Dolly Biters

Introduction – Exhuming the CryptThat vampires once existed in the London of the 18th and 19th Centuries is not in question. After all, it is this knowledge that has brought you here, to these streets, filled with fog and gas-lamps and alluring women with teeth too sharp and manners too coarse to belong anywhere else but in the old East End of London. The streets that you are about to walk are streets that you will not recognise. They are not the Victorian streets of Christmas cards and biscuit tins and cosy televisual costume dramas. These streets are dangerous and dirty; they are filled with s**t and shadows and at any moment, out of these shadows, death could appear in the guise of a thug's bludgeon or a p********e's syphilis or a vampire's teeth. The truth of the matter, and it's a truth that you may already suspect, is that the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields were far more dangerous than you will ever truly comprehend. The average life expectancy in the East End of London was the mid-twenties (it was an extravagant mid-forties in wealthier areas such as Chelsea), with half of all children dying before they reached their tenth birthday. It was in this atmosphere that the vampires of Victorian London operated with all-but impunity. Death surrounded the mortals, and if it wasn't one thing that got you, well, it would be the other. To the vampire girls of Victorian London, we soft, weak humans were nothing but food, to be preyed upon and taken at leisure. We may thank our Gods (should we have cause to believe in such fancies) that we live now in the 21st Century, and not in the 1800s. For if this were the 1800s we would by now, undoubtedly, be dead. So enjoy these tales, these macabre tales of death and murder and lesbian s*x. Slaver over them, let them haunt your sleep and benumb your waking day. Laugh and curse and thrill along with our dark heroines, safe and secure in the knowledge that if these girls still lived, if our paths should ever cross, they would despise us, spit in our face, and then feast upon our blood. If my words seem harsh, then understand this: I only wish to impress upon you the dangerous times we are about to travel to, so you are prepared, so you are not shocked when you come face to face with the sheer depravity of their world and come running back to me, whining that I had not warned you sufficiently of the depths that you have been dragged down to. I have warned you. I have done my job. Now you may close this book and leave, or you may take my hand and let me lead you, safely through the medium of the printed word, into the vampire-infested streets of Victorian London. That choice is yours, and remember, you make it freely. Paul Voodini, 2015. Book 1 - The Holmes of the Baskervillesor the Fall & Rise & Fall Again of the Celebrated Heiress Miss Irene Adler, Lesbian Vampire, Dolly Biter, and Infamous Trollop London, 1866 The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed. A cholera epidemic causes 5,000 deaths. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson opens the St. Mary's Dispensary where women could seek medical advice from solely female practitioners. Cadbury's first sell cocoa for drinking. The General Post Office writes to all householders urging those without a front door letterbox to provide one. Demonstrations in Hyde Park in favour of parliamentary reform turn violent. HG Wells and Beatrix Potter are born.