called rakers—usually Celestials—who collected nightsoil to spread on their market gardens. Fullers of cloth would seek urine but it was rarely pure.
Hoping finally to end his lonely vigil, The Ox obeyed the note’s instructions. He was ready. Optimistically, he had set beside him what were called arse-wipes—paper was scarce in poor households, so arse-wipes were usually old cloths or even small piles of dried cut grass. Some men, old salts come ashore, stuck with their maritime habits and used a sponge and a bucket of seawater.
In accordance with the instructions, The Ox had a beaker of water, half-filled, into which he mixed white powder from a spill of paper in the envelope. He swirled around the mixture then, as instructed, swallowed it in one gulp.
He sat awaiting results. Which soon manifested themselves as increasing pain in his belly, pain that he felt spreading to his muscles and extremities. He tried to call out for help but his throat was too painful, as if it had been scalded, and he found breathing difficult.
Before he lost consciousness, he felt himself lose control of his bladder and his bowels began—finally—to empty. The pain was beyond endurance.
Waking briefly from his faint—he didn’t know for how long he had lost his senses—he knew that his agony was worsening. The icy chill settling throughout his limbs did not diminish his pain.
As he jerked against the privy wall then slid to the dirt floor, his bowels, mouth and nose voided blood. The Ox was dying, not even as quickly as one of his slaughterhouse victims.
THE SMELL OF feces, human as well as animal, was usually unremarkable in much of the town. Even the grandest manor might have runnels of noxious waste flowing, not so freely, close beneath polished floorboards and Turkish carpets.
But no near neighbor could for long ignore the stench of The Ox’s violent last relief at the siege-hole. When a nose-holding fellow lodger finally investigated and pushed open the privy door, he turned tail and ran, yelling for help.
At first, he believed that the figure on the floor was alive. It still seemed to be moving and a low groaning sound arose from it. But the movement simply came from Lucilia cuprina, the blue-black blowfly, and perhaps 60,000 of its cousins at work, as did the drone that accompanied their feasting. They heaved on the carcass as they searched for new parts in which to plant their eggs, the millions of eggs that would soon hatch into maggots.
Someone was dead, awfully dead.
IN AN APOTHECARY′S shop in Pitt Street, not far from Sam Terry’s houses, the pill-and-potion purveyor looked up and smiled as a customer, whose clothes he recognized, came in. A scarf worn high hid the newcomer’s face.
As the apothecary wrapped the customer’s purchases, he said, “So that’s two ounces each of peppermint and magnesia lozenges, each at five pence per ounce; that’s one shilling and eight pence. And four shillings for a lancet—you can’t be too careful with boils—that’s a grand total of five and eight pence.” He added, “Did that mixture deal with the rat?”
The customer nodded. “I fervently hope so. Good day to you.”
SO IT WAS that Nicodemus Dunne, when he finally arrived at the hospital in Macquarie Street, had not one but two interesting bodies to survey.
CHAPTER TWELVE
O, that it were possible,
We might but hold some two days’ conference
With the dead!
—John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623)
A LONGSIDE THE HYDE PARK PRISONERS′ BARRACKS, SYDNEY′S general hospital loomed large, three graceful blocks in the classical colonial colonnaded style. As Nicodemus Dunne walked east up King Street, past St. James’s Church, he acknowledged that the pleasing pile nonetheless deserved the rather unbecoming label bestowed on it by the public, the “Rum Hospital.” This was not because its patients were all victims of the ardent spirit (although many undoubtedly were),
Hoping finally to end his lonely vigil, The Ox obeyed the note’s instructions. He was ready. Optimistically, he had set beside him what were called arse-wipes—paper was scarce in poor households, so arse-wipes were usually old cloths or even small piles of dried cut grass. Some men, old salts come ashore, stuck with their maritime habits and used a sponge and a bucket of seawater.
In accordance with the instructions, The Ox had a beaker of water, half-filled, into which he mixed white powder from a spill of paper in the envelope. He swirled around the mixture then, as instructed, swallowed it in one gulp.
He sat awaiting results. Which soon manifested themselves as increasing pain in his belly, pain that he felt spreading to his muscles and extremities. He tried to call out for help but his throat was too painful, as if it had been scalded, and he found breathing difficult.
Before he lost consciousness, he felt himself lose control of his bladder and his bowels began—finally—to empty. The pain was beyond endurance.
Waking briefly from his faint—he didn’t know for how long he had lost his senses—he knew that his agony was worsening. The icy chill settling throughout his limbs did not diminish his pain.
As he jerked against the privy wall then slid to the dirt floor, his bowels, mouth and nose voided blood. The Ox was dying, not even as quickly as one of his slaughterhouse victims.
THE SMELL OF feces, human as well as animal, was usually unremarkable in much of the town. Even the grandest manor might have runnels of noxious waste flowing, not so freely, close beneath polished floorboards and Turkish carpets.
But no near neighbor could for long ignore the stench of The Ox’s violent last relief at the siege-hole. When a nose-holding fellow lodger finally investigated and pushed open the privy door, he turned tail and ran, yelling for help.
At first, he believed that the figure on the floor was alive. It still seemed to be moving and a low groaning sound arose from it. But the movement simply came from Lucilia cuprina, the blue-black blowfly, and perhaps 60,000 of its cousins at work, as did the drone that accompanied their feasting. They heaved on the carcass as they searched for new parts in which to plant their eggs, the millions of eggs that would soon hatch into maggots.
Someone was dead, awfully dead.
IN AN APOTHECARY′S shop in Pitt Street, not far from Sam Terry’s houses, the pill-and-potion purveyor looked up and smiled as a customer, whose clothes he recognized, came in. A scarf worn high hid the newcomer’s face.
As the apothecary wrapped the customer’s purchases, he said, “So that’s two ounces each of peppermint and magnesia lozenges, each at five pence per ounce; that’s one shilling and eight pence. And four shillings for a lancet—you can’t be too careful with boils—that’s a grand total of five and eight pence.” He added, “Did that mixture deal with the rat?”
The customer nodded. “I fervently hope so. Good day to you.”
SO IT WAS that Nicodemus Dunne, when he finally arrived at the hospital in Macquarie Street, had not one but two interesting bodies to survey.
CHAPTER TWELVE
O, that it were possible,
We might but hold some two days’ conference
With the dead!
—John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623)
A LONGSIDE THE HYDE PARK PRISONERS′ BARRACKS, SYDNEY′S general hospital loomed large, three graceful blocks in the classical colonial colonnaded style. As Nicodemus Dunne walked east up King Street, past St. James’s Church, he acknowledged that the pleasing pile nonetheless deserved the rather unbecoming label bestowed on it by the public, the “Rum Hospital.” This was not because its patients were all victims of the ardent spirit (although many undoubtedly were),
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