Polly hadn’t understood why Mother had climbed into the black van, nor was she sure where it had taken her. Father had spared her the truth, saying Mother had gone to the country until she felt better. In the meantime they weren’t to mither about her. But one day, not long after Mother had gone, Polly discovered the truth from a most unexpected source.
Father had sent her on an errand into Bristol. She set off down the Wells Road, heading toward the Bristol Bridge and the busy High Street on the other side. The Wells Road was one of the main thoroughfares into the city. On a typical day, it was teeming with traffic. Contemporary photographs show tradesmen’s carts taking produce into the city centre; furniture removers; cabs and private carriages; maybe even a hearse, the black ribbons on the horse’s head bobbing sedately as it made its sombre progress. An omnibus heading down into town would cross paths with another on its way back up the hill; two dray horses drew each tram, often augmented by another pair, harnessed before the long pull up the slopes of Totterdown.
Women went about their business of buying the family’s food for the day, from the butchers, bakers and grocers of the Wells Road. Barrow boys sang out a small chorus, of pies, muffins, sweets, ices and fruit. Children looked longingly at glistening pyramids of red apples, stacked into broad baskets by the apple hawker.
On this particular morning, Polly saw that a crowd had gathered around a man singing a ballad on the dusty wooden pavement. Adults and children were cheering him on. Ballad-mongers and organ-grinders peppered the city streets, making the walk into the centre more exciting. They sang all sorts of songs – of fairy tales and love stories; of murder and intrigue; of tax laws and boxing matches – their tunes simple, rhythmic and melodious, like hymns. Their love stories rarely ended well and their tales of murder made women and children shudder in a macabre delight.
At first, Polly couldn’t catch the words of the ballad above the noise of the street. She had to get quite close before she heard anything at all. People were pushing through the crowd and dropping a halfpenny into the hat which lay at his feet, in exchange for a copy of the large broadsheet upon which the words and tune were printed. Polly tried in vain to catch a glimpse of the song’s title.
Babies, she realized. He was singing about babies. She picked out a phrase: “… taken in to die”.
Fearfully, she tried to move away but found herself hemmed in by the gathering crowd. She tried to bustle her way through, squeezing between felt trousers and full skirts. She remembered several children she knew had been standing at the back of the group. Just as she caught the eye of a boy she recognized, she heard the ballad-monger sing out two words she hadn’t ever expected to hear: “Amelia Dyer”.
The boy was still staring at her. A look of recognition flashed across his face. He opened his mouth and drew breath as Polly pushed through the crowd and broke free, but too late. She heard the boy cry out, “There’s one of her kids!”
She froze. All eyes were on her. For a second there was silence. Then the ballad-monger spoke. “Poor girl; she can’t help it.”
Polly began to move away, drawing the youths with her like a reluctant piper. The ballad-monger cautioned the crowd – leave her be; don’t be following her. No one paid him any heed. Polly walked the rest of the street to the sound of hoots and boos from an entourage that would not be shaken off.
The ballad-monger’s sensationalism was the tabloid journalism of its day: he capitalized on his audience’s emotional response to local and national news stories. The lyrics of this ballad, recalled in snatches by Polly in adulthood, encapsulated the anger felt by the people of Totterdown. Their gut feeling about this crime was intensified by his simple rhyme and melody so that some of the crowd took out their anger on the woman’s six-year-old daughter.
Polly later remembered no violence, nor even the spoken threat of it. But it had been none the less scarring: she had been pursued and set apart, her anonymity ripped from her. And, in the cruellest possible way, she had been made to realize that mother was not recuperating in the countryside as Father had said; rather, she was incarcerated in that very hell which was so often fodder for the ballad-monger.