A Very Unusual Pursuit

  DID BOGLERS EXIST?

  Was there ever a bogler, or Go-Devil man, in England? Probably not, though there might have been someone similar. For in the nineteenth century, many people still believed in folk monsters. They believed in knuckers, and boggarts, and banshees, and worricows. And although by this time these beliefs weren’t generally found among educated, urban people, a lot of lower-class country folk were slower in giving up their old beliefs. They still patronised ‘cunning women’, who cured with herbs and folklore. They still laid curses and used charms to protect themselves. And since there were any number of tradesmen who used to conduct their business door-to-door – such as chair-menders, and knife-grinders, and chimney-sweeps – who’s to say that somewhere, at some time, there wasn’t a man who, for a small fee, promised to kill any bogles that might be lurking in your privy or your coalhole?

  Hackney Union workhouse was a real place. It really did have a cook and a night porter. In the 1870s, the main building really did contain a kitchen, a lobby, and the Master’s bedroom. As for the men’s and women’s quarters, they actually did face each other across an inner courtyard. There was also an infirmary, a laundry and drying room, schoolrooms, coal and lime sheds, a pigsty, a chapel, kitchen gardens, and a medical officer. There was even a gelatine factory next door. And there was a well, too – there was always a well.

  But was there a bogle in that well? Since nobody ever mentioned one, I guess we’ll never know.

  Victoria Park cemetery really existed. It was a privately owned burial ground, opened in 1845 and never consecrated. In the 1850s, it was so overcrowded that several stacked-up coffins would be buried in each pit – around 130 every Sunday. The cemetery closed in 1876, and is now called Meath Gardens. It’s no longer full of headstones, but the creepy Gothic gate is still there.

  Wapping was a very busy area in Victorian London. It was down by the London docks, seething with porters and sailors and labourers of all kinds. It was also a popular place for scavengers – or ‘mudlarks’, as they were called – and for people who had to live in common boarding houses for two or three pennies a night. But since there were a great many warehouses, merchants, and shopkeepers in the area, the place had money coursing through it.

  Bethnal Green, on the other hand, was a slum, pure and simple. Very few well-off people lived in Bethnal Green. The middle classes tended to live further west, in places like Bloomsbury, and Paddington, and Westbourne Park. Islington was a little more rackety, with patches of run-down, lower-class housing. But a doctor might easily have lived there, in a very old house. Especially if he wanted to pursue his own peculiar little hobbies in secret.

  London House was a private lunatic asylum in Mare Street, South Hackney. It was licensed to a Mrs Ayres, daughter of Doctor William Oxley (deceased), and in 1874 had twelve female patients. According to the Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1868, it was a gloomy place that employed isolation and restraint when patients were difficult. Apparently it was visited twice a week by a ‘medical man’. Was that medical man Doctor Morton? I’m afraid the records don’t specify …

  GLOSSARY

  AREA the basement-level entrance under the front door of many nineteenth-century terrace or row houses, often with railings around the top

  BAIRN a Scottish word for ‘child’

  BALLAST HEAVER a person who loaded ballast into the holds of empty ships

  BASILISK a legendary reptile said to cause death with a single glance

  BEAK a magistrate

  BEDLAMITE an insane person

  BOGLE a monster, goblin, bogeyman

  BROUGHAM a one-horse carriage with an open seat in front for the driver

  BUGGANE a huge ogre-like creature, native to the Isle of Man

  CADGER a beggar

  CAFFLER a rag-and-bone man

  CHINK money

  COAL WHIPPER a person who unloaded coal from ships

  COSH a blunt weapon

  COSTER a street-seller

  COVE a man

  CRACKSMAN a burglar, lock-picker

  CRIB a house

  CROW a lookout

  DEADLURK an empty building

  DIPPER a pickpocket

  DIMMICK a counterfeit coin

  DUNNAGE clothes

  EARTH CLOSET a seat placed over a deep hole in the ground

  FLAM lie

  FLUX diarrhoea

  FUATH an evil Gaelic water spirit

  FUSTIAN coarse, cotton-linen cloth

  GAMMONING lying

  GANGER a supervisor

  GLOCKY half-witted

  GRIDDLER a beggar

  GRINDYLOW a bogeyman from Lancashire or

  Yorkshire, typically found in bogs or lakes

  HACKNEY CAB a two-wheeled carriage for hire

  HANSOM CAB another term for hackney cab

  HACKNEY CARRIAGE a four-wheeled carriage for hire

  HOBBLER a boat tower

  HOBYAH an English fairytale goblin

  HOIST to steal or shoplift

  HOOK IT move it

  HURRIER a girl aged five to eighteen who drew coal in a mine

  JACK a detective

  JEMMY a crowbar

  KNUCKER a kind of water-dragon from Sussex

  LAGGED gaoled

  LAY a method

  LURK a trick or scam

  LURKER a criminal

  LUSHERY a low public house

  MOOCHER a tramp

  MUCK SNIPE a tramp

  MUDLARK a child who scavenged on riverbanks

  MUMPER a beggar

  NAVVY an unskilled labourer, especially one who did heavy digging

  NIBBED arrested

  NOBBLE to hurt

  OMNIBUS a very large horsedrawn vehicle for moving large numbers of people

  POTTLE a container holding half a gallon

  PRIG to steal

  PRIVY a toilet

  RACKET a shady or illegal pursuit

  SENNIGHT a week

  SHELLYCOAT a Scottish goblin that haunted rivers and streams

  SHIRKSTER a layabout

  SLAVVY a maid-of-all-work

  SLOPS old clothes

  SPIKE workhouse

  TOFF a well-to-do person

  TOFFKEN the dwelling of well-to-do people

  TOGS clothes

  TOOLING pickpocketing

  TOSHER a sewer scavenger

  WHITE LADIES ghosts of a very particular type

  WIPE a handkerchief

  WORKHOUSE an institution that housed and fed

  paupers

  WORRICOW a Scottish hobgoblin

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Catherine Jinks was born in Brisbane in 1963 and grew up in Sydney and Papua New Guinea. She studied medieval history at university and her love of reading led her to become an author. Her books for children, teenagers and adults have been published all over the world, and have won numerous awards.

  Catherine lives in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales with her husband, journalist Peter Dockrill, and their daughter Hannah.

  BOOK 2 – A SNEAK PREVIEW

  The man stationed at the door was small and stout. He had a red face, blue eyes and wispy grey curls. His satin-breasted coat was trimmed with silver lace. His top hat was the colour of mulberries.

  ‘Walk in! Walk in! Now exhibiting!’ he boomed. ‘The best show in London, ladies and gentleman! A Menagerie of Mythical Beasts! Living, breathing monsters for only one penny!’

  The narrow shop-front behind him was plastered with brightly coloured advertisements. One of them showed a picture of a very young girl cracking a whip at something that looked like a giant toad.

  ‘See our griffin! See our mermaid! See our erlking!’ cried the man in the purple hat, tapping at the picture with his bamboo cane. ‘See Birdie McAdam, the Go-Devil girl, tame a fierce bogle and a dainty unicorn!’

  Across the road, Jem stopped short. He stood goggle-eyed as the crowds surged past him. In one hand he carried a cheap broom. On his
feet he wore nothing but a thick layer of mud.

  For a moment he stared at the man in the purple hat. Then he darted forward, dodging a pile of horse manure and the rattling wheels of a carriage.

  ‘See the world’s greatest novelties, ladies and gentleman! Marvel at the legendary two-headed snake of Libya! Touch a genuine dragon’s egg for only one penny!’ The red-faced showman raised his voice a little, drowning the chant of a nearby coster selling nuts and whelks. ‘Now exhibiting! Satisfaction guaranteed! The World’s Greatest Wonders, here in Whitechapel Road!’

  He was perched high on a wooden box, with a good view of all the bobbing umbrellas that filled the street. But he didn’t see Jem until the boy tugged at his coat.

  ‘Sir? Hi! Sir?’

  Glancing down, the man saw only a filthy little crossing-sweeper in a ragged blue shirt and striped canvas trousers, torn off at the knee. A cap like a cowpat cast the boy’s gleaming brown eyes into shadow.

  It also concealed most of his thick, black, glossy hair – which was his best feature, though it made his head look too big for his body.

  ‘Hook it,’ the man growled. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Please, sir, I’m a friend o’ Birdie McAdam. Will you let me in? She’ll want to say hello.’

  ‘Get out of it, I said!’

  Jem flushed. ‘I ain’t gammoning you, sir! Jem Barbary’s the name. Why, Birdie and me – we used to knock around Bethnal Green together when she were just a bogler’s girl. Ask her if we didn’t!’

  The only reply was a quick swipe with the bamboo cane, which left a red welt on Jem’s knuckles. He jumped back, grimacing. Then he retreated a few steps to take stock of the exhibition venue. It was a small, two-storeyed building wedged tightly between a pastry-shop and a public house. Over the door was a faded sign, but Jem couldn’t read it. Nor could he see any side-alleys piercing the impenetrable wall of shop-fronts breasting the street.

  But the public house was on a corner, and would probably have a rear yard of some kind. Jem’s gaze moved up a drainpipe, along a brick ledge and across a roof that bristled with chimneys. He’d burgled many a house in the past, and this one was no strong-box.

  He thought that he could probably find another way in – without paying a penny for the privilege.

  ‘Begging your pardon, lad, but is it true?’ a soft voice suddenly asked. ‘Do you really know Birdie McAdam?’

  Startled, Jem spun around. He found himself staring up at a pretty young woman in a velveteen mantle. She had rosy cheeks, grey eyes, and lots of rich, brown hair piled up under a hat that was barely big enough to support all the feathers, flowers, veils and ribbons sewn onto it.

  She was sheltering from the rain under a pink silk parasol.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ he said, wondering why a decent-looking female would approach him in the street like a common beggar. The young woman glanced around nervously before leaning down to address him.

  ‘I’m Mabel Lillimere,’ she murmured. ‘I’m a barmaid at the Viaduct Tavern in Newgate Street. If you are a friend o’ Birdie’s, and can persuade her to talk to me, then I’ll stump up your fee so as you and I both can get in.’ Eyeing his grubby face with a touch of suspicion, she added fiercely, ‘But if you’re lying – why, I’ll box your ears so hard you’ll have your left ear on the right side o’ your head, and your right ear on the left!’

  This threat didn’t worry Jem. He’d suffered worse.

  ‘Why not talk to her yerself?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Because she’ll not see me! Or so he says.’ Mabel gestured at the man in the purple topper, who was now reminding all the damp pedestrians scurrying past him that Birdie McAdam was ‘well known to the public’ owing to ‘newspaper reports of her bogle-baiting prowess’.

  ‘Mr Lubbock, he calls himself,’ Mabel continued. ‘Claims he’s in charge. Says Birdie’s not inclined to speak to the public. Says she’s too shy, and needs to rest her voice.’

  Jem snorted. ‘Well, that’s a flam,’ he declared. ‘Birdie’s as forward as they come. Did you offer him extra?’

  ‘Twopence.’

  ‘Then he’s a-humming you.’ His suspicions confirmed, Jem scowled at Mr Lubbock. ‘I’ll wager Birdie ain’t here. Last time I saw her, she were living with a fine lady near Great Russell Street, eating plum cakes every day and wearing lace on her petticoats. Why would she want to come back to the east and work in a penny gaff like this ’un, when there’s fine folk as think she’s too good for the life?’

  Mabel’s face fell. Her troubled gaze slid towards Mr Lubbock. ‘You think that there feller is lying, then?’

  ‘Why not?’ Jem shrugged. ‘He’s a slang cove. Lying’s what they do best.’ Studying the barmaid with frank curiosity, he added, ‘Why d’you want to speak to Birdie? You can’t be kin – she ain’t got a soul to call her own.’

  Mabel hesitated. At last she said, ‘I read about Birdie in the newspapers last summer, and never thought of her again till I passed this here gaff. Then I saw her name and recollected how she killed them monsters that you find in privies and coal-holes and chimneys and such.’ Seeing Jem shake his head, Mabel frowned. ‘Didn’t she?’

  ‘Birdie helped kill ’em,’ Jem corrected. ‘She were bait for the bogles. Alfred Bunce did all the killing.’

  ‘Alfred Bunce?’

  ‘The bogler. Didn’t you read about him too? He were in the papers, same as Birdie.’

  Mabel bit her lip. ‘I daresay,’ she mumbled. ‘But the little girl is what stuck in my head. There was a picture, as I recall. Such a pretty thing, with all them golden curls . . .’

  ‘And Mr Bunce ain’t pretty, which is why there wasn’t no pictures of him.’ By now Jem was feeling confident. He knew that he was onto something, so he fixed the barmaid with a shrewd and penetrating look. ‘You got a bogle problem, Miss?’

  The barmaid sighed. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘On account o’ poor Florry.’ Edging further beneath the jutting first-floor window of the pastry-shop, Mabel suddenly blurted out, ‘Florry was our scullery maid. She went down into the cellar last month, and never did come out. And not a trace of her was left, though Mr Watkins and me looked high and low—’

  ‘Who’s Mr Watkins?’ Jem interrupted.

  ‘The landlord. He keeps the place. And would never have took it on, had he known.’

  ‘Known what?’

  ‘About the beer-cellar.’ Mabel shuddered, as if someone had walked over her grave. ‘The tavern’s fresh-built, but the cellar’s old. There used to be a prison on that very spot, for debtors and the like, and our cellar was where they put ’em. I never go down, if I can help it. Not without Mr Watkins. Even before Florry vanished, I misliked the air. It felt . . .’ She paused for a moment, frowning. ‘It felt bad,’ she said at last.

  ‘Unwholesome. As if someone had died there.’

  Jem thought back to the previous summer. He thought about Alfred and Birdie. He thought about the two bogles that still haunted his dreams; the one he’d glimpsed at a gentleman’s house near Regent’s Park, and the one he’d helped to kill some four months later, in a cutting on the London and North Western Railway.

  ‘How old was Florry?’ he inquired.

  ‘That I can’t tell you. Twelve, perhaps? But she was very small.’

  ‘Then it could have bin a bogle as took her.’ Jem tried to inject a note of authority into his voice. ‘You should talk to Alfred Bunce. Mr Bunce will know what to do. He’s a Go-Devil man. He kills bogles with the same spear Finn McCool used to kill fire-breathing dragons, in times past.’

  ‘But how can I talk to Mr Bunce if I don’t know where he is?’ Mabel objected. Then she narrowed her eyes at Jem, who grinned when he saw her sceptical, measuring look. ‘I suppose you do,’ she said wryly. ‘Is that your lurk? Are you touting for this cove?’

  ‘I’ll take you straight to him for twopence ha’penny,’ Jem offered. And as she rolled her eyes in disgust, he argued his case. ‘
Mr Bunce don’t care to go bogling no more. He changed lodgings a while back, on account of it. Where he is now, there’s no one knows what he used to do, and no one to plague him as a consequence. But he’ll listen to you, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mabel. ‘Why am I so different?’

  ‘You ain’t,’ said Jem. ‘You got a kid gone, same as all the others. That’s why he’ll listen.’ Seeing her confusion, he tried to explain. ‘Bogles eat children. Mr Bunce don’t like that. He don’t like using kids as bait, neither, which is why he stopped bogling. There’s a boy lodging with him now – a mudlark called Ned – who’d be a deal happier bogling than scavenging on the riverbank. Mr Bunce won’t oblige him, though. Thinks bogling’s too dangerous.’ Jem paused, then took a deep breath. ‘But what if someone should come along, a-weeping and a-wailing, asking for help?’ he concluded. ‘Mr Bunce ain’t got it in him to turn ’em down. That’s why he changed his lodgings.’

  Mabel nodded slowly. She seemed to understand. ‘Where does he live now?’

  ‘Near enough,’ Jem replied, ‘if we take a ‘bus there.’

  Mabel’s lip curled. She raised one finely plucked eyebrow. ‘Oh-ho!’ she exclaimed. ‘So it’s the omnibus fare you’re after now, is it?’

  Again Jem shrugged. ‘Unless you want to walk to the Strand,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Bunce lives near the Strand?’

  ‘Off Drury Lane. But that’s all I’ll tell you.’ Gazing up at Mabel from beneath his cap, Jem held out one dirty palm. ‘Twopence ha’penny,’ he repeated. ‘You’ll be needing me there to soften him up, like.’

  Mabel sniffed. Then she grunted. Then she glanced up at the sky, which was low and grey and as wet as a sponge.

  ‘We’ll take a ’bus,’ she remarked, before turning to Jem with a crooked smile. ‘By the by, how old are you?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘And already you’re bargaining like a Billingsgate fishmonger!’ There was a touch of admiration in Mabel’s tone. ‘I’ll give you a ha’penny up front,’ she said. ‘The rest you’ll get when we reach his crib.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘And if this here is a caper, my lad, I’ll give you such a hiding – never mind what I tell the police when I’m done!’