The Potato Factory (11 page)

While there were a great many kidsmen to be found, men who trained street urchins for snakesmen, pickpockets and as beggars, they were generally most harsh in their methods, ignorant men with a too frequent hard, flat, impatient hand to the side of an urchin's head. Should a boy fail to exhibit the required amount of tact and ingenuity in dipping it was the custom for him to be given a severe beating from the other boys or by the kidsman himself. To this punishment was added no food to eat until the hapless child improved his pick-pocketing technique or simply starved to death.

Ikey, however, offered not harsh punishment but reward, a bright penny handed over, a large chop rimmed with fat added to a child's plate at supper, or even a glass of best beer given with a pat on the back. Ikey's thorough ways and his understanding of the competitive nature of small boys created the best toolers to be found in London, all most proud to be graduates of the Methodist Academy of Light Fingers, Proprietor, Isaac Solomon, Esq.

At practice Ikey would use a tailor's dummy set up in a pool of lamplight and dressed up with the garments most likely to be worn in the street. Sometimes these would emulate the attire of a toff, swell or country gentleman and at others, a grand lady, a doxy or, for the smallest of the children, a nanny or shop assistant. Into these clothes were sewn tiny bells that tinkled at the slightest vibration.

At the conclusion of each week it was the custom among Ikey's boys to take a vote decided by the acclamation of all. The most proficient boy at the practice of dipping was voted the title of Capt'n Bells, whereas the least competent was christened Tinkle Bell. The former was a title much prized among his young apprentice thieves, while the latter was worn with a fierce resolve to be 'unchristened' as speedily as possible.

Bob Marley had come from among these children and there were a number of talented magsmen, swell mobsmen and flash-men who could claim 'a proper education' by the redoubtable Ikey in the ways of thieving and disposing and the general nature of surviving in the trade of taking what rightfully belonged to others. It was this foundation, laid early and trained carefully, which later supplied much of the goods which Ikey would receive as a fence.

Ikey would arrive at the boys' squalid quarters around three in the morning, whereupon lectures and demonstrations on the art of light fingers and the brightening of minds took place. Afterwards those boys with goods to dispose of, such items as they might have taken on the street since the previous night's visit, would wait back while the remaining urchins would repair to a nearby chop house where a private room was held for them. Ikey would carefully examine the prize each offered, explaining its composition in stones or judging its value in precious metal or as an article alone.

'Know what you takes, my dear. A bit o' glass set in lead and gold dipped ain't worthy o' your knowledge, emeralds or diamonds set in gold is what your fingers is trained to lift. Watch the light, see it play, diamonds shoot, emeralds pulse, rubies burn, pearls glow. Judge the wearer, not the glory o' the gown, the toss o' the head, the modesty of eye. Fake pearls is more common than real and when worn on a bosom young, temptin' and firm, is most likely to be that of a tart playin' at courtesan than a lady o' quality. Judge the laughter -too shrill and too often is the 'abit o' the badly bred. Details, my dears, everythin' is in the details. Sniff the perfume, examine the nap o' the boots and the 'em o' the skirt for old dirt or much mending. If the gentleman's 'ands is too familiar with 'is escort then the lady is too cheaply bought. It's all there waiting for your eyes to measure and your mind to equate before you decides to make the vamp.'

Ikey would then pay them, naturally at a much reduced price to the street value of the goods, though never were the articles so cheaply purchased as to encourage a young lad to take the merchandise elsewhere.

The business of the night completed, Ikey would join the dozen or so boys who ranged in age from six to sixteen for a meal in the nearby chop house. Here they would all be fed from Ikey's purse, though in the order and quality of their performances. Those who had not done well at practice or failed to bring in any merchandise taken on the street would be denied a plate of chops or steak, meat being the reward for performance, though all were equally given a thick wedge of bread and a large bowl of thick steaming broth, enough to keep body and soul together. Ikey himself partook of a bowl of mutton and potato stew, followed by a dish of curds.

Some of the smaller boys, their bellies replete, would leave the chop house to crawl back into their squalid quarters and sleep until noon in a bed of dirty rags. Those who had money or friends who would share what they'd won would stay to grow drunk on a pint of gin or brandy.

During the progress of one night Ikey might be seen, his hands working in the gestures of unctuous trading, in the reeking hubbub of Rosemary Lane doing business among the festoons of second-hand clothes. Or if the tide was in and to run before dawn, he might be seen working his way to the river to the regions of Jacob's Island and those parts known as the Venice of Drains in Bermondsey, which he reached by traversing the impenetrable alleys, dives and runways round Leicester Square  and the Haymarket,  this  part of the  great rookery being the convenient asylum for the thieves, flash-men, touts and prostitutes working the rich fields of the West End. Here could be found the rakish members of the upper classes with their courtesans, their ears and necks and decolletage awash with diamonds and pearls, the starched young swells, toffs and codgers on the randy, the gamblers and cashed-up jockeys and the furtive old perverts from the privileged classes who mixed vicariously with the low-life. This place, too, was an essential nightly visitation for a fence of Ikey's status in the underworld.

Ikey could come upon these places from Whitechapel or Spitalfields along dark, fetid lanes, and through vile netherkens crowded to suffocation with thieves and beggars and the desparate, starving poor sleeping and copulating on straw-filled billets and bundles of rags.

Sometimes he moved along well-established paths formed over rooftops or through cellars and dark alleys, sliding past the stagnant open gutters which ran down the centre of these narrow filth-choked runways. Even in the dark he knew the whereabouts of the numerous cesspools which would trap many a gin-soaked hag, or drunkard who'd lost his way and having slipped on the surrounding excrement could not regain a foothold and would be sucked into the shit to drown.

Ikey knew with intimacy this great rookery of St Giles and many others, and was as much at home in them as the rats scurrying ahead of him along the soot-stained walls. He could reach the destination of his choosing without once crossing an honest thoroughfare or appearing within the light of a single street lamp, seen along the way only by the incurious eyes of beggars, thieves, night-stand prostitutes, petty touts, sharpers and the broken and desperate humanity who lived in these festering parts. Those who saw nothing unless they were paid to do so and who, upon being questioned by a magistrates' runner, knew nothing of a person's whereabouts, even if they had glimpsed them, bold as brass, not a moment beforehand.

On a rising tide Ikey might be seen furtively moving close to a wall or along a pier in the dock areas before disappearing below the malodorous deck of a boat. Before dawn's light it would slip its moorings and on the morning tide move silently down the river, its progress concealed by the sulphurous mist and smog that sat upon the Thames.

By sunrise this vessel, which outwardly carried hemp or tiles or any of the other miscellanea which made up the maritime drudgery of commerce between England and the continental ports, would be safely into the Channel. It carried about Ikey's consignments of stolen jewellery to be reworked in Amsterdam and Antwerp; parcels of Bank of England notes in every denomination to be laundered in Hamburg and Prague banks; silver and gold bound for Bohemia and Poland to be sold or melted down in the shops and workshops of various foreign Jews.

Ikey would arrive at Egyptian Mary's not a minute beyond five in the morning. He would greet Mary upon his return from the foulness of his peripatetic night and before anything else he would look at the house takings, always wheedling and quarrelling, as if the bitter bargaining of the night must be run down and unwound before he could be brought to a state of calm.

He would carp at the cost of a haunch of ham, or measure the level of the claret cask, as much to bring himself to an emotional repose as to attempt to gain more than his fair share of the night's profit. Thereafter he would unload the takings of his fencing business for that night, valuing each item expertly and suggesting what might become of them; a melting or resetting or re-cutting, what could be disposed of in London, what must needs be sent abroad.

Mary entered all this into her receivals ledger. Ikey also acquainted her of the whereabouts of heavier merchandise: bolts of cloth, linen and brocade, a handsome pair of Louis XIV chairs or a valuable tapestry. Mary would arrange to have these picked up and delivered at a time when they would arrive unobserved. In this last regard she would often use Bob Marley, the slash man, whom she trusted and who proved to be a careful and reliable go-between.

Ikey had a passion for order in his affairs and this had made him extremely rich. When this final task for the night was completed, Mary would place the books in a secret place, this task always overseen by Ikey. Then, at last, often just before dawn, they would pause to share a glass of chilled champagne in her little private parlour at the rear of the establishment.

This was the happiest time of Ikey's life and he composed an epigram which he would pronounce to Mary and which encapsulated the satisfaction he took from being the joint proprietor of Egyptian Mary's. Holding his glass of champagne to the light and watching the tiny beaded bubbles rise in straight and orderly lines to the surface he would announce, 'My dear, I 'ave a theory fantastic for the success of our enterprise. Shall I say it for you?'

'You certainly may, sir! You certainly may!' Mary would rise and top up his glass and then do the same to her own, whereupon she would seat herself again holding her glass and wait. Ikey would lower his glass and take a polite sip of champagne, then in a preacher-like manner, intone:

If the angle of the dangle

is equal to the heat of the meat,

then the price of the rise,

is decided by the art of the tart.

'There it be, my dear, the entire business of brothel keepin' contained in a simple rhyme.'

Simple as he claimed it to be, Ikey thought it exceedingly clever and never tired of the reciting of it. At the conclusion of the rhyme they would clink glasses and entwine arms, each taking a sip of champagne, whereupon Mary would say, 'May our bubbles keep risin'. Amen!'

It was as close as the two of them ever came to sentimentality of the kind which might be described as love.

*

For Mary the bawdy house on Bell Alley was a daily confirmation that she could be a woman of enterprise and that by her own wit and skill she could gain a security in life she had never known. Ikey was proving to be her way out of poverty, misery and an almost certain slow crippling death from syphilis, or a quicker one at the hands of some madman with a shiv in need of the means for an opium pipe. There were a thousand ways a prostitute could meet her death, but very few ways in which she could expect to remain alive much beyond her mid-twenties.

In gratitude Mary showed Ikey more tolerance than ill temper. She was often sorely tempted to screw his scrawny neck, but for the most part refrained from violence, boxing his ears only when provoked to the extreme. She knew him to be a coward, a cheat, a liar and, of course, a notorious thief, though this last characteristic she regarded simply as Ikey's profession.

Without the thief there would be no magistrate or judge or lawyer or half the regular clientele of her bawdy house. And so she had no reason to place Ikey's choice of vocation in any poorer light than that of her clients. When the poor embrace the tenets of morality it comes ready-made with misery as its constant companion. Mary counted herself fortunate to have Ikey in her life and very occasionally in her bed, which was as close as anyone had ever come to loving him, or she to feeling affection for any other person since her mother and father died.

But it is not in the nature of things to remain calm. Contentment is always a summer to be counted in brief snatches of sunlight, while unhappiness is an endless winter season of dark and stormy weather. The cold wind of Ikey's and Mary's discontent was beginning to howl through the rat-infested rookeries, sniffing at the mud and shit of the dark alleys and stirring the slime of the river into a foment of disaster which was about to wash over them both.

At the end of a miserable night in December with the wind roaring and the snow swirling, Ikey was just turning into Bell Alley from Winfield Street when a figure leapt from the shadows directly into his path. Ikey jumped in fright as the dark shape presented itself through a sudden flurry of snow.

'It be friend!' Bob Marley shouted into the driving wind. 'A word is needed in yer ear, Ikey, an urgent word!'

Ikey relaxed. Bob Marley was to be trusted. As a young 'un he'd been a chimney sweep whom Ikey had plucked from his miserable trade to work for him as a snakesman. He recalled how he hadn't cheated the boy particularly and so had no reason to fear him. He was a likely lad in his day who seemed to be double jointed in all his connected parts, and could squirm and slide through apertures too small for a dock rat to enter. While he had remained small Ikey had profited well from his talent for entering property.