James Marshall walked from Tyburn to Newgate Prison, in the face of the thousands making their way towards the turnpikes and the small country villages beyond. Walking time was much less than an hour, although the execution procession took twice that long. He had often made the walk, sometimes with his father, and had occasionally ridden behind his father on Dare, a horse he had known since he could remember; twice he had ridden proudly alongside his father on a borrowed hack or pony. As he drew nearer Newgate all was quiet, but farther along Holborn and approaching Newgate Prison itself the crowds grew thicker. Many entered the gin palaces; others stood and watched the bearbaiting, hearing the snarling fury of the goaded animals and the sharp ring of the goading sticks against the iron cage; small, tight groups of men watched two gamecocks, laying their bets as the birds tore at each other’s eyes and bodies with steel-tipped claws. Lights flickered over the entrances to alehouses; prostitutes stood bare-breasted at the open doors of the brothels, some actually on the main highway; men and women coupled in nearby passages, and small children with silken-touch hands stole wallets for their wayward mothers, or the women themselves, pretending warm embrace, lifted wallet or watch, purse or snuffbox, while their victims strained and grunted, gurgled and gasped.
The boy was oblivious of these things, for on the nights of the Tyburn hangings they were as normal as breathing. He passed Tyburn Tree, long since replaced as the gallows; indeed, the weight of a man on many of the branches would bring the branch down, the tree was so old. He passed along Oxford Road, with its small shops and taverns, down Holborn Hill and at last reached Newgate, not long ago part of the wall of London.
He had always been fascinated by the story of the prison, rebuilt on the greater part of Sir Richard Whittington’s fortune, which he left for good works after he died in 1423.
James liked to imagine that Dick Whittington had desired a prison which was clean, and where there would be justice above all. But Dick Whittington’s prison had soon become a place of infamy and terror. It stood until burned down by the Great Fire of London in 1666.
So this was the fourth prison of the name.
There it stood, tall and black-grey, with its arched gateway and narrow windows, the three statues just above the great arch. Atop the castellated roof a windmill turned sluggishly in a light wind, drawing some of the foul air out of the prison and dispersing it into the skies, driving a slender draught of cleaner air down into the cells and even to the dungeons. There debtor and murderer, highwayman and coiner, man and woman, boy and girl, lived in the stinking filth, fed, if they were lucky, by friends or relatives, or by turnkeys who took their money and charged extortionate prices for food which was almost impossible to eat.
When James had been here before, he had known that his father had come to question the prisoners in the murderers’ and not in the debtors’ side. He knew also that his father had taken food that he had seen his mother prepare to men he had arrested or helped to arrest and who would one day be hanged; meat pies and fruit turnovers, with slices of savoury-stuffed veal or rich fat pork, cheese wrapped in its muslin cloth and a small wooden dish of butter.
He had never been able to understand what moved his parents to pity, but some such emotion had stirred in him when he had seen the cart jolt away and Frederick Jackson swinging. Was it pity?
Was it what his mother and father had felt?
He heard the clatter of iron hooves on the cobbles, moved hurriedly to one side and saw a well-known thief-taker and an assistant hustle a captive inside. He watched the jailers as the carriage door opened and three men climbed out and hurried towards the lodge, where the jailers seized the prisoner and took him into a small stone building attached to it. Clearly they had been warned of his coming, for manacles were clapped onto his wrists before a word was spoken and he was hustled away.
A smaller carriage arrived and the coachman called out: ‘I’ve one for the Master Debtors’ quarters. Who’ll come for him?’
A man dressed in the height of fashion climbed down, looked disdainfully about him and walked, unescorted, to the lodge. Only a single jailer came to him, a big-bellied man who touched his forehead and said, ‘Mr. Eustace, sir?’
‘Yes. That is my name.’
‘All ready for you, sir,’ the jailer said in a hoarse voice. ‘Everything’s as comfortable as it can be. If you want anything just let me know.’ It was difficult to judge whether his ugly brown teeth were bared in a smile or a snarl.
James Marshall turned away, disgusted. A ‘master debtor’, thanks to his friends, could afford to pay for the best, as if this were a hotel. And while he had money, even the senior jailer would toady to him.
James knew the prison was comprised of the Master Debtors’ Side, the Master Felons’ Side, the Common Side for Debtors and the Common Side for Felons, as well as the Press Yard, the Castle and the Gate. Both the Common Side for Debtors and the Common Side for Felons were supposed to be for women only, but he knew from his father that the whole prison was a jungle. The terms ‘Master Side’ and ‘Common Side’ referred to the lodgments of those who paid and those who did not pay the keeper of the jail for their accommodation.
James’s legs began to feel achy and tired but it did not occur to him to stop. He was two miles from the rooms he shared with his mother and two sisters, chosen because of their proximity to Bow Street and his father’s work. The only change was that his thinking was blurred now, and he did not look at the sights he passed, did not feel the raw chill of the autumn night, did not hear the laughter of drunken men or the wailing of women or the sounds of evening traffic.
It was nearly ten o’clock when he turned off Long Acre into a side street, then into a yard, or small square, close to Bow Yard, and slipped into a narrow alley lit by two flares sheltered inside glass frames. Here was Cobbold Yard, where tradespeople lived, prosperous enough to keep servants, to pay for ‘protection’ in the form of two men even now dozing in the doors, staffs aslant, placed so as to give them a sharp crack across head or shoulder if they slipped because the men slept.
One woke enough to ask in a sharp but frightened voice: ‘Who is it now? Who passes?’
‘It’s all right, William,’ the boy said. ‘’Tis only I, James Marshall.’
‘I don’t know what the young are coming to, coming home in the middle of the night. And your poor mother, scared half to death she is because you didn’t get home on time.’
‘Good night.’ James Marshall strode briskly to the door leading to the back stairs which led to their two rooms. He started up them quickly but confidently enough, but slowed down as he drew near the door which his mother might open at any moment. He did not know why he was afraid, for his mother would at most remonstrate with him. Had his father been alive he could have expected a beating for being out so late; he had often been frightened of returning late without a good excuse.
Yet he felt differently now - worse.
He did not know, although later the years told him, that on this day when Jackson’s execution could not fail to awaken painful memories of the shooting, already six months past because Jackson had used every device to postpone his trial and to buy false witnesses, he should have been with his mother. He simply knew that there was disquiet within him; new sensations which were not simply fear.
Ruth Marshall heard her son’s voice in the yard, and the querulous tone of the guard, but she did not get out of her chair. A glow of red embers which filled the fireplace and cookstove provided the only warmth in these two rooms. The younger children were already in the smaller room, asleep, one at each end of a bed built from the wall; her bed was beneath it, much wider: her bed and Richard’s. With Richard and the quilts there had been no cold nights, but now she was often cold. An iron pot was warm on the black iron stove, filled with meat soup which James liked; bread stood on the table with some cold vegetables and a piece of dried-looking cheese.
It was such a supper as she had often shared with both Richard and James on nights when they had been home in time to eat and talk before going to bed. In a strange way she missed their discussions more than any other single thing except her loving with Richard.
How father and son had talked!
How proud Richard had been of the boy! Even though he had never said so in James’s presence, for fear of making him swelled-headed. For from a very early age - earlier than that of Beth today, with her childish prattle and her giggles and her easy tears - James had used words as if taught their significance in the womb. A prodigy, Richard had called him.
‘We’ve brought forth a scholar, Ruth,’ he would say. ‘A boy with a man’s mind already.’
Richard had had access to many books through his friend the Reverend Sebastian Smith. He borrowed and read them, then allowed his son to read them before discussing with the boy the author’s meaning, the significance of the phrases and the philosophies. The more complex facts he would explain with extreme care, and his son always remembered. As the boy grew older, his interest in the rest of the world, in trade, in the figures quoted in the Annual Register, developed. There were two coffee houses in which he was permitted to sit for hours over a single mug of coffee, reading newspapers, absorbing the events of London especially, reading about crime and criminals, about his father’s work and about that of John Furnival and Bow Street. Afterward he would talk over what he had read with his father, forever seeking explanations and information.
Sitting and listening, Ruth had absorbed a great deal of knowledge, just as, at James’s age, she had from her own father. But she could not expound, as Richard had; and today as always she found it difficult to talk with her son except on homely matters.
She knew that he still read a great deal.
She could only guess how much he missed the talks with his father.
She heard her son hesitate outside the door, but still she did not move.
Slowly the door opened and he came in.
There was nothing furtive about the way James entered; there had never been anything furtive about him. She did not understand his expression but was aware of something different about him; perhaps it was due to the candlelight, but whatever the cause, he seemed older, older and very tired. He closed the door as cold night air swept up the narrow staircase and stood looking at her for a while, as if he were seeing something different in her, too. Quite without warning he crossed to her and went down on his knees, leaning against them and looking up into her face. She opened her mouth but no words came. Her right hand moved and touched and then soothed his forehead. He could feel the roughness at the end of her forefinger where she pushed the head of the needle; too often she sewed without a thimble.
It was like looking down on her husband, but this mood of nostalgia did not hurt. ‘What made you so late?’ she inquired at last.
‘I could not rest.’
‘You feel warm although ‘tis cold outside. Have you been walking far?’
‘Very far,’ he replied. ‘But that is not new to me.’
‘No,’ she said, echoing his words, ‘that is not new to you. Where have you been?’
He did not reply immediately.’
He was ten years old, yet in some ways a man. He was ten years old yet felt a great burden of responsibility for his mother and his sisters, and he felt shame because he had left them alone all day, one of the few days when he was free because the merchant for whom he worked knew that it was useless to open his shop on a Tyburn hanging day. It was the poor people’s holiday, and no one worked except those who must.
‘James,’ she said, ‘you must tell me where you have been.’
It was still some time before he answered, but there was no defiance in him, so she let him be, not trying to hurry him. Suddenly he buried his face in his hands and sobbed, so hard that she could feel the shaking throughout her body. Now both of her hands covered his head with a light touch which she hoped, prayed, was reassuring. He did not cry loudly and there was no fear that he would wake the others.
When at last he quieted and drew back, she asked, ‘Have you eaten this day, my son?’
He shook his head, his voice too hoarse for words.
‘Go and wash,’ she told him, ‘and then come to the table.’
He moved away, watching her, but she did not linger. She was young to be his mother, not yet twenty-seven; her body had natural sprightliness and she moved without effort. He went to a corner where there was a wooden slab with a bowl standing in a hole cut into it, a tall jug, and some soap so coarse it scraped the skin. He used very little of the precious water, emptied the waste into a pail, and rinsed in only an inch or two in the bottom of the bowl. He dried himself on a patched linen towel and, feeling refreshed, went to the table. Two pewter bowls of soup steamed at either end. He sat down and his mother sat opposite, head bowed and palms placed together in prayer. Half a minute passed before she said, ‘Thank God from whom all blessings flow, all food and sustenance comes, all health and all courage.’
‘Amen,’ breathed James Marshall and, when he was sure that she had finished saying grace, he began to eat; only when he started did he realise how ravenous he was! But his mother did not offer him more soup; that was for tomorrow. He had a crust of bread and some cheese from a wooden trencher, for all their china had been sold, and washed these down with water; then he pushed the roughhewn wooden chair back, feeling much better.
‘Can you tell me now?’ his mother asked.
‘I can and will but I do not know if it will please you.’
She looked at him for a long time and, unbidden, what little he knew of her history passed through his mind. She was the daughter of a dissenting minister who, somewhere in Berkshire, had gathered supporters and had built a small chapel until, persecuted by more orthodox Christians, he had become a wandering preacher, visiting inns and, on the fringe of London, alehouses and even brothels to carry his message. Richard Marshall had once saved him from a gang of ruffians in an alehouse and had taken him home. That was when she and Richard had first met.
James realised, as what he knew of these things drifted through his mind, that his mother was about to speak so he did not try to find the words he needed. Slowly she went to where a basket stood on a narrow side table. She fumbled in the bottom of the basket and brought out a folded paper with black printing.
He caught his breath as she unfolded it and held it out for him to see.
‘Is this where you have been?’ she asked.
The face of Frederick Jackson, drawn true to life, stared out of the page, and across the top were the words:
Confessions and Last Utterances on This Earth of the Famous Frederick Jackson - Hero
James stopped reading halfway down the page of the injustice done to Frederick Jackson by his persecutor, John Furnival. There was so much more in the same malicious vein, no insult not heaped on the head of the man who had provided evidence at the trial of a man he had been trying to bring down for twenty years.
The boy said, ‘They are lies - all lies!’
‘The only truth is that Mr. Furnival sent him to his death and he was hanged this afternoon.’
‘He was a murderer, a thief, a devil in human form.’
‘This is what Mr. Furnival is to some people,’ his mother replied.
‘You don’t believe that!’
‘No, I don’t believe it,’ Ruth assured him. ‘I believe him to be as good a man as your father, except in one way, and most of these statements are lies. But many will believe them, my son.’ Almost in the same breath she asked, ‘Why did you go to Tyburn today?’
‘It was not possible for me to keep away.’
‘Had you planned to go?’
‘Yes, Mother. I was set on it.’
‘Why?’ she asked, puzzled and frowning. ‘Why?’
‘If there is an answer it is that the ghost of my father drew me there,’ he said huskily. ‘I wanted to see for myself what he had often told me happened. And it did. Mother, did you know that he came near to worshipping Mr. Furnival?’
She nodded mutely.
‘And that was because he believed in all that Mr. Furnival believed in, and hated what Mr. Furnival hates. The evil system of thief-takers, who live by catching men, often innocent men, and having them hanged - like the seventeen I saw today!’ His voice grew louder, fiercer. ‘Except for the men Mr. Furnival pays, and a few paid by others who abominate the system, there is no honest thief-taker, scarce an honest magistrate, for each wants his share of the government’s blood money. Mr. Furnival believes the laws aid the criminals. They leave the safety of the wards and the parishes in the hands of these grasping justices. They allow two or three sheriffs to represent the King - and to make a profit out of crimes as best they can, by charging prisoners for favours, and by selling the body and the clothing of the men they have just hanged. And that is not all,’ tumbled on James, so fiercely that his mother gave up trying to interrupt him. He finally broke off as if hearing something of significance, and then cried: ‘Hark!’
In the stillness that followed, a frail voice sounded: ‘Eleven o’clock and all’s well. Eleven o’clock and all’s well!’
‘There is our sole protection against criminals, save for any we pay for ourselves. The Charlies!’ He sneered the word. ‘Men of the watch hired by the wards to patrol the streets to keep them safe. Those useless hour bawlers who will croak “all’s well” if a house is on fire or a girl is being raped or a man robbed in front of their eyes! They are nothing but bumbling old fools who doze in their boxes or in the watch-houses and keep themselves out of trouble. That is how the peace of London is kept. That is why crime is always increasing and justice has no meaning. And that is what my father pledged himself to fight - and what Mr. Furnival is fighting with all his strength.’
At last, exhausted, he stopped.
Looking up at his mother, it came to his mind that he had not seen her smile or heard her laugh since his father’s death. He realised also that except for the younger children these rooms had been rooms of mourning for half a year, yet before then they had been filled with laughter and song. He had never come home to find his mother crying or vexed and he had known so few other families - then - that he had not realised what a remarkable thing that happiness was. He had never come home to an empty table, to curses, to punishment unless it was merited. In this past half year his mother had become a different person, and so had he.
But his answer was not the full explanation of why he had gone to see his father’s murderer hang. He had not even known that murderer, had not known for certain until he had climbed these stairs and hesitated - not for fear of having hurt her, but for fear that hope would not be realised. For he had gone to Tyburn to see the end of the man who had brought such heaviness upon him and his mother and he had thought that with the murderer dead the weight would be eased.
But there was no easing of his heart or, he knew, of hers. He drew a deep breath and spoke so quickly that it was difficult for her to follow the words.
‘I thought it would exorcise the devil of hate from us, that’s why I went. I thought when life departed from him—’
‘No,’ she choked, ‘no, my son, don’t tell me that.’
‘If ‘tis not the devil, then who is it?’ he cried. ‘Why is this like a house of death?’
As he saw the tears well up in her eyes, he knew how he had hurt her but became aware of something else, of a secret to share with her: he knew deep within him that she had suffered the same fears; that since his father had gone it had been as if they were possessed of the devil.
But why, why, why? What wrong, what evil had they done?
‘James, my son,’ she said in husky whisper, ‘it is very late and you must be at the merchant’s by six o’clock. You will be hard to wake. In the morning you will have forgotten all such talk of the devil. Why, you should be ashamed and so should I! Your father laughed at all mention of the devil and declared that God would not allow him to exist.’
She laughed. Then for the first time in so many months they both laughed; together.
But when he was on the straw mattress in a corner of this room and his mother had gone to her bed, he saw those thrashing legs and he heard the voice of the Reverend Sebastian Smith asking God’s mercy for the man who had killed his father.
Then he remembered his father, alive.
He bit into the coarse sheet which covered him and forced back the stinging tears. He must not cry, he would not cry, a man never cried.
About the time that James Marshall reached his home, Red Foster and his pretty wife passed the pike at Tyburn, his horse prancing between the shafts of a fancy gig hired for this night’s work. It was very cold, and dark except for the clear light of the stars and lights at houses and taverns on either side of the highway and on other carriages. In the distance, lights showed at the windows of great houses and from farmhouses or from barns where cows were calving and in need of help. Now and again they passed little groups of people, tipsy-drunk, walking back to their country homes after the day at Tyburn Fair. Outbursts of laughter, oaths, shrieks of protest, came from the road which was usually deathly quiet except on the nights of death.
Foster was in his late twenties, a man from a good family which had disowned him for his gambling; but he took that ostracism easily, for he had won his Lilian at the gaming table and she was worth all the’ money he had ever lost. She held his arm as they went towards the Owl, an alehouse two miles from Tyburn Pike, where it was known that the notorious Dick Miller spent much of his time.
‘Red,’ Lilian said, ‘I think I’m very frightened.’
‘Fie! With me to protect you? And Harris and his men close by?’
‘But I haven’t seen them,’ she protested. ‘I haven’t caught a glimpse of them, and - and you know what Miller is like.’
‘Exaggeration, ma’am. Old wives’ tales which should never be believed by young wives. I—’
‘Red!’ she gasped. ‘Look!’
And there, not far ahead and directly in their path, was a man on horseback, coming towards them. He had chosen his spot well, for a ditch with banks too steep for horse and gig was on one side, while on the other side was a high stack of hay. From both hay and ditch there came a stench which made all who passed this way wish to hurry.
Red, perforce, slowed down.
Ahead, the solitary figure on horseback came on, and from behind there was a movement and a noise loud enough to make Lilian look over her shoulder in alarm. Silhouetted against the light of a big house was another horseman.
‘It’s one of Tom Harris’ men,’ Red muttered. ‘I swear it.’
There was no way of being sure.
There was only the darkness, so full of menace, and the riders both in front and behind, the snort of a horse, the creak of leather and the chink of bridles, for the wheels of this gig ran smoothly and made little sound. Red Foster’s wife was beginning to take in long breaths as deeper fear possessed her; knowing the risk of what they were doing, knowing Miller’s reputation, made the sense of danger far greater than if she had not known that she, at least as much as her husband, was a decoy.
Suddenly the rider in front spurred his mount and called: ‘Stand there! Stand and deliver.’ He came straight on into the path of the carriage and Red pulled at the reins and the horse slowed down. The man who had called out waited only for the carriage to stop before he moved to the side. ‘Get down, the pair of you,’ he ordered. He looked huge and menacing in the light from the carriage lamps. His pistol was levelled at Red Foster but his gaze was on Red’s wife, who was little more than a girl. Foster draped the reins over the rail and climbed down.
‘Take all I have,’ he begged, ‘but do not alarm my wife more, I beg of you.’
‘And how much have you got?’ demanded Miller, and he roared with laughter. ‘Precious little if I know anything about young gallants who bring their wives out of London without an escort. Or are you lying? Is she your wife?’
‘I swear it! I—’ Foster cast a desperate glance behind him. The man who had followed the carriage was dismounting and Foster now needed no telling that he was Miller’s man; there was no sign of Tom Harris or any who worked with him. He handed Lilian down and Miller rode close, covering them with his pistol and still looking at her. ‘I’ll give you everything I have! I was lucky at the tables tonight, I’ve ten gold pieces and—’
‘Deliver to my friend all you have,’ Miller ordered, and as he spoke the other came up, a slimmer man who looked as if a boy’s face might be hidden by the mask he wore. ‘Stand over him,’ Miller ordered his assistant, and slid from his horse, making a mock bow and a sweeping motion with his right arm. ‘Ma’am, it is my earnest desire to make your closer acquaintance,’ he declared. ‘It is a long time since I have seen a prettier wench.’ He made a swift movement and plucked her off the ground and into his arms. She cried out and kicked and beat at his face and shoulders but he did no more than laugh at her.
‘I beg you, do not take my wife!’ Foster flung himself down on his knees.
Miller placed his right foot against Foster’s chest and pushed him backwards, and at that moment one of Lilian’s nails scratched his cheek beneath the right eye. She could smell his gin-soaked breath, the odour of his clothes and body, and terror possessed her.
‘So you want it rough, my pretty,’ he growled. ‘Then rough you shall have it, with your fine husband looking on!’
He tossed her at the foot of the great stack of hay and, while Foster grappled desperately to free himself from the vicelike grip of Miller’s assistant, unbuckled his belt and let down his breeches. Lilian, staring up at the menacing figure, knowing that in a moment she would feel his hands, would have her clothes torn apart, would be another victim of Dick Miller, was so terrified that thought of Tom Harris went out of her mind.
Miller came down on one knee by her side and she felt his hand at the neck of her dress.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘God help me! God help me!’
‘As much use to call to Him as to your husband,’ Miller growled.
‘Perhaps someone else heard her, Dick,’ a man called from the top of the stack of hay.
Suddenly the place was alive with men who sprang down behind Miller and on either side. It was as if they had come out of the night air.
‘Leave your breeches down,’ Tom Harris ordered, rough laughter in his voice. ‘The lady’s husband may like five minutes to lambaste you before I take you in.’
Red Foster was already running. He ignored Miller and flung himself down by his wife’s side, while Miller stood helpless and his assistant was seized and manacled. When a man pulled his mask from his face he showed for what he was: a lad of seventeen or eighteen. The girl was sobbing, Foster trying to reassure her. Miller began to hoist his breeches after Harris and another of the thief-takers had taken his pair of pistols and his dagger.
‘Let me go,’ begged Miller. ‘Let me go and I’ll put a name on a dozen thieves, each worth as much as I. Five hundred pounds’ worth, well nigh. Take what I have and let me go!’
Tom Harris clapped the heavy manacles on him, and rejoined: ‘The only place you’re going is Bow Street, and after Mr. Furnival has questioned you, to Newgate to wait trial. Do you know what I would do with the likes of you, Miller? I’d hang you from the nearest tree and swing on your genitals until you died. Get on your horse!’ He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Get on my horse, Miller; it’s mine in forfeit now.’
Soon, all of them were riding back to London, the carriage last except for one of Furnival’s men who had come with Tom Harris. Lilian was quiet now, her head resting on her husband’s shoulder, while Red Foster talked with an undertone of excitement in his voice.
‘There’ll be forty pounds each for the prisoners, m’dear, and the horses will be worth half as much again. We won’t know how much money Miller has on him but Furnival is an honest man; whatever there is we’ll get our share and I can be out of debt.’ For a moment he was silent, and then he went on: ‘I’ve been in terror of going back to Newgate, Lil. God bless you for keeping me free.’
She did not answer. She was crying.
John Furnival was sitting in the back room downstairs when Moffat came in a little before midnight. Lisa Braidley had been gone for nearly two hours, and Furnival had been reading, his legs up on a stool with a feather cushion on it, a blanket wrapped around him and a voluminous jacket over his shoulders. The embers- glowed both red and gold on the half-full glass of French brandy by his side, and a book was open and supported by another pillow on his thighs. When the mood took him he would go to the bed in the alcove, perhaps to sleep at once, perhaps to ponder.
He heard Moffat but did not look around.
‘I have news you would like to know, sir,’ announced Moffat.
‘Then why keep me waiting?’
‘Dick Miller was taken tonight, with a youth believed to be his son. Both are lodged in the cells here, the better to be questioned tomorrow.’
‘So the trick worked,’ Furnival said with satisfaction. ‘How many witnesses do we have?’
‘Five, sir.’
‘Not even the most besotted jury could argue with that,’ declared Furnival. ‘One rogue the fewer to haunt the highways:’ He picked up his glass and added testily, ‘Come where I can see you, man!’ When Moffat appeared by his side, so grey, so tired, Furnival looked at him intently for a moment and then said, ‘I would want to talk to you but sleep will be better for us both. Tell me one thing, Silas.’
‘If I can, sir, I most surely will.’
‘Oh, you can, for I want only your opinion. Does it seem to you that for every rogue we hang at Tyburn or at Newgate or at any gallows, two grow in his place?’
Moffat spread his hands towards the fire, not only for warmth but for time to think. His master did not urge him, just sat up bundled in his warmth and comfort while Moffat looked as if his flesh were too thin to hold any warmth at all.
At last he answered, ‘Yes, sir, it does. But it also seems to me that if the one wasn’t hanged there would be three instead of two’.
‘You’re a great comfort, Silas,’ Furnival said. ‘King Solomon could have been no wiser. Now off to bed with you.’
Soon after his man had gone, John Furnival stirred himself and went to the necessary room behind the alcove. In one corner a brazier glowed, and there was an overpowering perfume of flowers, which always reminded Furnival of the flowers the judges carried to overpower the stench which came from prisoners ‘fresh’ from Newgate or one of the other stinking holes.
It was a good night for John Furnival, sleeping with the window open, for he could afford the window tax and preferred both light and air.
Out beyond Soho the city ranged, and already streets were appearing between there and Tottenham Court and Marylebone, beyond Clerkenwell and Hoxton to the north and Bethnal Green and Mile End to the east. Old houses might collapse, like thunder, even new ones fall, but the growth in numbers continued. The fields and the farms were beginning to yield to the great houses, while to the west, Hyde Park’s fences were under siege to builders voracious in their hunger for land, egged on by great landowners who served both King and Parliament and ignored the laws which had been passed to try to prevent London from growing too large and so beyond control. Even Knightsbridge, even the south bank of the Thames was being developed far beyond the Borough of Southwark. And there was much talk of more bridges, one at Westminster and one at Charing Cross, to speed the stagecoaches and the riders.
Nothing, it seemed, could stop London from extending its boundaries beyond the limits set by King and government. These laws were circumvented in two ways: by the wealthy who, believing in the future of London as the heart of Britain, bought great tracts of land, bribing officials for permits to build; and by small merchants and houseowners who, too frightened to break the law, built onto existing houses.
The jealousies and animosities between the City of London itself and Westminster grew worse, not better. Within the City walls was the greatest concentration of families and businessmen, including the guilds of all crafts and most professions. Beyond the walls and the seven gates was the two-mile highway which led to Westminster. Once nothing but a road between open farmland running down to the Thames on the south, this was now built up to the north with inns, alehouses and brothels, and the great terror of the Strand was the highwaymen who lurked there after dark, making the journey deadly dangerous unless one travelled with a group or a strong escort.
Within the City, divided into wards and parishes, there was some pretext of law and safety, but most responsible citizens were too careful to trust the watchmen patrols and so paid for their own peace officers. The profession of thief-taker, so abominated by John Furnival, arose because anyone could charge a man with a crime punishable by death, and anyone could bear false witness, often to his advantage, since he received a reward for his service to the community. And he could be even better rewarded, for if he arrested a man and had him committed, then he received a certificate which exempted him from any otherwise compulsory service in his parish, from jury duty and many such tasks. ‘A thief-taker is a thief-maker,’ Charles Hitchins had said more than twenty years earlier, and that was as true as ever.
Rich landowners built the nuclei of small towns in and beyond the villages, where there were no restrictive laws. As these spread they drew closer to the permitted limits of London and so the day came when the gaps closed and they were virtually part of the city. These building projects slowly changed the face of London, and while some took over green fields by which the city breathed, others tore down rat-infested slums and did much good.
From the forbidding walls of the City of London, at that time a free port for the goods of all nations of the earth, the Strand led to the City of Westminster, which was without walls and proud of its position.
Both places crawled with beggars; with the destitute, the sick, the frightened; and with criminals who lurked by night and sometimes were bold enough to strike for a rich prize by day.
The Strand became more infested with highwaymen every week.
The Thames, the other great means of communication between the two cities, was infested with thieves and footpads and ‘mudlarks’ and was crowded with shipping from across the world as well as from the coasts of Britain and of Europe.
Thirty watermen plied their little wherries for hire, and the calls of ‘Eastward Ho!’ and ‘Westward Ho!’ were forever hovering on the river.
No law denied a man the right to build on the side of his property, or atop it, or beneath it, and so those who feared the law added rooms and shops, encroaching onto streets already narrow; and attics were built with narrow wooden stairways and sometimes only ladders, making such firetraps as London had not seen even before the Great Fire, which some old people could remember.
London’s burning, London’s burning.
Bringing different dangers were the cellars, dug into the gravel beneath the city, where damp rose and struck at the bones and joints of young and old, rats and other vermin thrived, and the seeds of the great plague festered until some special set of circumstances caused them to erupt into epidemics so fearful that the death carts could come again to the narrow streets. These ghettos, or rookeries, had narrow passages and connecting doors used to harbour thieves on the run from the law.
So London spread both up and down and at the seams until she swelled like a human being whose lungs were bursting.
The young novelist Henry Fielding, already stirred by a deep social conscience, said bitterly of the Charlies, who kept their slothful watch:
They were chosen out of those poor old decrepit people who are from their want of bodily strength rendered incapable of getting a living by work. These men, armed only with a pole, which some are scarcely able to lift, are to secure the persons and houses of His Majesty’s subjects from the attacks of young, bold, stout, desperate and well-armed villains.
In the cellars or the attics of grogshops the drunks lay in their stupor on bales of stinking straw; soon they would wake and stagger to the taproom and buy their penn’orth of gin so as to drink themselves back into oblivion. Much of the gin was bad, for all of it was illegal under the hated Act of 1736. Despite the public whipping ordered for all caught drinking gin, few tried seriously to enforce this, and none succeeded. In open defiance of the law, seven thousand quarters of wheat out of London’s yearly importation of twelve thousand quarters was used for alcohol, not one per cent of which was licensed.
The sober workmen slept.
The night watchmen, who were old and scarcely capable, dozed in their watchhouses.
The thieves slept as morning drew near. The whores and the good women slept with the same peace.
Lisa Braidley and Eve Milharvey slept, and so did the Reverend Sebastian Smith, next to his buxom wife and in a room apart from their five children, with whom the Marshall children sometimes played.
Even Dick Miller slept; and, exhausted by both tears and fright, so did Lilian Foster, by her husband’s side.
Only one of the Furnival family did not sleep well that night. She was Sarah McCampbell, sister of John and William and crippled Francis, Anne and Cleo. Recently widowed, she and her three children, two girls and a boy, were staying with Cleo while an apartment was being made ready for them. That night she lay awake, tossing and turning in the great four-poster bed, thinking of her husband; thinking, also, of her children, and in particular of her son Timothy, already a favourite with his aunts and uncles.
All of this family except John lived in various houses and flats in Great Furnival Square, built not far from Tyburn Lane and Hyde Park; then it had been two miles outside the limits of the metropolis but now most of the space was built up with fine squares and streets with easy access to Piccadilly and to Westminster. When the Square and the arches and the colonnades had first been built, there were many who had called it Great Furnival’s Folly. On the south side was the great house, taking up the whole of that side of the Square and facing a garden planned by Giacomo Leoni, the famous Italian who had laid out the gardens for the palaces of kings and noblemen. In this verdant garden grew trees and shrubs and flowers, roses such as never appeared on London streets; and there were gravel paths for the nursemaids to push their charges and all who had authority to walk.
By night and by day there were six middle-aged watchmen in the garden and the surrounding streets, armed with staves and with pistols and muskets close at hand. There were also six younger watchmen inside the great house, almost a museum, where the grandfather and the father of John and his brothers and sisters had lived. To the east and west were individual houses for members of the family. In one, William and his wife and seven children lived - five girls and two boys. In another lived Francis and Deborah and their two pale and puny children. Anne, oldest of the sisters, lived in another house with her husband, Jason Gilroy, whose banking and trading business had merged with the Furnivals’ on marriage. Gilroy travelled extensively in India and farther east, and Anne lived the life of a widow with her two children, boy and girl twins now aged fourteen. Next door to Anne was Cleo, long married to Robert Yeoman, Member of Parliament for one of the City constituencies. Two of their daughters were already married to young men who, if they chose, could each play a leading part in the growth of the great enterprises which had come to be known as the House of Furnival. Cleo also had a daughter aged seven and two sons, one slightly older and the other younger than Sarah’s son Timothy.
The Furnival family had first come to prominence in Queen Elizabeth’s day, with William, a banker. His oldest son, John, a man of great strength of will and unbounded ambition, had brought the business enterprises to great power, had built Furnival Tower House, so near the Tower of London, had even built some docks across the river and, of course, had created Great Furnival Square. Largely because of substantial loans he made to the Court he had been knighted. His oldest son, John the Second, had extended all the enterprises, and of his male children - John the Third, William, and Francis - had expected most of John the Third.
At first these expectations promised well. John the Third travelled the world, came to know the vast Furnival empire, and made a report of great detail and value to his father and brothers. Then he had simply stated his intention of withdrawing from business, taking his inherited money with him, and becoming a justice of the peace for Westminster. Nothing had dissuaded him.
There had never been a justice like him, for he could afford to keep peace officers and far more court officials, had great personal courage, and was incorruptible. He had become the scourge of London’s criminals; with a dozen like him, he might have cleansed the City and Westminster of crime. Certainly he tried without ceasing. When he had left the business he had also left his house in Great Furnival Square. By inheritance his, it was now occupied by poorer relatives; he did not keep even one room for his own use.
Here in Furnival Square and in nearby streets hundreds lived, but none who was not a Furnival, a relation of the family, or working for one or the other of the businesses.
It would have been difficult to find a square better kept or more attractive to the eye.
Three miles away, in the heart of the City of London, close to the Tower and with its warehouses fronting the river and St. Catherine’s Docks, were the Furnival offices, substantial and comparable with the biggest business houses, designed by Colin Campbell, whereas Furnival Square had been designed by the first John Furnival, working with a builder who had been one of those who had helped to build the Covent Garden piazza. Here were the head offices of all the Furnival businesses, from banking to shipping, importing and exporting; there were few branches of commerce with which Furnival and Sons was not associated, either directly or indirectly. Here, in Furnival Tower House, there was a private force of guards, or peace officers; and in the hundred years of its existence, none had ever been caught in the attempt. They had been taken to the mayor and to aldermen, to justices at the Guildhall and the Mansion House, from where they had been committed to the Sessions in Newgate or Bailey Street. No matter what the trade, or from whence it came, the Furnivals were involved. At first they had been discreet, often buying small companies, such as shipping merchants, small coastal shipping lines, small banks, and wholesale distributors who brought in the food from all of England as well as from distant lands. They owned farms in Scotland and Wales as well as in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, from where cattle and sheep were driven to London’s markets. There were Furnival-owned dairy and pig farms in Norfolk, herds of which crowded the rutted, muddy roads; they had farms in East Anglia, coal mines at all the strategic points for shipment to London by sea. They owned drays and carts in and near London, and had gradually extended their trade until, in the previous generation, it had been impossible to hide the enormous size of their trading empire. In the same year, 1705, they had founded the third of the great fire insurance companies; a year later, the land on which Great Furnival Square was built had been bought - then virtually worthless farmland.
No one knew how much their businesses were worth; but now they could compete openly with the great ducal landowners, with families that had been wealthy for centuries.
This, then, was the Furnival empire, controlled wholly by the family, with John the one ‘rogue elephant’ who would not conform to traditions created by his forefathers. And in all of the houses in Great Furnival Square people slept safe in their beds.
Soon London stirred.
Long before dawn the journeymen were on their way to work, leaving narrow doorways and lanes, stepping over piles of yesterday’s filth, stepping over some old sot who, not knowing it, had drunk himself to death on the day of Tyburn’s frolic.
And they stepped over foundling babes, some stark naked and blue with cold or even stiff with death before the light of day shone upon them, some bundled up in rags or blankets, perhaps sleeping, perhaps crying, all left by girls often no more than twelve or thirteen; the warm ones left by their mothers in the despairing hope that one child at least would be picked up and fondled and perhaps wet-nursed by a mother in desperate need of the relief of milk from her breasts, suckled, and cared for and even - loved.
The great Foundling Hospital, with a royal charter, was in preparation because of the unyielding persistence of Captain Coram. Dukes and earls were to be on its board of Governors; some even said the Prince of Wales, the Minister of State and the Archbishops would be, also. But so far, it was only an empty patch of wasteland near Holborn Garden.