The Potato Factory (22 page)

In fact, the coach was completing the last mile into the centre of Birmingham by way of the new road composed of a material known as macadam. This was a tar-like substance as used for caulking vessels. It was heated until it was treacle-like and ran easily, whereupon it was poured upon a bed of small stones (the men who mixed it might use no stone larger than one they could roll on their tongue and still repeat: 'God save the King!'). The substance was soaked into the stony surface and while steaming was compressed with a large steamroller and allowed to dry smooth and hard. The result was a surface impervious to the most inclement weather and upon which any manner of wagon or coach wheel could travel. All was made without the need for skilled labour and at a fraction of the cost of the quarrying, shaping and laying of cobblestones.

Ikey's mind was not tuned to dullness and he was soon aware of his surroundings. The widow, satisfied that she'd done her Christian duty and wakened him, did the same for Tweedle. He sat up groaning and holding his head in both hands, eyes bloodshot and his
hair
standing up in untidy tufts. 'Oh my Gawd!' he moaned.

Ikey stared out of the coach window at the houses, some with chimneys already smoking in the early light, growing more and more numerous and close-built as they approached the city centre and the coach terminus. Staging posts, particularly at the terminus from one great metropolis to another, were much inhabited by the watchful eyes of the law as well as those of informers hoping to earn a few shillings for spotting a known villain. Ikey's fondest hope was that he would be allowed to skulk unnoticed from the scene into the nearest darkened lane, and thereafter to a nearby rookery where he would be free from the ever curious attentions of any members of the law or the underworld.

He now became concerned with the presence of Tweedle. His earlier anxiety returned and Ikey imagined him to be a law man who would elicit the aid of a waiting law officer from the Birmingham constabulary to arrest him, his task while on the coach simply being to keep a watchful eye on him lest he take his departure before reaching the city.

Ikey was tired and his senses somewhat blunted. He told himself one moment that he was imagining the danger, and the next that he should have reasoned it out long before this and left the coach when they'd stopped to change horses at a village during the night. Caution, with its partner suspicion, being his more natural instinct, Ikey decided he would make a dash for it the moment the coach drew to a complete standstill.

Ikey carried no personal baggage. In fact, Ikey's taking a chance that a highwayman might waylay the coach during the night journey was not as courageous as it might have outwardly seemed. Highwaymen seldom shoot their victims and Ikey had no fear of robbery, for he'd carried in his purse coin sufficient only to purchase the coach ticket and to eat frugally and pay for his accommodation for a day or two upon his arrival, with a little left over for miscellaneous expenses. A secret pocket under the armpit of his coat contained fifty pounds, though a highwayman would need to remove the coat and most carefully dissect its lining to find this. To be robbed of what he superficially possessed would have been no serious matter. He carried only a cheap watch and chain and a small cut-throat razor and the deeds to the house in Bell Alley, a paper which would make no sense to a common robber. Also resting in a pocket was the key to his home in Whitechapel.

It being so close to Christmas, this absence of serious cash on Ikey would have been somewhat surprising. Anyone who knew him was aware that he would often carry a thousand pounds on his person, for the season's pickings would be exceedingly good and ready cash was what was needed to make the most of the many opportunities certain to come his way. But, this time in Birmingham, Ikey was playing for much bigger stakes than the fencing of a few bright baubles taken in the Christmas crowds.

The coach drew at last to a standstill, the coachman laying aside his horn and shouting, 'Whooa! Whooa!' to the wild-eyed beasts in the time-honoured way. The horses thus brought to a stop shook their heads in a jingle of brasses, champed at the bit and stamped their feet on the hard surface of the road. Their coats were lathered with sweat from their final gallop and their nostrils snorted smoky air.

The coach official opened the door on the widow's side. 'Oh me Gawd!' he exclaimed fanning his nose. He immediately turned to the waiting crowd. 'Anyone come for a show freak?' he yelled. 'If 'e is, she be blind, 'opeless drunk! Need ter fetch cart and oxen, or special sprung carriage. She'll not be walkin', I can tell 'e that for sure and absolute certain!'

The widow reached out and took the unfortunate official by the collar of his coat and pulled the top half of him backwards into the coach so that his head lay upon her lap.' 'Ullo, dearie, fancy a kiss?' she said, then burped loudly into the man's astonished face.

Ikey glanced quickly at Tweedle, who sat frozen upright looking directly out of the window, trying to ignore the bizarre antics of the drunken woman and the wildly struggling and whimpering official.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Ikey quietly unlatched the coach door on his side, leaving it ajar. Then he rose and lifted the still surprisingly heavy hamper and placed it down upon an astonished Tweedle's lap, quite preventing him from rising in pursuit should he take it in his mind to do so, whereupon he pushed the door open and stepped through it. But alas, his coat caught on the sharp corner of the small door and pulled him back. Ikey pulled desperately at the coat and a six-inch tear appeared in the thick wool as he wrenched it free, and then dashed into the dark shadow cast by the terminus building. In a few moments he had escaped up a narrow alleyway which ran between the stage coach terminal and the building beside it.

*

Ikey's immediate destination in Birmingham was not, as might normally have been the case, one of the more notorious flash-houses nor thieves' kitchens where he might be expected to take up temporary residence, but to a stabling property on the outskirts of the city.

This large, unprepossessing building of rough-hewn stone had all the appearances of a farmhouse. It was set on the road to the village of Coleshill, with stables on the ground level for several horses and above it two additional storeys, which a visitor might naturally suppose was the owner's residence. However, in this instance, the large building was much, much more than a simple farmhouse and might even have been called a kind of factory, a paper and ink factory to give this most improper and anonymous business a proper name.

The property belonged to Silas Browne Esq., outwardly a respected horse dealer but to those in the know, one of the greatest forgers of soft in the land. He was a man of great ingenuity and reputation known to all who dealt in a serious manner in good forged banknotes throughout England and continental Europe.

Birmingham was the chief centre of the production of good hard, this being the name for counterfeit coin. Since it had always been a place where fine jewellery, watches and military medals were made, it was easy enough for Birmingham craftsmen to turn to this illicit trade. The same was not necessarily true for the forging of banknotes, and had it not been for the remarkable talents of Silas Browne and his wife Maggie the Colour, the city might not have become a recognised centre for banknote forgery.

While the city supported a great many clandestine coining workshops it contained only a handful of talented engravers. These mostly derived from men who had been decorators of gold and silver plate. Though these few very skilled men together gave it an acknowledged presence in banknotes and forged letters of credit, and even some work on share certificates, their efforts were no greater than other major English cities.

Etching was an exacting task and a superior engraver might take a year or more to perfect the plates required for a single banknote, so that these men needed to be financed and carefully safeguarded by those who profited most from their skills. Silas Browne and Maggie the Colour were known to employ the very best engravers. But to the engraver's skill they added two ingredients which gave Birmingham an advantage in the forged banknote trade. The house to which Ikey now hurriedly set out was used for making this paper and ink.

Silas Browne, though seeming a ponderous and somewhat befuddled man, made the best counterfeit paper in England and his wife, Maggie the Colour, the best inks. This combination, together with the fact that Silas financed most of the more skilled engravers and so came into possession of the best engraved plates, made them very wealthy. It was claimed they had a share in every forgery printing operation in Birmingham and, as well, sold ink to Manchester printers and even to some of the better London operators.

Maggie the Colour was the daughter of a Manchester dyemaker and possessed a talent for mixing inks and dyes and an eye for subtle colour, shading and gradations, which was truly remarkable. She was known to use mostly local tinctures, some from plants and herbs she collected in the surrounding countryside, the juice of mulberry and pomegranate imported from Spain, as well as tannins from various types of wood. These she mixed with the exotic pigments and dyes available on the English market, but which came from India, China and from Dutch Batavia used by the silk makers in Macclesfield and the cotton spinners of Manchester. Any forger worthy of his name would use no other ink, the powdered galls mixed with camphor supplied by Maggie the Colour were so good that even the officials at the Bank of England could find no major fault with her product.

Given the very best engraver's plates, expertly prepared paper, perfect ink matching and superior printing, the work done by Silas Browne and Maggie the Colour was among the finest in England. But it fell short of perfection because the paper used for bills simply could not be reproduced, and the plates used for banknotes above the ten pound denomination were thought to be too complicated for a single engraver, and could never hope to deceive even the most casual banker's eye.

Abraham Van Esselyn's forged plates were near to being the exception. They were the very finest of their kind available, perhaps in the entire world of forgery, so perfect that they might have been prepared by the Bank of England's own engravers. These plates, now about to be offered by Ikey to Silas Browne, were the work of a single man of undoubted genius and moreover, each was perfect to the point of almost any magnification. This made them of the greatest possible value to a team like Browne and his wife, Maggie, though, of course, it was not concerning these alone that Ikey had come to see them.

Ikey, having walked for almost an hour, came at last to the end of the city's sprawling slums, and soon found himself in more open ground where cottages rested separately, some with small gardens to the front or back. Ikey disliked space of any sort and his eyes darted hither and thither. He shied away from a barking dog, and jumped wildly at the sudden crow of a cockerel or the hissing of a goose. Some of the lanes along which he passed contained hedges on either side which provided some concealment, though nature's walls of hawthorn thicket did very little for Ikey's peace of mind. Strange things went click and buzz and chirp within them, and none of these noises equated to the myriad sounds to which Ikey's highly particular ear was tuned.

It was coming up mid-morning when he finally reached the open field in the centre of which stood the house of Silas Browne. Ikey was in a state of high nervous tension. The daylight hour, though some snow had started to fall, coupled with the open terrain through which he had been forced to travel on this final part of his journey, had brought him very close to complete panic. He was hungry but so single-minded in his mission that he hadn't even thought to enter a chop house for a meal. Now he stopped and rested at the gate leading into the field and, removing his neckcloth, wiped the nervous perspiration from his brow and the back of his neck.

The large treeless field appeared to be flat and, but for a dozen or so horses grazing about it, completely empty. Ikey expected that the moment he entered the gate someone would appear from the house to meet him. In fact, this is what he hoped might happen before he'd intruded too far into the large field, and so was unable to retreat back to the gate should a savage hound, designated for this very purpose, be set upon him. An envoy sent from the house would give him an opportunity to explain his reason for coming, and to send ahead of him a sample of his credentials for perusal by the redoubtable Silas Browne and his wife.

Ikey entered the field, his eyes darting everywhere, forwards and backwards and to either side. To his dismay no one came from the distant house and he was forced to move ever closer to it. Therefore it came as a fearful surprise to him when his hat was tipped over his eyes from behind, and a voice declared.

'Don't turn around, sir!'

Ikey, despite the fright he'd received, was of course an expert on young boys, and this voice was no more than ten or eleven years of age. This didn't do a great deal for his confidence, however, as street children of this age were as tough as grown men. Besides, they were sometimes larger than himself. He removed his hat and replaced it squarely back on his head.

'A penny for a word then, my dear,' Ikey said slowly, digging into his coat to find a copper coin which he held between finger and thumb and proffered behind his back.

His unseen assailant snatched the coin from Ikey's hand.

'Where does you think you're goin' then?' the boy enquired.

'Silas Browne! I begs to see Mr Silas Browne. That is, with your permission o' course, your very esteemed permission, my dear.'