THE WICKED BOY

In 1895, a British pound (£1) comprised 20 shillings (20/-) or 240 pence (240d). £1 could then buy the equivalent of goods that in 2014 cost roughly £100 ($150), and 1/- could buy goods that in 2014 cost about £5 (or $7.50). These comparisons, based on the Retail Price Index, are explained on the website measuringworth.com.

In Life and Labour of the People: Volume I (1889), the social reformer Charles Booth detailed the expenditure of several East London families. Over five weeks, a couple and their two sons with an annual income of about £70, slightly higher than that of the Coombes household, spent as follows:

Meat 19/1d

Potatoes 2/4d

Vegetables 1/1d

Fish 2/8d

Bacon &c 1/2d

Eggs 1/-

Cheese 4/10d

Suet 1/2d

Butter and dripping 5/10d

Bread 7/3d

Flour 1/11d

Rice, oatmeal &c 8d

Fruit, jam &c 6d

Sugar 3/5d

Milk 5/-

Tea 5/3d

Coffee, cocoa &c 2/11d

Pepper, salt &c 5d

Beer and tobacco 4/10d

Fire and light 9/-

Rent 22/6d

Washing and cleaning 3/4d

Clothes &c 22/9d

Education, medicine &c 1/-

Insurance &c 2/11d

Total over five weeks: 133/1d (approximately £6 13/-)

The average prices of some of these items:

Meat 7d per lb

Potatoes 1/2d per lb

Eggs 1d each

Cheese 8d per lb

Milk 4d per quart

Coffee 1/- per lb

PROLOGUE

In June 1930 an eleven-year-old boy walked four miles along a dirt track in New South Wales, south-eastern Australia, to report a crime. He went into a police station in a village in the bush and told the officer on duty that he had been beaten with a brush hook. The boy showed the constable the evidence: his right arm and leg were heavily grazed and bruised; his nose, his left cheek and his right eye were dark with cuts and swellings. The policeman put the child in his car and set out to investigate. The incident was reported in the local press, but to protect the identity of the child neither his name nor that of his attacker was given.