Angel Meadow Asylum, 18^th September 1852

We worked at Knight and Day’s blacking factory six days a week, for fifteen hours a day. It was easy for me to see that Mr Day made more money than he admitted. The advertisements I wrote had increased his takings too, though I noticed he said nothing about it to Mr Knight. Mr Day kept his extra money at home. His wife and his daughter spent it on fine clothes and gowns; I had seen them with Mr Day on Oxford Street. Mr Day ignored me then, though when he was alone with me in the office above the boot and shoe repair workshop he was not so aloof. He stroked my cheek with his pale soft fingers.

‘You learn fast and you are good with words and figures, Miss Devlin. But there is so much more I can teach you. Will you sit on my knee so I can show you?’

‘No, sir,’ I said. Goblin had given me his knife, and in my pocket my fingers curled around its worn wooden handle.

‘Come, come,’ said Mr Day. ‘I will send you down to the polishing bench if you do not. ‘He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket. His breath was hot and stale, heavy with the smell of tobacco, boot blacking and dirty leather. At that moment the office boys returned from the fool’s errand Mr Day had sent them on. I had never been so glad to see their grubby smirking faces.

Mr Day caught me off guard. He told me that he needed me to work late, that he wanted me to stay for a little while after my shift. He said he had decided to pay me more for my work on his advertisements, but that he did not wish to reward me in front of the office boys or other staff. How naive I was! I thought I could manage him, that I could deal with his advances. I was soon to find how much I had underestimated him.

I had been watching him all day out of the corner of my eye for he was more bothersome and excited than ever. He wiped his sweaty hands continually on his waistcoat and prowled the office, passing up and down before the shelves of brown ledgers. At last, the two office boys were sent home for the evening. Their presence so far had proved useful as it had stopped Mr Day from making his advances more open and insistent. The boys were eagle-eyed. They did not talk to me, but only watched me, before wiping their noses on their sleeves and turning back to their ledgers. But it was clear to us all that they made Mr Day self-conscious, and he could only lay a hand on my shoulder or steal a caress of my cheek when they were not looking.

And then the boys were gone. As I turned to dip my pen in the inkpot, all at once he was upon me.

Mr Day was stronger than he looked, his wiry frame taut as a harp string with expectation, his whole body quivering with lust and determination. In an instant he had my hands pinned behind my back. His pants and grunts sounded in my ear, and he had clearly planned his moment, for as I opened my mouth to scream he reached round and stuffed a polishing rag into it. My mouth was filled with the acrid taste of boot blacking — soot and fat and turpentine. I thrashed beneath him, revolted, filled with fury at my own stupidity, and damp with fear at what he was about to do.

Astride me, as though riding a beast to market, Mr Day was jubilant. His voice was high-pitched with excitement.

‘You’ll earn your pay tonight, my dear. You’ll make good on all those promises you made and find what kind of a master I really am.’ From somewhere to my right, far off amongst the vats of melted tallow, a bell rang. It was the bell that summoned Mr Knight to the office. My flesh turned cold. Were there to be two of them? After a moment I heard the sound of hurrying footsteps, and then Mr Knight was there too. Perhaps they will boil my body afterwards, I thought, as they pulled at my clothes and pushed their faces against my neck, so that I might be rendered down to fat, mixed with lampblack and turpentine and smeared onto the boots of men.

Mr Knight’s breath smelled of tallow – did he eat the stuff too? ‘Hold, her, Mr Day,’ he cried. ‘Tightly now!’

I coughed, gagging on the foul rag that stopped my throat. I had only one trick. I was sure they would not fall for it, but what choice did I have? I moaned, and fell limp beneath their hands. And then, as Mr Day’s grip loosened, I burst once more into movement. Before they could hold my arms again I had ripped out the dirty rag and screamed with all the breath left in me. ‘GOBLIN!’ I felt a blow to my head, and I fell forward on top of the ledger.

‘Shh!’ hissed Mr Day. They stopped and listened, but the workshop, and the factory, were silent.

Mr Knight laughed. ‘Your little friend will be half way to Prior’s Rents by now. You may scream all you like, he will not hear you.’

But Goblin would not have left the workshop without me, and I knew he would come. They stuffed the rag back in, ramming it down my throat so far that I feared I would choke to death, and shoved me onto the desk. Ink seeped from beneath me in a dark pool.

‘Careful, Mr Day,’ said Mr Knight. ‘You’re messing up the accounts.’

Mr Knight and Mr Day argued as they held me down. ‘I caught her,’ said Mr Day. ‘I should be first.’

‘But my name is first on the labels, and on the business, ‘replied Mr Knight. ‘I am always first.’

At that moment, the door burst open. I saw Goblin standing on the threshold. In his hands was a cobbler’s last. His face was streaked with tears and lampblack. He lurched forward, and before either man could move or cry out, he swung the last at Mr Knight’s head. I heard a moist crunch, and then a scream from Mr Day as Mr Knight crashed to the ground. Mr Day leaped off me. He could not get to the door as Goblin was barring his way, so he scuttled past the office boys’ desks to the back of the room. There, he ran up and down like a rat trapped in a server, babbling and crying out, his hands clawing at the air as though he hoped to tear a door in it with his fingernails. Before us Mr Knight stared up, a pool of red seeping from his head. Goblin dropped the bloodied last and pulled from his pocket a variety of boot-mending tools: a button hook, a hammer, a shoemaker’s awl, a bodkin.

I spat out the rag and snatched the sharp-spiked awl from Goblin’s hand. Suddenly I was blind with rage: rage against Mr Knight and Mr Day, rage against the father who had died and left me and my mother to make our way alone in the world, and rage against all the men who had used my mother in any way they pleased and who sought to do the same with me. I hardly know what happened next, but I came to to find myself crouched over the corpse of Mr Day. My fingers were bloody, and a cobbler’s awl projected from his right eye. The left eye, and his mouth, had been stitched closed using thread from the mending bench.