The Great Train Robbery - Crichton Michael - Страница 27

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He knew that Burgess fell into the lowest-paid category of railway employee. An engine driver was paid 35 shillings a week; a conductor 25 shillings; a coachman 20 or 21; but a guard was paid 15 shillings a week and counted himself lucky it was not a good deal less.

Burgess's wife made ten shillings a week, which meant that the family lived on a total of about sixty-five pounds a year. Out of this came certain expenses-- Burgess had to provide his own uniforms-- so that the true income was probably closer to fifty-five pounds a year, and for a family of four it was a very rough go.

Many Victorians had incomes at that level, but most contrived supplements of one sort or another: extra work, tips, and a child in industry were the most common. The Burgess household had none of these. They were compelled to live on their income, and it was little wonder that Burgess felt uncomfortable in a place that charged two shillings a drink. It was very far beyond his means.

"What's it to be?" Burgess said, not looking at Pierce.

"I was wondering about your vision."

"My vision?"

"Yes, your eyesight."

"My eyes are good enough."

"I wonder," Pierce said, "what it would take for them to go bad."

Burgess sighed, and did not speak for a moment. Finally he said in a weary voice, "I done a stretch in Newgate a few years back. I'm not wanting to see the cockchafer again."

"Perfectly sensible," Pierce said. "And I don't want anybody to blow my lay. We both have our fears."

Burgess gulped his drink. "What's the sweetener?"

"Two hundred quid," Pierce said.

Burgess coughed, and pounded his chest with a thick fist. "Two hundred quid," he repeated.

"That's right," Pierce said. "Here's ten now, on faith." He removed his wallet and took out two fivepound notes; he held the wallet in such a way that Burgess could not fail to notice it was bulging. He set the money on the bar top.

"Pretty a sight as a hot nancy," Burgess said, but he did not touch it. "What's the lay?"

"You needn't worry over the lay. All you need to do is worry over your eyesight."

"What is it I'm not to see, then?"

"Nothing that will get you into trouble. You'll never see the inside of a lockup again, I promise you that."

Burgess turned stubborn. "Speak plain," he said.

Pierce sighed. He reached for the money. "I'm sorry," he said,. "I fear I must take my business elsewhere."

Burgess caught his hand. "Not overquick," he said. "I'm just asking."

"I can't tell you."

"You think I'll blow on you to the crushers?"

"Such things," Pierce said, "have been known to happen."

"I wouldn't blow."

Pierce shrugged.

There was a moment of silence. Finally, Burgess reached over with his other hand and plucked away the two five-pound notes. "Tell me what I do," he said.

"It's very simple," Pierce said. "Soon you will be approached by a man who will ask you whether your wife sews your uniforms. When you meet that man, you simply… look away."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"For two hundred quid?"

"For two hundred quid."

Burgess frowned for a moment, and then began to laugh.

"What's funny?" Pierce said.

"You'll never pull it," Burgess said. "It's not to be done, that one. There's no cracking those safes, wherever I look. Few months past, there's a kid, works into the baggage car, wants to do those safes. Have a go, I says to him, and he has a go for half an hour, and he gets no further than the tip of my nose. Then I threw him off smartly, bounced him on his noggin."

"I know that," Pierce said. "I was watching."

Burgess stopped laughing.

Pierce withdrew two gold guineas from his pocket and dropped them on the counter. "There's a dolly-mop in the corner-- pretty thing, wearing pink. I believe she's waiting for you," Pierce said, and then he got up and walked off.

Economists of the mid-Victorian period note that increasing numbers of people made their living by what was then called "dealing," an inclusive term that referred to supplying goods and services to the burgeoning middle class. England was then the richest nation on earth, and the richest in history. The demand for all kinds of consumer goods was insatiable, and the response was specialization in manufacture, distribution, and sale of goods. It is in Victorian England that one first hears of cabinetmakers who made only the joints of cabinets, and of shops that sold only certain kinds of cabinets.

The increasing specialization was apparent in the underworld as well, and nowhere more peculiar than in the figure of the "eel-skinner." An eel-skinner was usually a metalworker gone bad, or one too old to keep up with the furious pace of legitimate production. In either case, he disappeared from honest circles, re-emerging as a specialized supplier of metal goods to criminals. Sometimes the eel-skinner was a coiner who could not get the stamps to turn out coins.

Whatever his background, his principal business was making eel-skins, or coshes. The earliest eel-skins were sausage-like canvas bags filled with sand, which rampsmen and gonophs-- muggers and thieves-- could carry up their sleeves until the time came to wield them on their victims. Later, eel-skins were filled with lead shot, and they served the same purpose.

An eel-skinner also made other articles. A "neddy" was a cudgel, sometimes a simple iron bar, sometimes a bar with a knob at one end. The "sack" was a two-pound iron shot placed in a strong stocking. A "whippler" was a shot with an attached cord, and was used to disable a victim head on; the attacker held the shot in his hand and flung it at the victim's face, "like a horrible yo-yo." A few blows from these weapons were certain to take the starch out of any quarry, and the robbery proceeded without further resistance:

As firearms became more common, eel-skinners turned to making bullets. A few skilled eel-skinners also manufactured sets of bettys, or picklocks, but this was demanding work, and most stuck to simpler tasks.

In early January, 1855, a Manchester eel-skinner named Harkins was visited by a gentleman with a red beard who said he wanted to purchase a quantity of LC shot.

"Easy enough done," the skinner said. "I make all manner of shot, and I can make LC right enough. How much will you have?"

"Five thousand," the gentleman said.

"I beg pardon?"

"I said, I will have five thousand LC shot"

The eel-skinner blinked. "Five thousand-- that's a quantity. That's-- let's see-- six LC to the ounce. Now, then…" He stared up at the ceiling and plucked at his lower lip. "And sixteen… now, that makes it… Bless me, that's more'n fifty pounds of shot all in."

"I believe so," the gentleman said.

"You want fifty pounds of LC shot?"

"I want five thousand, yes."

"Well, fifty pounds of lead, that'll take some doing, and the casting-- well, that'll take some doing. That'll take some time, five thousand LC shot will, sometime indeed."

"I need it in a month," the gentleman said.

"A month, a month… Let's see, now… casting at a hundred a mold… Yes, well…" The eel-skinner nodded. "Right enough, you shall have five thousand within a month. You'll be collecting it?"

"I will," the gentleman said, and then he leaned closer, in a conspiratorial fashion. "It's for Scotland, you know."

"Scotland, eh?"

"Yes, Scotland."

"Oh, well, yes, I see that plain enough," the eel-skinner said, though the reverse was clearly true. The red-bearded man put down a deposit and departed, leaving the eel-skinner in a state of marked perplexity. He would have been even more perplexed to know that this gentleman had visited skinners in Newcastler-on-Tyne, Birmingham, Liverpool, and London, and placed identical orders with each of them, so that he was ordering a total of two hundred and fifty pounds of lead shot. What use could anyone have for that?

London at the mid-century had six morning newspapers, three evening newspapers, and twenty influential weeklies. This period marked the beginning of an organized press with enough power to mold public opinion and, ultimately, political events. The unpredictability of that power was highlighted in January, 1855.

On the one hand, the first war correspondent in history, William Howard Russell, was in Russia with the Crimean troops, and his dispatches to the Times had aroused furious indignation at home. The charge of the light Brigade, the bungling of the Balaclava campaign, the devastating winter when British troops, lacking food and medical supplies, suffered a 50 percent mortality-- these were all reported in the press to an increasingly angry public.

By January, however, the commander of British forces, Lord Raglan, was severely ill, and Lord Cardigan-- "haughty, rich, selfish and stupid," the man who had bravely led his Light Brigade to utter disaster, and then returned to his yacht to drink champagne and sleep-- Lord Cardigan had returned home, and the press everywhere hailed him as a great national hero. It was a role he was only too happy to play. Dressed in the uniform he had worn at Balaclava, he was mobbed by crowds in every city; hairs from his horse's tail were plucked for souvenirs. London shops copied the woolen jacket he had worn in the Crimea-- called a "Cardigan"-- and thousands were sold.

The man known to his own troops as "the dangerous ass" went about the country delivering speeches recounting his prowess in leading the charge; and as the months passed, he spoke with more and more emotion, and was often forced to pause and revive himself. The press never ceased to cheer him on; there was no sense of the chastisement that later historians have richly accorded him.

But if the press was fickle, public tastes were even more so. Despite all the provocative news from Russia, the dispatches which most intrigued Londoners in January concerned a man-eating leopard that menaced Naini Tal in northern India, not far from the Burmese border. The "Panar man-eater" was said to have killed than four hundred natives, and accounts were remarkable for their vivid, even lurid detail. "The vicious Panar beast," wrote one correspondent, "kills for the sake of killing and not for any food. It rarely eats any portion of the body of its victims, although two weeks past it ate the upper torso of an infant after stealing it from its crib. Indeed, the majority of its victims have been children under the age of ten who are unfortunate enough to stray from the center of the village after nightfall: Adult victims are generally mauled and later die of suppurating wounds; Mr. Redby, a hunter of the region, says these infections are caused by rotten flesh lodged in the beast's claws. The Panar killer is exceedingly strong, and has been seen to carry off a fully grown female adult in its jaws, while the victim struggles and cries out most piteously."

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