," Agar added.
The crowd, in fact, did not seem to mind. There was a moment of utter silence, and then the excited roar of discussion. Pierce knew that most of the crowd would remain in the square, watching for the next hour, until the dead woman was cut down and placed in a coffin.
"Will you take some punch?" asked Agar's tart.
"No," Pierce said. And then he said, "Where is Willy? "
____________________
Clean Willy Williams, the most famous snakesman of the century, was inside Newgate Prison beginning his escape. He was a tiny man, and he had been famous in his youth for his agility as a chimney sweep's apprentice; in later years he had been employed by the most eminent cracksman, and his feats were now legendary. It was said that Clean Willy could climb a surface of glass, and no one was quite certain that he couldn't.
Certainly the guards of Newgate, knowing the celebrity of their prisoner, had kept a close watch on him these many months, just in case. Yet they also knew that escape from Newgate was flatly impossible. A resourceful man might make a go of it from Ponsdale, where routines were notoriously lax, the walls low, and the guards not averse to the feel of gold coin and were known to look the other way. Ponsdale, or Highgate, or any of a dozen others, but never Newgate.
Newgate Prison was the most secure in all England. It had been designed by George Dance, "one of the most meticulous intellects of the Age of Taste," and every detail of the building had been set forth to emphasize the harsh facts of confinement. Thus the proportions of the window arches had been "subtly thickened in order to intensify the painful narrowness of the openings," and contemporary observers applauded the excellence of such cruel effects.
The reputation of Newgate was not merely a matter of aesthetics. In the more than seventy years since 1782, when the building was finished, no convict had ever escaped. And this was hardly surprising: Newgate was surrounded on all sides with granite walls fifty feet high. The stones were so finely cut that they were said to be impossible to scale. Yet even if one could manage the impossible, it was to no avail, for encircling the top of the walls was an iron bar, fitted with revolving, razor-sharp spiked drums. And the bar was also fitted with spikes. No man could get past that obstacle. Escape from Newgate was inconceivable.
With the passing months, as the guards grew familiar with the presence of little Willy, they ceased to watch him closely. He was not a difficult prisoner. He never broke the rule of silence, never spoke to a fellow inmate; he suffered the "cockchafer"-- or treadmill-- for the prescribed fifteen-minute intervals without complaint or incident; he worked at oakum-picking with no surcease. Indeed, there was some grudging respect for the reformed aspect of the little man, for the cheerful way he went about the routine. He was a likely candidate for a ticket-of-leave, a foreshortened sentence, in a year or so.
Yet at eight in the morning on that Monday, August 28, 1854, Clean Willy William had slipped to a corner of the prison where two walls met, and with his back to the angle he was skinning straight up the sheer rock surface, bracing with his hands and feet. He dimly heard the chanting of the crowd: "Oh, my, think I'm going to die!" as he reached the top of the wall, and without hesitation grabbed the bar with its iron spikes. His hands were immediately lacerated.
From childhood, Clean Willy had had no sensation in his palms, which were thickly covered with calluses and scar tissue. It was the custom of homeowners of the period to keep a hearth burning right to the moment when the chimney sweep and his child assistant arrived to clean the flue and if the child scorched his hands in hastening up the still-hot chimney, that was not any great concern. If the child didn't like the work, there were plenty of others to take his place.
Clean Willy's hands had been burned again and again, over a period of years. So he felt nothing now as the blood trickled down from his slashed palms, ran in rivulets along his forearms, and dripped and spattered on his face. He paid no attention at all.
He moved slowly along the revolving spike wheels, down the full length of one wall, then to the second wall, and then to the third. It was exhausting work. He lost all sense of time, and never heard the noise of the crowd that followed the execution. He continued to make his way around the perimeter of the prison yard until he reached the south wall. There he paused and waited while a patrolling guard passed beneath him. The guard never looked up, although Willy later remembered that drops of his own blood landed on the man's cap and shoulders.
When the guard was gone, Willy clambered over the spikes-- cutting his chest, his knees, and his legs, so that the blood now ran very freely-- and jumped fifteen feet down to the roof of the nearest budding outside the prison. No one heard the sound of his landing, for the area was deserted; everybody was attending the execution.
From that roof he jumped to another, and then another, leaping six- and eight-foot gaps without hesitation. Once or twice, he lost his grip on the shingles and slates of the roofs, but he always recovered. He had, after all, spent much of his life on rooftops.
Finally, less than half an hour from the time he began to inch his way up the prison wall, he slipped through a gabled window at the back of Mrs. Molloy's lodging house, padded down the hallway, and entered the room rented, at considerable expense, by Mr. Pierce and his party.
____________________
Agar recalled that Willy presented "a ghastly aspect, most fearsome," and he added that "he was bleeding like a stuck saint," although this blasphemous reference was expunged from the courtroom records.
Pierce directed the swift treatment of the man, who was barely conscious. He was revived with the vapors of ammonium chloride from a cut-glass inhaler. His clothes were stripped off by the women, who pretended no modesty but worked quickly; his many wounds were staunched with styptic powder and sticking plaster, then bound with surgical bandages. Agar gave him a sip of coca wine for energy, and Burroughs amp; Wellcome beef-and-iron wine for sustenance. He was forced to down two Carter's Little Nerve Pills and some tincture of opium for his pain. This combined treatment brought the man to his senses, and enabled the women to clean his face, douse his body with rose water, and bundle him into the waiting dress.
When he was dressed, he was given a sip of Bromo Caffein for further energy, and told to act faint. A bonnet was placed over his head, and boots laced on his feet; his bloody prison garb was stuffed in the picnic basket.
No one among the crowd of more than twenty thousand paid the slightest attention when the well-dressed party of hangers-on departed Mrs. Molloys boarding house-- with one woman of their party so faint that she had to be carried by the men, who hustled her into a waiting cab-- and rattled off into the morning light. A faint woman was a common enough sight and, in any case, nothing to compare to a woman turning slowly at the end of the rope, back and forth, back and forth.
It is usually estimated that seven-eighths of the structures in Victorian London were actually Georgian. The face of the city and its general architectural character were legacies of that earlier era; the Victorians did not begin to rebuild their capital in any substantial way until the 1880s. This reluctance reflected the economics of urban building. For most of the century, it simply was not profitable to tear down old structures, even those badly suited to their modern functions. Certainly the reluctance was not aesthetic-- the Victorians loathed the Georgian style, which Ruskin himself termed "the ne plus ultra of ugliness."
Thus it is perhaps not surprising that the Times, in reporting that a convict had escaped from Newgate Prison, observed that "the virtues of this edifice have been clearly overstated. Not only is escape from its confines possible, it is mere child's play, for the fleeing villian had not yet attained his majority. It is time for this public disgrace to be torn down."
The article went on to comment that "the Metropolitan Police has dispatched groups of armed officers into the rookeries of the town, in order to flush out the escaped man, and there is every expectation of his apprehension."
There were no follow-up reports. One must remember that during this period, jailbreaks were, in the words of one commentator, "quite as common as illegitimate births," and nothing so ordinary was really newsworthy. At a time when the curtains of the windows of Parliament were being soaked in lime to protect the members against the cholera epidemic while they debated the conduct of the Crimean campaign, the newspapers could not be bothered with a minor felon from the dangerous classes who had been lucky enough to make a clean getaway.
A month later, the body of a young man was found floating in the Thames, and police authorities identified him as the escaped convict from Newgate. It received barely a paragraph in the Evening Standard; the other newspapers did not mention it at all.
After his escape, Clean Willy was taken to Pierce's house in Mayfair, where he spent several weeks in seclusion while his wounds healed. It is from his later testimony to police that we first learn of the mysterious woman who was Pierce's mistress, and known to Willy as "Miss Miriam"
Willy was placed in an upstairs room, and the servants were told that he was a relative of Miss Miriam's who had been run down by a cab on New Bond Street. From time to time, Willy was tended by Miss Miriam. He said of her that she was "well carried, a good figure, and well-spoke, and she walked here and there slow, never hurrying." This last sentiment was echoed by all the witnesses, who were impressed by the ethereal aspect of the young woman; her eyes were said to be especially captivating, and her grace in movement was called "dreamlike" and "phantasmagorical."
Apparently this woman lived in the house with Pierce, although she was often gone during the day. Clean Willy was never very clear about her movements, and in any case he was often sedated with opium, which may also account for the ghostly qualities he saw in her.
Willy recalled only one conversation with her. He asked, "Are you his canary, then?" Meaning was she Pierce's accomplice in burglary.
"Oh no," she said, smiling. "I have no ear for music."
From this he assumed she was not involved in Pierce's plans, although this was later shown to be wrong. She was an integral part of the plan, and was probably the first of the thieves to know Pierce's intentions.
At the trial, there was considerable speculation about Miss Miriam and her origins. A good deal of evidence points to the conclusion that she was an actress. This would explain her ability to mimic various accents and manners of different social classes; her tendency to wear make-up in a day when no respectable woman would let cosmetics touch her flesh; and her open presence as Pierce's mistress. In those days, the dividing line between an actress and a prostitute was exceedingly fine. And actors were by occupation itinerant wanderers, likely to have connections with criminals, or to be criminals themselves. Whatever the truth of her past, she seems to have been his mistress for several years.
Pierce himself was rarely in the house, and on occasion he was gone overnight. Clean Willy recalled seeing him once or twice in the late afternoon, wearing riding clothes and smelling of horses, as if he had returned from an equestrian excursion.
"I didn't know you were a horse fancier," Willy once said.
"I'm not," Pierce replied shortly. "Hate the bloody beasts."
Pierce kept Willy indoors after his wounds were healed, waiting for his "terrier crop" to grow out. In those days, the surest way to identify an escaped convict was by his short haircut. By late September, his hair was longer, but still Pierce did not allow him to leave. When Willy asked why, Pierce said, "I am waiting for you to be recaptured, or found dead."
This statement puzzled Willy, but he did as he was told. A few days later, Pierce came in with a newspaper under his arm and told him he could leave. That same evening Willy went to the Holy Land, where he expected to find his mistress, Maggie. He found that Maggie had taken up with a footpad, a rough sort who made his way by "swinging the stick"-- that is, by mugging. Maggie showed no interest in Willy.
Willy then took up with a girl of twelve named Louise, whose principal occupation was snowing. She was described in court as "no gofferer, mind, and no clean-starcher, just a bit of plain snow now and then for the translator. Simple, really." What was meant by this passage, which required considerable explanation to the presiding magistrates, was that Willy's new mistress was engaged in the lowest form of laundry stealing. The better echelons of laundry stealers, the gofferers and clean-starchers, stole from high-class districts, often taking clothes off the lines. Plain, ordinary snowing was relegated to children and young girls, and it could be lucrative enough when fenced to "translators," who sold the clothing as second-hand goods.
Willy lived off this girl's earnings, never venturing outside the sanctuary of the rookery. He had been warned by Pierce to keep his mouth shut, and he never mentioned that he had had help in his break from Newgate. Clean Willy lived with his judy in a lodging house that contained more than a hundred people; the house was a well-known buzzer's lurk. Willy lived and slept with his mistress in a bed he shared with twenty other bodies of various sexes, and Louise reported of this period, "He took his ease, and spent his time cheerful, and waited for the cracksman to give his call."
Of all the fashionable sections of that fashionable city of London, none compared to the spongy, muddy pathway in Hyde Park called the Ladies' Mile, or Rotten Row. Here, weather permitting, were literally hundreds of men and women on horseback, all dressed in the greatest splendor the age could provide, radiant in the golden sunshine at four in the afternoon.
It was a scene of bustling activity: the horsemen and horsewomen packed tightly together; the women with little uniformed foot pages trotting along behind their mistresses, or sometimes accompanied by stern, mounted duennas or sometimes escorted by their beaus. And if the spectacle of Rotten Row was splendid and fashionable, it was not entirely respectable, for many of the women were of dubious character. "There is no difficulty," wrote one observer, "in guessing the occupation of the dashing equestrienne who salutes half-a-dozen men at once with whip or with a wink, and who sometimes varies the monotony of a safe seat by holding her hands behind her back while gracefully swerving over to listen to the compliments of a walking admirer."
These were members of the highest class of prostitute and, like it or not, respectable ladies often found themselves competing with these smartly turned-out demimondes for masculine attention. Nor was this the only arena of such competition; it occurred at the opera, and the theatre as well. More than one young lady found that her escort's gaze was fixed not on the performance but on some high box where an elegant woman returned his glances with open, frank interest.
Victorians claimed to be scandalized by the intrusion of prostitutes into respectable circles, but despite all the calls for reform and change, the women continued to appear gaily for nearly a half-century more. It is usual to dismiss Victorian prostitution as a particularly gaudy manifestation of that society's profound hypocrisy. But the issue is really more complex; it has to do with the way that women were viewed in Victorian England.
This was an era of marked sexual differentiation in dress, manner, attitude, and bearing. Even pieces of furniture and rooms within the house were viewed as "masculine" or "feminine"; the dining room was masculine, the drawing room feminine, and so on. All this was assumed to have a biological rationale:
"It is evident," wrote Alexander Walker, "that the man, possessing reasoning faculties, muscular power, and courage to employ it, is qualified for being a protector; the woman, being little capable of reasoning, feeble, and timid, requires protecting. Under such circumstances, the man naturally governs: the woman naturally obeys."
With minor variations, this belief was repeated again and again. The power of reasoning was small in women; they did not calculate consequences; they were governed by their emotions, and hence required strict controls on their behavior by the more rational and levelheaded male.
The presumed intellectual inferiority of the female was reinforced by her education, and many well-bred women probably were the simpering, tittering, pathologically delicate fools that populate the pages of Victorian novels. Men could not expect to share much with their wives. Mandell Creighton wrote that he found "ladies in general very unsatisfactory mental food; they seem to have no particular thoughts or ideas, and though for a time it is flattering to one's vanity to think one may teach them some, it palls after a while. Of course at a certain age, when you have a house and so on, you get a wife as part of its furniture, and find her a very comfortable institution; but I doubt greatly whether there were ever many men who had thoughts worth recounting, who told these thoughts to their wives at first, or who expected them to appreciate them."
There is good evidence that both sexes were bored silly by this arrangement. Women, stranded in their vast, servant-filled households, dealt with their frustrations in spectacular displays of hysterical neuroses: they suffered loss of hearing, speech, and sight; they had choking fits, fainting spells, loss of appetite, and even loss of memory. In the midst of a seizure they might make copulating movements or writhe in such arcing spasms that their heads would touch their heels. All these bizarre symptoms, of course, only reinforced the general notion of the frailty of the female sex.
Frustrated men had another option, and that was recourse to prostitutes, who were often lively, gay, witty-- indeed, all the things it was inconceivable for a woman to be. On a simpler level, men found prostitutes agreeable because they could, in their company, discard the strained formalities of polite society and relax in an atmosphere of "unbuttoned easiness." This freedom from restraints was at least as important as the availability of sexual outlets per se, and it is probably this appeal that gave the institution such a broad base within society and allowed prostitutes to intrude boldly into acceptable arenas of Victorian society, such as Rotten Row.
Beginning in late September, 1854, Edward Pierce began to meet Miss Elizabeth Trent on riding excursions in Rotten Row. The first encounter was apparently accidental but later, by a sort of unstated agreement, they occurred with regularity.
Elizabeth Trent's life began to form itself around these afternoon meetings: she spent all morning preparing for them, and all evening discussing them; her friends complained that she talked incessantly of Edward; her father complained of his daughter's insatiable demand for new dresses. She seemed, he said, "to require as a necessity a new garment every day, and she would prefer two."
The unattractive young woman apparently never thought it strange that Mr. Pierce should single her out from among the throng of stunning beauties on Rotten Row; she was completely captivated by his attentions. At the trial, Pierce summarized their conversations as "light and trivial," and recounted only one in detail.
This occurred sometime in the month of October, 1854. It was a time of political upheaval and military scandal; the nation had suffered a severe blow to its self-esteem. The Crimean War was turning into a disaster. When it began, J. B. Priestley notes, "the upper classes welcomed the war as a glorified large-scale picnic in some remote and romantic place. It was almost as if the Black Sea had been opened to tourism. Wealthy officers like Lord Cardigan decided to take their yachts. Some commanders' wives insisted upon going along, accompanied by their personal maids. Various civilians cancelled their holidays elsewhere to follow the army and see the sport."
The sport quickly became a debacle. The British troops were badly trained, badly supplied, and ineptly led. Lord Raglan, the military commander, was sixty-five and "old for his age." Raglan often seemed to think he was still fighting Waterloo, and referred to the enemy as "the French," although the French were now his allies. On one occasion he was so confused that he took up an observation post behind the Russian enemy lines. The atmosphere of "aged chaos" deepened, and by the middle of the summer even the wives of officers were writing home to say that "nobody appears to have the least idea what they are about."
By October, this ineptitude culminated in Lord Cardigan's charge of the Light Brigade, a spectacular feat of heroism which decimated three-quarters of his forces in a successful effort to capture the wrong battery of enemy guns.
Clearly the picnic was over, and nearly all upper-class Englishmen were profoundly concerned. The names of Cardigan, Raglan, and Lucan were on everyone's lips. But on that warm October afternoon in Hyde Park, Mr. Pierce gently guided Elizabeth Trent into a conversation about her father.
"He was most fearfully nervous this morning," she said.
"Indeed?" Pierce said, trotting alongside her.
"He is nervous every morning when he must send the gold shipments to the Crimea. He is a different man from the very moment he arises. He is distant and preoccupied in the extreme."
"I am certain he bears a heavy responsibility," Pierce said.
"So heavy, I fear he may take to excessive drink," Elizabeth said, and laughed a little.
"I pray you exaggerate, Madam."
"Well, he acts strangely, and no mistake. You know he is entirely opposed to the consumption of any alcohol before nightfall."
"I do, and most sensible, too."
"Well," Elizabeth Trent continued, "I suspect him of breaking his own regulation, for each morning of the shipments he goes alone to the wine cellar, with no servants to accompany him or to hold the gas lanterns. He is insistent upon going alone. Many times my stepmother has chided him that he may stumble or suffer some misfortune on the steps to the basement. But he will have none of her entreaties. And he spends some time in the cellar, and then emerges, and makes his journey to the bank."
"I think," Pierce said, "that he merely checks the cellar for some ordinary purpose. Is that not logical?"
"No, indeed," Elizabeth said, "for at all times he relies upon my stepmother to deal in the stocking and care of the cellar, and the decanting of wines before dinners, and such matters."
"Then his manner is most peculiar. I trust," Pierce said gravely, "that his responsibilities are not placing an overgreat burden upon his nervous system."
"I trust," the daughter answered, with a sigh. "Is it not a lovely day?"
"Lovely," Pierce agreed. "Unspeakably lovely, but no more lovely than you."
Elizabeth Trent tittered, and replied that he was a bold rogue to flatter her so openly. "One might even suspect an ulterior motive," she said, laughing.
"Heavens, no," Pierce said, and to further reassure her he placed his hand lightly, and briefly, over hers.
"I am so happy," she said.
"And I am happy with you," Pierce said, and this was true, for he now knew the location of all four keys.