The Potato Factory

Preface

Some people are bound to argue that this book is the truth thinly disguised as fiction and others will say I got it quite wrong. Both sides may well be correct.

That Ikey Solomon existed and was perhaps the most notorious English criminal of his day is not in dispute, and wherever possible I have observed the chronology of his life and that of his wife, Hannah, and their children. That Charles Dickens based the character Fagin in his novel Oliver Twist on Ikey Solomon is a romantic notion which I much prefer to believe. But the moment I allow him and all the characters in this book to speak for themselves I have created a fiction of the fact of their historical existence. By every definition this is therefore a work of fiction.

In reading it I ask you to take into account the time in which my story occurs, the first half of the nineteenth century. In these more enlightened times this book may be regarded as anti-Semitic; in the terms of the times in which it is written, it is an accurate account of the prevailing attitudes to the Jews of England.

These were dark times, bleak times, hard times, times where a poor man's life was regarded as less valuable than that of a pig, a poor Jew's far less valuable even than that. That Ikey Solomon's life could have happened as it did in fact, allows my fiction to exploit the ability of the human spirit to transcend the vile tyranny of which humankind has proved so consistently capable. In these terms Ikey Solomon was a real-life hero and my fiction cannot possibly do him justice.

In history there are no solitary dreams; one dreamer breathes life into the next.

_Sebastiao Salgado_

_Be This a Warning!_

_This little work is held up as a warning beacon to keep the traveller from the sands of a poisonous desert, or from splitting upon the rocks of infamy._

_It is necessary in such a case to point out 'hells' and brothels, girls and bawds, and rogues, by name and situation, not as a direction for youth to steer towards them, but that he may take the contrary course – for no reasonable man would enter a whirlpool, when he could pass by it on the smooth surface o' the reaches of a tranquil river crossing._

_The life of Ikey Solomon is filled with iniquitous adventure; he has acted with the rope round his neck for twenty years, but by his cunning always avoided being drawn up to the beam, where he is likely to end his infamous career._

_We are duty bound to hold him up as a depraved villain, whose conduct must disgust, and whose miseries, with all his wealth, will show how preferable a life of honesty and poverty is to a guilty conscience, and treasure gained by blood and rapine._

_From Ikey Solomon, Swindler, Forger, Fencer amp; Brothel Keeper, 1829_