paste, slapping their lies over honest posters for Barklay’s Asthmatic Candy and Sunderland Reform meetings, making Whilky so mad he could spit. The whole East End has been gummed and slathered, calci-mined and blanchified with these damn white papers, a new one every other day. They figure if they scream it loud enough, we’ll begin to believe, thinks he. It’s just another facet of the Grand Plot.
BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH
All kinds of Putrid matter, decayed Vegetables,
Filth of every Description should be
REMOVED .
Walls of Houses and Passages should be Washed with
hot LIME
and all Persons Bathed daily.
Dirty Hands and dirty Faces breed
THE CHOLERA MORBUS
The git who smacks this bill over Whilky’s boarded-up, tax-free window gets a sharp rap on the head for his pains. Away with you, toady! And with your wheelbarrowload of lime dumped in front of my door! Whilky kicks the white mound left by the minions of the Board of Health. Whitewash the damn streets if you like but you’ll not invade the house of a free man.
Mike peeks his narrow head out of Whilky’s breast pocket at the disturbance. Look at ‘em, Mike. Pious men and do-goody women marching up and down our back lanes. Hawking their moth-eaten blankets and donated stockings, darned six times at the toe until a man feels like he is eternally treading upon a pebble. But we’re not fooled, are we, Mike? They’d rather see every one of us dead than give us the Right to Vote. Funny, isn’t it, how this cholera morbus business only came up after the Reform Riots in October? Funny, too, how all the Reform meetings had to be canceled for fear of the contagion. And while you and I have tenants to spare, Mike, them that lodged in the workingman’s pockets and the workingman’s belly; by which I mean the staples of cash and food, Mike, have all up and fled in the face of this contrived Quarantine. A poor man is so busy contemplating those cruel desertions, so busy scheming how to lure cash and bread home again, that he has no time left to even think on Reform. Look there, Mike. Some of our weak-minded neighbors open their doors to these government patsies. But not us. Against our better judgment, we let the government inside this summer so that we might be “counted,” and look what it’s got us. Green toads and a coming plague that, conveniently enough, kills only the poor.
Whilky hesitates at the end of the lane. Maybe he ought to go back and wait them out. Pink, moronic git that she is, might open the door, and God
only knows what they’ll plant inside. But Whilky wants his newspaper and a tall glass of beer. And besides, John Robinson claimed a bricklayer came into the Labour in Vain last night with a Border collie rumoured to have killed sixty rats in ten minutes. Pink knows what he’ll do to her if she undoes that latch. She’s daft, but she’s not that dumb.
Whilky ducks under the low arch and lumbers out onto the wide expanse of High Street, blissfully unaware that behind him, exactly nine houses in, a tidy blonde woman loaded down with charity is stepping over his uncovered midden (that overflows with decayed Vegetables and All kinds of Putrid matter) onto his privately owned stoop and is, even now, rapping sharply upon the sanctity of his door. His republican daughter Pink, resisting tyranny for the time it takes to set down the baby and scamper over, asks cheerfully through the wood, “Who’s there?”
“Audrey Place. With the Indigent Sick Society,” comes the answer.
“Right,” says Pink and opens the door.
Why, we know this Audrey. She’s lived on Fawcett Street all her life. Her mother is good Dr. Clanny’s wife’s best friend, just as Henry’s mother is sister to the selfsame wife. We understand Audrey’s engagement is a much-needed distraction at the Fawcett Street household; it’s been so sombre with her father away, captain of a ship stuck in Riga, on the other side of Quarantine. Take a peek at her, there
BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH
All kinds of Putrid matter, decayed Vegetables,
Filth of every Description should be
REMOVED .
Walls of Houses and Passages should be Washed with
hot LIME
and all Persons Bathed daily.
Dirty Hands and dirty Faces breed
THE CHOLERA MORBUS
The git who smacks this bill over Whilky’s boarded-up, tax-free window gets a sharp rap on the head for his pains. Away with you, toady! And with your wheelbarrowload of lime dumped in front of my door! Whilky kicks the white mound left by the minions of the Board of Health. Whitewash the damn streets if you like but you’ll not invade the house of a free man.
Mike peeks his narrow head out of Whilky’s breast pocket at the disturbance. Look at ‘em, Mike. Pious men and do-goody women marching up and down our back lanes. Hawking their moth-eaten blankets and donated stockings, darned six times at the toe until a man feels like he is eternally treading upon a pebble. But we’re not fooled, are we, Mike? They’d rather see every one of us dead than give us the Right to Vote. Funny, isn’t it, how this cholera morbus business only came up after the Reform Riots in October? Funny, too, how all the Reform meetings had to be canceled for fear of the contagion. And while you and I have tenants to spare, Mike, them that lodged in the workingman’s pockets and the workingman’s belly; by which I mean the staples of cash and food, Mike, have all up and fled in the face of this contrived Quarantine. A poor man is so busy contemplating those cruel desertions, so busy scheming how to lure cash and bread home again, that he has no time left to even think on Reform. Look there, Mike. Some of our weak-minded neighbors open their doors to these government patsies. But not us. Against our better judgment, we let the government inside this summer so that we might be “counted,” and look what it’s got us. Green toads and a coming plague that, conveniently enough, kills only the poor.
Whilky hesitates at the end of the lane. Maybe he ought to go back and wait them out. Pink, moronic git that she is, might open the door, and God
only knows what they’ll plant inside. But Whilky wants his newspaper and a tall glass of beer. And besides, John Robinson claimed a bricklayer came into the Labour in Vain last night with a Border collie rumoured to have killed sixty rats in ten minutes. Pink knows what he’ll do to her if she undoes that latch. She’s daft, but she’s not that dumb.
Whilky ducks under the low arch and lumbers out onto the wide expanse of High Street, blissfully unaware that behind him, exactly nine houses in, a tidy blonde woman loaded down with charity is stepping over his uncovered midden (that overflows with decayed Vegetables and All kinds of Putrid matter) onto his privately owned stoop and is, even now, rapping sharply upon the sanctity of his door. His republican daughter Pink, resisting tyranny for the time it takes to set down the baby and scamper over, asks cheerfully through the wood, “Who’s there?”
“Audrey Place. With the Indigent Sick Society,” comes the answer.
“Right,” says Pink and opens the door.
Why, we know this Audrey. She’s lived on Fawcett Street all her life. Her mother is good Dr. Clanny’s wife’s best friend, just as Henry’s mother is sister to the selfsame wife. We understand Audrey’s engagement is a much-needed distraction at the Fawcett Street household; it’s been so sombre with her father away, captain of a ship stuck in Riga, on the other side of Quarantine. Take a peek at her, there
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