The Potato Factory

Chapter Eight

It did not take long for Hannah to learn of the arrest of Abraham Van Esselyn and the reason for Ikey's hasty departure to Birmingham. Not more than an hour after Ikey had departed an officer from the City police had knocked loudly on the front door of their Whitechapel home. 'Name o' Ikey Solomon. Is this 'is 'ouse?' he demanded.

Hannah, who was accustomed to both rudeness and crisis, nodded calmly and invited the officer into her front parlour. 'Shall I take yer coat and mittens, officer?'

'Gloves, they's gloves,' the policeman corrected her. 'Thank 'e kindly, I'll stay put.'

Hannah smiled. 'And what brings ya out at the crack o' dawn, officer? Bit early to come callin', ain't it?' Without waiting for the policeman's reply, she rubbed her hands together against the cold, '

'Ave a pew, officer, make y'self at 'ome, don't blame ya for stayin' with yer coat and mittens, cold as charity in 'ere, 'ang on a mo, good idea, I'll light the grate.' She said all of this with such rapidity that the policeman hadn't yet mustered sufficient wit to reply to her original question. He cleared his throat, preparing finally to answer, but Hannah turned her back on him and kneeling in front of the fire-place struck a lucifer to the kindling in the grate.

'Sit, sit, officer,' Hannah said. A tiny curl of yellow flame licked between the dark lumps of coal and a wisp of smoke followed it up the chimney.

The policeman, a stout, heavily jowled man with a bushy black moustache, lowered himself slowly into the chair. 'Your 'usband, madam, we should like to talk to 'im on a matter 'o some urgency.'

Hannah rose from the fireplace and turned towards him, her expression most conciliatory. 'What a bloomin' shame, you've come all this way for nuffink! 'E's gorn, sir, 'fraid 'e's not 'ere.'

'Gorn?' The policeman looked quizzical. 'Madam, I must inform you, we 'ave the 'ouse surrounded.'

'That won't 'elp none, you could 'ave the bloomin'

'ousehold cavalry outside, 'e still ain't 'ere. 'E left three days ago on business.'

'And where might 'e 'ave gorn, madam?' the police officer demanded. He was aware of Hannah's reputation and would not normally have appended the word 'madam' to his questions, the criminal classes being best addressed in the bluntest possible way. But such is the regard of the English for property that he was in truth paying his respects to the imposing three-storey residence and the expensive furnishings, in particular the magnificent Persian carpet upon which his large feet rested. He hadn't expected anything like this, and they demanded a courtesy which he knew the frumpy whore in curling papers, who hadn't even bothered to wear a mob cap, should be emphatically and officially denied.

Hannah's face puckered into a frown. 'I beg ya to understand, sir. I cannot tell ya the whereabouts of me 'usband. These are 'ard times and 'e is on the road seekin' customers for 'is bright little bits!'

The officer now leaned forward feigning exasperation, raising his voice and speaking in an imperious manner.

'Come now, we all know your 'usband's vocation, don't we! 'E ain't no jeweller sellin'

'is wares at country fairs an' the like, now is 'e, madam?'

Hannah shrugged her shoulders, wondering briefly why they'd sent this clumsy man to interview Ikey. She felt vaguely insulted – they deserved better, a more senior man who spoke proper and who would be a fair match in the wits department for Ikey or herself. She could almost see the cogs turning in the big policeman's head.

'I dunno what ya can possibly mean, sir! 'Onest to Gawd, officer, I swear I dunno where 'e is.' She folded her arms across her chest and pouted, 'He scarpered three days ago, that's all I can tell ya.' She gave the police officer a brief smile. 'Shall I tell 'im ya called when 'e returns?' Hannah raised her eyebrows slightly. 'Whenever, from wherever? What shall I tell 'im it's in connection with? Shall I tell 'im you've a warrant out?'

The policeman ignored Hannah's questions. 'Scarpered? You mean 'e's left you, done a runner on you and the kids?'

Hannah smiled, inwardly relieved. She knew from the policeman's reply that Ikey wasn't yet under arrest, they hadn't taken out a warrant nor had they a search warrant for the house. 'Nah! I mean 'e's just gorn. 'E'll be back. Sellin's 'is trade, ain't it? When 'e's sold 'is stock 'e'll be back orright, grumblin' and cantankerous,' she sighed, 'just like 'e never left.'

The policeman sniffed. 'Receivin', more like! Gorn to Birmingham or Manchester then, 'as 'e?'

Hannah shrugged again, though she was slightly more impressed. At least the officer had done some homework. 'What you take me for, a bleedin' clairvoyant? I told you, I dunno nuffink about where me 'usband's gorn, for all I knows 'e's gorn to Windsor Great Park to see the giraffe what the Mohammedan from Egypt give to the King!' Hannah's expression brightened at this bizarre thought and she added, 'Perhaps 'e's stayed to play a game of battledore and shuttlecock with 'Is Majesty? Wouldn't put it past 'im.'

The policeman sighed heavily and rose from the chair, pointing a stubby finger at Hannah. 'We've got the Froggie and we'll get Ikey! You can quite be sure o' that! This ain't no normal enquiry from the magistrates' runners, this is City, Bank o' England!' He sniffed again and turned towards the front door. 'We'll be back with a warrant, you may be sure o' that!'

'Always welcome, I'm sure,' Hannah said, smiling brightly at the officer. 'Next time, stay for a cuppa.' She arched an eyebrow and sniffed.'

'Ardly worth lightin' the fire, that was, the price of a lump o' coal bein' what it is!'

Despite her outward calm, Hannah was far from in possession of her wits. The single word 'City' followed by the three others 'Bank of England' had struck terror into her heart, for they told her all she needed to know. They'd arrested Van Esselyn, and now they were after Ikey. The house in Bell Alley must have been raided and Ikey had somehow been informed just in time to make good his escape.

Hannah knew the seriousness of the situation, but she also knew her man and unlike Mary she did not for a single moment think he'd either betrayed or deserted her. Not when all their wealth was still sitting in the basement safe. Ikey had made no attempt to take a large sum of money with him, therefore he was not planning to escape to America as he'd often speculated they would do if there was no hope of either of them beating a rap.

Hannah would have liked to go to Australia where John and Moses, their two oldest sons, had been sent, well capitalised, to establish themselves in respectable vocations in Sydney Town. But she knew that New South Wales was not beyond the reach of the law or, even more so, the wrath of the Bank of England.

Hannah wanted her children to have a better life than her own. For them to be accepted as respectable members of society, even if it was only colonial society, was uppermost to her ambitions. The idea that they should follow in the path of their loathsome father was unthinkable. Curiously, Hannah did not see herself as an example of moral degeneration. She was, in her own eyes, a good girl turned temporarily aside by the events which Ikey had caused to happen to their family. Hannah saw her immorality as an expedient to be discarded as easily as a petticoat when the time came to lead a respectable middle-class life.

Left destitute as a young wife with two small children by a husband imprisoned on a hulk as a common thief awaiting transportation to Australia, Hannah had been forced to survive on her wits. The brothels she now owned were simply the end result of her determination not to be destroyed. She had even come to think upon herself as a necessary component in a complex but predestined society. The gin-soaked whores, starving brats, the deformed, witless, the whoresons, freaks, cripples, catamites and opium addicts, they all came to her and, if she thought she could convert their tortured minds and broken bodies into a cash flow, she employed them. Hannah took a secret pride in the fact that she was called 'Mother Sin, The Queen of the Drunken Blasphemers', in a popular Wesleyan tract widely issued by the Salvationists. To her this inglorious title meant she had earned her place in life's rich tapestry, that she had triumphed within a social structure not of her making, and had overcome obstacles which would have defeated most other young women saddled with two infant mouths to feed.

Hannah saw herself as a good mother who worked hard and selflessly so that her children might grow up to have both the trappings and the virtues of respectability. She told herself it was all for them, John and Moses, who were already on their way in life, and David, Ann, Sarah and baby Mark. She was convinced that while they remained in England they would be regarded as the bottom of the social heap, the criminal poor. She was quite unable to recognise that she was already in possession of a grand fortune, that her children would never starve again.

The capacity to delude herself had been a part of Hannah's personality from a very young age, and her subsequent social disintegration had become so complete that she felt not a morsel of shame for her actions. Her life, she told herself, had been a bitter disappointment, meaningful only in the fact that she had been blessed with children, so she extracted, and continued to extract, her revenge upon it. Hannah was a woman who was possessed by hatred which had long since consumed her conscience. The only purity in her life was her offspring, the precious fruit of her loins, and the major object of her hate was their father.

It was quite clear to Hannah that Ikey would be returning and that he must have already evolved a plan to beat any indictment against himself for forgery. Although she loathed him, she respected his brains and his ability to make money and even, in a perverse sort of way, she enjoyed the 'respectability' he gave her as a criminal of international repute who carried the undisputed title of Prince of Fences.

Long after the departure of the police officer, Hannah continued to sit with her hands cupping her chin, staring into the fireplace which now filled the little parlour with its warmth. Her first task, she told herself, was to determine precisely what had happened earlier that morning. She could not go around to what she now thought of as the deserted house in Bell Alley, though she would need to ensure that it was securely bolted against intruders. She had often witnessed how the desperate poor could strip a deserted house of its contents, then occupy it in a matter of hours and destroy its worth in a matter of days. Of course, she knew nothing of Mary and imagined the property completely vulnerable, doors left off their hinges by an uncaring City police, windows thrown open to create a deliberate deadlurk. Hannah determined to send a dozen street brats immediately to scatter throughout the surrounding rookeries to find Bob Marley who she knew, given sufficient incentive, could be relied upon to see that the house was made safe against intruders.

To put this thought into action Hannah simply walked down the hall, opened the front door, put two fingers to her mouth and let out a piercing whistle. It was a trick she'd been taught by her coachman father as a child and was a well-known signal to any children in the neighbourhood. In a matter of moments two ragged urchins appeared and Hannah instructed them to gather ten of their mates. The boys soon returned with well in excess of this number.

Hannah explained what she wanted. Marley was well known in the Whitechapel markets and in Rosemary Lane where the local urchins looked up to him as a flash macer and both feared and greatly admired his reputation as the acid slasher.

'Me, missus, me!' they shouted, jostling each other. 'Please, missus, I'm yer man, I knows 'im, I knows 'im well! This Bob Marley cove, I knows where 'e lives, missus, 'onest I does! Please, me, me!' they yelled, clamouring around the front step, their skinny arms protruding from the tattered rags they wore.

Hannah selected ten helpers. Then she went into her kitchen and put a dozen apples into her pinny together with a sharp knife. From each apple she cut a single wedge a different size and handed the smaller piece, one to each of the selected boys, returning the apple to her pinafore pocket.

'I must 'ave Mister Marley 'ere on me doorstep in one 'our, no more, mind!' she instructed, then added, 'The boy what Mister Marley 'imself declares found 'im, gets a silver shillin'!' The urchins around her gasped and Hannah continued, 'The rest gets tuppence for yer 'ard work 'o lookin', can't be fairer'n that now, lads, can I?'

'No, missus, that's fair!' they chorused.

Hannah waved her forefinger and admonished the children standing directly below her. 'Don't no one eat the piece o' apple what 'e got, not even a tiny bite, if the piece ya brings back don't fit what I got in me pinny, ya don't get bugger all!'

'Does we get to eat the 'ole apple too, missus?' one of the urchins asked hopefully, his breath frosting in the air about his dirty little face as he pointed at Hannah's bulging pinny.

Hannah laughed. 'Cheeky bugger!' she looked down at the tiny, malnourished child standing below her with his arms folded across the dirty rags covering his chest. Cold sores festered around his mouth and his nose ran so that he was constantly sniffing. Hannah saw none of the collective misery contained in the urchins crowded at her steps, they were all the same to her, dirty, ugly, starving, cruel, thieving and drunken and to pity them was a waste of time and sentiment. 'I'll 'ave to think about that,' she said at last. 'Make a nice apple pie these apples would.'

'Can we 'ave a penny now, missus? In advance, like?' the urchin tried again.

Hannah looked down at him in horror.

'You again! Well I never 'eard o' such a cheek! Think I was born under a cabbage leaf, does ya? Give ya a penny and 'ave ya all go out an' get a tightener or a mug o' gin and yours truly never sees 'ide nor 'air of any of ya brats again. Think I'm bleedin' barmy or summink?' Hannah looked down scornfully at the hungry, eager faces looking up at her. 'Righto, you lot! Tuppence and ya all gets the 'ole apple thrown in, that's the deal! Now scarper, before I changes me bleedin' mind!'

With the immediate details taken care of Hannah returned to the parlour to think, though moments later she was called to the front door by the arrival of the wet nurse to feed and care for baby Mark.

Hannah stood at the door and made the woman bare her breasts and squeeze them with both hands so that she might see her lactate. She wasn't paying for a wet nurse who was short of milk. Then she made the woman open her mouth and she smelt her breath to see if it carried the fumes of brandy or gin. The woman's teeth were rotten and her breath was foul, further burdened with the sour smell of the ale she'd had for breakfast, though nothing else. She allowed her to enter.

The children hadn't risen yet, though she knew the nurse would tend to them when they did. She instructed the woman not to disturb her or allow the children to do so and returned to the parlour, asking only that the woman bring her a cup of tea before she fed the baby.

The wet nurse was one of two selected for their milk. One stayed with the children at night while Hannah was at work and the other took care of the baby during the day and also tended to the house. This one, as well as breast feeding Mark, was employed for the rough work. Both women, Hannah knew, ate her out of house and home, but short of catching them stealing food for their own young 'uns, she didn't mind. The food they consumed, she told herself, went into making milk for baby Mark.

Hannah, only slightly comforted by the fact that no warrant existed for Ikey's arrest, was nevertheless fearful of what the future might hold and she knew she would need to make plans. She had endured one six-year period with almost no means when Ikey had been imprisoned. Now they were rich and they should think about going to live in America or, if Ikey should escape the forgery charge, Sydney Town, though she was realistic enough to know that this was unlikely.

On the rare occasions Hannah had discussed the consequences of crime with Ikey, he had pointed out to her that the crime of forgery carried the hangman's noose, the death penalty. Hannah dared not think further on that matter.

However, she was not above thinking that the ideal situation was to see Ikey transported for life to Botany Bay, leaving her to settle in America with their total assets in her sole possession, though she could think of no way to bring this about. If Ikey avoided being indicted for forgery but was arrested as a fence and proved unable to fee the arresting officers, then she too could be implicated and would receive a similar sentence of transportation. In the unlikely event that she was able to prove her innocence, Ikey knew she could easily live off the proceeds of her six bawdy houses and, while the hope of completing his sentence existed, would never agree to giving her control of their combined resources.

Even if she should contemplate divorce, by definition of law the wealth they'd accumulated together remained the property of the husband. Hannah was quite unable to contemplate such an outcome. In the event of a separation, she would be rendered virtually penniless. Yet in Hannah's mind, all the money rightfully belonged to her. Ikey was no more than a retriever is to a hunter, the dog that brings in the bird and who has no subsequent rights to the spoils from the day's shooting.

In this Ikey seemed to support Hannah's expectations, for he had no apparent need for money. He spent none on himself – even his watch and chain were of very little value lest he be robbed for it. He had only one small personal indulgence, this being the sport of ratting. He kept three of the best rat-killing terriers in England, cared for by a trainer, a butcher in the village of Guildford. But even in the ratting pit he would bet modestly.

Ratting was a sport which involved every grade of society, the ordinary poor, criminals, shop assistants, servants, toffs and even occasionally some of the nobility on the slum, each gambling according to his own means. Or, as Ikey hoped, beyond his means. Ikey saw the rat-pit as another opportunity to make money. There were very few seasoned gamblers at the rat-pits on Great St Andrews Street who, at some time or another, were not in debt to him.

With little taste for the sport of gambling itself, but with a fondness for the game little terriers, ratting was the closest Ikey ever came to being of a charitable nature, for should a client owe him a considerable sum of money, he would extend him a further loan against the odds given on one of his own terriers. This was considered most generous in the circles of ratting, for should his terrier win the bout then Ikey accepted the winnings as part or full payment of the loan.

However, if Ikey's terrier lost, then the money loaned would be added to the gambler's outstanding debt. Ikey's charity was limited to a single attempt to wipe out a gambling debt and, as often happened, if the debt was a large one and the gambler, being as gamblers are, bet sufficient on one of Ikey's terriers to eliminate the money owed, and the terrier lost, then the debt naturally doubled. When this happened it was generally agreed that the offender should forfeit goods or services to cover the outstanding money. Many a toff or member of the moneyed classes lost an item of value from his household in this manner, the convenience and advantage that Ikey was a fence and the article could be handed straight over to pay the debt without first being converted to cash.

Common criminals who had given their marker to Ikey undertook many a burglary and handed the contents of their night's work over to him, whereupon their marker was returned so they would remain in good standing for a future loan.

It was generally conceded in ratting circles that Ikey's terriers, which came from the Forest of Dean on the Welsh border, were exceedingly well bred and highly trained for courage and of the very best disposition for the rat-pit. The little black and brown terriers, usually the smallest dogs brought to the rat-pits, more often than not took the prize from bigger and more naturally brutal animals. Ikey's sparing use of his terriers to regain money lost by his clients was well regarded in the sport, and it was the only endeavour in Ikey's life where those about him did not look upon him as a rapacious and vile member of the Christ-killing race.

However, Ikey's reluctance to let his little terriers into the pit too often had nothing whatsoever to do with his desire to be well regarded, but was in a great part due to a sentimental consideration for them. Sewer rats give dogs canker, which is eventually the death of them. After each killing in the rat-pit Ikey would rinse the pretty pink mouths of his tiny terriers with peppermint and water and return them to their trainer with instructions to carefully tend the rat bites they had sustained. It was a tenderness he had never shown his children or any other living person, not even Mary, whom he would have been quite unable to stroke or touch as he did the little dogs he owned.

Ikey, like every other dog owner in England, dreamed of one day owning another Lord Nelson, a legendary ratter. Lord Nelson was so small he used to wear a lady's jewelled bracelet as a collar, weighed but five pounds and a half and had once killed two hundred rats in a single evening. It was said that, at times, some of the sewer rats pitted against him were his equal in size. But there was never a one or even a dozen together in the rat-pit who could bring the little terrier to a halt or bail him up. Ikey dreamed of owning a dog such as Lord Nelson though, for once, not for the money it could wring from the rat-pit. It was because he was so small, the smallest ratter ever to win in the pits, yet this miniature terrier, like Lord Nelson himself, who stood at only four feet and ten inches, contained a courage greater per pound of weight than any dog that had ever lived to kill a rat.

Ikey, too, was small and thought of himself as weak and a coward. A dog such as Lord Nelson proved the exception to the rule that the small and the weak must always eat shit. Had another such as Lord Nelson presented itself for sale, then Ikey might for the first time have understood a reason for money beyond avarice. He would be prepared to pay a king's ransom for a dog like-proportioned to Lord Nelson and as well proven in the pits.

Even the sport of ratting could not claim to involve Ikey in the need for money, since the costs of keeping the dogs fit for ratting constituted only a small part of his total earnings from the sport. Ikey didn't need or use money for the material things it could buy, he simply accumulated it. When he required clothes or boots, he bought them secondhand in the markets around the corner or in Rosemary Lane, bargaining fiercely for an embroidered, long-sleeved waistcoat, or a pair of well-worn boots from a secondhand shoe dealer in Dudley Street. Ikey couldn't abide new shoes or even new hose and preferred his stockings to be well darned at the heels and knees. Only his great coat was purchased new, made bespoke of the finest wool to his own precise instructions with a hundred concealed pockets, the whereabouts of which required an exacting layout memorised in his mind.

In fact, this coat represented the very nature of Ikey Solomon. He, himself, was a hundred pockets, each concealing hurt: some contained past abuse, some inadequacies and some were stuffed with deformities of thought. In others past injustices rattled, yet other pockets contained abnormalities and social obscenities. A host of pockets were filled with past woundings which rubbed raw against insults, hatreds and peculiar malice. Ikey carried all the sins and bitter blows, pocks and pits of his wandering kind in the pockets of his mind. They became the total of who he was, the whole, concealed by a cloak of indifference to the outside world.

The sole importance of money to Ikey was protection. Money bought sycophancy and this passed well enough for respect. Money kept those who would destroy him at a proper arm's length. Money was the lining of the protective coat which concealed him from a dangerously cold and malevolent world.

For Hannah no such problem of concealment with a metaphorical garment existed. Her loathing of Ikey was the centre of her everyday preoccupation, and his accumulation of wealth her single reason for their coupling. Hannah saw Ikey as a servant to her ambition, and his wealth the means to purchase the social aspirations she so earnestly desired for herself, and for the futures of her six children. She had invested in Ikey as one might in the cargo of an opium clipper, and her expectation was for a handsome end profit.