river were harsh indeed on the ones who didn’t make the grade.
‘He reckoned she’d jumped off the bridge in Putney,’ said Mary. ‘Probably up the duff.’
Crestfallen, Dodger sighed again. They usually were with child, he thought: the girls from faraway places with strange-sounding names like Berkhamsted and Uxbridge, who had come to London hoping it would be better than a life among the hay seeds. But the moment they arrived, the city in all its various ways ate them and spat them out, almost always into the Thames.
That was no way to go, since you could only call what was in the river ‘water’ because it was too runny to be called dirt. When the corpses came to the surface, the poor old watermen and lightermen had to gaff them and row them down to the coroner of one of the boroughs. There was a bounty for turning over these sad remnants to the coroner’s office, and Double Henry had told him once that sometimes it was worthwhile to take a corpse quite a long way to get to the borough that was paying the most, though it was generally the coroner at Four Farthings. The coroner would post notice of the dead person and sometimes, Dodger had heard, the notice got into the newspapers. Maybe the girls’ bodies would end up in Crossbones Graveyard, or a paupers’ burying ground somewhere else, and sometimes, of course, as everybody knew, they could end up in the teaching hospitals and under the scalpels of the medical students.
Mary was still snivelling, and in a conversation made up largely of blobs of snot said, ‘It’s so sad. They
all
have long blonde hair. All the country girls have long blonde hair and, well, they are also, you know, innocent.’
Messy Bessie intervened with, ‘I was innocent once. But it didn’t do me any good. Then I found out what I was doing wrong.’ She added, ‘But I was born on the streets here, knew what to expect. Them poor little innocents never stand a chance when the first kind gentleman plies them with liquor.’
Mary-Go-Round sniffed again and said, ‘Gent tried to ply me with liquor once, but he ran out of money and I took most of what he had left when he fell asleep. Finest watch and chain I ever pinched. Still,’ she continued, ‘them poor girls wasn’t born round here like the likes of us, so they don’t know nothing.’
Her words reminded Dodger of Charlie. Then his thoughts turned to Sol and what
he
had voiced earlier. He said, as much to the open air as anything else, ‘I should give up on the toshing . . .’ His voice trailed off. Now he was talking to himself more than to anyone else. What
could
I do? he thought. After all, everybody has to work, everybody needs to eat, everybody has to live.
Oh, that smile on the face of Grandad; what had he seen in that last smile? He had seen the Lady. Toshers always knew somebody who had seen the Lady; nobody had ever seen her themselves, but nevertheless any tosher could tell you what she looked like. She was quite tall, had a dress that was all shiny, like silk; she had beautiful blue eyes and there was always a sort of fine mist around her, and if you looked down at her feet you would see the rats all sitting on her shoes. They said that if you ever saw her feet, they would be rat claws. But Dodger knew that he would never dare to look, because supposing they were; or even worse, supposing they weren’t!
All those rats, watching you and then watching her. Just maybe – he never knew – it would take only one word from her, and if you had been a bad tosher she might set the rats on you. And if you were a very good tosher, she would smile on you and give you a great big kiss (some said a great deal more than just a kiss). And from that day on you would always be lucky on the tosh.
He wondered again about those poor wretched girls who’d jumped. Many of them, of course, were with child, and then, because the barometer of Dodger’s nature almost always gravitated to ‘set fair’, he let go that chain of
‘He reckoned she’d jumped off the bridge in Putney,’ said Mary. ‘Probably up the duff.’
Crestfallen, Dodger sighed again. They usually were with child, he thought: the girls from faraway places with strange-sounding names like Berkhamsted and Uxbridge, who had come to London hoping it would be better than a life among the hay seeds. But the moment they arrived, the city in all its various ways ate them and spat them out, almost always into the Thames.
That was no way to go, since you could only call what was in the river ‘water’ because it was too runny to be called dirt. When the corpses came to the surface, the poor old watermen and lightermen had to gaff them and row them down to the coroner of one of the boroughs. There was a bounty for turning over these sad remnants to the coroner’s office, and Double Henry had told him once that sometimes it was worthwhile to take a corpse quite a long way to get to the borough that was paying the most, though it was generally the coroner at Four Farthings. The coroner would post notice of the dead person and sometimes, Dodger had heard, the notice got into the newspapers. Maybe the girls’ bodies would end up in Crossbones Graveyard, or a paupers’ burying ground somewhere else, and sometimes, of course, as everybody knew, they could end up in the teaching hospitals and under the scalpels of the medical students.
Mary was still snivelling, and in a conversation made up largely of blobs of snot said, ‘It’s so sad. They
all
have long blonde hair. All the country girls have long blonde hair and, well, they are also, you know, innocent.’
Messy Bessie intervened with, ‘I was innocent once. But it didn’t do me any good. Then I found out what I was doing wrong.’ She added, ‘But I was born on the streets here, knew what to expect. Them poor little innocents never stand a chance when the first kind gentleman plies them with liquor.’
Mary-Go-Round sniffed again and said, ‘Gent tried to ply me with liquor once, but he ran out of money and I took most of what he had left when he fell asleep. Finest watch and chain I ever pinched. Still,’ she continued, ‘them poor girls wasn’t born round here like the likes of us, so they don’t know nothing.’
Her words reminded Dodger of Charlie. Then his thoughts turned to Sol and what
he
had voiced earlier. He said, as much to the open air as anything else, ‘I should give up on the toshing . . .’ His voice trailed off. Now he was talking to himself more than to anyone else. What
could
I do? he thought. After all, everybody has to work, everybody needs to eat, everybody has to live.
Oh, that smile on the face of Grandad; what had he seen in that last smile? He had seen the Lady. Toshers always knew somebody who had seen the Lady; nobody had ever seen her themselves, but nevertheless any tosher could tell you what she looked like. She was quite tall, had a dress that was all shiny, like silk; she had beautiful blue eyes and there was always a sort of fine mist around her, and if you looked down at her feet you would see the rats all sitting on her shoes. They said that if you ever saw her feet, they would be rat claws. But Dodger knew that he would never dare to look, because supposing they were; or even worse, supposing they weren’t!
All those rats, watching you and then watching her. Just maybe – he never knew – it would take only one word from her, and if you had been a bad tosher she might set the rats on you. And if you were a very good tosher, she would smile on you and give you a great big kiss (some said a great deal more than just a kiss). And from that day on you would always be lucky on the tosh.
He wondered again about those poor wretched girls who’d jumped. Many of them, of course, were with child, and then, because the barometer of Dodger’s nature almost always gravitated to ‘set fair’, he let go that chain of
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