shadow of britain

Chapter 711 An unexpected gain
If a man has no shillings in his pocket and has holes in his cuffs, others will feel as if he has a hole in his heart.

—William Thackeray
Old Fagin hunched over like a mouse hesitating whether to come out of a hole.

But under Arthur's cold gaze, the old crow finally succumbed.

He walked over and picked up the cloth bag that was placed on the corner of the counter. The cloth bag was small and didn't look worth much, but old Fagin held it in his trembling hands, as if it were some kind of explosive package with a lit fuse.

Fagin's Adam's apple moved twice, and he swallowed dryly.

"I didn't mean to take it..." Fagin said in a low voice, as if talking to himself, or as if he was apologizing to Arthur: "But she...she said it was for writing a letter...it's just a box."

"Then bring out 'Just a Box'," Arthur replied calmly. There was no accusation in his tone, but it sounded like a whip to old Fagin's ears, making his entire back burn.

He seemed to have accepted his fate. He closed his eyes and made up his mind. The belt that was tied to the bag loosened, and the cloth slowly fell off, revealing a milky white writing box.

There is no glittering gold or gaudy jewels, but only the warmth and elegance that ivory products should have. The box is inlaid with silver threads that smoothly form a blooming rose.

Arthur pushed the lid of the box gently with his fingertips, and it opened with a click, and a faint fragrance wafted to his face.

The sun shines obliquely on the inner cover, and the subtle light falls on a line of words engraved below the silver plate:

To V— Be your will sovereign. GR
For a moment, Arthur's breathing stopped.

"GR", this signature, Arthur hasn't seen it for several years.

He thought that the next time he would see this signature would probably be in some historical document, but he never imagined that this signature would be lying in a maritime store in Greenwich, waiting to be processed like scrap metal.

"GR" - George Rex, the personal signature abbreviation of former King George IV.

Fagin did not dare to look at Arthur's face, but only stared down at his hands.

Arthur cursed inwardly, but his expression didn't even move his eyebrows.

He took out a cigar from the cigar box, took a cigar from it, and handed another one to Fagin, then lit it for him himself. Two flames rose up, and Arthur put his arm around Fagin's shoulder and said, "Think positively, Fagin. In fact, the situation in Australia is not as bad as everyone says."

"Australia?" Old Fagin was so frightened that he stammered, "No... Mr. Hastings, you... you can't joke like that. Although I have done some dishonorable things in my life, I have never done anything bad. I am different from people like Fred and Solomon. I am an old-fashioned businessman. I only seek money, but I have never killed anyone!"

"I didn't say you killed anyone. If you did, it wouldn't be exile, but your neck would be hung on the gallows in front of Newgate Prison."

Arthur exhaled a puff of smoke lightly. "You are not an ordinary stolen goods dealer, but a royal stolen goods dealer. Even if they accuse you of crimes such as treason, stealing secrets, and conspiracy to subvert the constitution, I can understand it. Remember to hire a good lawyer to defend yourself. Oh, by the way, if you need, I can help you ask Lord Brougham to see if he is willing to take your case."

Fagin turned pale with fright, as if he had just crawled out of a grave.

"I...I really didn't know this box was so important!"

His voice was so anxious that it rose eight octaves. He could even star in Turandot: "I thought it was just a toy that some servant stole. I could wash it and change it into something else and sell it as a small ornament... Mr. Hastings, you are an old policeman. You have to believe me. At my age, is it worth taking such a big risk? I am satisfied as long as I can earn a living every day."

Arthur said nothing, but slowly put out his cigar in the porcelain mug beside the counter.

Seeing this, Fagin dared not hide any details, for he was afraid that he would miss this opportunity and the next time they met, one of them would be on the boat and the other on land.

"The girl who came to sell the things called herself Lizzie, but I'm not sure if it was her real name. She came in wearing a gray dress, looked clean, and her face was pale. As soon as she came in, she asked if I could deal with this thing... I really didn't want to answer at first, but she said..."

Old Fagin paused suddenly, as if hesitating whether to go on.

Arthur frowned: "What?"

"She said it was her brother's fate!"

Fagin's eyes were fixed, and his speech was getting faster and faster: "She said that her brother worked in a shipyard, and his hand was cut by a machine. The factory only paid him a few shillings and kicked him out. Her brother owed money to the drugstore, and couldn't pay the food bill, so he was reported by the creditor and sent to the fleet prison. She said that if the fine was not collected before the end of the month, her brother would be dragged to do hard labor. With the injury and the torture, he would definitely not live past spring... You know, I am a kind-hearted person, so..."

Arthur leaned against the counter. "I don't know if you have a good heart or not. But if you believe everything someone says, you won't survive in Crow's Nest."

Old Fagin also knew that Arthur was telling the truth. Although he was not a very bad person, anyone who could be a stolen goods dealer in the slums must have been a shrewd person who had practiced for decades.
After all, he was blinded by greed at the time and failed to stop his greed, which resulted in him taking on such a big thing.

"I just... I just couldn't help myself. She was standing at the door with the box in her hand, her face pale, and she didn't say a word. When I saw that the store was empty, I felt that if I didn't take this job, I might not be able to earn enough money for food this month."

"You think too much." Arthur said calmly: "Maybe you had your last decent dinner in your life yesterday."

Fagin shuddered and begged for mercy: "Mr. Hastings, you are a reasonable man. I know you are the most compassionate. You were able to bring a rascal like Adam back to the right path. Please give me another chance... This time I have really learned my lesson! I will not even dare to accept a teacup brought by a servant in the future!"

"Did she ever say that she had stolen the box?"

Fagin paused, his eyes evidently wandering.

"Tell the truth," Arthur added.

The old sly guy lowered his head and stammered, "She didn't say she stole it. She...she said she picked it up. She said she saw it lying alone on an old flannel cloth, covered with dust, when she was cleaning the storage room. She said that since no one remembered it, it wouldn't be considered stealing if I took it. Her brother was dying in the sponge room, and this inconspicuous box might save his life."

Arthur didn't respond immediately, but simply tapped the counter lightly with his knuckles, thinking.

"Did she ever say where she lived?"

"No, she just said she might come again in the next few days to see if I had any chance to help." Fagin swallowed his saliva and added, "She said if she couldn't sell it, she would pawn it to save people."

Arthur nodded.

"Fagin."

"exist!"

The old man straightened up reflexively.

"If she comes again, don't say anything." Arthur stood up straight, took out his check folder from his bosom, signed a twenty-pound note and handed it to Fagin. "Just tell her that you have found a sucker who is willing to pay fifty pounds for the box. The twenty pounds is a deposit, which should be enough for the creditor to release his brother from the sponge room. As for the rest of the money, just say that I can raise it in a few days. When you have agreed with her on the next withdrawal time, send someone to find me at 15 Lancaster Gate."

Fagin nodded his head. "Yes, yes, I will say it exactly as it is, without changing a word." "One more thing."

"Please tell me."

"Don't even think about running away. Cooperate with me and I'll make sure nothing happens to you. But..." Arthur opened the door and a cold, wet wind blew into the room. "If you lose your mind and do something stupid, it won't end well, whether you run to India or Tasmania."

Arthur stepped out of the maritime store. The streets were wet and cold. The weather before it was about to rain was the most annoying. The air was full of the smell of dampness and coal smoke.

Years later, Greenwich's streets are still winding and full of the rough vitality of the dock area.

But perhaps due to the bad weather, as light rain fell, all this energy was blown away by a gust of wind.

Arthur didn't even bother to hold an umbrella. He just pulled the brim of his hat down a little and let the wind lift up a corner of his coat.

He remembered that there used to be a shoe repair stall at the entrance of the street, and a small cart selling steamed meat patties was often parked nearby.

The car owner was an old man with a rash on his face. He was the only one among the vendors on Central Street who was willing to greet him. Whenever they met, he liked to take off his hat and say hello: "Is work going well today, Mr. Officer?"

Now the stall is long gone, leaving only a few wild cats as thin as ghosts in the corner, digging for food in a pile of rotten fish bones.

As Arthur walked along the graveled lane towards the Trafalgar Restaurant he caught a glimpse of the workhouse beside St Alphic's Church.

The door had not changed, it was still mottled and heavy, but now there was a new bronze plate hung on the iron lock, engraved with - Greenwich Joint Workhouse, a registered unit of the new Poor Law in 1834.

The font is cold and hard, as cold as iron.

For London's poor, life has indeed been difficult in recent years, even worse than before.

Britain is perhaps the only country in the world where poverty is criminalized. Under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, begging and sleeping rough without a source of income are illegal.

Although the passage of the parliamentary reform in 1832 triggered collective jubilation among the middle class, when the urban middle class came to the fore, the combination of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism and the petty middle class gave birth to a monster - the New Poor Law of 1834.

What made it even more difficult for Arthur to accept was that he even knew the person who played a decisive role in the new Poor Law Commission: Lord Brougham's private secretary Edwin Chadwick.

Arthur and Chadwick had worked closely together during the cholera epidemic, but it turned out that even though they were both followers of Jeremy Bentham, they still had different opinions on different issues.

The New Poor Law was strongly hostile to state subsidies. They submitted a 13-volume report of millions of words, doing their best to prove that the principle of least suitability should be implemented in social relief, that is, living conditions in the workhouse must be worse than those of the poorest free laborers, so as to prevent people from deliberately seeking relief and eliminate laziness.

Disraeli had previously criticized the New Poor Law to Arthur when he visited Göttingen, but now it seems that the actual situation may be worse than Disraeli had imagined.

When Arthur was a policeman at Scotland Yard, the paupers and vagrants in the East End received about 3 pence in relief per week. After the new Poor Law was passed, this amount was quickly reduced to 1 pence, and the money was only given to poor people with a certain income.

If you want to be completely dependent on the parish for help, I'm sorry, but you must go to the workhouse now.

However, life in the workhouse was not necessarily any easier. The main requirement of the newly established Central Poor Relief Committee for the director of the workhouse was to control the budget and reduce financial expenditure. To achieve this, the easiest way was to cut the number of employees, reduce the quality of personnel, and reduce the supply of daily necessities.

Of course, it might be unfair to blame the poor of London entirely on the Board of Poor Practice.

The growth in the number of poor people and the spread of slums were, at least in Arthur's view, driven primarily by the rapid growth of London's population.

Arthur first arrived in London in 1826. When he was still in the countryside of York, he found that many people in the village were constantly pouring into the city.

This is not because York folks don't like to stay in their hometown, but because many agricultural jobs are being replaced by rapidly developing industrialization and factory operations, and the wages of rural farmhands are falling almost every year.

But when Arthur came to London, the situation was completely reversed. You could see new faces in London every year. Although many people had a hard time here, only a few left.

After all, you can’t find squeezed lemon peels in the gutter in the countryside, let alone sell them to manufacturers who squeeze the residual juice to make cheap lemon candy.

In London, bone pickers competed with dogs in the streets for discarded bones, which they sold to bone boilers for two shillings a bushel.

Metals such as nails can also be found in the pebble piles and sold to dealers in maritime stores.

Rag pickers walk up to 10 kilometres a day collecting metal, rags and bottles, earning an average of 2 to 3 pence a day.

Some people may say, since life in the city is so hard, why not go to the countryside?
In reality, these people do live a nomadic lifestyle just like the MPs of Westminster and the shopkeepers of Regent Street, but at slightly different times.

Typically, they spent their summers and autumns in rural and suburban areas, working as bricklayers, diggers, or farmhands.

But when winter came, most of the wealthy people returned home for vacation and the weather was not suitable for continuing construction work, so they returned to London to find work.

Generally speaking, the highest-paying construction sites are the most sought-after. If you can't find a job there, go to factories, such as brick factories, or work related to heating, such as chimney sweeps and coal carriers. It is well known that such jobs generally require more workers in cold seasons.

Some of the lucky ones who have mastered a craft, such as jugglers, have a completely different migration schedule. Jugglers usually leave London in March or April, perform on a nationwide Easter tour, and return to London before October to welcome the upcoming garden season.

As for why Arthur knows so much about the daily routines of migrant workers?

That was naturally because the places where they settled in London had always been areas closely monitored by the police. St. Giles, little Adam's hometown, Tothillfield next to the Parliament, near the Mint, and the area on the south bank of the Thames where Greenwich was located were all areas where they gathered.

It is no exaggeration to say that at the worst time of the year, from Rotherhithe to southeast London, almost the population of an entire town could live under the more than 500 bridge arches.

Arthur did not completely disbelieve what old Fagin had said about the girl of unknown origin. After all, such things were not particularly uncommon in London, and most poor people were usually only one accident or illness away from destruction.

If the situation was true, Arthur would not mind helping out. Although a few dozen pounds was not a small amount of money, it was nothing to him. Even if the Order of St. Anna awarded to him by Tsar Nicholas I was auctioned, it would not be worth more than that.

But what made Arthur even more curious was why he didn't hear anything at Scotland Yard about the theft of the items given by the king.

Is it because the owner did not come to Scotland Yard to report the case, or is it because this little loach Ridley is not honest again and did not report the news related to the royal family even though he knew about it?
If it was the former, then Arthur really wanted to see which family was so cowardly. It would be fine if the security measures were careless, but how could they not even know that something was missing from their own home?
If it is the latter, it is not too difficult to verify.

After all, he has more than one friend in Scotland Yard, especially Inspector Charles Field, a backbone of the Criminal Investigation Department who was trained by him. No case can be hidden from the eyes of this new detective of Scotland Yard.

(End of this chapter)