Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event (20 page)

When Catherine’s bedclothes and pillow were returned to Katie cleaned, her mother’s scent was all but gone from them. She hid her mother’s skirts by day so her aunt wouldn’t clean them, and at night she retrieved and slept with them both.

Aun
t
Elizabeth, a seamstress, was a strict disciplinarian and taskmistress, clearly in charge of the household. Nothing was given to Katie that she didn’t earn through hard work. She had little time for herself, but was allowed to finish her final year of education at the Bermondsey United Charity School for Girls. She was grateful even though Aunt Elizabeth required her to compensate for the time lost by working whatever hours were left to her after her lessons, mostly at night. Her duties included mending, alterations, stain removal, and garment dyeing for Aunt Elizabeth’s customers.

Bent over a wash tub, Katie was cleaning a stained dress bodice the first time Uncle William lifted her skirts to touch her backside. She stood and turned quickly to defend herself, nearly upsetting the tub. Uncle William, a crooked smile on his leering face, backed away swiftly and left the room. Too embarrassed to say anything about it, Katie kept her shock and dismay to herself.

This is what Mum wouldn’t tell me about him.

Over time, his pawing became a habit. He took advantage of the times when she was absorbed in her work to grab at her budding breasts or reach under her skirts. She endured the indignity with as much grace as possible and became ever watchful while working alone. Sticking close to Aunt Elizabeth during waking hours prevented the worst of his abuses.

~~~

Katie had been with her aunt and uncle for a year when she saw through the front windows gaunt figures walking in the lane toward the house in the hazy-bright, midday sun. Recognizing her sisters, she ran out the front door to hug them, but stopped short when she was close, overcome by their smell. Thin and dirty, they had aged ten years in the span of only one. Clearly they were her sisters, for they still had the dark, almost black hair of their mother, and they wore the same clothes they’d worn a year ago, Emma in a worn brown linsey-woolsey skirt and bodice, Margaret in grey and blue wool. Even so, there was a frightful madness about their appearance, as if she were facing dangerous, savage strangers, for who would willingly allow themselves to fall into such a state? They were mottled with sores and abrasions, and a weary animal vigilance haunted their eyes. Katie wanted to reject the reality of what she saw; she looked instead for evidence that her sisters were actors wearing costumes.

The three stood for a moment regarding each other silently, then Katie overcame her fear and hurried to hug them. With each embrace, she worried she might catch lice and disease.

“It’s good to see you,” Katie lied, with a grim smile and furrowed brow.

“Thank you,” Emma said. “I’m sorry we didn’t come to visit sooner. A leave of absence is a misery of documents and we must give up our uniforms and don our old clothes.”

“Come say hello to your aunt and uncle.”

Aunt Elizabeth stood in the front doorway, arms crossed, barring passage. “We’re expecting a customer,” she said.

Katie, who commonly knew the day’s schedule, was unaware of that.

“You two are too filthy to come in,” Elizabeth continued. “If you’ll go to the rear, I’ll bring you something to eat.”

Emma and Margaret made no response to the rudeness.

Katie led them to the back of the house. “I’m sorry,” she said when they were out of earshot of their aunt. They sat in the sun, amidst barrels and crates at the back doorstep. Elizabeth provided them with a midday meal of boiled cabbage, potatoes and bacon. Katie pretended she was not hungry and offered up her portion to her sisters. They ate what was on their plates with a slow determination, then scrupulously divided and ate what was on hers.

Margaret had temporarily lost her voice due to a case of influenza. She communicated only with smiles and nods.  Sneezing repeatedly, she blew her nose into a piece of coarse linen.

Emma was reluctant to talk about the workhouse, but Katie’s plied her with questions. “We are clothed and kept warm,” Emma said, finally opening up, “but are rarely fed more than a thin gruel. The staff is corrupt and abusive and must be paid in some way for any advantage. We must share beds with many different strangers. That means sharing their illnesses. The work is hard and the hours long. Look at my hands.” She held up cracked and bleeding fingers. “Courtesy of the Lump Hotel. Most of the work is picking oakum for the ship builders.”

Regretting her persistence, Katie frowned and turned away, looking for a way to change the subject. “Have you heard anything from Christopher?” Katie asked.

“No, we haven’t.” Emma said sadly. “I don’t know if he is earning his keep yet, but he was right about us.” Her words came out thick and slurred.

“What do you mean?” Katie asked.

“That we would not earn enough to have Mother placed in hallowed ground. It’s too late now. I hope she enjoys her companions.” Emma chuckled dryly and Margaret bowed her head and closed her eyes as if nodding off. Katie thought Emma was being disrespectful, but then had a brief, pleasing image of Catherine playing Grandmother’s Trunk with her grave companions. The game was Katie’s favorite to play with her mother while they replaced buttons in the evening.
A pleasant way for her to while away eternity.

“I met a man, Joseph Matthews, in the workhouse,” Emma said slowly, a faraway look in her eyes. “He found work as a lumper and has left us…for a time. We’re to be married…soon as he’s earned enough to find suitable lodgings. I’ll take Margaret with me.”

Margaret glanced up briefly with a flicker of a smile, but otherwise remained motionless.

“I’m pleased to hear of the hope Mr. Matthews brings,” Katie said.

The food must have put her sisters in a stupor, for they didn’t offer anything more to the immediate conversation. 

Katie tried unsuccessfully to think of something else to say. She was uncomfortable and wanted their visit to end, and was ashamed of that desire. Still, she was in sympathy with her aunt; as long as her sisters were living in the workhouse—Emma had called it the Lump Hotel—she wanted nothing to do with them either.

Katie flinched and drew her hand back when she felt Margaret’s touch. Her silent sister had reached for her
so
quietly.

“She wants to hold your hand,” Emma said.

Katie had the absurd fear that the workhouse might rub off on her.

Margaret’s eyes expressed hurt.

“You startled me is all,” Katie said, and grasped her sister’s rough, scabby fingers in her own. 

She was relieved when they left in the late afternoon to return to the workhouse. Her sisters were mere ghosts of the young women they had been, particularly the silent Margaret.

Katie fell into a state of mourning while cleaning up after their meal. Finding the piece of linen Margaret had used as a handkerchief, she could not throw it away. She washed it and added it to her possessions.

With time Katie became resigned to William reaching under her skirts because she always managed to keep her drawers on. But when she was sixteen years old, he became more insistent. To insure her safety, she took a sharp table knife from the kitchen and then made a pocket to hide it in. The pocket was made from a section of the blue striped bed ticking from her mother’s pillow with strings added to cinch the opening around the handle of the knife. She sewed a band to the pocket so it could be fastened around her waist out of sight, under her top skirt. A cork stuck on the end of the knife prevented it from cutting through the bottom of the pocket. Although difficult to get to in a hurry, it made her feel a little bit better.

One day, nearly sober, Uncle William came to her while she stood at work a table, preparing a cochineal dye bath for a customer’s faded red jacket. He reached for her. Katie dodged and upset the bath, spilling bright crimson dye over several bolts of cloth.

“Your aunt will be unhappy you’ve wasted her dyestuffs and damaged her valuable goods,” Uncle William said. “I might agree with her that you should be turn out of our home. However, if you will be good to me, I would tell her
I
upset the dye bath.”

Cast out on the street with no where to go but the workhouse, the grueling life under conditions of hard labor, malnourishment and chronic disease—it was too much to face.

Katie allowed Uncle William to have his way. In his excitement, he ejaculated too soon, merely staining her drawers.

She pushed her skirts back down and started cleaning up the spilled dye. Uncle William was straightening his clothing when Aunt Elizabeth came in. She looked at him, her brow furrowed and mouth open with an unspoken question. Then she saw the spilled dye on the table and her eyes turned on Katie.

“What have you done, girl?” She grabbed Katie by the arm and pulled her roughly away from her work and turned her around. “Do you know what this dye and cloth cost me?” Aunt Elizabeth backhanded her across the mouth, splitting her lip, and Katie cringed silently.

“Answer me, child!”

“
I
spilled the bath,” Uncle William said.

Aunt Elizabeth spun on him.

“You asked me to wax the sash.” He pointed to the window behind the table, his head tilted to one side and his mouth pinched with false remorse. “I should have waited. I’m sorry, love.”

“Where is the wax?” she demanded to know.

He shrugged. “I was trying the window first.”

She looked at him hard, the suspicion on her face unwavering. Then she turned back to Katie. “Clean this up at once.”

“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth,” Katie said, as her aunt swept from the room. Relief was overshadowed by a deeper dread of the future with Uncle William.

“Good girl,” he said, and left her to her work.

I’ll always be beholden to someone and do what I must to get by. Some day there will be one who will not charge a cruel price.
  

~~~

Uncle William came to her often after that, but drunk most of the time, he wasn’t interested in surveying his conquest and his aim was poor. If she squeezed her legs tightly together, he responded as if he had achieved penetration. These hot, sweaty transactions were disgusting, but his release, attended by much huffing and puffing of his sour swill breath, always came quickly.

At the age of nineteen, Katie felt a bit foolish to still be sleeping with her mother’s skirts. Even so, she cuddled with them at night, pressing the fabric against her nose, trying to retrieve the scent and maintain the connection with her dear Catherine. But the scent was gone and the only time she felt close to her mother was when she held the thimble.

Most of the silver had worn off the outside, and Katie thought the
pretty
had all but worn off her as well. Still, each time she put her finger in the thimble, she remembered what her mother had said about the silver inside, and she liked to think there remained something
good and pure
in her as well. Whenever she bled she hoped to see a bit of quicksilver mingled with her blood. Although a childish fantasy, looking for it became something of a game that was harmless and yet helped distract from the fright of bleeding.

She was touching the silver inside the thimble when she met Conway. The year was 1861. He was close to thirty years old, tall and fair. A round-topped felt hat and side whiskers framed his friendly face. His brown, striped trousers were worn shiny at the thighs, thin at the knees. He came to her needing the green revers of his white, square-cut linsey waistcoat mended.

Aunt Elizabeth was known to accept work through her kitchen window in the early evening. Katie was working alone in the kitchen at the time, her aunt having been called away to attend to an ailing neighbor. She was singing a favorite ballad of her mother’s when he approached.

"My name is Tom," he said. "People call me Conway."

His waistcoat was ratty, but he offered it through the open window as if it were precious.

“It is the uniform of a poet, Miss,” he said, his accent making it obvious he was Irish. “It has seen many a glorious campaign, but is become old and gloomy. Please revive its spirits, for I must look my best. I’ll wait, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she said.

His whiskers had worn away the green cloth at the sides of the garment’s neck—a common problem. “I don’t have cloth to fill what’s missing, but I can darn it with a matching thread.”

“I trust you will do your best.”

Conway remained throughout the mending, leaning on the sill, gazing off down the lane, trying to look relaxed and care free. He was obviously posing for her. Under the guise of keeping himself amused, he whistled a tune and recited a couple of sonnets Katie knew to be by William Shakespeare.

“I heard you singing ‘The Berkshire Tragedy,’” he said. “If you like sad songs, you might like this one.” He sang a popular gallows ballad.

“Of a dreadful Murder you shall soon hear,

Was done in Banbury, in Oxfordshire;

One William Willson, how sad to tell;

Murdered Susan Owen, who was known full well.

The murderer Willson, so cruel he,

Slew Sarah Owen, aged thirty-three.”

Conway was quite handsome and clever. He was indeed trying to impress her, but there was something different in the way he went about it. The majority of men who chased after her were either drunk or acted as if they were. If she’d thought any had prospects for the future she might well have chased after them to escape her situation with Uncle William and her cold-hearted aunt.

Conway, while whimsical, had a sense of purpose about him. He was sober and respectful. When he stole glances at her during his performance, her heart skipped a beat or two, for he did it in a discreet manner refreshingly different from the ogling she usually got.

“In a dreary dungeon he now bewails,

Awaiting his trial in Oxford Jail,

And if he should there convicted be,

His days must end on the fatal tree…”

He paused when he was done, no doubt for dramatic effect, looking pensively thoughtful. Then he turned to Katie and said, “I penned that sad tale.”

Although he was probably lying about writing the ballad, his attention and efforts to impress were flattering.
The silver has not worn off the outside of me entirely.
Perhaps he’ll take me away from here and give me a new life, a new home
.

Foolishness! But what harm in fantasy if you know it’s just that.

“Did you enjoy it?” Conway asked.

Katie merely looked up from her work, smiled and nodded.

Conway fixed his gaze on her, and, after a moment, said, “You’re a pretty girl. I have use for a pretty girl. How are you at hawking?”

Katie was speechless, but relaxed and smiled to buy time to regain her voice and allow her blushing face to loose it’s telltale color. Perhaps he would think she was merely choosing words carefully.

“I’m quite good at it,” she said, finally. “As a child I sold watercress at Farringdon Market.”

“Good,” he said. “Would you care to accompany me to a hanging?”