Liverpool made Josiah Hewlett uncomfortable. Not only was the local accent completely unintelligible to him, but, as soon as he spoke, everyone knew he was from “Lunnon,” and that worried him. In a city seething with Irish labourers, its own native population, and visitors from the Lancashire countryside, he stood out—not ideal for a man who was avoiding the police and wished to be unnoticed.
His ready cash was dwindling, and he had to face the choice of raising more through the sale of some of the more valuable pieces of jewellery he’d acquired or selling the leases he held on slum properties in Mile End, Poplar and Whitechapel. He scanned a copy of the Morning Chronicle he’d managed to filch from a pile of old newspapers on a bench in the local pub. It was five days old—a bare two days
