The Night of the Ripper

~ TWO ~

Promptly at midnight on August 6 the bells of St. Jude’s tolled an end to Bank Holiday.

No one heard them in the Angel and Crown Public House. Here the chimes were only a faint counterpoint to the chorus of “What Cheer, ’Ria?” as a dozen revelers grouped around a huge table competed with the clamor of the crowd. Market porters, slaughterhouse workers, sailors and soldiers from the garrison at the Tower of London thronged before the bar or paired off at tables with street-women flaunting their bedraggled Sunday best.

Seated at a smaller table in the far corner. Dr. Albert Trebor studied the scene, gray-green eyes mirroring a mixture of interest both clinical and cynical. Although well past his middle years, the tall, thin physician still served as a consultant on the staff of nearby London Hospital, but that seemed his only apparent link with the customers here. His quiet dress and demeanor marked him as a toff, as was the young man sitting across the table with a deerstalker cap pushed back over a broad forehead.

Trebor’s gaze shifted to his companion. “Well now,” he said. “What do you make of it, Mark?”

Mark Robinson shrugged. “Hard to say. It’s all still so new to me.”

“Nothing like this in your Wild West, eh?”

“Michigan is neither wild nor western.” Mark tweaked the corner of his mustache. “But you’re right, there’s nothing quite like this in Ann Arbor.” He smiled at Trebor. “It’s good of you to look after me like this — the sightseeing, a night on the town—”

“Nonsense, my boy. You came over here to study our professional procedure, but there’s more to it than just observing hospital routine. Consider this part of your education.” Trebor sipped his beer. “I’ve been in practice for almost forty years now and I’m still learning.”

“What was it like when you started?”

“Quite primitive, really. Surgical techniques were crude, no anesthesia, no qualified assistants or female nurses, just mucking about in a bloody butcher shop. Not like London Hospital today. Think of what we do there — four hundred outpatients treated daily, seven thousand bed cases a year—”

“Everything changes,” Mark said.

“Perhaps.” Trebor glanced toward the carousing crowd gathered before the bar. “But Whitechapel hasn’t changed all that much since Mr. Dickens wrote about life in the streets. Oh, we’ve had a go at reform movements, but laborers still live in squalor, the serving class is pitifully underpaid, our prisons and workhouses and asylums are hellholes.” He frowned. “We used to think progress would take care of conditions — steam engines, machinery, the telegraph, that sort of thing. It didn’t work out that way. Now we have eleven postal deliveries a day here in London alone, but what’s the good of it when the majority of our population can’t read or write a proper sentence? What point in an Education Act when children begin slaving in sweatshops and factories almost as soon as they learn to walk?”

“It’s almost as bad in America.” Mark nodded. “That’s one reason I entered medicine, to help relieve some of the suffering—”

“There’s more to medicine than alleviating physical pain,” Trebor said. “Mental anguish, that’s the real problem. Work that cripples bodies also cripples the mind and spirit. The trouble with our profession lies in thinking we’re only dealing with patients. We forget that patients are human beings. Now that I’ve retired to a consultant’s post I’ve shifted my attention from the study of patients to the study of people.” He gestured toward the bar. “That’s why I take time to frequent places like this. Not for amusement — who can enjoy the spectacle of misery drowning its sorrows in drink and debauchery? — but to learn the real causes of distress rooted in the human condition.”

“You sound like a philosopher,” Mark told him.

“Or an idiot.” Trebor gulped his beer. “If there’s any distinction between the two.”

“Damn your eyes!” This from the group at the large table, now chanting the refrain of “Samuel Hall.”

“Well said,” Trebor murmured. “But we’re neglecting your education.” He smiled at his companion. “If you intend to administer treatment to these people you’ll have to learn their language. I suggest a few lessons in vocabulary.”

“But I speak English,” Mark said.

“Do you?” Trebor’s tone was quizzical. “Then suppose you try your hand at identifying the occupations of some of the patrons as I point them out to you.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of a sooty-faced man wearing smudged coveralls and high boots who stood at the end of the bar. “What does he do for a living?”

“I’d say he’s a chimney sweep.” Mark grinned. “And a drunken one, at that.”

“A flue-faker.” Trebor smiled. “As for his condition, he’d generally be referred to as a lushington. Note the heavy side-whiskers? They’re called Newgate knockers hereabouts.”

He pointed to a dark-skinned man in a pea jacket and stocking cap, clinging to the bartop for dear life. “What about this fellow?”

“That’s easy — a merchant seaman. And Asiatic, from the looks of him. You call them Lascars, I believe.”

“Full marks.” Trebor’s eyes narrowed. “But notice his friend. While pretending to hold him up, his free hand is groping into his companion’s jacket.”

“A pickpocket!”

“Better known as a mutcher. A drunken-roller.” Trebor swiveled in his seat. “How about that chap in the far corner, with the portable grindstone beside his chair?”

“A knife grinder, obviously.”

“Chiv sharpener is the preferred description. The lady he’s buying drinks for is a trooper — a polite euphemism for prostitute. But he can afford the treat. Chiv sharpening is a lucrative profession, what with all the sailors, leather cutters, market porters and slaughterhouse men using knives in their work. Some of them could teach us a bit about surgery and dissection. I fancy.”

A fat waiter in a soiled apron waddled up to their table. “Your pleasure, gents? Another round o’ gatter?”

“Why not?” Trebor nodded at him. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” As the waiter moved away the older man reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. “Which reminds me,” he said. “While we’re at it, I’d best give you a lesson in arithmetic.”

He spread the loose change on the tabletop before him, indicating each coin in turn with a thrust of his forefinger. “This ha’penny piece is called a flatch. And here’s a yennap — a penny, pronounced backward. The tuppence is a deuce. A sixpence is a sprat, the shilling is a deaner, the half-crown’s an alderman—”

“What cheer, luv?”

Trebor glanced up quickly at the interruption. A plump double-chinned woman wearing a frayed jacket and brown skirt lurched unsteadily beside him, her bleary eyes blinking at the row of coins. At a table directly behind her, two bearded soldiers stared sullenly as another woman rose to join her intoxicated companion. She moved up to Mark, a tall imposing presence in her huge plumed hat and pearl-buttoned dress, then offered him a gold-toothed simulacrum of a smile and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Are you goodnatured, dearie?” she said.

Trebor scowled and shook his head. “Clear off,” he muttered.

The pearl-festooned woman drew herself up with a look of injured innocence. “No need to jump down me throat! ’Ere we are, wantin’ to be sociable-like—”

Trebor’s scowl and voice deepened. “Mind what I said. Clear off, both of you!”

The tall woman turned to her matronly companion without replying. “Come along, Martha. To hell with these bloody buggers — let’s go back to the sodgers.”

As the two started away, Trebor relaxed, nodding at Mark. “Good riddance.”

Mark shifted uneasily in his chair. “Weren’t you a bit short with them?”

“One needs firmness. It’s the only thing they can understand.” The older doctor pushed the coins together as he spoke. “Thousands of them about, drunken and raddled with disease, spreading infection every time they spread their legs.”

Mark nodded. “Still, they’ve got to live.”

“Do they?” Trebor glanced over at the table occupied by the two whores and the pair of bearded ruffians in uniform. One soldier was pinching the tall woman’s breasts while the other’s hand crept up beneath the brown skirt of her drunken companion. “Disgusting,” he said. “Animals prowling our streets. Thank heaven they’re leaving.”

Mark followed Trebor’s gaze as the soldiers rose, yanking the women to their feet. The pudgy one stumbled and her escort cursed, cuffing her cheek with a meaty fist. Then they staggered off.

“Where are they going?” Mark asked.

“Does it matter?” Trebor shrugged. “Tarts like that will raise their skirts anywhere — in alleys, courtyards, or up against a wall. There’s nothing too low for their tastes, no act too perverted for them to perform. And all for want of a sixpence to pay for a night’s kip in a public lodging house.”

Mark stared at him. “You mean to say we could have prevented this if we’d only given them a few pennies?”

“I dare say.” Trebor nodded indifferently, then looked up as Mark pushed his chair back and started to rise. “Where are you off to? Our drinks are coming—”

The younger man didn’t reply. His eyes were fixed firmly on the two couples as they weaved to the swinging door and reeled out into the street.

“Hold on,” Trebor said. “Don’t be a fool—”

But Mark was already striding to the doorway and now he too moved past it and disappeared in the night beyond.

For a moment Trebor remained seated, his jaw tightening as anger overcame him. “Filthy sluts,” he murmured. Scooping up the coins from the tabletop, he thrust them into his pocket.

Then he rose, lifting his brown surgical bag from underneath the table, and hurried toward the door.