sanctuary in the landing cupboard and since then had made a precarious living as mud larks. I took them under my wing, giving them what I could in the way of fruit and vegetables and occasionally buying them meat pies. They always looked lean and hungry even with the extra food I gave them.
Polly was always trying to sell various little items to the people in the house. She knew them all and was brutally frank in her descriptions of the characters who slept and fed in this dingy warren of a place. First she warned me about the man in the attic above us.
“E's a thievin' bastard,' she said. 'Nothin's safe when 'e's arahnd. 'E'd take the pennies off a dead man's eyes, 'e would.'
In the room below us lived a 'tosher' with a wife and six children. A tosher's work was extremely dangerous. They were often bitten on the hands and face by rats as they scavenged with seven foot long poles for anything of value in the sewers that flowed into the Thames. Some of them suffocated in the poisonous vapours that arose from the foul sewage. The risk of being crushed by the roof of a sewer falling on them was always there and so was the danger of being sucked down in the perilous quagmires of mud and sewerage where the floor had collapsed. There were terrible stories of toshers' skeletons being found picked clean of skin and flesh.
Upstairs there was a married couple not yet fifteen, who Polly said had just moved in. At that time there was a well-known dubious church in the East End which married youngsters for sevenpence and no questions asked, provided both partners were over fourteen-years-old.
According to Polly, a drunken Irishman rented the basement cellar and charged beggars, prostitutes, thieving vagabonds and the like, twopence for a night's rest on the stone floor. Most of the other rooms were occupied by large families sleeping as many as ten in a room. Of them all, the worst was a dirty old cadger in filthy rags, who slept on the landing or wherever he could find a place to lie down. His melancholy face was pitted with smallpox marks. Even the corners of his eyebrows seemed eaten away by the awful disease. He was forever getting into trouble for groping one of the dozen or so little girls that swarmed all over the buildings. He would lie and wait in dark corners on the stairs and jump on them, getting his hands on their private parts before they had time to scream. Then he scuttled down the stairs and into the busy street before anybody had time to catch him.
It was about this time I began to notice that Adam seemed very flushed with money, spending it freely on clothes and amusements. He became very bumptious and overbearing when he donned his new 'togs', strutting and swaggering like a proud peacock.
Puzzled as to where all this money was coming from, I would ask him how he came by it only to be told to mind my own business when my questions became too pressing for his peace of mind. Of course, life became a lot easier for me. We only worked weekends when we were in Mart Street market. The rest of the week we were free to do as we wished. As we strolled at our leisure through the busy streets, frequently stopping to chat with his costermonger cronies, he would show off by giving me some money to spend on whatever took my fancy.
They were balmy days and nights. We became regular visitors to the theatres that catered for the lower orders and I was often taken to such sports as cock-fighting, the savaging of hordes of rats by terriers in private rooms at the rear of some tavern and bare-fisted fights between burly women who were compelled to grasp a coin in their hands as they were likely to scratch each other's faces with their finger nails. The first woman to drop a coin being accounted the loser.
Our favourite theatre was the Queens in Tottenham Street, London's most disreputable playhouse and consequently nicknamed the 'Dust Hole'. At the Queens we were entertained by melodrama, comic songs, acrobats, jugglers and dancing girls singing lewd songs.
Friday nights were reserved for 'The Half Moon' tavern where the dwarf was constantly catching me off my guard while I was talking to someone. On the night of the new year when we were celebrating the end of 1860 and the beginning of 1861, he was nowhere in sight as we entered the tavern and I settled down happy that he was absent from our revelries.
You could never predict what would happen next when he was around and I would sit, knees tight together in an agony of apprehension, waiting for a sly assault on my private parts by the lecherous little monster. I couldn't understand why Adam was so genial with him. Every time the dwarf looked at me I could plainly see the hatred and lust that lurked behind that fixed grin on his face.
I was leaning back in my chair, legs astride, laughing at something Adam had said when I felt a finger sliding into my giny. For a moment I couldn't believe my senses and was too stunned to move. Somehow the dwarf had come into the tavern and had got beneath our table without me seeing him. The revulsion and shock I felt at that moment cannot be described. Speechless with raging emotions, I ran behind the bar to stand beside Florrie.
Adam and his friends burst into laughter when they saw the cause of my sudden retreat as the dwarf emerged from under the table prodding the air with his forefinger. They roared with raucous laughter when the dwarf put the moist finger to his nose, sniffed and pulled a wry face. My humiliation was complete and there arose in me an ice cold hatred for this repulsive creature who had become a loathsome nightmare which often haunted my thoughts.
Florrie's soothing words did little to still my agitation. Trapped behind the bar I watched the dwarf climb onto the table with a helping hand from Tom Biggs. Looking directly at me with an obscene grin he put a hand between his legs and cunt-thumbed me once again.
'Now yer up there, yer little bugger, sing us a song,' Adam cried out.
In a voice as thick as treacle, the dwarf began to sing:
'All you that in your beds do lie,
Turn to your wives and occupy;
And when you have done your best
Turn arse to arse, and take your rest.'
This lewd little ditty was greeted with loud laughter and applause, giving him the encouragement to sing another song but my attention, being drawn elsewhere, I didn't hear the words. There was a respectably dressed woman, about forty, sitting near the door with a small glass of gin before her. I had seen her many times before, sitting alone staring into space, but what caught my interest this time was her exposed breasts and something wrapped in a white baby shawl which she cuddled close to her chest.
My curiosity got the better of me. Moving away from the bar as far as the door I got a closer look. Inside the shawl was a rag doll with a white bonnet on its head. There were two bright, wide-open, blue eyes painted on patches of kid leather sewn into the doll's face, and lower down one could see soft leather red lips in an open smile.
The woman looked up at me and smiled. 'Do you want to see my baby?' she asked.
After my latest encounter with the dwarf I was wary, suspecting another trick to humiliate me but nodded dumbly, keeping an eye on the dwarf who was now dancing an Irish jig on the table top.
Opening the shawl so that I could get a better view of a broderie anglaise gown she said, 'It's my first,' and then with a face glowing with motherly pride, 'Isn't he lovely?'
Taking a firm hold on one of her breasts she pushed the brown nipple between the doll's red lips and softly hummed a lullaby.
Looking around the tavern to see if anyone was observing what was going on, I became aware of Florrie beckoning me back to the bar.
'Who is she?' I asked Florrie. 'I've seen her before but didn't know she was deranged.'
'She's been like that for about two weeks now. I think her mother's death turned her head. You see, apart from when she was with her husband, Maggie has lived alone with her mother all her life. Twenty years ago her husband fell to his death when he was replacing some roof tiles. Three weeks after, Maggie gave birth to a baby who only lived for a few hours.'
'How awful,' I exclaimed.
'The way I see it,' Florrie said, shaking her head, 'Maggie can't stand being on her own in that big house where she lives so she has made another baby to keep her company through the long lonely days and nights. The first time she opened her blouse and put the breast to the doll's mouth there were a few coarse remarks from the men here but I soon put a stop to that. After all, she is not doing any harm so leave her to get on with it, that's what I say.'
I think it was about the end of February or the beginning of March when they hung Mrs. Lucy Flowers outside Newgate Prison. We left The Half Moon' tavern just after midnight to join the streams of people converging on the prison. When we got there Adam pushed me into the jostling crowd already assembled around the gallows. As
