Whitechapel Conspiracy

“Yer say ‘sugar’ again an’ I’ll put yer bleedin’ lights out meself!” the first man threatened, his eyes hot and black, and hideously sober. “I’ll practice on yer, ready fer all them foreigners wot’s poisonin’ this city an’ takin’ wot should be ours.”

This time there was no reply.

Pitt hated everything about this public house—the smell of it, the sudden anger in the air, the defeat, the gleam of gaslight on the battered pewter mugs, the stale sawdust—but he knew it was his job to overhear. He hunched lower down into himself and sipped at the cider.

Half an hour later a couple of street women came in, soliciting business. They looked tired, dirty, overeager, and for a few moments Pitt was as angry as Charlie had been, for the poverty and despair that made women walk alone around streets and public houses trying to sell their bodies to strangers. It was a squalid and often dangerous way to earn a little money. It was also quick, usually certain, and easier to come by than sweatshop or factory labor, and in the short term, far better paid.

There was a burst of laughter, coarse, overloud.

A man at the table next to Pitt was drowning his sorrows, afraid to go home and tell his wife he had lost his job. He was probably drinking the little money he had left, next week’s rent, tomorrow’s food. There was a gray hopelessness in his face.

A youth named Joe was telling his friend Percy how he planned to save enough money to buy his own barrow and start selling brushes farther west, where it was safer and he could make a better profit. One day he would move and find rooms somewhere else, maybe in Kentish Town, or even Pinner.

Pitt stood up to leave. He had learned all he was going to, and none of it was anything Narraway would not already know. The East End was a place of anger and misery where one incident would be enough to set it alight with rebellion. It would be put down by force, and hundreds would die. The rage would be submerged again, until next time. There would be a few articles about it in the newspapers. Politicians would make statements of regret, and then return to the serious business of making sure that everything stayed as much as possible the same.

He trudged back towards Heneagle Street with his shoulders hunched and his head down.

The remarks about sugar had seemed irrelevant to the rest of the conversation, at least on the surface, and yet they had been said with such bitterness of feeling that they stayed in his mind over the next few days. He had realized from snatches of conversation overheard in the various places he called at in the course of his duties just how many people were dependent in one way or another on the three sugar factories in Spitalfields. The money that was earned from them was spent in the shops, in the taverns and on the streets.

Had the remarks made been anything more than a bitterness at such dependence, and the fear that the only source of income might fail them? Or was there something more specific? Was the reference to a day coming when there would be justice only anger and bravado, or based in fact?

Narraway’s words came back to him that there was a mounting danger, not just the usual underlying resentment. Circumstances had changed; the mix of people had been added to and was more volatile than in the past.

But what was there to tell him? That he was right? If so, the solution lay in reform, not policing. Society had cultivated its own destruction; the anarchists were merely going to light the fuse.

Perhaps he should at least look more closely at the sugar factory in Brick Lane, gain some slight knowledge of the place and see the men who worked in it, get a feeling of their temper.

The best way seemed to be to pretend he was interested in a job there. He had no skill in the processes of making sugar, but there might be something simpler he could do.

The following morning he went early down Brick Lane towards the seven-story-high building with its squat windows overlooking the entire town. The smell of cane syrup, like rotting potatoes, filled the air.

It was easy enough to enter at the yard gates. Huge hogshead barrels were piled up and carts were being unloaded, having just come up from the docks. Men hauled and lifted; cranes were maneuvered into position.

“ ’Oo are yer, then?” a bull-chested man asked abruptly. He was dressed in worn dun-colored trousers and a leather jerkin shiny with constant rubbing. He stood squarely in front of Pitt, blocking his way.

“Thomas Pitt. I’m looking for any extra work that might be going.” That was almost true.

“Oh yeah? An’ wot are yer good fer, then?” He looked Pitt up and down disparagingly. “Not local, are yer.” That was an accusation, not a question. “We got all we need ’ere,” he finished.

Pitt stared around him at the high, flat sides of the building, the cobbled yard, the wide doors open to the ground floor, and men coming and going.

“Do you work all night?” he asked curiously.

“Boilers do. Gotter keep ’em alight. Why? Yer wanner work nights?”