Angel Meadow Asylum, 18th September 1852
I learned later that had I kicked and thrashed things might have turned out differently. I learned too that when the hood was pulled from my head I looked indistinguishable from my sister felons — black faced and bloody lipped, my skirts soaked with my own fear and shame. The three of us were loaded onto the anatomists’ wagon and trundled through the streets to St Saviour’s Infirmary.
I awoke in a curious place. The air was cold as the grave and there was a horrible smell in the air. Putrid and sickly, but sweetish too – not a pleasant sweetness, but nasty and cloying. I heard the murmur of voices, and then all at once I was awake and gasping, my eyes streaming. My eyeballs stung, throbbing in their sockets as if they were two sizes too big. My throat smarted, the skin on my neck stinging as if it had been burned away. I raised my hands. It felt moist to the touch and hurt like the devil from where the noose had chafed and burned, and when I took my fingers away they were wet with blood.
I reared up from the cold hard slab upon which I lay. Hands pushed me back down. But they were not rough hands, not the hands of thieves or gaolers. Instead, their fingers were soft and cool. I could not see who they belonged to, for my sight was dim and clouded, though I could make out the movement of dark shapes, could see that the place I was in was bright, and lit from above by patches of ochre-coloured London sky.
‘Salts,’ said a voice. ‘But carefully this time.’
There were six of them, their leader an older, smallish man with long yellow teeth set in a grimace, and a curious half-crouching posture like a creeping burglar about to spring. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he moved quickly about the table where I lay, staring down at me hungrily, though with disappointment in his eyes once he saw that I was not dead after all. The other five gentlemen wore old overcoats and caps, against the cold, I was sure, but also against the terrible stink of decay that pervaded the place.
I struggled to sit up once more, then slipped off the table and onto my feet, the gentlemen so shocked by my movement that they hardly knew what to do.
‘Shall we catch her, Dr Graves?’ said one of the younger men.
‘What’ll we do, sir?’said another.
‘Get her back!’ snapped the small man in the shirt sleeves.
‘Quick,’ said a third. ‘Dr Graves, sir, she’s taken your coat!’
Dr Graves’s coat stank of sweat and death. Its pockets were full of sugar lumps, which scattered to the floor and crunched painfully under my feet as I turned about looking for a means of escape. On all sides there were jars and bottles of sparking glass, inside each an object so monstrous that I was sure I must have woken up in hell itself. A double-headed baby, pale as fat, its eyes two pairs of sightless milky orbs. Beside it was a lizard with its stomach slit open and pinned wide, the delicate bags of its innards on display like a purse full of jewels. To my right I saw a pair of filthy mottled feet and ankles, and the hem of a soiled chemise, and even in my delirium I knew that beneath the winding cloth lay the coiner’s wife; the skinny bruised ankles on the slab beside her those of the wronged maid. Worst of all, next to them both gleamed an array of knives and blades. I heard a scream and my throat stung, so I knew at once that it had been mine. I staggered back, into the arms of an anatomist.
My knees buckled, and I screamed again as the arms around me grew tighter. ‘Kitty,’ whispered a voice. Kitty!’ I looked up. I could hardly speak. My neck burned and my voice was as barbs in my throat. Tears filled my eyes, tears of relief and surprise for there was my old teacher, the medical student from the thieves’ kitchen in Prior’s Rents.
And that is how I became once again briefly acquainted with Joshua Milner. It was he who had taught me to read and write; how to add and subtract, and how to speak with the easy confidence of his adopted class. And yet fate had more in store for Mr Milner than he or I could ever have guessed. That evening at Angel Meadow, when we met again, I recognised him instantly. He had a powdered face and was dressed in fine clothes, but he could not hide his kindly eyes and smile, and when he spoke to me it was in the voice I had known and learned from so many years ago. I knew that Joshua Milner recognised me too that evening – why else had he spoken to me in his own voice – and it was all we could do not to embrace each other like lost lovers, sobbing out our tales of torment and sorrow, tales we were obliged to keep hidden from the world. Miss Mothersole noted our conversation down, I suspect, though whatever words she overheard can have meant little to her, or to anyone, so extraordinary were our interconnected lives.
Once he heard what I had to say Joshua Milner – Dr Stiven, whatever you wish to call him – said he would help me in any way he could. I have had many enemies, but I have also had many friends, and I have found the latter in the most unlikely of places. It was Joshua Milner who educated me, Joshua Milner who helped me to get well after I was hanged, and Joshua Milner who helped me get back what was rightfully mine. He helped me because he felt sorry for me. And because he knew it was right.