Fear

1- London 1888

Maria Docherty was a workhouse kid. She'd been working there for almost eight of her twelve years. She had no idea of her age or birthday, just that, at sometime over the last year her body had changed and that she would bleed from her 'doodle' about once every moon.

She'd seen it happen to other older girls and it meant that soon she'd make a choice to leave the only place she'd ever really known and try to find employment, maybe as a servant in a well to do house and then maybe find a man to keep her. The other options were there too she could as an adult sign herself back in here, or she could trade her body for a penny to purchase a bed for the night.

She lay awake on what used to be a mattress on the old iron framed bed. Tilda, her bunk partner, was already snoring from the top end of the bed.  They shared a dormitory with about 100 others. She watched as a pair of rats sniffed around the corners of the room. They'd be lucky to find a decent meal here just like the rest of the poor who live and work here.

She pulled the blanket she'd sewn together, from the rag ends she'd lifted from the workshop floor, to her chin and tried to find a position to sleep in.

Her blanket was ever growing she'd add to it when she could. She kept the pilfered needle hidden in the waistband of her skirt and when she couldn't find any threads to join the rags together she had found that several strands of her hair twisted and tied formed a strong enough bond. She'd been fortunate enough to avoid the last four outbreaks of head lice and hadn't had her head shaved now in over a year.

She'd been a workhouse girl for so long now that it was normal. The early starts, the limited food, the mornings of toil and sweat in the laundry room. The almost efficient production line in the sewing station. Yet there was a camaraderie, a sense of family and there had always been Liz to look out for her.

Maria's Dad lost his job as a cobbler, due to his reliance on alcohol and lack of ability to get to work on time, if at all. Then they had no choice, her mum, her and her three brothers ended up here. If a man moved into a workhouse then it was expected that his whole family would do so. It wasn't an easy choice but if it wasn't the workhouse then he'd have to send her mother out to 'work'. Prostitution was probably one of the biggest trades in Whitechapel behind innkeeping.

The Whitechapel area of London was in the most part a series of slum housing, poorhouses like the one Maria lived in, casual lodging houses which were a mix of mini workhouses and brothels. The streets were awash with urine and the great unwashed. A public house stood on every corner and was full of drunkards, whores and undesirables. Crime was rife. Violent criminals gangs run the streets.

The police were new, literally new the Metropolitan was established a little over 50 years previous in 1829. Replacing the watchmen and the runners. So there was little to deter the criminality that was the lifeblood of the capital's east end.

1888 had been a year of ghastly murders, sure there were people killed all the time from gang fights, bare knuckle boxing and pub brawls. People were taken out by gangland retribution, working women were found, strangled or stabbed in the courtyards and alleyways that led away from the main thoroughfares. But these murders were different, they were brutal, sadistic and cruel. They were frenzied but efficient, chaotic yet proficient, skilled. Whoever he was, he was cruel, swift and adept.

All the women in the workhouse were all gossiping about it, apparently last night he got another one. Someone who had just signed in had brought in a discarded news sheet and Liz, who was one of the few who could read, had did so aloud to the other women in the dorm. Most of the children were asleep, but as Maria eavesdropped into the story she became even more scared about what the outside world would hold.

She heard them speculating, 'he's gotta be a leather apron to butcher them like that.' Maria knew that leather aprons worked with meat like a butcher but sometimes they also worked with the dead. Like the men who worked in the morgue at the old workhouse, which was now the infirmary. She wondered if she'd met him. This killer. If he was one of the old workers or if he'd been a resident here.

Maria shuffled about restless. She couldn't stop thinking about the details she heard. 'The woman was stabbed in 20 places. No weapon was found near her, and her murderer has left no trace. She is of middle age and height, has black hair and a large, round face, and apparently belonged to the lowest class.'

Liz had really been her ward since arrived in the workhouse; her mother succumbed to a colic that wiped out over 40 people before it abated. Her father was in the men's dorm and was put to hard Labour, breaking down bricks. He also couldn't curb his habit and was frequently punished for being under the influence of alcohol. He'd also have a week's bread and water, regularly for playing cards with some of the other men.

So Liz was her constant. The dorm mother. She didn't know much about Liz only that those who knew her well sometimes called her Bess or Bessie, she spoke English well but with a foreign accent. Some of the people suggested that she had found herself in the Whitechapel Union house as a result of being a woman of poor character, Maria wondered what that meant as had only ever found Liz to be kind.

She'd also heard that Liz was a mother before, she considered if this were true as she never spoke of children. Maybe she lost them and it was too hard. But in Victorian society where children were expected to be silent and were chastised much more than they were praised for the fear they would become spoiled, any term of endearment was welcomed.

"Hey what's up my little treasure, can't you sleep?" Liz was checking on the youngsters and noticed Maria was still very much awake.
"Ms Liz, sorry. I heard the story from the paper."
"Tis okay my  lovely,  nobody 'll touch y'in 'ere. They'd have to get through me first." She smiled. Liz spoke in a bizarre accent she'd been in the east end long enough to pick up the colloquialisms, but her English while perfect was still laced with Scandinavian tones.
Maria smiled as the woman tucked her in.
"Try, get some sleep y'll be needing it come morning."
Maria nodded.

What Maria didn't know was that Liz was actually now paid a small amount to watch over the ward. She'd not actually stayed in the workhouse for a while. When everyone was asleep she would leave and return to the casual workers' lodgings. Where she would clean the rooms and then return to the workhouse for dinner and bedtime. She'd leave again about midnight.

Liz liked a drink. It was ultimately her downfall. She had come from a well to do family in Sweden. She had married well, but did not love her husband, nor was she interested in any man but, she had to find a way to live and that meant that she had taken to selling her body in her native country.

London was meant to be a new start. But she couldn't let it go, Stella the only person she ever loved and she was gone from the world much too young. When they were really only just children themselves. The numbness that drink brought was the only way she could find sleep. Sex was meant money for her lodgings and nothing else.

So Liz locked up the dorm and headed to the ten bells.