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The Borough of Islington
Jimmy ran full speed toward the other three, looking back over his shoulder with full fright on his face and crying “No, No!” Five feet short of the group he tripped and fell, rolling into Max, his teacher. At eight-years-old, Max, a skinny kid living most of the time on the streets, was as close to a father figure as Jimmy had known. For the final bit Jimmy looked up with his wide eyes, brushed his long mop of brown locks out of his eyes and said, “So very sorry, Sir.”
“Blimey, Jimmy, you’ve got to put more spit into the game,” Max said to his young foil. “Let’s see your lower lip quiver when you look up at the target. London streets is ripe with targets but ya’ gotta sell your soul in this bit, Jimmy, or it bloody-well won’t work a lick. I’m not lookin’ for anythin’ queer here me boy just sweet innocent fear in those soft black eyes.” Max, with his dirty yellow hat sitting back on his head, was exasperated at the results of his first training lesson with six-year-old Jimmy, the gang’s newest recruit.
James Northway Stockley was born in the near north side slum of London known as Islington. He and his mother Renee lived in a tiny one-room apartment on the third floor of a building on Childerditch Lane just off Liverpool Road. The four-story buildings stood in long rows close to each other each apartment had one small window for ventilation. Landlords were taxed per window. Typical for 1880s London, the apartments in their block had no water and no toilet facilities. Renee carried water from a pump located about 150 meters down the street from their building. There were pumps located all over London in those days and they were open only certain times and certain days. Lines were typically long at the pumps to fill the families’ pots and jugs. Families who ran out of water while the pumps were closed had to use the water in the rivers, which were also depositories for the neighborhood’s garbage and human “dung.”
Because the latrines on the ground floor of the building were dank and putrid, most upper floor residents kept a copper chamber pot in the corner of the room. When the pot filled for a day or two and the smell in the apartment became unbearable, it was emptied out the window. Richard II, who had become King of England back in 1377 at age 10, later issued a writ that, “no one is to dump dung.” Further, there were penalties, still in effect, for hitting a person with anything, especially dung, thrown from a window. It seemed such restrictions only encouraged tenement dwellers. By the end of the day the streets below the tenement windows were ankle deep in human waste and ripe until the next rain washed it down the gutters toward the rivers. The appearance of the buildings suffered in that a yellowish brown stain quickly developed below each window. Apartment dwellers kept their windows closed despite the occasional hot day to avoid dung spilling in from above.
Jimmy’s mother worked afternoons and nights as a prostitute walking the streets bordering the boroughs of Islington and Heringey, where she competed with women stationed on several other street corners. Jimmy’s first memories of his mother were of her wearing pretty dresses and sparkly bracelets with her blonde hair pulled back and tied, running down her back. He remembered her ruddy complexion and sad loving eyes as she got ready for work. On many nights there were no customers in their dark district but she needed to be there just in case.
“Come to Mommy, Jim Bo,” she whispered as the toddler ate stale bread she’d found thrown out the back door of the bakery. Jimmy looking around the table for more. “Things will be better, Jim Bo, just you wait and see.” In those early years, Renee worked from 3 to 5 pm with Jim in her arms, then took a two-hour break to fix dinner. Before reporting back to the corner, she wrapped her son in a blanket and rocked him in a chair that didn’t rock, gently smoothing his little brown infant curls. Renee spit on her fingers and cleaned her son’s face of the grime of the day. She sang him to sleep with a lullaby, a fantasy of unrealistic hope. Somehow it had been very real when her mother had sung it to her many years before. Jimmy grinned, looking up into his mother’s eyes as she rocked and whispered the song more than sang it.
C u r l y Locks, C u r l y Locks
Wilt thou be mine
Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor feed the swine
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam
And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream
Renee sang it again with tears slowly ruining her heavy makeup. She placed her son in the top wooden drawer of a beat-up dresser that served as a bed before locking the door and leaving him in the apartment while she went to work. If the night went well, she’d be back a time or two, accompanied by a friend.
At three years old, James walked to work with his mommy in the afternoons and played along the streets while Renee sat on a broken bench with Sadie, a partner prostitute with dark orange hair. Sadie nursed her newborn baby girl, Marilyn, who she called “Pookie.” The baby, with a shock of wavy auburn hair and big blue eyes, was a happier miniature version of her mother. Sometimes one of Sadie’s regulars walked by and stopped to talk. James couldn’t hear what was said but a few minutes later Sadie stopped the feeding, slid her breast inside her blouse, and declared the baby fed. She stood and handed Pookie to Renee for a while as Sadie and the customer walked toward her flat. James sat down at his mother’s feet and played in the dust. Renee put the baby down next to her son.
The women worked in pairs so one could watch the children and hold the position if a customer showed up. Sometimes Renee would grab Jimmy’s hand and hurry behind the nearest building. Jimmy noticed that Sadie picked up Pookie and did the same as a black carriage rolled by on the rutted street. Renee mentioned to Sadie that the constable was getting to be a pest with his weekly patrols. Sadie didn’t say much because sometimes the constable winked at her and she walked away with the constable.
The girls were always on the lookout for fancy carriages with skinny-legged horses entering their street. Well-dressed gentlemen from the wealthier boroughs sometimes rode up in carriages providing the girls with a chance for income for the evening..
“Here comes a carriage, Mommy,” Jimmy said, as the women dozed, leaning into each other, back to back on the bench.
“How many in the team, Jimmy?” Renee asked, opening one eye then the other.
“Looks to be two horses, Mommy,” her son reported proudly.
“Come on Sadie,” Renee said. “Put the baby down and get up. This could be dinner for one of us.” As the carriage approached, the women stood, brushing back their hair, smoothing their dresses and smiling. The carriage passed by with a look of disdain from the dark occupant inside. Some days it seemed the rich had better things to do, and all the four souls on the corner got for their trouble was a smile and a wink from the driver.
The following year James passed the summer playing with Pookie. They ran from one end of the street to the other, stopping in between for a hug or a playful spank from their mommies. It was another year before James sensed a change in his mommy. They were sleeping together by now in the only bed, but somehow there was a growing distance between them. His mother never looked happy at work and for no reason she seemed irritated at him much of the time. Some days she didn’t say more than “Morning’’ when she got up, and that was all she said until noon.
“Mommy, are you mad at me?” James asked one afternoon as Renee got ready for work.
“God no, Jimmy,” she said. “Mommy’s just tired, I suppose.” She fell silent, looking away with nothing more to say.
“Jim Bo, come here,” she said, reaching out to hug her son. “You know I love you and want what’s best for you. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got something I’ve been meaning to give you,” Renee said, digging in the bottom of her bag.
“Jimmy,” she said, kneeling down to her son’s eye level, “this is a ring my father made for me with my initials carved inside, a year before he died. He made it from a piece of mahogany he’d stolen and gave it to me on my seventh birthday,” Renee said, holding her son and resting her cheek on his head. Her hair hung loose and it covered their faces like a soft silky shield against the world outside. “I grew out of the ring some time ago,” she said. “And I have been meaning to give it to you. You are growing up fast Jimmy so I think it’s time.”
“Does it mean we’re married, mommy?” Jim asked, squinting to see the carvings in the blur of the light in the apartment. Renee slipped the ring on his finger.
“It is given in love, Jimmy, so I guess it can mean whatever you want it to mean.”
“Thanks, Mommy. I love my present and I love you.”
Renee smiled at her son and lowered her eyes. She had carved her son’s initials inside the ring next to those carved long before by her father.
Jimmy didn’t really know or care how poor they were. He played along the street and helped his mother in any way he could, including standing in line at the pump to get water and emptying the chamber pot each evening. By age five, however, Jim began asking questions.
“Pookie, why do they sit all day on that bench?” he asked. “Now she’s making me stay in the hallway for hours when she has a friend come into the apartment.”
“I don’t know,” Marilyn said. “Maybe the friends don’t like little kids.” Marilyn was two years younger than Jimmy and didn’t yet suffer from the same level of curiosity. “Chase me, Jimmy. Come on and chase me,” she persisted. His little friend loved to run and scream as Jimmy chased her down the street.
When guests stayed all night Jimmy had to move out of his mother’s bed to the floor across the room. She explained that the visitors were friends who came to the flat to drink and visit with her. He couldn’t help but wonder if they were really friends and uncles, as she sometimes said, and why they never talked to him. They just looked at him and went back to visiting with his mommy. Most of all he wanted to know about the fights that he could hear and feel across the dark room. He noticed his mother would use extra makeup on her face after a night of visiting with some of these friends. Seemingly irritated by her son’s curiosity, Renee sent him out to play on the streets during the evenings, instructing him to stay away from the corner as well as the apartment. James wondered if her sudden preference for working without his assistance was because she was somehow ashamed of him.
With his mom sleeping (and healing from the prior night’s visits) during the day and welcoming new visitors at night, James was glad to get outside to play and he began to stay out all day. On one occasion, returning at night, he interrupted his mother and a visitor James had seen earlier in the week. The man his mother called Walter, yelled at Jimmy to get out. Walter grabbed Jimmy’s arm and whipped him against the wall.
“Walter, stop!” Renee pleaded. “You’ve got to leave.”
“Somebody’s leavin’, Love, but it ain’t likely me,” Walter said, his eyes sparkling even in the dark. Renee stood up and grabbed Walter around the neck, but he knocked her back into the bed with an elbow to the ribs, followed by a slap to the face with the back of his hand. Jimmy could hear his mother yell in pain as she fell to the bed sobbing. He was trying to stand and go to her when Walter made a drunken lurch in the dark, kicking Jimmy across the room into the chamber pot which emptied in his lap.
“Get your stinking ass out of me sight,” Walter shouted, bending to grab Jimmy by the hair, “before I choose to throw ya out the window.”
Instead, he threw Jimmy out the door where he crashed into the wall with a crack. Jimmy lay against the dark hallway wall in more physical pain than he’d ever felt in his short life. The stench of his own clothing, never close to fresh, made him lose the small chunk of cheese and bread he’d had at dinner. Jimmy took off the offending trousers and threw them down the stairwell, spending the night curled up leaning against the door for warmth and a sense of connection. Jimmy slept in the hall on the nights Walter visited. His mother put some bread and cheese in a tin for her son and set it in the hall next to the door each night. The second night the boy interrupted a small mouse who was halfway through eating Jimmy’s dinner.
Lying in the hall, trying to get warm enough to go to sleep, Jimmy thought of the disapproving looks from those who passed by the corner in their carriages. At first he didn’t understand, but guessed it was obvious: his ragged clothes and the layers of dirt on his face made him very different from those riding in the carriages. He planned to walk down to the New River at the south end of the borough and jump in to get his clothes and face sorted out a bit. The next day there was a rare streak of sunshine coming down on Islington so he headed for the river. If the sun stayed out awhile, his clothes would dry a bit on the way home. He hoped Walter would be gone by the time he reached the apartment. It would be another year before James began to understand his social position, and a lifetime to fully comprehend his mother’s life and her change in attitude toward her only child.
Renee never said much about Jimmy’s father except that he was from the Midlands. James asked where his father lived but Renee avoided the question, eventually saying he was a man who stayed at the house for a fortnight and then for some reason disappeared into the London mist. When Jimmy persisted with his questions and wondered if he would ever see his father, Renee said he was a sailor and she had heard he had died at sea.
A few months before Jimmy turned six, Renee’s business dried up and she kicked him out each morning to find his own food. What money she made was increasingly going to drink. Jimmy met other kids sentenced to foraging on the streets of London and began to run with three lads around his age. Twin boys, seven-year-olds Kenny and Kerry, were the first to befriend James after he had gone three days without knowing how to find food. The third boy in the group was a skinny eight-year-old kid named Max, a dark complected boy with darting brown eyes and a quick idea for every problem of living on the streets. All of the kids were escaping similar hostile home environments. To survive on the streets, the gang of small boys searched for food in rubbish bins and stole fruit from local vendors. They eventually developed a sometimes profitable pickpocket business with young Jimmy as the foil. Even at five, his big hands and stubby fingers made him a lousy lifter of wallets and jewelry, so others were assigned to do the actual lifting while Jimmy played the shill.
“No,” Jimmy shouted, running down the street looking behind him in fright. With his ragged clothes flapping and fear on his dirt-crusted face, Jimmy had developed a convincing act. On cue, just short of the target, he stumbled and fell rolling into the feet of a well-dressed stranger.
“Most sorry, Sir,” James said, looking up into the target’s eyes, clearly in fear for his life.
“Whoa, little man,” the gentleman said, lifting James up and dusting him off, further disheveling Jimmy’s’ collar-length curly mop. He reached into his front pocket for a small coin.
At that moment one of the twins bumped into the man, making a humble apology while the other twin removed the contents of the gentleman’s rear pocket.
“Here, young man,” the gentleman said, nodding to the clumsy twin and looking back, giving Jimmy a coin before sending him on his way. The man resumed his stroll minus his wallet, and the gang could look forward to eating well for a few days.
“Ta, Sir,” Jimmy said, waving gratefully and walking away. Out of the corner of his eye James could see the holding twin making a drop to Max as he walked briskly in the target’s direction. The twins continued to walk briskly the other way, relieved of any evidence of wrong doing.
The boys got better at the scam as they grew until they got caught hitting on the same local gentleman two days in a row.
Jimmy was on the receiving end of a beating from his mother and her visitor when the police bobby brought him home. Renee went into a rage and kicked him out of the house again. Bruised, in pain and confused, Jimmy leaned against the wall in the hallway outside his mommy’s flat and cried quietly for her attention. If she loved me as much as she says, he wondered, how could she prefer to be with that fat drunk rather than her own son? Jimmy decided to do something about his situation as soon as he found a way.
A fortnight later an unusual event happened in Islington. A traveling circus came to town and paraded its wagons and animals down the High Street on its way to the field at the other end of the borough where they were to pitch their tents and perform for three days. The small gang of four had seen billboards advertising circuses before, but they were for the traditional stationary circuses which performed in great halls built as amphitheaters. Earlier in the year the famous Barnum and Bailey Circus had come to London to perform in the London Circus Hall, but the only entertainment the boys gleaned from the show was looking at one of the billboards out on Liverpool Road. Max explained to the gang that the famous circuses performed in great halls and there was no way to sneak into these fortresses.
“I can’t believe it,” Max said, watching the animals and performers parade down the High Street. Reading the sides of the caravans rolling past, he said, “It’s called the Singer Circus Spectacular and they are going to perform shows here in Islington for three days.” The boys had never before seen a circus marching through their town. The discordant whistling notes of the calliope marked the middle of the parade of some 30 caravans painted in bright blue, red, and yellow and an entourage of clowns and other performers. Some were leading elephants, giraffes, and other animals that were not being employed hauling the caravans. A team of high-stepping black horses pulled the lead caravan, with its carved emblems and brightly-painted exterior. Teams of donkeys, camels, and a variety of other horses pulled the rest of the squeaking, swaying caravans.
Of considerable interest to the crowd were the menacing tigers, periodically roaring and charging the bars in their cages. The band provided lively marching tunes and the clowns tumbled and threw pieces of candy to the youngsters along the parade route. The young observers with Jimmy laughed at the animals stepping in the fresh dung left behind by the animals preceding them in the parade.
The Singer Circus, which played smaller communities, was sized and priced for the poorer boroughs of London and the smaller villages and towns spread throughout the English countryside. Jimmy and the other boys soaked in the sights, smells, and sounds of the parade passing by and then ran ahead to see it again. Down at Regent’s Park that evening, the boys were captivated by the teams of men who struck the tent stakes into the ground with precision timed hammers and rolled out the bundles of white canvas. Through it all they could hear the rhythm of the blacksmith’s hammer and anvil preparing and repairing shoes and hardware for the next day.
The smaller dining tent went up first while the main crew positioned the others and directed teams of horses to drag the main poles into position. For their finale the crew slowly winched the wave of canvas up the center pole of the Big Top. The boys joined the small crowd of onlookers in applauding the raising of the giant tent.
The next day the ragged workers from the night before were dressed in colorful costumes ready to entertain. Horses and elephants used for draft in setting up the site were plumed and ornamented, ready for the show. A fresh layer of straw was everywhere, mixing the intoxicating smells of animals, straw and dung.
Jimmy and the twins snuck under the tent by timing the route of the man assigned to keep freeloaders out, and managed to see a few minutes of their first-ever circus. The night gave the boys more color, noise, and fun than they had found in the sum of their whole lives. The second night they snuck in again. However, ten minutes into the show, just as the trained horses and performers were starting their act, they were observed by the guard and they had to flee before they were arrested. Jim had one lasting impression of the show he saw that first night. He was fascinated by the daring men and women of the high wire act. He fell asleep in the hallway that night dreaming of becoming a tightrope walker. The next night Jimmy sat alone at the edge of the nearby woods and listened to the ringmaster’s announcements, the cannons firing during the clowns’ act, the animal sounds, and the band. Magically, the circus took Jim away from his dismal life to a better place where splashes of color, music, laughing, and fun were everywhere at the same time. The magic also showed Jimmy for the first time how much he was missing living on the streets of Islington.
At the end of the three-day engagement, the circus packed up the tents, caravans, and animals for a journey to the next stop. Even watching the crew take down the Big Top and pack the equipment and animals for the road was exciting for Jimmy and his friends.
That evening Jimmy thought about the circus to the point that he couldn’t sleep. At 2:00 a.m., with his mother passed out across the room, six-year-old Jimmy put on his trousers, his ragged tan shirt and the thin short black coat his mother had outgrown. With a quid in his pocket from the young gang’s enterprises, he closed the door without making a sound and walked quietly down the creaking stairs into the night. At the end of Childerditch Lane, he turned right down Rosslyn’s Way toward the river. Tears filled his eyes as he walked, afraid of the dark and a possible attack from the pack of stray dogs known to roam the neighborhood at night. He was surprised at how alarming the night became as he walked away from his home without the gang to lead the way through the streets. Most of all he was afraid of what he was doing. The night before, he’d taken a chance and discussed his plan with Max.
“Go for it Jimmy,” Max had said. “I’d go with ya but for me there’s bigger money here in London. Remember what I taught ya, Jimmy. Ya gotta sell from deep inside or it’s no sale.”
Jim stopped in the dark street two or three times trying to make up his mind. Was this what he wanted? Was it what his mommy wanted him to do? Would she be better off without him? Could he be better off without his own mommy? In the end the “yes” answers outnumbered the “no” answers. A light rain began to fall and he squinted to focus on shadows that seemed to move. Were they street people waiting for a chance to jump out and take his money and maybe his clothes? He walked in small circles around the locked water pump. Finally, hearing two dogs howling to each other in the distance, he decided to keep moving.
The smells of a circus were unmistakable as he reached the park at the end of Priest’s Lane. The Big Top, and the two tents used for animal cages as well as for care and training, had been brought down along with the smaller dressing and wardrobe tents. The animals were in the caravans, except for the elephant which was staked at the north end of the pitch. The dining tent was the only one standing. Jimmy could hear the two cooks inside working and smelled breakfast being prepared. All was ready for an early departure in the morning.
Jimmy thought of trying to steal a piece of bread but knew he’d be sent back home if he was caught. He loved the smells of the circus, the wet canvas, the animals, and the crunch of the hay under foot. He walked slowly around the caravans, staying far clear of the elephant and trying not to wake the other animals or the exhausted crew. Jimmy walked quietly past an open door on one of the caravans and listened to a choppy chorus of snores flowing out into the night. He tried three locks before finding an unlocked box attached to the back of one of the caravans. Jimmy shook with fright at this final moment of decision. Would they send him back? Would the police put him in jail? Would they kill him with a bullet? Wiping water from his eyes with his sleeve, he decided he was too tired to worry any more. He climbed inside the box and quietly closed the lid.
Now he was safe from the dogs but not from the cold. Jimmy reached around under his body and covered himself with the box’s contents, heavy ropes it seemed. He wondered if his mommy would cry for him in the morning the way he was crying for her in the night. His teeth rattled until exhaustion took him to safety, to sleep.
The circus pulled out the next morning at 6:30 and proceeded up the narrow muddy road to another town for another three-day show, with an added member of the crew. Twice the caravans were stopped by deep ruts in the country roads, requiring a team of horses directed by the crew to free the wagons. After a long day’s travel, the winds were blowing as the circus arrived in the village of Shenfield. The riggers would work all night setting up for the first show the following night. The first order of business was to set up the kitchen equipment and raise the tent around the cooks as they worked. During the set-up the boss canvas-man went looking for an extra rope and pulley. Holding a fresh cup of coffee in one hand, he opened the green box attached to the stakes and canvas caravan and made a startling discovery.
