The Potato Factory Page 8

  Ikey was a rich man, a very rich man, but not one given to spending it upon others. But persuaded by Mary that the best of London's professional and commercial society would beat a path to her door, or more correctly between her expensive linen sheets, where they would be attended by the most skilled and beautiful young courtesans in return for large amounts of money, he opened his purse to the fullest. At the same time he allowed that Mary should owe him thirty percent of the total cost of refurbishing, to be paid off from her future brothel earnings.

  Mary was delighted. For the first time she was in control of her own life and she did not regard Ikey's terms as onerous. On the contrary, she was aware that she owed him a great debt and was determined that she would repay it with the utmost loyalty. Ikey was the first person who had shown her the least charity and she would never forget this. A great deal would happen in the course of this strange partnership, some good and much bad, but Mary would never deny that Ikey had been the means of her salvation.

  In Mary's bawdy house Ikey could take vicarious pleasure in observing the high and the mighty at work through a peephole in the ceiling. He found it ironic and immensely pleasing to think that one day he was bound to stand trial before a bewigged and scarlet-robed judge and have the image recalled of this same m'lord, without breeches, fat belly wobbling, rogering one of Mary's plump little pigeons.

  Mary's establishment made Ikey feel clean and respectable and even somewhat superior for the first time in his life and he grandly imagined himself a member, if only by proxy and proximity, of London's professional classes. Indeed, it gave him the greatest possible satisfaction that it was lawyers, judges, magistrates and bankers who became Mary's regular clients, the very men who, throughout his life, had caused him so much anxiety.

  For Ikey it was money well spent and soon it was money most easily earned as men of the bench and at the bar and in the city knocked discreetly at the scarlet door of Mary's Bell Alley brothel.

  For the most part Mary's clients shared two characteristics: the sprightliness and easy randiness of youth had long passed, though the memory of it remained bright as a sunlit morning. They came to Egyptian Mary's, as it became known, to attempt to relive the past while indulging any current fantasies.

  The story of Mary's missing hands, often told with great conviction, added greatly to her fame and customers believed that many of the sexual fantasticals available to them stemmed originally from her time spent in the mysterious orient. Mary took to wearing a turban of multi-coloured silks which did nothing to dispel the rumours and added greatly to her mystique.

  Mary taught her girls the use of belladonna to lift their spirits and to enter with enthusiasm into the many bondages, recitations, titivations, dressing ups and stripping downs, spankings, pretendings, offendings, excitements, oral, anal, frontal and often curiously banal, which her ageing, mostly pot-bellied, clientele required. They learned to be extravagant in their compliments and the most inadequate sexual performance was built to high praise so that the ageing participant left Egyptian Mary's convinced of his renewed and awesome virility.

  There were three things not on offer at Egyptian Mary's but which could be procured at any other London brothel. Mary did not trade in little boys or girls or in young men.

  This was not because Ikey had any morality in regard to the exploitation of children or whoresons, but Mary did. She loved children and each day at noon the brats would be at the scullery door for soup and bread which she had cooked up in a steaming cauldron so that she would feed fifty or more. Though she took care not to show them more than a rough affection, she longed to take the smaller children into her arms and hug them. Street children, she knew from her own experience, were feral animals and must be treated as wild creatures that would always bite the hand that fed them. Mary expected nothing from them and somehow they knew she was their friend, and even perhaps that she loved them. She earned their loyalty slowly with food and some physic and an occasional dressing for a cut or yellow ointment for their eyes, and they repaid her with gossip. Should a constable appear to be snooping there was always a child at the back door to alert her.

  Though a new client might occasionally demand the services of a child or a young boy, a common enough request in almost any London brothel, Mary would refuse him and often in the process offend some high-ranking toff. London Town was swarming with starving urchins who would go with anyone for twopence or a plate of toasted herrings. There was no class in that sort of rough trade which was more for the likes of Hannah to supply, which she did without compunction. Mary had no trouble convincing Ikey, who wanted no close attention from the law paid to the premises on Bell Alley and he knew, better than most, that children cause trouble when grown men of the middle and upper classes are involved.

  Several hours past midnight, long after the customers had been gratified, satisfied, slumbered, sobered and finally put into carriages and sent on their way, when the clicking of Mary's abacus beads ceased and the accounting books were made up in straight lines and neatly squared columns, Ikey would arrive.

  He would come in from his vile night abroad where he received and paid and argued and bartered for stolen property in dimly lit taverns and tap rooms, brothels, flash-houses, netherkens and thieves' kitchens and it was usual for him to drop into the Pig 'n Spit where he passed some time at the ratting. His life was populated by all manner of villains, thieves, swell mobsmen, flash-men, touts, pickpockets, pimps, itinerant criminals and scallywags. His last call before returning to Egyptian Mary's was always within the great St Giles rookery, known in the vernacular as the 'Holy Land', to a decaying building long vacated by its original occupants. Here he unlocked the door and in darkness crept up a set of rickety stairs to the very top where the damp and decay had not yet fully penetrated.

  Within this building resided a gang of carefully chosen urchins, street children who had been trained to Ikey's ways and who did his bidding. The youngest of them were stock buzzers or smatter haulers, stealers of silk handkerchiefs known as kingsmen which, as was the fashion with toffs, were conveniently carried protruding from the coat tail. Ikey would pay ninepence each for these, though some were worth as much as three shillings when later sold in Rosemary Lane.

  Ikey was always on the look-out for a talent, a boy with fingers light enough to make a tooler. A tooler was the most elite of the pickpockets, a planner and plotter, a boy with brains, daring and courage. At any one time Ikey hoped for four toolers in the making and two fully blown and working at the top of their trade. A great tooler could go on to be a swell mobsman, though most, even some of the best, got their hands to shaking from too frequent imbibement of gin or brandy or found their minds preoccupied and numbed to action by the fear of being caught and transported.

  Tooling was where the real money lay in the art of pickpocketing and it required four boys, the tooler himself, a stickman and two stalls and, if available, up to four urchins to transport the goods from the scene of the crime as quickly as possible.

  The first stall would go ahead, scanning the crowd for members of the law or even a group of workmen or a large shop boy who might give chase to a thief in return for the prospect of a reward. The second stall was on duty between the tooler and the stickman and was generally a larger boy who was required to impede the progress of any person in too hot pursuit of the stickman, who was the first to receive the article from the tooler and get the transportation of the lifted goods under way. The tactics followed were to set a pattern, a routine worked by Ikey until it became second nature to the boys.

  Choosing a victim was a task not taken lightly, for the tooler was trained to observe human nature in the smallest detail, to watch the mannerisms of a chosen quarry, how each talked and walked and where they placed their hands, with whom they conversed and where they stopped. Ikey would demand patience and careful selection. A pogue taken from a dizzy shop-girl containing one silver shilling carried the same penalty at law as a dumby lifted from a rich toff stuffed w
ith Bank of England longtails and jingling with gold sovereigns. A garnet brooch deftly unclipped from the bombasine blouse worn by a nanny earned a gaol term or transportion no different to the neatest unclipping of a diamond pin from the silk bodice of a duchess.

  'It's quality we's after, lads. To be sent abroad for the lifting of a tin brooch is a sin of character what can't never be recovered from. A gentleman's gold 'unter or a diamond pin, now that's a lay worthy o' true respect!' Ikey would pause, taking in the eager faces around him. 'We does not sell ourselves cheaply, my dears. Tooling is a most ancient and noble art and we are artists. Our fingers play as lightly upon a purse or dumby, diamond clip or gold yack as the fingers o' the greatest virtuoso alight upon the ivories of a harpsichord at a concert in 'onour of the King 'imself.'

  Sometimes a promising quarry would be watched for days until the tooler knew precisely how and where to make the pull. A lady might be taken while shopping in the afternoon, this being regarded as light-fingered practice for the more meaningful tooling of toffs and gentlemen during the evening to come. '

  'Umans is all predictable, observe the pattern and you know the mark,' Ikey would repeat ad nauseam to his dirty-faced pupils.

  Ikey seemed never to tire of the training of these small boys. He started with them very young, not older than six or seven, for it was his belief that the lad who had not mastered the grammar of his art by the time his voice broke seldom reached any high degree of competence. He even taught them to cheat skilfully at the game of cribbage, for he understood that they would naturally grow up to be gamblers and he hoped to give his boys a better chance than most of keeping their ill-gained money in their own pockets.

  In this respect and in many others he was known as the best and most famous of all the kidsmen and his toolers became the elite on the streets and in the busy arcades. Urchins would implore him to be enrolled in what Ikey referred to as the 'Methodist Academy of Light Fingers', a spoof on the Methodist Academy of Light, a Salvationist school for the honest poor, situated in an adjacent slum court in St Giles.

  While there were a great many kidsmen to be found, men who trained street urchins for snakesmen, pickpockets and as beggars, they were generally most harsh in their methods, ignorant men with a too frequent hard, flat, impatient hand to the side of an urchin's head. Should a boy fail to exhibit the required amount of tact and ingenuity in dipping it was the custom for him to be given a severe beating from the other boys or by the kidsman himself. To this punishment was added no food to eat until the hapless child improved his pick-pocketing technique or simply starved to death.

  Ikey, however, offered not harsh punishment but reward, a bright penny handed over, a large chop rimmed with fat added to a child's plate at supper, or even a glass of best beer given with a pat on the back. Ikey's thorough ways and his understanding of the competitive nature of small boys created the best toolers to be found in London, all most proud to be graduates of the Methodist Academy of Light Fingers, Proprietor, Isaac Solomon, Esq.

  At practice Ikey would use a tailor's dummy set up in a pool of lamplight and dressed up with the garments most likely to be worn in the street. Sometimes these would emulate the attire of a toff, swell or country gentleman and at others, a grand lady, a doxy or, for the smallest of the children, a nanny or shop assistant. Into these clothes were sewn tiny bells that tinkled at the slightest vibration.

  At the conclusion of each week it was the custom among Ikey's boys to take a vote decided by the acclamation of all. The most proficient boy at the practice of dipping was voted the title of Capt'n Bells, whereas the least competent was christened Tinkle Bell. The former was a title much prized among his young apprentice thieves, while the latter was worn with a fierce resolve to be 'unchristened' as speedily as possible.

  Bob Marley had come from among these children and there were a number of talented magsmen, swell mobsmen and flash-men who could claim 'a proper education' by the redoubtable Ikey in the ways of thieving and disposing and the general nature of surviving in the trade of taking what rightfully belonged to others. It was this foundation, laid early and trained carefully, which later supplied much of the goods which Ikey would receive as a fence.

  Ikey would arrive at the boys' squalid quarters around three in the morning, whereupon lectures and demonstrations on the art of light fingers and the brightening of minds took place. Afterwards those boys with goods to dispose of, such items as they might have taken on the street since the previous night's visit, would wait back while the remaining urchins would repair to a nearby chop house where a private room was held for them. Ikey would carefully examine the prize each offered, explaining its composition in stones or judging its value in precious metal or as an article alone.

  'Know what you takes, my dear. A bit o' glass set in lead and gold dipped ain't worthy o' your knowledge, emeralds or diamonds set in gold is what your fingers is trained to lift. Watch the light, see it play, diamonds shoot, emeralds pulse, rubies burn, pearls glow. Judge the wearer, not the glory o' the gown, the toss o' the head, the modesty of eye. Fake pearls is more common than real and when worn on a bosom young, temptin' and firm, is most likely to be that of a tart playin' at courtesan than a lady o' quality. Judge the laughter -too shrill and too often is the 'abit o' the badly bred. Details, my dears, everythin' is in the details. Sniff the perfume, examine the nap o' the boots and the 'em o' the skirt for old dirt or much mending. If the gentleman's 'ands is too familiar with 'is escort then the lady is too cheaply bought. It's all there waiting for your eyes to measure and your mind to equate before you decides to make the vamp.'

  Ikey would then pay them, naturally at a much reduced price to the street value of the goods, though never were the articles so cheaply purchased as to encourage a young lad to take the merchandise elsewhere.

  The business of the night completed, Ikey would join the dozen or so boys who ranged in age from six to sixteen for a meal in the nearby chop house. Here they would all be fed from Ikey's purse, though in the order and quality of their performances. Those who had not done well at practice or failed to bring in any merchandise taken on the street would be denied a plate of chops or steak, meat being the reward for performance, though all were equally given a thick wedge of bread and a large bowl of thick steaming broth, enough to keep body and soul together. Ikey himself partook of a bowl of mutton and potato stew, followed by a dish of curds.

  Some of the smaller boys, their bellies replete, would leave the chop house to crawl back into their squalid quarters and sleep until noon in a bed of dirty rags. Those who had money or friends who would share what they'd won would stay to grow drunk on a pint of gin or brandy.

  During the progress of one night Ikey might be seen, his hands working in the gestures of unctuous trading, in the reeking hubbub of Rosemary Lane doing business among the festoons of second-hand clothes. Or if the tide was in and to run before dawn, he might be seen working his way to the river to the regions of Jacob's Island and those parts known as the Venice of Drains in Bermondsey, which he reached by traversing the impenetrable alleys, dives and runways round Leicester Square and the Haymarket, this part of the great rookery being the convenient asylum for the thieves, flash-men, touts and prostitutes working the rich fields of the West End. Here could be found the rakish members of the upper classes with their courtesans, their ears and necks and decolletage awash with diamonds and pearls, the starched young swells, toffs and codgers on the randy, the gamblers and cashed-up jockeys and the furtive old perverts from the privileged classes who mixed vicariously with the low-life. This place, too, was an essential nightly visitation for a fence of Ikey's status in the underworld.

  Ikey could come upon these places from Whitechapel or Spitalfields along dark, fetid lanes, and through vile netherkens crowded to suffocation with thieves and beggars and the desparate, starving poor sleeping and copulating on straw-filled billets and bundles of rags.

  Sometimes he moved along wellestablished paths formed over rooftops
or through cellars and dark alleys, sliding past the stagnant open gutters which ran down the centre of these narrow filth-choked runways. Even in the dark he knew the whereabouts of the numerous cesspools which would trap many a gin-soaked hag, or drunkard who'd lost his way and having slipped on the surrounding excrement could not regain a foothold and would be sucked into the shit to drown.

  Ikey knew with intimacy this great rookery of St Giles and many others, and was as much at home in them as the rats scurrying ahead of him along the soot-stained walls. He could reach the destination of his choosing without once crossing an honest thoroughfare or appearing within the light of a single street lamp, seen along the way only by the incurious eyes of beggars, thieves, night-stand prostitutes, petty touts, sharpers and the broken and desperate humanity who lived in these festering parts. Those who saw nothing unless they were paid to do so and who, upon being questioned by a magistrates' runner, knew nothing of a person's whereabouts, even if they had glimpsed them, bold as brass, not a moment beforehand.

  On a rising tide Ikey might be seen furtively moving close to a wall or along a pier in the dock areas before disappearing below the malodorous deck of a boat. Before dawn's light it would slip its moorings and on the morning tide move silently down the river, its progress concealed by the sulphurous mist and smog that sat upon the Thames.

  By sunrise this vessel, which outwardly carried hemp or tiles or any of the other miscellanea which made up the maritime drudgery of commerce between England and the continental ports, would be safely into the Channel. It carried about Ikey's consignments of stolen jewellery to be reworked in Amsterdam and Antwerp; parcels of Bank of England notes in every denomination to be laundered in Hamburg and Prague banks; silver and gold bound for Bohemia and Poland to be sold or melted down in the shops and workshops of various foreign Jews.