Chapter 1 The Rookery : the worst streets in London

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As the wagon creaked through the silent streets, Daisy peeped through narrow gap in the tarpaulin,  her first glimpse of the city she had dreamed about for so long. The tall buildings loomed over the wagon; their dark facades coated with grime; the streets so narrow that the wagon only just fitted through.  Everywhere was shrouded in thick fog and the smell from the narrow gully that ran down the middle of the street, made her gag. By the light of the hissing gas lamps she began to make out shapes; lumps on the muddy road that were so wet and ingrained with filth it was impossible to tell what they had once been. Beside her Evie snored gently, worn out with the long journey from the North.  It seemed like a different life now; the dark pit ; slaving for13 hours each day: rising at 3.30 and only returning when the first gaslights were being lit. The endless drudgery of young lives lived in the dark- 12 hours, six days a week would have been their lot had they not fled when they did. Thinking about it brought tears to her eyes: what would become of mam now she’d gone? And dad; did he die deep underground, trapped, all because of them, because of the explosion that, they – Daisy, Jonnie and Tim had caused?

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On the other side of the wagon Tim stirred, moaning: He was used to his nightmares now, every night he would fall asleep, only to wake shortly afterwards, shaking and sweating with fear. The dreams were unrelenting; night after night, replaying the terrible events of that day, his first day working down The Bankside Pit, the deepest mine in the North. He’d been excited at first: it was a big day for a boy when he finally followed his father into the pit. He was much older than some of the others that were beginning work on that fateful day: some, like little Evie snoring beside her, were only five or six. Their mams and dads carried them down, many of them still sleeping as they climbed into the cage that would take them deep into the stinking pit. The pit where they would spend 12 hours in the pitch black, up to their knees in water, opening and closing the heavy doors that kept the silent but deadly methane gasses from building up and exploding from something as minute as a spark from the heavy coal wagon wheels.

Daisy rubbed her tummy; she could still almost feel the bite of the thick leather belt and the pull of the chain between her legs: the pain as the heavy coal wagon began to bite, the leather leaving deep welts on her back and sides. Oh, it had felt like an honour at first: to be up there with the older girls, pulling the corves-the coal trucks- along the low passages- passages too low and narrow for grown adults to pass- passages where slime dripped from the shiny rock face and dried, filthy on their faces by the warm draughts that blew through.  But, paired up with one of the cruellest and hardest girls in the mine, Annie Giles, she soon found out that her new role left her chained and treated worse than a pit pony,  and, it was in breaking free from it that led to the explosion: An explosion that meant that they could never go back to the village they called home: never return to the mum they adored and the brothers and sisters that needed them.

Sitting beside Sid driving the wagon, Jonnie was blissfully unaware that Daisy too could see the sinister place that was sucking them in with each step that Old Bosher, their pony, took. She already felt trapped by the looming dirt encrusted buildings that towered above them, and the filthy mud below, sucking Bosher’s hooves deeper and deeper. The stench down the pit had been foul but seemed like nothing compared to this suffocating miasma that seemed to penetrate every pore. Above her the gloomy tenements loomed like hungry crows, just waiting to swoop down and pluck them from the wagon. The broken windows, sightless eyes in the once proud facades. This had been a handsome area once, when the silk weavers had lived there, their businesses flourishing by the sale of fine dresses and coats for the rich. But cheaper silk from elsewhere had put paid to their livelyhoods, leaving them penniless. Their once fine streets, now some of the worst slums in England.

Sid, now almost fully recovered from his injuries – after being beaten and left for dead by Annie and Geordie Giles - sat, the reigns limp in his hands, his eyelids drooping. Gently Jonnie took them from the older man, as his head fell forward in slumber. She knew that their journey through London would be a long one: from here they needed to go right through the centre of the city and out  the other side. Through the south side of London: the notorious den of thieves and murderers, and out to the hopping fields of Kent. Where the air was clean and there was money to be made, and good company to be had with the gypsies of the South.

Jonnie’s thoughts were interrupted by a sharp jerk on the reigns, ‘Easy there girl, steady as she goes,’ she murmured to the now agitated horse.

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Peering into the mud she caught sight of what had disturbed old Bosher, a dead dog lay in the mud; too filthy to make out what breed it had been in life, it lay amongst the mud, and other stinking objects in this street which they had all been led to believe, to be ‘paved in gold.’ Jonnie grimaced: when they were back in Bankside Pit, London had seemed the city of their dreams. All they knew of it, they’d learned at Sunday school: with the fantastic pictures on every wall of gleaming St Paul’s Cathedral, and the wonderful city where good Queen Victoria had been crowned. A[JB1]  young girl, not much older than Jonnie. She wondered about the Queen; wondered what it must be like to have power over all of those men, the government. Wondered how the young queen managed. Looking down at the delicate hands that held Bosher’s reigns, she wondered how long it would be before her own secret was revealed; the secret she’d been keeping since the mother she adored, died, leaving she and Evie alone. It was just after her mother died that Jonnie decided that being a girl was too difficult, that she would never be able to look after her younger sister, Evie, if she remained a girl: That they would both end up in the workhouse, or worse. The only way to survive was to change-to convince everyone that she was a strong and independent lad. Capable of the type of work necessary to keep she and Evie safe. It hadn’t been hard at first, many of the local lads were thin and malnourished, and with her wiry physique, she’d easily beat them in the numerous fights that erupted in and around the village of Skry. But now she was getting older, the boys were stronger, and the changes in her own body would be difficult to hide for much longer.

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Tim’s dream was even worse than usual: trapped in a dark and airless passage he feverishly felt his way along the slick slime-soaked rocks. The voices grew louder and louder as he approached the low door in the rock.

‘Come through Timmie, we’re waiting for you, push on the door, the voices reached a crescendo, chanting in unison, ‘push on the door Timmie, push on the door.’ As he approached ,the roof became so low that he was forced to creep, belly to the ground along the mud. The stones tore into his flesh, and he felt blood, flowing from his torn knees. “Daisy, I’m coming for you, he croaked through the thick smoke.”

“Help me Tim, help me,” Shrieked Daisy. ‘They’re taking me away’.

His eyes sprang open, the sweat pouring down his brow. For a moment he thought he was back there, in the heat and the darkness, but the steady rhythm of the wagon wheels reminded him that he had left that life behind him for ever. Shivering he pulled the blankets around his thin shoulders. It felt cosy in the wagon: cosy and safe. The gentle rocking of the caravan soothed him and before long his eyelids drooped.

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From a grating far below street level, eyes peered out through the darkness. It wasn’t usual to get the gypsies in the rookeries: they normally had more sense, thought Mo wryly. Mo had never known much different. Living in a tenement with 30 other families, just one privy between them in one of London’s words courts. At fourteen she had rarely known peace and quiet. Peace? No chance. Her grimy fingers gripped the iron grill that served as the only ventilation for the room. In a few hours her mam would rise, reaching for the gin ‘just to get her going,’ and take to the streets once more, taking the pitiful bundle of rags that she sold, with her. The clothes were fresh from the victims of smallpox, mam went round the families she knew had suffered a death and collect the clothes of the deceased. She’d give them a penny and sell them on to other, equally desperate folk, for tuppence if she could. She wouldn’t come back until after dark, often with nothing to show for her day in the grimy London streets- she would say it was the trade that was low, but Mo knew that it was the drink that had claimed her meagre offering and there would be no food for the next day and often no selling either, as mam would spend most of the day on her pallet, oblivious to everything going on around her. Mo would then leave taking her brothers and sisters: six-year-old May, four-year-old Jessie and 2 year old Jack, away into the streets. They would often go up the old Convent Garden where some of the flower sellers would take pity on them and give them a few bruised blooms to sell on, if trade was slow, then her only choice would be to wrap May’s leg in a dirty cloth and pour on a good bit of soap, then blister it up with vinegar-so that folk would think she had a nasty sore on his leg- a good beggars trick that normally got them a bit of sympathy and a few pennies.

As for Pat, he’d be working from 5am right through until 7 that evening; it wouldn’t be hard to guess what he did she thought wryly looking at his still form. Now 13, he had been working the chimneys since he was 8. Sold as an apprentice to Ollie Masters the local sweep, who, delighted with his purchase of a small thin lad who could reach up the narrowest of flues, was determined to make the most of his little prize. It was impossible to get him clean. Though Mo scrubbed and scrubbed him she could never seem to shift the layer of soot which joined the other assorted smells in the room to form a noxious stench which hung like a pall over the sleeping children. It didn’t help that Pat didn’t like to be clean- or rather he didn’t like being scrubbed with a carbolic sponge and the drenching with buckets of icy water that followed !

Sighing she turned back into the room. In the grey light of dawn, she spotted two cockroaches creeping over the still forms of the sleeping children, crying out she knocked them off, into the threadbare rag that passed for a rug. It hadn’t always been like this …………