The Trial of Elizabeth Cree (2 page)

And what of the police throughout this affair? They had followed their customary procedures. They had set bloodhounds on the scent of the putative murderer; they had made detailed inquiries from door to door throughout Limehouse; the divisional surgeon was called on each occasion and minutely inspected the remains of the victims, while the post-mortem examinations at the police station itself were conducted with exemplary thoroughness. A number of suspects were closely questioned although, since the Golem had never really been glimpsed in human form, the evidence against them was at best circumstantial. No one was charged, therefore, and “H” Division became the target of much injurious newspaper criticism. There was even a limerick published in the
Illustrated Sun
which attacked the senior officer in the case:

I
was my mother’s only child, and always an unloved one. Perhaps she had wanted a son to provide for her, but I cannot be sure of that. No, she wanted no one. God forgive her, I think she would have destroyed me if she had possessed the strength. I was the bitter fruit of her womb, the outward sign of her inward corruption, the token of her lust and the symbol of her fall. My father was dead, she used to tell me, having been terribly maimed in the Kentish mines; she performed his last moments for me, pretending to cradle his head in her arms. But he was not dead. I discovered, from a letter she kept hidden beneath the mattress of the bed we shared, that he had left her. He was not her husband but some masher, some fancy man who had got her in the family way. I was the family, and I was the one forced to bear her shame. Sometimes she knelt through the night, calling upon Jesus and all the saints to preserve her from hell: she will be frying there tonight, if there is any justice beyond the grave. Well, let her burn.

Our lodgings were in Peter Street, Lambeth Marsh, and we earned our keep by sewing the sailing cloths for the fishermen by the horse ferry; it was exceedingly difficult work, and even my leather gloves could not keep the cloth and the needle from chafing my hands. Look at them now, so worn and so raw. When I put them against my face, I can feel the ridges upon them like cart tracks. Big hands, my mother used to say. No female should have big hands. And none, I thought, should have so big a mouth as yours. How she prayed and moaned while we
worked, repeating all the bunkum she had learned from the Reverend Style who kept a chapel on the Lambeth High Road. One moment it was “God pardon me for my sins!” and then it was “How I am exalted!” She used to take me with her to that chapel; all I can remember is the tapping of the rain on its roof as we sang from the Wesley Hymnal. And then it was back to the sewing. When we had finished mending one of the sailcloths we would take it down to the horse ferry. Once I tried to carry it upon my head, but she slapped me and said that it was common. Of course she knew what it was to be common; a reformed whore is a whore still. And who but a whore would have a child without husband? The fishermen knew me as “Little Lizzie” and meant me no harm, but there were gentlemen who whispered things to me by the waterside and made me smile. I knew such words as the worst teachers in the world had imparted to me, and at night I would speak them into my pillow.

Our two rooms were bare enough, except for the pages of the Bible which she had pasted to the walls. There was hardly an inch of paper to be made out between them, and from my earliest childhood I could see nothing but words. I even taught myself to read from them, and I still have by heart the passages which I learned in those days: “And he took all the fat that was upon the inwards, and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys, and their fat, and Moses burned it upon the altar.” There was another I recall: “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.” I recited them in the morning and in the night; I saw them as soon as I rose from my bed, and gazed at them before I closed my eyes in sleep.

There is a place between my legs which my mother loathed and cursed—when I was very little she would pinch it fiercely, or prick it with her needle, in order to teach me that it was the home of pain and punishment. But later, at the sight of my first
menstrual issue, she truly became a demon. She tried to stuff some old rags within me, and I pushed her away. I had been afraid of her before but, when she spat at me and hit me across the face, I was filled with horror; so I took one of our needles and stabbed her in the wrist. Then, when she saw the blood flow, she put her hand up to her face and laughed. “Blood for blood,” she said. “New blood for old.” She began to sicken after that. I bought some purging pills and palliative mixtures from the dispensary in Orchard Street, but nothing seemed to give her any benefit. She became as pale as the cloths we stitched, and so weak that she could hardly manage the work; you can imagine, with her frequent vomitings throughout the day and night, how much now rested upon my own shoulders.

There was a young doctor who sometimes came among us, from the charity hospital in the Borough Road, and I prevailed upon him to visit our lodgings; he felt my mother’s pulse, looked at her tongue and then smelled her breath before stepping back quickly. He said that it was some slow putrefaction of the kidneys, and at that she set up yet another wailing to her god. Then he took my hands, told me to be a good girl, and gave me a bottle of medical water from his bag.

“Be quiet, Mother,” I said as soon as he had left us. “Do you think your god is moved by your screeching? I wonder at you for being such a fool.” Of course she was too weak to raise her hand against me now, so I saw no need to comfort her further. “He must be a very strange demon indeed, if he has left you to perish so miserably. To be pitched from Lambeth Marsh into hell—is that the answer to all your prayers?”

“Oh God my help in ages past. Be now the water to comfort me in my affliction.” These were no more than the words she had learned by rote from the hymnal, and I laughed as she passed her tongue across her lips. I could see the sores upon it.

“I shall bring you some comfort, Mother. I will bring you
real water.” I poured out a little of the doctor’s cordial upon a spoon, and made her drink it. I glanced up and saw a passage she had pasted onto the ceiling. “Look here, Mother,” I said. “Here is another sign for you. Can you not read it now, you naughty girl? ‘Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus’—you know Lazarus, Mother?—‘that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue. For I am tormented in this flame.’ Is that your torment, Mother? Or will it become so?”

She could scarcely speak, so I bent over her and listened to her foul-smelling whisper. “Only God can make the judgment.”

“But look at you now. He has already made his judgment.” At that she set up another such wailing that I could no longer endure the sound of it. So I went down into the street and walked towards the riverside. The females of Lambeth Marsh are considered easy prey but, when a foreign-looking gentleman glanced at me in that way, I gave him no joy but laughed and went down to the water. I could see that the ferry was about to move off, so I lifted up my skirt, jumped over the ditch, and ran towards it; my mother said that it was common for a young woman to run, but how was she ever going to catch me now? The ferryman knew me well enough, and would not take my penny from me—so I came over to the Mill Bank with more coin than I expected!

I had only one wish in my life, and that was to see the music hall. Curry’s Variety was by the obelisk, close to our lodgings, but Mother told me it was the abode of the devil which I was never to enter. I had seen the bills announcing the comedians and duettists, but I knew no more of them than I did of the cherubim and seraphim to whom my mother cried aloud. To me these patterers and sand dancers were also fabulous beings, wonderfully exalted and worthy of worship.

I took off from the Mill Bank as fast as ever I could, and walked down towards the new bridge; I did not know London
so well in those days, and it still seemed to me so vast and so wild that, for a moment, I looked back at my old patch in Lambeth. But she lay putrefying there, and with a lighter heart I continued my course beside the shops and houses; I was alive with curiosity, and never once did it occur to me that a young girl was in any danger among these streets. I came out upon the Strand and turned down Craven Street, just by the water pump, when I saw a penny gaff with some people loitering outside it. It seemed to be a penny gaff, at least, but, when I walked a little closer, I realized that it was a proper saloon of varieties with its colored glass and painted figures making such a contrast to the plain old houses to either side of it. It had an odor all of its own, too, with its mixture of spices and oranges and beer; it was a little like the smell of the wharves down Southwark way, but so much richer and more potent. There was a poster in bright green letters plastered at an angle on the front of the theater: the manager must have just put it there, because the crowd had gathered to read it. I looked at it in wonder, because up till that time I had never heard of “Dan Leno, the Whipper-Snapper, Contortionist and Posturer.”

E
lizabeth walked through the streets until it became quite dark but she did not want to stray too far from the little theater, so she lingered among the congeries of byways and alleys that lead into the Strand. Once or twice she heard a soft, low whistle and believed that she was being followed. By the corner of Villiers Street a man beckoned to her—but she swore at him fiercely and, when she put up her large raw hands marked by the thick fibers of the sailcloth, quietly he backed away. Only once did she think of her mother, when she passed the old churchyard in Mitre Court, but it was close to the time of Dan Leno’s performance and she hurried back to Craven Street. It was twopence for the gods and fourpence for the pit, but she chose the pit.

The customers sat at several old wooden tables with their food and drink in front of them, while three waiters in black-and-white check aprons were being harassed by continual calls for more pickled salmon, or cheese, or beer. An ancient and very red-faced woman, with extraordinary ringlets of artificial hair cascading across her forehead and cheeks, sat down beside her. “Just the rakings here, dear,” she said as soon as she had sat down. “I don’t know why I bother.” Elizabeth could hardly hear her, through all the noise and uproar. The woman reached out and purchased an orange from a small child, who could barely carry his basket of fruit, and then stuffed it between her breasts. “That’s for later.” Then she made a grimace and fanned
her face with one of the plates discarded on the table. “Aren’t they rank?”

But Elizabeth was accustomed to the human smell—or, rather, she was hardly aware of the sharp odor of flesh—and her attention was entirely concentrated upon the threadbare stage curtain ahead of her. A very large man in the most extraordinary striped topcoat was being helped onto the raised wooden boards, and although he seemed the worse for drink he managed to stand upright and raise his arms in the air. He called, “Silence, if you please!” in a very stern voice and Elizabeth noticed, with some surprise, that a whole bouquet of geraniums was pinned to his buttonhole. Finally, to much cheering and laughter, he began to speak. “A keen east wind has spoiled my voice,” he bellowed out, and then had to wait for the cheers and catcalls to subside. “I am overwhelmed by your generosity. I have never known so many dear boys with such perfect manners. I feel as if I am at a tea party.” There was so much noise now that Elizabeth had to put her hands to her ears; the red-faced old woman turned and winked at her, then raised the little finger of her right hand in some kind of salute. “It is not in the power of mortals to command success,” he went on, “but I will do more. I will endeavor to deserve it. Please to note that the oxtail in jelly is only threepence tonight.”