Whitechapel Conspiracy

And the feeling had been given back with good measure added.

He remembered also snatches of conversation about business that would not be done on religious grounds, hospitality denied, even the reasonable help to one in trouble withheld, not out of greed but because the one in need was of the other faith.

The anti-Semitic taunts were less surprising to him simply because he had heard them before: the dehumanizing, the resentment, the blame.

He went into the first public house he came to, and sat down at a table near the bar nursing a tankard of cider.

Ten minutes later a thin-shouldered young man came in with a finger tied up in a bloodstained rag.

“Eh, Charlie!” the barman said curiously. “Wotcher done ter yerself, then?”

“Bitten by a bloody rat, that’s wot,” Charlie replied angrily. “Gimme a pint. If I were paid ’alf o’ wot I work fer, I’d ’ave a shot o’ whiskey! But wot poor sod in Spitalfields ever got paid wot ’e was worth?”

“Yer got a job, yer better’n some,” a pale-faced man said bitterly, looking up from his half pint of ale. “Don’ know w’en yer well orff, that’s your trouble.”

Charlie turned on him angrily, his cheeks flushing. “My trouble is that greedy men work me night an’ day and take wot I make and sell it and grow fat themselves, an’ keep all us poor sods on a pittance.” He drew in his breath with a rasping sound. “An’ bloody gutless cowards like you don’t stand up beside me to fight fer justice … that’s my trouble! That’s everyone’s trouble ’round ’ere! Just roll over an’ play dead every time anyone looks sideways at yer!”

“Yer’11 get us all out in the gutter, yer stupid sod!” the other man snapped, clinging onto his mug as if it were some kind of protection to him. His eyes were hot with anger struggling to overmaster the fear that haunted him day and night: fear of hunger, fear of cold, fear of being hurt, fear of being despised and excluded.

A fair-haired man looked from one to the other of them, apparently not noticing Pitt at all. “What d’yer want ter do then, Charlie? If we all stand beside yer, wot then, eh?” he demanded defensively.

Charlie glared at him, considering his answer carefully, his face still creased in anger.

“Then, Wally, we’d see a few changes ’round ’ere,” he retorted. “We’d see a day w’en a man gets paid wot ’e’s worth, not what some fat swine chooses ter give ’im, because ’e’s no use if’e starves!”

Wally coughed into his beer. “Dream on!” he said witheringly. His tone conveyed his boredom with such empty words he had heard too many times.

Charlie slammed his empty mug on the bar so hard the pewter made a scar on the wood. “Yeah?” he said belligerently. “Well if we ’ad more men wi’ the guts ter be men, instead of a lot o’ sniveling papists an’ Jews creepin’ around the place, we’d get up an’ fight fer wot’s ours! Like the bloody Frogs did in Paris! Cut a few throats an’ we’ll soon see ’ow quick some o’ them fancy bastards can change their minds about ’oo ’as wot!”

A dark-haired man shivered a little, biting his lips. “Yer shouldn’t say fings like that!” he warned. “Yer dunno ’oo’s listenin’. You’ll only make it worse.”

“Worse!” Charlie exploded. “Worse? Wot’s worse ’n this, eh? Yer expectin’ bleedin’ crushers ter come in ’ere an’ cart us all orff ter the Tower o’ London, are yer? All of us, like?” His voice rose, frustration raw and throbbing in his words. “There’s ’undreds an’ thousan’s of us trodden down by a few idle, greedy bastards poncin’ around up west, eatin’ ’emselves sick an’ so fat they can’t scarcely ’old their trousers up. An’ the rozzers are in their bleedin’ pockets, an’ all,” he added, swinging around, daring anyone to challenge him. “That’s w’y they never caught the Whitechapel murderer wot killed them poor cows in ’88. You mark my words, ’e’s one o’ them … an’ that’s the Gawd’s truth!”

There was a sudden chill in the room. At the table next to Pitt three men stopped talking. Even now, nearly four years afterwards, it was not done to speak of the Whitechapel murderer. No one made jokes about him, and there were no songs, no music hall references.

“Yer shouldn’t say that!” A gray-haired man was the first to speak, his voice hoarse, his face pasty-white.

“I’ll say wot I want!” Charlie retaliated, the blood high in his cheeks.

Someone else started to laugh, and then stopped just as suddenly.

A stoop-shouldered man stood up and held his glass tankard high. “ ’Ere’s ter nothin’!” he said with a grin. “ ’Ere’s ter terday, ’cos termorrer yer could be dead.” He drank down the entire glass without taking it from his lips to draw breath.

“Shut yer mouth, yer fool!” the man nearest to him hissed, hard anger in his face, his fist clenched on the tabletop.

The man subsided sullenly, his grin vanished. “I never said nothin’!” he snarled. “Our day’s gonna come! An’ soon.”

“Then we’ll see ’ow much sugar they can eat!” his companion said between his teeth.