The Butcher's Daughter E-Book

Corinne Leigh Clark

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 533

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

An eerie and evocative Victorian-set horror thriller about how a well-meaning butcher's daughter from London's Whitechapel grew up to become the baker who stuffed her pies with the flesh of Sweeney Todd's victims. Perfect for fans of Clare Whitfield, Jess Kidd and Ambrose Parry. Includes original Victorian pie recipes. "You want to know the true tale of the wicked woman, the murdering monster, what baked the pies that she filled with the bits of her victims? The talk of London Town. I will tell you what you want to know, if it be the last that I do tell. And it may well be." Enclosed herewith: the hitherto untold story of Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd's infamous partner in crime—a bloodcurdling correspondence of profound horror and intrigue. London, England, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Police for review. It contains a curious correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd's accomplice, who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. Rumours have swirled about Mrs. Lovett since the disappearance of hundreds of unwitting men decades ago—but is it actually Lovett, even if the suspected woman swears against it? As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life—from her upbringing on Butcher's Row in the unruly and perilous streets of Victorian London to her daring escape from a mad doctor—the correspondence unlocks an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her dearly.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Corinne Leigh Clark’s Acknowledgements

David Demchuk’s Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Mrs Dawson’s Household Recipes

Praise for

THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER:

THE HITHERTO UNTOLD STORY OF MRS. LOVETT

“Perfect for those who love to escape back in time with a dark atmospheric story with that unmistakable Victorian gothic vibe. It’s told from the perspective of the young woman destined to become the infamous Mrs. Lovett, and she certainly has a chilling and disturbing tale… The Butcher’s Daughter paints a vivid picture of a secretive world filled with enigmatic characters with lots of sinister intrigue.”

CLARE WHITFIELD, author of People of Abandoned Character

“Your fingers may bleed with paper cuts as you tear through The Butcher’s Daughter. Retailed with consummate confidence, this novel draws out of the foggy demimonde of Victorian London all manner of mayhem. I am spellbound. You will be too, should you attend the tale.”

GREGORY MAGUIRE, author of Wicked

“Engrossing and exquisitely detailed. A twisty tale worthy of the enigmatic Mrs. Lovett.”

KELLEY ARMSTRONG, New York Times bestselling author of Bitten and I’ll Be Waiting

“Bloody and beautiful, The Butcher’s Daughter is a visceral novel that grips the reader and refuses to let go. David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark brilliantly reimagine a classic, giving it new depths, new horrors, and new layers to peel back by centering the character of Mrs. Lovett and rightfully letting her tell her own tale in her own voice. The moment I started reading, I didn’t want to put it down.”

A. C. WISE, author of Wendy, Darling and Hooked

“Grisly, spellbinding, and oddly touching . . . Demchuk and Clark get their arms bloody to the elbow reaching deep into the carcass of a story about life at the margins and the gruesome allure of wanton violence.”

GRETCHEN FELKER-MARTIN, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo

“A consistently clever and harrowing fin-de-siècle horror, The Butcher’s Daughter draws its eerie narrative harmonies from a cacophony of documents. Demchuk and Clark are equally adept in blending genres, creating a unique mixture of sensation fiction and literary horror. Tremendous fun.”

NABEN RUTHNUM, author of Helpmeet

“A Victorian nightmare. Demchuk and Clark present an assembly of communications and reports that together form temporal windows to a slaughterhouse, turning us into voyeurs glimpsing the edges of carnage. All the ingredients of a macabre treat.”

HAILEY PIPER, Bram Stoker Award©-winning author of Queen of Teeth and All the Hearts You Eat

“A wonderfully sophisticated horror. The Butcher’s Daughter is a gloomy, disgusting, and suspenseful rollercoaster ride, brought to vivid life by two exceptionally talented writers. At its heart, it is a tale about bodies—especially women’s bodies—about freedom and agency, and those who wish to control other human beings down to their guts. An historical novel, yes, but very much spun from this current bloody moment. Bleak, witty, and disturbing.”

RICHARD MIRABELLA, author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest

“The seedy underbelly of Victorian London comes to life in this deliciously dark novel, with mad scientists, murderous cults, merciless madams, and, of course, meat pies. If Sarah Waters had written penny dreadfuls, it might look something like this, but only David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark could make me hungry while reading about cannibalism.”

NINO CIPRI, author of Dead Girls Don’t Dream

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The Butcher’s Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett

Print edition ISBN: 9781835410844

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835410851

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: June 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2025 David Demchuk & Corinne Leigh Clark.

The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (for authorities only)eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, [email protected], [phone]

Design by Richard Mason.

Printed and bound by CPI (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY.

APRIL THE 3RD, 1887

Dear Miss Gibson,

I am in receipt of your three letters to Mother Mary Angelica, our Prioress, which had been held for consideration in the offices of St. Anne’s Priory here in North Hampstead. They have been released to me for reply. I see that you are a journalist, in search of Mrs. Margery Lovett—a wanton woman, a murderess, whose name we daren’t speak aloud for its profanity. A half century has passed since her dark deeds! You believe her to be secreted here at the Priory, working in the kitchen or as a housemaid or possibly as a nurse. What has led you to this conclusion? You do not say. You present a rough and unflattering description of her, which no doubt befits such a monstrous creature. You do not elaborate on your interest in her whereabouts or well-being, though given your occupation one can surmise the worst.

Three letters! You are persistent, I will give you that. I suppose it’s a vital quality in your profession and serves you well for the most part. However, we do not know your Margery Lovett nor do we know where she might be found.

St. Anne’s is a community of Sisters of the Church, living in quiet contemplation. I can assure you the pious women on these premises would have nothing to do with someone as depraved as your Lovett, let alone provide her with shelter. A hundred and fifty gruesome murders! Baking human flesh into pies! Perhaps she was more diabolical than her vile confederate Sweeney Todd, that malevolent barber of infamy, for who could conceive of such a thing. The Sisters here are innocent of such horrible stories as are told to children to frighten them under the covers. They have no knowledge of these ghastly crimes, and they are better for it. One of our youngest, Sister Catherine with her fine and delicate hand, has been assigned to assist me in crafting this reply. Poor soul. The names of Lovett and Todd had never touched her ears until this moment. If only I could be as unspoiled as she.

I wish you had been here with me in the minutes just after dawn when I was out in the yard with the cook’s maid, gathering eggs from our three nesting hens. I take on such tasks as the need arises, and will sometimes top a plumped-up bird to make our Sunday supper. As we had our basket filled and our backs to the runs and were dithering with the kitchen door, a windhover lurking in our ancient oak saw his chance to strike and swept down to seize one of the hens. Unexpectedly, the old girl put up a tremendous fight, screeching and thrashing with beak and claw until the maid and I could grab our sticks and drive the creature off. The hen may yet die from her wounds, poor thing, but not without having torn a few feathers from her assailant. I know some of how she feels. Young as you are, and more fair than fowl, I wonder if you do as well.

Why don’t you turn your attention away from the gutter, to more worthy journalistic pursuits? I have read your inspiring piece in the Daily Post on the suffragist Helen Taylor, and your series of articles on the Malthusian League, abandoned mothers and unwanted children. Why seek out the worst of women, when those who suffer legitimate injustices need your passion, when we need you to shine a light on the struggles we face in every turn of our lives, at every station, at every age? Even the Priory has faced hostilities over decades: accusations of succumbing to papacy and rejecting women’s natural obedience to men. You are not the first to write to us enquiring after vagrants, cutpurses, dissolutes, harlots and worse.

Ours is an order of Christian charity. I myself have suffered greatly, decade upon decade. I have endured many abuses, faced horrors at the very height of London society and among the very dregs. In these, my final years, I am grateful that the Sisters and the Prioress, Mother Mary Angelica, took pity on me and accepted me into their fold so that I could escape the turmoil of the world. Your time and effort would be better spent on noble works, on acts of bravery and benevolence, than on a ghoulish tale which has been glorified in penny bloods and gaffs. In any event, the last I heard of your Lovett was that she died in her cell at Newgate Prison, poisoned herself I believe, which by all accounts was the best possible outcome. Certainly, poisoning is more merciful than a hanging.

With this, Sister Catherine and I must leave you, as we are being called to dine before Vespers. This is a time of great unease for us at the Priory. The Reverend Mother, God bless her soul, was taken to hospital early yesterday evening; we understand her to be direly ill, and do not know if she will ever return. Our Sister Augustine is acting in her place, and is at sixes and sevens with her new duties, as you would expect. Might the Post consider a portrait in prose of the Reverend Mother as a beacon of benevolence in the capital? It would send an inspiring message to the populace, even as she lies on what may be her deathbed.

We wish you the best of luck in your endeavours, but please know this is not the right rock under which to look. Margery Lovett is no doubt at the bottom of a pile of bones in a pauper’s grave, and that is better than she deserves. Leave her to rest with the dead, if rest she can. You would be chasing phantoms.

I enclose for you the windhover’s feather, speckled and striped. A memento between us.

Always look forward, never look back.

Margaret C. Evans (Miss)

APRIL THE 14TH, 1887

Dear Miss Gibson,

Thank you for your kind enquiry after the health of the Reverend Mother. Sadly, she remains at Royal Free Hospital in a most desperate state, watched over day and night by the fine nurses in the Victoria Wing. Despite all our prayers, we are told that she is unlikely to recover. It is only a matter of time. Sister Catherine is beside herself with grief. She and the Reverend Mother had grown quite close in recent months.

As for your other queries, your determination is admirable but remains misdirected. We regret that we do not permit visitors to the Priory. Ours is an order of peaceful observance that benefits from being at a remove from the troubles that surround us. As the acting Prioress, Sister Augustine would be the one to receive guests on our behalf. If you have questions, she would be pleased to assist, though I doubt she has the answers that you seek. Even if your Lovett had been here in decades past, our files are unlikely to be of much use, and are not available for your perusal.

I do see though that we have piqued your curiosity about our order and Mother Mary Angelica. Allow me to take a moment to tell you about the Priory. St. Anne’s was built as Hunt House, a huddle of mottled black brick and grey stone along the northeastern edge of the cemetery. It was built by Sir Charles Marten shortly after the ascent of George I, and was so named for its proximity to the Bishop’s Wood, now known as Brewer’s Fell. He died fifty years after, leaving the house to the Church which first fashioned it as a convalescent home for those leaving hospital, and then as an attachment to the St. Milburga’s Abbey in North London. Our Sisters number twenty-nine at the moment, the eldest aged eighty-one and the youngest sixteen. To this, we add six lay workers who tend the kitchen, the refectory, the oratory, the dormitory and chapel, and the ice house; the Sisters and I tend to the chicken shed where we get our eggs, the small glass conservatory, the laundry, the garden and grounds. There is also the Prioress, may the Lord bless and protect her. And, of course, they also have me. When my strength is with me, I assist in the baking of altar breads between Matins and Lauds; these are offered up to churches throughout London. On the harder days, I join the elders in the parlour and embroider handkerchiefs, table linens and altar cloths, and help with the mending of socks and mantles and robes. One must strive to be useful in this life, and through usefulness find purpose. My loving Sister thinks I see the world queerly, and perhaps I do. While the women here are gentle with me and hold me among their number, it is at an arm’s length at best: I sleep and eat alongside them; I watch them as they rise and wash their bodies, pale and freckled and soft with womanly down; I listen as they chant and pray; but I am not of their realm, not truly, nor am I of the world beyond the gate. I admit I keep a certain distance as well, and do not invest myself in their whispers and their tiny daily dramas.

Sister Catherine’s face is already flushing, she knows what I’m about to tell: yesterday after Terce, one of the youngers, Eleanor, went to fetch her sewing kit and found her thimble was missing, an enameled silver bauble set with tiny white beads. Eleanor came to us a merchant’s daughter, well-to-do, just turned twenty-one and twice as vain as she was pretty. She refused to surrender this token of her father’s affection and now it was gone: not in the basket, not under the bed, nowhere on the floor. Vanished. An hour of wailing while the others searched the dormitory; then one of the others, Estelle, two years older and two feet taller, she came in laughing from outside to say that she had tossed it in the sluice where we all dump our chamber pots, and no doubt was on its way down to the Thames. Eleanor ran out into the morning fog in just her tunic, hurried to the sluice and combed through the clots of muck with a stick until she saw the dainty item lodged against the iron grate in the Priory wall, stopping it from sliding out and down into the gutter. She scurried back in, sobbing and sniveling, flung herself down to the cellar and into the laundry, and washed and scrubbed the filthy object as best she could. Sister Augustine, meanwhile, took Estelle by the ear, pulled her up the stairs and confined her without meals to the bedchamber that we keep aside for those who are unwell. She remains in there at this hour, and likely through the night. As if all that would not suffice, one of the kitchen girls, a rude and ruddy sort, muttered to the others about “Sister Stinkfinger.” We were two twips away from a bare-knuckle brawl. None of this would have happened, of course, if the Reverend Mother was well and with us. It is in our grief and fear that our tempers flare; pettiness takes hold of our hearts, and we lower ourselves to foolishness that would be frowned upon by bone-grubbers.

I say all this to you, but to the others I say little. Sweet Catherine here has never heard me speak so much. Her eyes are wide as saucers! I keep to myself, and wisely so, and know my company is true. I am more alone here than I have ever been, yet I cannot claim to be lonely. I have never been safer than I am in here, yet my heart still quickens, seizes, at the thought of the dangers I’ve left behind. If you are reluctant to share the story of our Reverend Mother with the world, perhaps you would find something of interest in mine, here at the Priory or in my life before. I have come to virtue late in life. I enjoy a simple existence, and have ample time to reflect upon it. Your readers might do well to join in that reflection.

I wonder, Miss Gibson: Have I seen you at the gate, in those moments after Prime when we gather ourselves to break our fast, when the streets outside are calm and still? Have I seen you standing there, watching our windows, imagining our lives? I have caught a woman lingering there more than once these past few weeks. A smart, sharp, curious girl, perhaps from the village, imagining a life of solitude and service within these walls. Young and strong she is, cheeks aflush with the first light of dawn, a feathered green postilion perched above her auburn curls, emerald dress ruffled and pleated with a jet-black bodice, taffeta and silk, blouse clutched tight at the neck. Could this be you? Would you tell me if it was? Her soft black glove frothed with white lace at the cuff, she clasps one bar and then another, stares intently through the refectory window, strains to see inside. Fleeting figures shuffling in and out of the shadows. Is that you watching, Miss Gibson? Have you seen us? Have you seen me?

Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called.

M.E.

APRIL THE 29TH, 1887

Dear Miss Gibson,

A fortnight has passed since your last letter. I fear that my tone has offended you, and for this I must offer my apologies. This was certainly not my intention. I have sat and stood by the window, morning and evening, day upon day. The strong young woman has not returned to the gate, at least not that I have spied. She may well have watched us and she may have seen enough, her fancies of a cloistered life dispelled by glimpses of the dull reality: a gaggle of geese clucking and squawking as they trundle from psalms and prayers to barley soup and potato bread. I know I shouldn’t talk this way, the Sisters have been very kind to me. But merely being alive is not much of a life. All that aside, it grieves me to think that I, or that we, might have frightened you off. We are barely kind to each other, no wonder they shut us up away from the likes of strangers.

Sister Catherine is here with me, as she is most days, wrinkling her nose at my rudeness and rightly so. She is delicate and fine and fair, where I am coarse and stiff like an old bristle brush. She comes to me in the afternoon between None and Vespers to help make my words pretty for you. She thinks I was born to tell a story, and that my tales would give your readers at the Post a window through which they could observe our devotion and works of mercy. I wish I had her grace. I went for a few years to the charity school at St. George-in-the-East, near Ratcliff, where I was born and raised. My father was a butcher on the Row, and he needed me to be good with numbers and to read and write a little; to help my mother, who stood out front hawking while he worked in back salting and hanging and smoking and carving the meat. I only ever learned a little but I make use of what I did. My tender Sister has been so kind to me, and in such times of trouble. The Reverend Mother is still in care, her days are surely numbered, and we are all beside ourselves in despair. Young Estelle has left us; her nasty prank on Eleanor turned back upon her like a wave, all the youngers refused to sit with her or speak to her. Sister Eleanor remains, and has passed her silver bauble on to Sister Augustine for safekeeping. She uses a plain brass thimble like the rest of us now, every one the same as every other. Some of her vanity has been passed off as well. No longer a giggling girl, she sits alone most days, and at odd moments displays a quiet dignity. An improvement.

Have you found another avenue to pursue in your quest to unearth your murderess? I expect if we are to have newspapers then we must have them sold. Unlike the odious Lovett, I am alive and present, and would gladly unburden my soul to you if I thought it would uplift another, if only someone might listen.

I doubt you’ve ever been to the Row. A different world for you. I can see you in a clean corner shop, picking out a neatly trimmed joint, getting it all wrapped up in paper and tied nicely with a length of string, tucking it under your arm as you step out into the sunshine. No stink, no filth, no vermin, no screams and squeals. You can forget that something’s throat was slit to make its flesh your supper.

Growing up as I did, I learned quickly about man’s place in the world, and the place of all our lessers. Meat was meat, you were lucky to have it, and you didn’t enquire too deeply whence it came. Life was not so precious then. Creatures lower in the natural order were beasts of burden, food on the table, and little else. They weren’t to be pitied, even though they led miserable lives and met gruesome ends. They were better off dead, all things considered. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

Little went to waste in our shop. There was barely a scrap left at the end of the day, apart from what fell to the floor. Every part was good for something, from the ends of the ears to the tips of the tails, blood, gristle and bone.

Each day I would awaken well before dawn to the bleating of terrified sheep being strung up and slaughtered, to the smell of blood and muck flowing out into the gutters. My father was always hacking and sawing big hunks of mutton and beef, striding about with a whole side of cow slung over his shoulder. I would watch him pierce the slabs with massive iron hooks and hang them by the window where they swung all red and dripping into the fresh sawdust strewn across the floor. Then he would sharpen his knives, saws, cleavers and skewers, and ready the buckets and bowls to collect the offal. My mother and I would don our aprons and wash down the butcher’s blocks, stained pink and slashed with deep knife cuts, and sweep the gore-soaked dust out of sight of the customers. Some mornings my mum would call for me to help her make short crust for rolls and pasties, stuffed with scraps that we had chopped and seasoned and baked into brawn. Then when we opened she would stand out front shouting the wares of the day: pork loin, side of beef, tender leg of lamb, a chant not unlike those you hear in the oratory. I’d hang back and watch her without her knowing, to see how she dealt with haggling housemaids, belligerent hawkers, drunks and beggars and thieves.

In the last few years that we had the shop, we received carcasses that had been slaughtered elsewhere, but it was not always so. When I was a child, we had a steady stream of calves, lambs and piglets through our yard and shed that my father would kill and hang and drain and skin himself, or in exchange with Mr. O’Brien, who often needed help with his chickens and geese. I would help by collecting offal, picking it up with my hands off the killing shed floor, and dropping it into tin buckets to either be cleaned and washed and ground into sausages or, if it was poor or diseased, to be fed to the other animals. It was beastly, messy, smelly work, but I accustomed to it soon enough. I do recall one time, though, when I was just seven or eight years old, my father was in the shed with a stout young finishing pig, a thrasher and a biter. He was in the pen kicking and squealing and sending the other animals into a frenzy. My father shouted and I came running. He held the pig tight by the neck while I slid under and around and pulled the rope harness tight over his front legs, then up around the back of his head. He grabbed the rope and hoisted the creature about a foot in the air while I held its back legs still. He then tucked a blood bucket between its legs, grabbed his long, thin knife, and slashed the animal across its throat. The pig screeched once more as the blood spewed onto my hands and into the bucket. I still remember how it steamed in the freezing shed, the stench and the thickness of it. Once the animal was finally still, I wrung the blood off my hands into the bucket and then went into the back of the shop to wash myself while my father tied the hind legs together and raised the carcass onto a hook for skinning and gutting. I caught a glimpse of my reflection on the side of a kettle. I looked like a mad murderous fiend: I raised my hands and clutched my fingers like claws, bared my teeth and growled, leaning in towards my distorted face, then giggled, having scared myself. My father hired Ned soon after, the O’Brien boy, as he was six years older than me and better suited for such things. I was very proud of myself though, that I had been so helpful when my father needed me. I would spy on Ned from time to time and watch my father teach him how to tie and stun and hang and bleed and split and dress an animal, things I already knew. It was only much later, once I was with the Sisters, that I thought back about the death we delivered to so many innocent creatures.

Life can end at any moment, for any of us. Cut short in one of a thousand ways. It can be cruel or merciful, painful or peaceful. Sometimes we choose our ending, oftentimes we can’t. If you had to choose your own end, Miss Gibson, what would it be? Do you believe in a divine saviour, like the Sisters around me? What sort of end does each of us deserve? Are we judged ultimately by all we’ve done in this life? I have considered these questions myself, and don’t yet have a good answer. This is that strangeness that Sister Catherine sees in me. I want to know my heart, yet there are times when it feels like it is wrapped in thistles and thorns, impossible to touch.

Another day comes to mind, not so different from the ones before. I would have been just sixteen. I was out in front with Mum, selling chops and sausages, shooing away boys carrying sacks of onions and potatoes. Already carriages crowded the street, their muddy horses riding shoulder to shoulder with mere inches between their clattering wheels. The rhythmic clopping of their hooves blended with the cries of the costermongers and their rumbling carts. Cross sweepers and newsboys wound their way through the crowds of pedestrians streaming in every direction. Skinny, mangy dogs nosed through heaps of guts and refuse. The sky hung low and grey over the crooked rooftops, spitting and grumbling. A trio of gulls wheeled and soared above us, seeking out scraps to fight over, their cries scraping at our ears.

I saw it out the corner of my eye—a child, a boy, rushed out of one of the shops next over and chased a ball into the street. Quick as a flash, knocked to the ground, trampled by a carriage horse, pulled under the wheel, the screams, the screams were terrible. My mother and I, we were right there, we were the first to reach him. He was nearly a baby, just three or four years old. Not dead, thank God, but his leg was crushed and the bone-flecked blood poured out like water. We pushed our way through the gathering crowd, lifted and carried the boy into the shop, back to where my father was. A half-dozen men rushed in with us, jostling my mother as she waved back the women and the children and hurried back to the street to keep the thieves at bay. The tallest man, with a silk top hat and frock coat and silver-crowned cane, he was the one who had followed from the carriage, his face was as grey as the scarf around his neck.

My father had slaughtered countless lambs and calves, but when he had to save this screaming boy, he froze, he could not make a move. I hollered for him to hold the boy down on the wide wooden table while I tore a strip of waxed linen from the roll and tied it round his leg above the knee, pulled it tight and tighter still. The boy was bucking and thrashing, the tall man from the carriage pressed forward to join us, he stood with my father and held the boy down. I took the flesh-choked meat saw from the sink, wiped it across my apron, jumped up on the table and, with one knee on his ankle, I dug the metal teeth into his flesh and dragged and pulled with all my might, six long hard strokes, until I felt the bone give way and the flesh tear off with a snap. At last, the boy was silent. Had I killed him? No, he was breathing still, eyes wide, trembling, in another world from our own. Behind me, someone spewed their breakfast on the floor. I called out for another square of waxen cloth, a length of twine. I wrapped the oozing stump like a mutton shank, leapt off and cried, “Hospital! Hurry!” My heart was pounding half out of my chest. The tall man seized the boy from the table, cradled him against his chest, and flew through the shop and out into his carriage, which roared through the street as if chased by the devil. The crowd untangled and withdrew. My father showed more emotion in that moment than he ever had. He wasn’t one for crying—no Englishman is. But he let out a heavy, hard, guttural sound. I realised he had choked back a sob, and turned away so no one could see his face. I stood there, staring at him, unable to speak, unable to comfort him. I raised a blood-crusted hand to touch him, but then thought better of it. He would not want to be comforted by me; it would humiliate him. I turned instead to the sink, plunged my hands into the pinkish water, scrubbed them clean, then wiped them dry on my apron. They were ruddy and raw and blistered and sore from the work I had done, but alive. So alive.

I turned round and saw the boy’s severed leg on the table, blackened and oozing. So did my father. “Take that round the back,” he said quietly. I stripped off the tattered pants cloth and the single bloodied shoe and tossed them into the bin by the sink. I knew by dusk the dogs would have it. Meat was meat, after all, and they were none too picky about where it came from. What luck for them.

Two days later, the tall man returned, on foot this time. He took my mother aside and told her that the boy had died on their way to the infirmary. Despite our efforts, he had lost too much blood. He had likely been doomed from the start. The man thanked and commended us, then proffered his card and told my mother that, if at any time I sought a servant’s position in a fine household, he wished to have me come and work with him. For he was a physician, north of the city, and was often in need of help in the kitchen and perhaps in his office as well. He turned the card over and drew a strange symbol, an eye enclosed within a triangle, then told us to take it to any cabman stationed at the corner of Commercial Road; whomever we asked would take us direct to Highgate without charge. Surprised and saddened at the news of the boy, my mother curtsied, bid him good day, and placed the card under the foot of the counter scale. It remained there for one year, until I turned seventeen, when we found ourselves with an urgent need to make use of it.

I do remember wondering that night, as I lay in my bed: If he was a physician, why hadn’t he helped us? Why hadn’t he helped me? Why did he just hold the boy down and watch?

It is time. We have been called to prayer. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. I do hope I will hear from you soon.

M.E.

Miss Gibson: I believe your father is Sir Hadley Gibson? The Reverend Mother was taken by his generosity toward the less fortunate. I will hold you both in my heart. Your servant in Christ. —Sr. C

MAY THE 7TH, 1887

Dear Miss Gibson,

We were touched to receive your note expressing your condolences for the passing of the Reverend Mother from our earthly realm. It truly is a tragedy, but at least she suffers no longer and has found her peace with Our Heavenly Father. The Sisters are overwhelmed with grief, and their mourning suffuses every aspect of our lives in the Priory. They will observe forty days of fasting and continuous prayer, and then will return to their regular offices on the 15th of June, when we will observe the Feast of St. Vitus.

Did I detect your subtle hand in the phrasing of the notice in the Evening Post? It was most generous and kind. As was true of my own mother, Sister Augustine’s strength is not in disquisition but in compassion. “Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” ( John 3:18). I was pleased as well to receive the card you left at the funeral service at St. Mary’s. It was with great sorrow that I could not attend. I was asked to remain at the Priory to help with the duties that the Sisters were unable to perform while in mourning. I am glad that you are interested in maintaining our correspondence, and that my insights into the history of hardships of Londoners in the East End may be illuminating to your readers. Sister Catherine’s availability is limited at the moment; she and I will meet in the early hours before she begins her vigil or during the brief respite when she takes her afternoon meal.

These last few days of profound sadness have reminded me of my father’s death. It will be fifty years this June, just before Victoria ascended the throne. It was a terrible time, one that tore apart our family irreparably. I cannot fault him, nor my mother. We suffered a series of grave circumstances and navigated them as best we could but, well, I will try to tell the story in a way that will spare Sister Catherine some of the harsher aspects of his demise while remaining truthful to the plight in which we found ourselves.

It was not unusual for men to die at such an age, forty-eight as I recall, but the manner was unexpected. No doubt you’ll think it was consumption or cholera, but in fact it was an injury due to his trade. He had always been careful with his knives and saws, and only ever weathered a nick or two, which healed quickly and with little pain; however, on the day I’m picturing now, a cleaver slipped while he was slicing through a side of lamb, and he gashed the fleshy web of his hand between the thumb and index finger. It was a deep, clean cut which immediately began to bleed, more heavily than either my mother or I noticed and that he was willing to disclose. I was at the sink with my back to him, I heard him curse when the blade sank into his flesh. He dropped the cleaver, I turned and saw him squeezing his hand, his blood mixing together with that of the carcass he was breaking down. I could see he wanted to keep working and I thought he would, but instead he took up a length of cloth and wrapped it around his hand very tightly. However, a moment later, a crimson bloom soaked through the fabric. I shouted for my mother and she peered into the back, confused. She thought I was the one who had been injured. When she saw the rag on my father’s hand, now sopping and dripping onto the floor, the colour drained from her face leaving her pale and gaunt as a ghost. She told me to take over the counter where a clutch of customers waited, some of them impatiently. She wiped her hands down her apron and hurried towards him.

“A nick is all,” he grumbled before she could speak. “Never mind me, Clara. Take care of the customers.” He spoke with such briskness my mother couldn’t argue. He called to young Ned, across the shop, “Finish with that mutton, eh? I’ll be back as soon as I give it a wash.” He left through the back with a slam, and I heard his heavy boots upon the stairs as he climbed up to our rooms above. I imagined him sitting down on the edge of the bed he shared with my mother, the bedsprings groaning under his weight, then examining the wound and cursing some more. Perhaps he had a jug of water that he splashed over it, made a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding. I have no doubt he was infuriated by his situation. We had meat to butcher and customers to serve.

He returned to the shop half an hour later, wearing a heavy leather glove on his left hand, one of the pair he wore for wood chopping. I could see folds of wet bloody fabric peeking out the bottom of it. He fumbled his knives a bit, it was awkward cutting the meat like that. I knew he’d rather die than admit he couldn’t keep working, and he wasn’t one to stand back and bark orders at others. I caught his eye and he scowled at me, then turned his face away. He didn’t want to seem weak to me a second time. He pushed through the rest of the day until the shop door closed, and if splashes of his blood mingled on the table with that of the carcasses he split and dressed with Ned, well, we had much worse things to worry about.

That night, as Mum put the kettle on the stove to make a pot of tea, she turned and reached for his hand: “Tobias. Let me see it. Please.” I thought he would wave her away with his usual bravado, but instead he slipped off the glove, wincing, unspooled the red-stained fabric from the base of his thumb, and held it out to her. She gasped, and my eyes went wide, when we saw how deep and wet it was, wet and red like a baby’s mouth and, all those hours later, still bleeding. He shuddered a little, from pain or fear or from the sight of the wound. It didn’t matter which; he knew, and we knew, just how bad this could be.

My mother grabbed her shawl from the nearby chair, draped it around her shoulders. “Father, keep your hand wrapped and rest by the fire. And make the tea, will you, Meg? I’ll be back before the clock strikes.” I saw her slip a few coins in her pocket.

“Where are you going?” I asked her. It was getting late and growing dark. Soon it would be too late for a woman to be out alone.

“I’m going to fetch a doctor.” She knotted her bonnet under her chin. I cringed at the thought of my father protesting but instead he sat in silence. We watched her leave and I heard her boots patter down the stairs, much lighter and faster than my father’s had been.

A doctor. Did she mean the physician from Highgate? I shook the thought from my head—that was impossible, he was much too far away, ten miles by cab at the least. She would have to settle for someone nearby and that was a frightful thought. Still, we had little choice. I bustled about the kitchen, my hands trembling as I filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove to boil. My father watched me move to and fro like a metronome, then closed his eyes. He was glistening with sweat. I feared he would faint and fall to the floor. I measured out a spoonful of leaves and dropped them into the old tin teapot. Pushing the curtains aside that overlooked the road, I watched the lamplighter move from post to post, discomfited when tears blurred my vision. I turned away and poured the water into the pot, and as it steeped, allowed myself a glance in my father’s direction. His head was tipped back against the wall and his breathing was ragged. I doubt he even knew I was with him.

Again, there were boots on the stairs, and the murmuring of my mother’s voice, answered by one with a deeper resonance. She threw the door open and hurried into the room, followed by a stooped older man leaning on a cane. His features sagged as though he was made of wax and had stood too close to a fire. Greying hair sprouted from his ears, and the buttons down the front of his coat strained against his bulging belly. He wore a shabby top hat and carried a small leather bag. His nose was red, and not from the evening chill. Three cooling cups of tea sat on the table next to the old tin pot. I hardly remembered pouring them. The clock struck nine, a harsh clanging sound, and my father stirred at last. He looked around slowly, vaguely. His face was flushed and shiny, and he was shivering slightly. All bad signs.

The doctor gingerly lifted my father’s beefy hand, turning it over and back again, squinting at the laceration. He put the back of his hand to my father’s forehead. “There’s a fever here.” He pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small brown glass bottle. It was laudanum. “He’ll need that for pain,” he said to my mother as he set it on the table. “A surgeon is required to stitch that hand up. We must take him to the hospital.” A noxious cloud of gin wafted from his mouth as he spoke, and I noticed a small egg stain on his sleeve.

“I’ve got to be back at work tomorrow,” my father slurred, meek as a lamb. “I can’t close up the shop. Fix it.” He held out his gashed hand. “Please.”

The doctor puffed his cheeks out. He knew he wasn’t sober enough. We all knew, I think. “I’ve done a stitch or two in my time,” he said, “but never on such a wound as that.”

“I’ll pay you extra,” my mother said. Her eyes were so pleading and desperate, I had to look away. I couldn’t bear it. Then I thought of the small tin of coins I had been saving to buy a new bonnet. I feared I’d be throwing it away for the same result, but I couldn’t help myself.

“I’ve got money,” I blurted. Before anyone else could speak I rushed into my bedroom to retrieve the tin I had stashed beneath my bed frame. It was an Indian tea tin, yellow and orange, with an image of an elephant led across the sands by a man with a scarf wrapped round his head. I forced the lid off and tipped the money into my hand.

When I returned to the kitchen the doctor and my parents were just as I had left them, frozen with worry. “Here,” I said, offering the coins to the doctor. He gazed at the pennies and shillings on my palm. I hoped the gaslight made them shine a bit, to tempt him.

“No, Meg, you can’t,” my father barked. “That’s yours what you earned in the shop. How could I let my child pay for my own foolishness?” But he looked even weaker, if that was possible, his eyes struggling to stay open. Beads of sweat lined his upper lip. I had never seen him like this.

“Please, Doctor,” I said, tears welling in my eyes again. I shook the coins lightly. “He’s a proud man, a strong man. He needs to work. We don’t have time to take him to hospital and wait a week for him to get better. And we can’t close the shop.”

The doctor sighed. “Give us a shot of gin, then,” he said. He looked at my mother keenly. Her eyes narrowed. I thought he meant for my father, but she knew he intended to drink it himself. She turned, pulled open one of the cupboard doors, and reached into the back. Glass and crockery clinked together. She pulled out half a bottle of pale yellow liquid that I’d always been told not to touch, and a small white enamel cup that was chipped around the edges.

The doctor gave himself a generous pour of the alcohol and tossed it back in one go. He winced, wiped his lips on the sleeve of his coat and reached into his bag. After riffling through it he emerged with a dirty vial of catgut and a large needle in a case. It looked like the ones my mother used to darn socks. “We’ll need a stick,” he said to my mother. “For your husband to clench between his teeth.”

My mother fetched a wooden spoon and held it up to my father’s mouth. “Bite that as hard as you can, Tobias,” she said. “And close your eyes.” The doctor squinted as he threaded the needle. My mother turned away and crossed the room, then stood at the window I had looked out of moments before. She tried to stay silent, but we could all hear her weeping.

My heart was pounding in my ears. I was frightened for my father, but I was also curious about what the doctor was going to do. I moved closer and peered over his shoulder. “More light, girl,” he said. I took the oil lamp off the table and held it above my father’s hand, as close as I dared. I could easily imagine my father slapping it away and starting a fire.

“Hang on, my good man,” the doctor said. “I’ll do it as quick as I can.”

I watched, slightly sickened but also enthralled, as the doctor forced the needle through the fleshy part of my dad’s hand. My father grimaced and threw his head back, gripping the wooden spoon so hard between his teeth I feared it would crack. The doctor pushed the needle in and out five times till he had made a crooked seam. He snipped off the end of the catgut, took the spoon from between my father’s clenched teeth. The straw-coloured thread stuck out gruesomely against my father’s flesh. A trickle of greenish pus and blood had begun to ooze from between the stitches, the skin around the wound inflamed and hot to the touch. The doctor gestured towards the laudanum. I brought it to him and he gave my father a few droplets on his tongue. His forehead and cheeks were red and shining with sweat. His breathing was harsh and shallow. My mother returned to his side, making soothing sounds and brushing her hand through his damp hair. I had never seen her be so tender with him. With anyone. I gave the doctor my handful of coins, and the rest of the bottle, and led him to the door and down the stairs and out into the thickening, darkening night.

Of course, the shop never reopened and my father never recovered. He lay in the bed for hours, slick with sweat and racked with fever, his breath ripe and sickly sweet like fruit on the turn, and then he slipped away just as the clock struck noon. Blood poisoning, the doctor said, when he returned to make the pronouncement. A terrible death. A mercy he passed so quickly.

The following day, the butchers and their wives all came to pay their respects, crowding into our small rooms in the late evenings, after they had closed their shops. The undertaker and his assistant came by early the next morning to carry him away, wrapping his limp body in a linen shroud and gently depositing him into a rudely crafted pine box, then loading him into the back of a cheap hearse, a grim black cart on wobbling wheels, drawn by a single horse.

Fortunately, my father had paid a penny a week to a burial club for several years, which entitled him to as grand a funeral anyone in the East End could hope for, including an elm-wood casket ornamented with punched tin corners and a cross on its face, and a stone with his name upon it for the graveyard. Loving father and husband.

The service took place on a sunless Sunday, grey and dull and leached of colour. My father was to be buried at St. Mary’s in Whitechapel, on the high street not far from our shop. The small, cramped churchyard at St. Mary’s was already crammed with the dead, sometimes two or three to a plot, but there was nowhere else to put him. It had rained in the early hours and the air was ripe with coal smoke and the smell of the mouldering dead. How eerie it was to see the majestic stallion emerge from the haze, with two rows of solemn butchers in their finest suits trudging alongside the glass-sided hearse.

My mother had bought herself a mourning gown made of Albert crape, black as pitch with not a hint of shine to it, ruched across the bosom and gathered simply at the waist, with nary a ribbon nor a bow nor a sash. We could not afford a new dress for me, so instead my mother took my best frock, a pale blue wool with fine white stripes, and had it dyed black by a dressmaker. The damp in the air made the wool clammy and heavy, and the sleeves stained my wrists like soot.

As my father’s coffin passed by, carried by the men whose shops were closest to ours, she wept into a black lace handkerchief that she threw into his grave as the first clots of dirt were thrown into it. The sky gave a growl, and flung a few droplets at us as a warning. By the time our carriages returned to the Row, the rain was pelting down and we hurtled ourselves through the doors of the shop. Ned was there, as was Millie from across the way, and they had set out a small feast, two chickens and a well-trimmed shoulder of mutton, a stew of barley and carrots and parsnips, two loaves of still-warm bread and a seed cake from the baker around the corner on Ratcliff Cross. Millie forced Mum to sit on a chair near the stove while she and Ned and I served the guests, filling plates and bowls and setting out pitchers of punch and pots of hot tea. Everything was borrowed from one place or another, but no one seemed to mind. Once everyone was inside, the room fell to a hush and all eyes turned to my mother, wanting her to say something. Her tears, which had stopped ever so briefly, began to flow again. “Go on, love,” she said to me, and gave me a tiny nudge. I stepped up onto a little stool we kept behind the counter to reach the top shelves, and I cleared my throat and spoke.

“My father was a good man,” I said. “A strong man,” I added, looking from face to face around the room. “The strongest I’ve ever known. He worked hard, he was honest. Butchery is a rough job but it needs to be done, and there was none as clean and quick as he was. He stood with everyone here on the Row. I never much heard him complain, except maybe to God, and only because he knew God would keep his thoughts to himself. He liked a drop of gin. He liked a good cigar when he could get one. He loved us, my mother and me. He loved the Row. People don’t live too long here, the work wrings it out of you. And once you’re gone, you’re gone. But it’s a good life while you’ve got it. If he was here, he would thank you for all you’ve done for him, for our shop and for our family, and for coming to visit today.” I looked back at my mother who nodded, wiping at her eyes with her handkerchief. I realised then that mine were dry. I had shed no tears, had held back no sobs. I loved my father, I mourned his loss, but it was as if my grief was outside my body, a phantom that walked alongside me with a hand upon my shoulder. Ned reached up to help me down from the stool. I thanked him and moved back to my mother’s side.

One by one the guests stepped up to share their quiet remembrances of our father, with Mr. O’Brien, Ned’s father, at the last. He said something close to my mother’s ear. I couldn’t hear it but I could see it. “Time to go.” She nodded, her tears catching the firelight and glistening as the room grew darker. What did he mean? I couldn’t ask, not then. He and Ned departed, and so did the rest of the others. I locked the door behind them, helped my mother up to her bed. I noticed as we passed that the card for the physician whose carriage had injured the boy was now out on the counter. It had been many months since I’d last seen it. I remembered the doctor’s interest in having me come to work for him, and knew then that we would be calling upon him the following day. All that I knew of my life would be changed, and perhaps not for the better.

For now, we will know this man only as Dr. C, as his identity must be held in strictest confidence.

Augustine has scurried in. She has asked for Sister Catherine to join her. It seems a doctor has come with a constable and they’re scratching around in the Reverend Mother’s quarters, searching for something. For what, they haven’t said. I’m frightened to think what they’ll find.

Let Him be our refuge and our shield,

M.E.

POST OFFICE DIRECTORY OFFICE.

16th of May, 1887Post Office Directory Office51, Great Queen Street,Lincoln’s Inn Fields

Dear Miss Gibson,

Thank you for your recent enquiry. We have consulted the Street, Commercial and Trade Directories for the period you have requested. We do have a listing for Evans, Tobias Giles, butcher, 14 Butcher Row, Ratcliff, in 1820; it seems he remains there until at least 1837. In 1838 the shop changes hands and remains in the possession of a poulter, O’Brien, Edward, until approximately 1846, at which point it is taken over by McLean, Norman, owner of the Turk’s Head Public House, 2 Butcher Row, as a beer and wine merchant. We have no listing for Evans, Tobias, after 1840, nor is there another Evans listed in Ratcliff, Limehouse, Whitechapel or St. George-in-the-East.

Further, we unfortunately do not have any records for a Mrs. Evans or a daughter, either at the Butcher Row address or at any other, nor do we have any listings for gentlemen or ladies by the name of Lovett. If Mrs. Evans took over her husband’s shop, it could not have been for very long.

Finally, we found several doctors in Highgate and Hampstead during the years you have noted, as well as a number of surgeons. (You did say that the gentleman in question was described as a doctor?) Of those whose surnames began with C, we found Dr. Ian Carstairs, who lived on Hampstead Lane at No. 17, but he died in 1840, just after the dates you mention. I have no account of a wife or children; the house changed hands directly after his death. Dr. Noel Cavanaugh was at 18 Jackson’s Lane. He continued his practice until 1868; the house was demolished two years later. He may still live somewhere in Highgate, or perhaps in London, if indeed he lives at all. He would be quite old at this point.

We do hope that this has been of some use in your research. Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Padgett

MAY THE 21ST, 1887

Dear Miss Gibson,