The Streets Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Anthony Quinn

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  1. Coats, shirts

  2. Nice as nip

  3. In the Brill

  4. Doogheno or dabheno?

  5. Leary man

  6. An honest living

  7. Pay No Rent

  8. Monkey on a stick

  9. Bindon Fields

  10. The hereditary taint

  11. Dark horse

  12. Noser

  13. Fresh fakements

  14. Not to harm

  15. Lights out

  16. Out of the past

  17. On the spike

  18. Reckoning

  19. Le strade

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  In 1882, David Wildeblood, a 21-year-old from rural Norfolk, arrives in London to start work at the offices of a famous man. As an ‘inspector’ for Henry Marchmont’s hugely successful weekly The Labouring Classes of London, his job is to investigate the notorious slum of Somers Town, near the new St Pancras Station, recording house by house the number of inhabitants, their occupations and standard of living. By mapping the streets in this way, Marchmont intends to show the world the stark realities of poverty in its greatest city.

  Befriended by Jo, a young coster, and his sister Roma, David comes to learn the slang of the hawkers and traders, sharpers and scavengers, magsmen and mobsmen, who throng the teeming byways of Somers Town. It is a place of Darwinian struggle for survival. And the deeper he penetrates the everyday squalor and destitution the more appalled he is by mounting evidence that someone is making a profit from people’s suffering.

  A dinner at the Kensington home of his godfather Sir Martin Elder introduces him to Kitty, Elder’s only daughter, and to a cabal of prominent citizens who have been plotting a radical solution to the problem of London’s poor. David belatedly realises that a conspiracy is afoot. Passionate but reckless in his urge to uncover it he finds his life in danger, sustained only by the faithfulness of a friend and, ultimately, the love of a woman.

  In The Streets Anthony Quinn reconstructs an unforgettable picture of Victorian London, encompassing the extremes of privilege and privation, from the baronial mansions of the rich to the ‘whited tombs’ of the slums. With shocking poignancy and pin-sharp detail he brings to life a world of terrible degradation, yet one redeemed by dark comedy, profound fellow-feeling and the enduring possibility of love.

  About the Author

  Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. Since 1998 he has been the film critic of the Independent. His first novel, The Rescue Man, won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award in 2009. His second novel, Half of the Human Race, was published in 2011.

  ALSO BY ANTHONY QUINN

  The Rescue Man

  Half of the Human Race

  For Sarah, my sister

  The Streets

  Anthony Quinn

  More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

  The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot

  Coats, shirts

  IT WAS NEARLY half past six by the time I found Marchmont’s house, a prosperous terrace on the west side of Montagu Square. An amber softness glimmered behind the leaded fanlight. I had knocked, and was still busy cleaning my boot heels on the porch’s scraper when the door swung open and Rennert, his chief secretary, stood there, a vanishingly slender man whose spindly legs and beaky nose put me in mind of a heron. My breath plumed frostily as I bid him good evening. I had met this gentleman at the office, on the Monday I began my employment, and had already noted the shrewdness of his gaze as it swept the whole newsroom and almost instantly picked me out from the stragglers. Without a word he had crooked his finger, beckoned me over like a schoolmaster spotting the new boy in the assembly hall and coolly recited my instructions for the day.

  Now, on the porch, those appraising eyes once again conducted a rapid inventory of my person, perhaps pausing to wonder why in such a climate – it was a bitter night in February – I had chosen not to wear a topcoat. With a jerk of his chin he admitted me to the high-ceilinged hallway, and the gas jets flared in their brackets from the sudden rush of cold I brought in. Following him down the hall, I happened to glance up the staircase and saw a girl, in a nightgown, watching us from the shadows. I did not yet know that Marchmont was, amongst other things, a father of six. Rennert led me into a reception room which evidently adjoined his master’s office, for through the closed double doors could be heard a booming laughter that I instinctively identified as Marchmont’s, though I had never had the acquaintance of the man before this evening. The laughter, full of rippling confidence, seemed to extend an invitation – no, an order – to join in, and by the sound of things his present company were eager to oblige him.

  Rennert, who showed no sign of listening to the merriment next door, gestured for me to take a seat on the sofa. He noticed my shivering as I sat down and warmed my hands at the fire. These occasional Friday nights were meant, I gathered, to be ‘at-ease’ encounters between the guvnor (as Marchmont was known to everyone) and his team of inspectors, though my inward commotion of nerves at the prospect of being introduced could not be quite stilled. I had laid aside my small briefcase, which Rennert’s attentive eye now fell upon.

  ‘Your report is in there?’ he asked.

  I nodded, and unlocking the clasp drew out a thin sheaf of loose foolscap, closely written in my sloping and rather blotchy script that made every vowel look identical. (I was at that time inclined to believe that a gentleman’s handwriting should not be altogether legible.) I handed them over and saw him frown as he riffled the pages. Without looking at me he said, ‘These are the notes you took today?’

  ‘No. They are – the whole week’s.’ He did look at me now. His lips started to purse, but he continued examining the contents. I shifted in my seat and stared down at my hands; I was once more transported back to the schoolroom.

  Presently he raised his eyes again and said, ‘Rather exiguous for five days’ work.’ I wasn’t sure what ‘exiguous’ meant, but sensed it did not signify approval. He sighed, removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I take into account that this is your first week on the paper, and that the work can be . . . troublesome. But there is nonetheless a standard of reportage expected of our contributors, it requires a certain finesse –’

  He was interrupted at this moment by the opening of the double-leafed doors and the emergence of two prefectorial young men, both bearded and trimly dressed, their bodies canted at a deferential angle to an older, larger fellow who swaggered urbanely between them and then paused on the threshold. This was Marchmont. Bobbing his head mischievously towards his departing guests, he muttered something about ‘do as my shirt does’. Bafflingly, they all exploded into laughter once more. With an exchange of ‘g’nights’ they were gone, and now Rennert stepped forward.

  ‘Sir. I have Mr Wildeblood here,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, the neophyte – come,’ boomed Marchmont, retreating into his office. We followed, and almost waded into the room’s conspiratorial fug of cigar smoke and alcohol. All was in affable disarray – the carpet speckled with smuts from the fire; bundles of paper totteringly stacked upon an ancient chaise longue; an unstoppered sherry decanter on a side table with smeared glasses; a chaotic desk which ‘the guvnor’ had just made even more untidy by throwing his short legs upon it. He was an odd-looking fellow, his stubby frame surmounted by a bald head as round and glazed as a toffee apple. Wisps of reddish-brown hair straggled over his ears. His fleshy nose
and cheeks glowed pink from the sherry, and more than one chin spilled over his stand-up collar, but this dissolute aspect was counterpointed by dark little eyes that glinted with a hard, disconcerting curiosity. He was perhaps fifty, or slightly older.

  Recalling the details of this introduction years later – Marchmont’s name has since become famous – it is not just the man himself who seizes my mind’s eye, it is the backdrop against which he sat. Across that entire wall stretched a map of London, vastly magnified, which would not have been unusual in itself but for the discrete blocks of colour that patched certain neighbourhoods of the city. These had been applied, I saw, from tiny pots of drawing ink ranged along a thin wooden shelf, itself suspended on string at waist height along the length of the wall. Parts of the map remained unmarked, but these were mostly on the city’s outskirts; towards the centre a motley of colours – navy, yellow, purple, pink and red, much red – began to cluster amongst the street patterns, lining the arterial roads, the fields and parks, the river and the canals. The effect was intricately pretty, like a mosaic, though what it signified I couldn’t say.

  ‘So . . .’ began Marchmont, expelling another noxious cloud of cigar smoke, ‘you’re Elder’s nephew –’

  ‘His godson, sir.’

  ‘– and you’ve been assigned to . . .?’

  ‘Somers Town,’ I said.

  ‘He’s had rather a slow start,’ Rennert said drily. Marchmont by a slight tilt of his head seemed to ask why, and, perceiving that he was not someone easily fooled, I told him the truth.

  ‘I had great difficulty in . . . understanding them, sir – the people, I mean. The slang they use is so very singular.’

  At this he swung his legs off the desk and stood to face the map. He examined it for a few moments, and, without turning round, said, ‘So you have been mainly talking to market people – street sellers, hawkers, costermongers, that sort.’

  I agreed that this was the case, for I had wandered for most of that week in the Brill, the market occupying the whole south-east end of Somers Town. When he enquired as to my impressions of it I thought immediately of the bustling narrow streets, all alike, and of the Sunday morning that I first became acquainted with the place. As you enter the Brill the market sounds are barely audible, but with each step a low hum, like that of a beehive, starts to gather; then, on turning a corner, a great tumult of voices assails you, as if you were standing in the sea and a monstrous wave had suddenly broken over your head. Before you the pavements are thronged with men and women, some talking and smoking, some hurrying about with their goods in bags and aprons, or else standing at carts and barrows heaped with vegetables – the cobbles are green with refuse leaves. But it is not only victuals for sale; here or there you find a magpie hoard of used articles, combs and cups, brass lamps, tinderboxes, candleholders, old jackets and trousers, fire irons, frying pans, knives and forks, boots, braces, hats, door knockers, key chains, and, in incalculable profusion, wretched ‘bits and bobs’ that one cannot imagine being bought once, let alone sold again. The din is astonishing, the stallholders’ cries grow so importunate that the noise seems to double in your ear, and on all sides you see a press of bodies, whether young girls carrying home jugs of beer and breakfast herrings, or boys sauntering about with pet terriers under their arms, or older men with pipes in their mouths, and any number of them playing cards or shove-ha’penny on the footpath.

  These were Marchmont’s people, the object of his restless curiosity and the lifeblood of an investigation to which I was the latest recruit. For the last two years their habits, occupations and earnings had been chronicled in his weekly paper, The Labouring Classes of London, and sold to a horrified but fascinated public at bookstalls and railway stations for tuppence an issue. Marchmont, seated again, listened intently as I recounted my ventures into the Brill, nodding his head and occasionally chuckling at some detail or other. He took particular delight in the story of my being invited by certain gentlemen to play ‘three-up’, a game of chance that requires you to bet on all ‘heads’ or all ‘tails’ on three ha’pennies pitched into the air. I played five games straight –

  ‘And lost every one of them?’ asked Marchmont with a grin.

  ‘Yes. All five.’

  ‘Doubtless they saw you coming,’ he said, ‘and I assure you – they were no gentlemen.’ Behind me Rennert stifled a snort of amusement. I added that during the game the men’s talk was at its most impenetrable, and again Marchmont looked unsurprised. ‘Costermongers are notorious for their slang; they are always seeking an advantage, and essential to that end is a language only they understand. They use it to fool their street rivals – the Irish, the Jews.’

  I replied that I was neither Irish nor Jewish, yet they were pleased to baffle me just the same.

  ‘You are a stranger to them. You know little of their ways. Therefore they would try to exploit your ignorance in a game of chance.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could enlighten me,’ I said, taking out the notebook from my breast pocket. ‘I recorded certain words and phrases that recurred in their speech . . .’ He settled back in his chair and spread forth his palms, as though to say, Be my guest. I found the page on which I had written them. ‘Yenep?’

  ‘A penny,’ he replied. ‘Money is often reduced to back slang. Rouf-yenep is fourpence. Net-yenep is tenpence, and so on.’

  ‘Top o’ reeb?’

  ‘Pot of beer.’

  ‘Cool him?’

  ‘Look at him.’

  ‘On doog?’

  ‘I think you can decipher that one.’

  ‘A couter?’ I said, trying to run the word backwards in my head.

  ‘A sovereign,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Not everything is reducible to the backwards rule. Gen, for some reason, is a shilling, and a bandy is a sixpence.’ He watched as I noted these translations, and I must have sighed a little, because his tone softened with a kind of pity. ‘Have patience. The language of the costers would take an outsider years to comprehend fully. You have been amongst them but a few days.’

  I looked again at that cartographic marvel behind him; inwardly a question was forming. ‘Sir, may I ask – is the paper engaged in a philanthropic mission? Is that the purpose of our endeavours?’

  Marchmont looked down, and joined the fingertips of each hand in a meditative arch. ‘How old are you, Mr Wildeblood?’

  ‘One-and-twenty, sir.’

  ‘This is your first time in London?’

  ‘It is.’

  He absorbed this, then pointed to the most heavily inked portion of the map. ‘Behold the East End, where we began our project. Do you know the most signal fact our enquiries have uncovered? It is that nearly a third of its inhabitants live in a state of abject poverty. By this I mean they cannot raise the basic minimum – I calculate it at seventeen shillings a week – to cover the cost of rent and food for themselves and their dependants. In certain areas, such as the Old Nichol in Bethnal Green, the figure rises to over eighty per cent. Just consider – eight in ten inhabitants of that vicinity are paupers. But we are beginning to discover something even more extraordinary. Since broadening our field of interest to Blackfriars, to Holborn and Drury Lane, to Borough, to Southwark – and to Somers Town – we are learning that the East End is by no means exceptional in its state of destitution. Some years ago, when I put an estimate of the city’s poor at three hundred thousand, I was abused and derided – people were angry, dismissed it as “provocation”. But all the evidence thus far suggests I was too cautious – the number is likely to be closer to eight hundred thousand! Now, to answer your question, even if it were desirable to offer philanthopic relief to the poor, we have not the resources to do so. Our motive is not paternalism, or socialism, or radicalism –’

  ‘Then . . . what is it?’

  ‘Why, it is journalism. We go through these neighbourhoods, street by street, house by house, and in so doing we glean a systematic and impartial understanding of the causes and conditions of
poverty.’

  ‘But . . . if we expose the reality of those conditions, to whom will be the benefit?’

  Marchmont frowned. ‘My dear boy – the benighted public, of course! The efforts of Mr Dickens notwithstanding, the world of the London poor is a terra incognita, as remote to most people as those tribes that dwell at the ends of the earth. By our endeavours the public will learn precisely the nature of this great capital of ours, where the beggar and the banker rub along cheek by jowl. They will learn that slums exist a mere six hundred yards from the gates of the Palace of Westminster, that a few minutes’ walk will take them from a club in Pall Mall to a dosshouse in the Seven Dials. We shall present a survey the like of which has never before been seen.’

  I was still unsure as to how this might alleviate the plight of our subjects, but I didn’t wish to deflate his transport of rhetorical fervour. Instead I gestured at the map. ‘The different colours – what do they mean?’

  At this point Rennert stood up and tapped his watch in signal to Marchmont, but the latter held forth his palms as though to hush him. ‘Each designates a class of living, which you will learn as you proceed. But in Somers Town, you will encounter no more than three. The purple streets indicate a mixture of poor artisans and the respectable lower orders. The dark blues signify an impoverished class living from hand to mouth – widows, deserted wives and children, casual labourers – who might be raised from poverty by hard work. The red—’ and here he paused – ‘the red streets are home to loafers and criminals, street Arabs, society’s dregs. They are, you might say, the outcast poor – beyond reform. You will become well acquainted with the type.’ He looked challengingly at me. ‘Do you recoil at such a prospect?’