Dodger of the Dials (34 page)

Once I had removed my hood I saw that we was now in the narrowest corridor yet. It was said that the rooms of Newgate get smaller as you are led towards the scaffold gate and so I reasoned that the noose must dangle close by. The women had set to work on a small but heavy-bolted iron door at the end of this thin corridor and I kept hold of Alice’s small hand what was now damp with fear.

As I watched my mother, who was calling Fat Bertha a cack-handed cow for her failure to file through a bolt with any speed, I recalled the sharp agony I had felt when first told of her execution. I had been surprised then by how much the news of her death had shaken me considering what a poor relationship we had always had. She had always acted around me as if I were nothing more than a growth what had been put inside her against her will which, for all I knew, may well have been the case. But now here she was arranging all this so that I – and this Alice person – could escape the gallows. I did not know what to make of her.

‘Lazy Jack!’ she said as the filing came to an abrupt halt, ‘get over here and do this for us, eh? It’s disgraceful, watching your mother labour while you just stand there pulling faces.’

I crossed over to where she stood, took the file from her and, without a word, finished the job. Soon the final padlock was destroyed and the door was forced open revealing a narrow staircase what led down into blackness.

‘This takes us underneath the kitchens,’ said the Rum Mort. ‘To an under-cellar full of the worst food. It’s gonna stink but get used to it because it’ll smell rosy against what follows.’

My mother snatched the tallest candle from Sessina and gave it to me. ‘Jacky is going first. That’s why we brung him. To be our
canary.’ I took the cleft stick and decided that I was done with feeling awkward around her.

‘Allow me to lead the way, ladies,’ I said and winked at the younger women, ‘but follow my light close. I don’t want none of you getting lost now.’ Meg and Eliza both smiled at me and I turned and went through the door, holding the candle low. This illuminated just enough to see the first few stone steps leading downwards and a rope bannister running down the length of the wall. I used this to steady myself as I took careful steps down into the cellar. The place stank of rotten meat and the air was thin and musty and I was unprepared for how cold it would be. Halfway down I came to a lamp in the wall from which I was able to light the candle and the others began to follow me down. ‘What’s down here?’ I asked as I reached the bottom of the steps and looked about. ‘You been digging a tunnel?’

‘We ain’t dug nothing,’ my mother said after I had lit some more lamps and revealed a cramped room full of wooden boxes, sacks of potatoes and oats. ‘London done the digging for us.’

As soon as there was enough light to see better the women put down whatever they was carrying and Sessina, Meg and Eliza all started removing their prison clothes until they was down to their underthings. The others walked over to a big stack of boxes in the centre of the room and peered at them to ensure they was the right ones. ‘These are full of dead prisoners’ things,’ sniffed my mother. ‘Clothes and such. Get them shifted.’ I helped them move the heavy boxes aside and, underneath, a bolted-over trapdoor was revealed. Two of the women unbolted the doors to this trap and pulled it back. Far down below I could just about hear the rush of a stream.

‘The old Fleet River,’ explained the Rum Mort as if she had uncovered a stash of gold. ‘Still alive and flowing underneath the city. And it’s gonna wash you all to freedom.’

I leaned over the trap and peered down into the depths of this hole. I couldn’t even see the water it was so far down but the stench coming up from down there was pure evil.

‘Wash us?’ I laughed in disbelief. ‘That’s a sewer.’

‘It ain’t a sewer,’ she replied, ‘It’s an underground river.’ Then she leaned over the hole and I saw her react to the same stink that I had. ‘An underground river flowing with shit,’ she added.

‘It could be bubonic, Rum,’ Meg said, once she had got into her trousers and was placing a second pair of socks over the ones she had on. ‘We could catch the plague and bring it back up to the surface with us.’

‘If you would like to stay here, Megan, my lovely, then you are welcome to. But you asked me to get you out of Newgate and I’m obliging, ain’t I? Jack and Alice here are going to hang tomorrow so they’re both better off taking their chances down in the stink, in my humble view.’ She sniffed as Sessina began tying some string around the bottom of her trousers so they was tight against the boots. I was then handed some string of my own and advised to do likewise. Meanwhile, Bertha had pulled away the shutters from the dark lantern so it shone from every side, and was tying the end of the bed sheets to it.

‘The gaolers must know about this trapdoor,’ I said as I tried to work out how far down the water was. It sounded a fair drop.

‘They do,’ my mother said. ‘They throw rotten food down there and more besides, I’d wager.’

‘So why ain’t it guarded?’

‘Because it’s suicide to go down there,’ piped up Bertha, who was not changing her clothes. ‘You’re mad to do it, you’ll die in the filth.’

Sessina Ballard was busy now tying the trousers tight around
Alice’s ankles and did not respond. Kat Dawkins though offered a retort by way of smacking Bertha around the back of her head.

‘How many have tried and lived then?’ Bertha continued, after rubbing the back of her neck. ‘None. Your bones’ll get flushed out into the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge after a time. You’ll be gnawed at by giant black rats the size of pigs.’

‘No, we won’t,’ I replied, getting everyone’s attention once more. ‘I’ve known toshers who have been down worse holes than this one, in search of treasure in the sewers. I ain’t concerned about going down there,’ I looked to the Rum Mort, ‘provided I can get back up again. Because we can’t stay down there forever.’

‘Deep breaths and you’ll all come up smiling,’ was all my mother had to say on the subject and so I was glad that Sessina was on hand to explain things better.

‘A couple of year ago,’ she told us, ‘the old river blew itself up. You recall the Great Shit Explosion of Forty-Six?’

I nodded, the explosion was hard to forget. The bang was said to have been made by trapped gases down there what had created enough pressure to burst in spectacular fashion. You couldn’t even pass by Farringdon, there was so much sewage in the street. When the filth of the Fleet shot through into the Thames it caused a boat to ram into Blackfriars Bridge.

‘One of those cracks appeared in a basement in Old Seacoal Lane,’ continued Sessina. ‘Which is where we’re heading. Right, Rum?’

My mother nodded. ‘An enterprising woman of my acquaintance lives in that house and is going to fish you all out again. What time is it now?’

‘Five to two,’ said Meg after looking at her pocket watch. ‘They’re expecting us to leave when the church bells chime twice. We shouldn’t wait much longer.’

My mother then pulled out a coin-purse from her left dress pocket and tossed it to Sessina. ‘Here you go, girls,’ she said as it was caught. ‘Freedom’s on me.’

Sessina tied the purse to her belt and the rest of the escapees continued to dress themselves in dead men’s clothing. Some mismatched gloves was produced from a box in the cellar and I took some for myself. Then we waited for the right moment to climb down into the Fleet as Eliza and Meg lowered the lantern down into the hole. Before leaving though I found myself itching to share some moments with my mother, the Rum Mort. I had last seen her when she had dragged me from the Three Cripples taproom seven years prior to this and so I was still just astounded to find her here alive. I wanted to speak to her some more to try and make sense of the vision. But conversation between us had never flowed easy and I wondered how to start.

‘Should I tell Horrie?’ I asked her as an opener, knowing that my half-brother was always more her favourite than I ever was. ‘That you’re still alive?’

‘Horrie already knows,’ she replied to my surprise. ‘Has done for years. He visited me here some years back to boast of his disgrace.’

‘Did he?’ I asked in disgust at the thought that Horrie had never seen fit to tell me of our mother’s survival himself. ‘What disgrace was that?’

‘He came in his uniform,’ she spat on the floor and shook her head at the memory. ‘As soon as the peelers turned him into one of them he marched straight down here to tell about it as though he thought I should have been proud or something. She watched over the women as they worked, and spoke cold. ‘He ain’t a son of mine no more.’

‘I still am though, ain’t I?’ I said to her in a quiet voice. ‘I mean, I must be.’ She turned to face me then. ‘You’re helping me escape
and I never even asked you to. So you must still think of me as a mother should.’ In the lamplight I saw her blue and green eyes blink like they she had only just noticed that I was there.

‘Course you’re my son,’ she answered after a silent second. ‘And the prison guards know it. I can’t let them what think they run this place get away with hanging my boy, can I? I got standards to maintain.’ Then another silence descended and we both went back to watching Sessina hook the other end of the bed sheet to the trapdoor.

‘Why don’t you come with us?’ I said then, as the rest readied themselves to go down. ‘It don’t make sense for you to just help others to their liberty. You should be freeing yourself.’

She looked at me with bewilderment in her face. ‘I’m the Rum Mort, Jacky,’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m a queen in here.’ Then she nodded at the open trap. ‘Out there,’ I thought I heard a drip of regret in her voice, ‘I’m just a madwoman.’

‘It’s time,’ said Meg and closed the face of the pocket watch. ‘They’ll be waiting.’

‘Very well,’ said my mother and she crossed over to the trap. ‘Now get down into that river, Jacky, before I push you into it.’

I peered again down into the hole and saw that the lamp now lit up the Fleet much better. The water was moving fast.

‘That’s the rain doing that,’ said Meg. ‘It’ll be treacherous.’

There was some slimy iron steps in the brick wall what led downwards but I doubted if these had been used much in recent centuries. I prepared myself for the descent.

‘When down there you need to untie the lamp so the others can use the sheet as a rope,’ ordered the Rum Mort. ‘Then you wait until all have followed, holding the lamp for ’em, and you proceed from behind. You’re looking out for them, they ain’t looking out for you. So don’t slip.’

‘Whatever you say, Rum,’ I said and took a strong breath in before climbing down.

The iron steps was slippery but I was quick to get down them and soon I was above the watercourse. I could see that, although disgusting, the water was not so deep and as I dropped myself into its stream it only came up to my knees. The rush of it, though, almost knocked me over, but I grabbed onto a scum-covered iron loop before stumbling. The noise of the tunnel was a shock and I could hear but not see rats all about.

‘I’m down,’ I shouted up as I took in my first full gulp of the rancid air. My whole self shook with revulsion. ‘Hurry!’

Sessina came down after me before I had even untied the sheets. When she joined me in the stream she pulled out a candle and cleft stick what she had in her belt and lit it from my lamp.

‘Tell the others to bear left,’ she shouted and I noticed that here the river split into two passages. ‘Follow my light.’ She then headed off downstream but her movements was slow. Water poured in from these round side-channels and I knew that this was rain making our task all the harder.

Meg was next. She took out a handkerchief and held it up to her face before following Sessina’s light. Young Alice followed but she took such a long time getting down the steps that I wondered if she would ever make it. She seemed too petrified to let go of the iron bars and I shouted up at her to jump. Instead, she slipped and screamed but I was quick enough to catch her with one arm before she crashed down into the water. She then waited for Eliza, the last of the escapers, and once down she and Alice headed off together. Then I saw that the knotted sheet was being pulled back up again. I looked up to the trapdoor above my head and tried to see my mother looking down. There was a faint flickering above and I
could just about make out her silhouette as the last of the sheets was pulled in.

‘Mother?’ I shouted up before left to I follow the others. ‘Thank you for this! You done me a right good tur—’

But before I could finish expressing these words of filial gratitude the trap door was slammed shut and that was end of that sweet moment. So instead I just turned and headed off to where I had been directed, moving as fast as I could through this vile and forgotten tunnel.

Part Three

Chapter 21
Under The Fleet and Above

Word of my miraculous escape reaches some ears before others

If you were to visit Newgate Prison on a clear day and follow the path from there down to the Old Bailey road, as if heading towards Blackfriars, before turning left into Old Seacoal Lane, then you would find it an unchallenging stroll. It is a short distance and you could run there before the long hand on your pocket watch had even performed a single revolution. If you were to attempt the same distance underground however, and was knee deep in rushing shit, as I was doing on that first week of 1848, then you would find the experience to be that much more of an ordeal, I can promise you.

The passage of the once exposed river was nasty and narrow and, although the stream moved fast, I still had to wade through sewerised water. My senses was under heavy assault but I forced myself onwards through the slimy tunnel breathing only through my nose. There was more of these scummy loops for me to grab hold of as I kept on moving and held the lamp high. Around me was a multitude of vermin, all eyeing me from dark places but, as those toshers had told me, rats would not attack if ignored. I strained to see the lights of the women ahead but the piercing screams of Alice, who was having by far the worst reaction to this hellish environment, told me they was not far in front. The rain above us must have been getting heavier as, before long, more
water was rushing in from out of those side channels. This had the effect of bringing the water level up to the waist but also helped me move quicker along. After about five minutes of marching I began to hope that I had already passed under the walls of Newgate and was free of its hold.