The Hellgate

Chapter 11

I walked home feeling somewhat vindicated. My work had made headlines, if only in the radical press. As to the meagerness of the news they"d had to print, it was hardly their fault, I"d left them with precious few facts; the victim unidentified, no suspects, Inspector Reid, Head of CID in H Division was in charge of the investigation. And, again, only in the radical press.

The other papers and, presumably and sadly, the citizens of London who had heard of the murder at all, considered it merely an activity of those people in the slums.

those peopleUltimately, the message I"d delivered and the fear I"d hoped to generate had reached regrettably few. My first outing could not be considered an unparalleled success. I would need to work harder.

With that in mind, I contemplated my immediate future. I felt it too risky to spend much time on the streets without knowing the status of the police investigations. But that presented problems. I had not taken into account how seriously political bias affected the way news was disseminated. The Tories didn"t like sensationalism. The Liberals didn"t like facts. The Radicals didn"t like the government and used their papers as sharp sticks, weapons of war. If I was to know, what I needed to know for my safety, I would need to bide my time, to seek out varied sources of news and to sift that news carefully.

I arrived safely home at the same time I arrived at a conclusion. I would need to collect information without being nicked in the streets or drawing undue attention to myself at work or at home. Luckily for me, my landlady was a busy woman.

This would, perhaps, be the correct moment to provide a few details regarding my landlady. As I"ve made it plain, Mrs Griggs was a respectable widow. She was a church goer, yes, of course, but not to excess. Religion was not her passion. What fueled her was social justice for women. She"d chosen one aspect in particular as her fight; Mrs Griggs was a Dress Reformist.

social justiceTo my landlady, and her followers, stays (or corsets as the posh would have it) were a dangerous moral evil. Stays, they believed, promoted promiscuous views of the female body and a harmful preoccupation with fashion. In particular she, and those she gathered round her, railed against the practice of tightlacing. The health risks, Mrs Griggs insisted, were many; damage to internal organs and compromised fertility being the two most obvious. The poor health of women could, in their vociferous opinions, be directly blamed on excessive corsetry and tightlacing.

corsetstightlacingSupporters of stays… ha ha. Forgive me.

Corset advocates… insisted they helped women maintain upright postures, figures to please the eye, and the necessary elements for a moral and well-ordered society; fashion, beauty, and health.

Dress Reformists could not have disagreed more, and they were not alone. Many in church authority spoke against tightlacing owing to the risk to the female soul, some doctors counseled against health risks to the female body, and not a few journalists used the subject to condemn the vanity and frivolity of women in general. Mrs Griggs, and her Dress Reformists, utilized all of those arguments, declaring stays and the practice of tightlacing to be morally indecent, physically detrimental, and the result of a male conspiracy to make women subservient.

Energized, apparently, by news reports of the public orations and political agitations of American women active in various movements in the United States, Mrs Griggs believed a change in fashion would not only ease physical movement and add needed comfort, but might alter the female place in society; allow opportunity for mobility, decent wages, and independence from men and marriage.

fromThe weekly meetings of the Dress Reformists occasionally rotated from one member"s residence to the next, but mostly the burden (or the honor) visited our residence. Often, on the nights Mrs Griggs acted as host, I heard my landlady"s authoritative voice through the floorboards of my room, speaking to the gathered like-minded ladies of the community. “Burn up the corsets!” she would shout.

Then would come the excited replies:

“We will never need whalebones again!”

“Make a bonfire of the cruel steels!”

“Free our abdomens!”

“Heave a sigh of relief for our emancipation!”

Following this breathless c****x, they"d all bask in their afterglow, clinking tea cups and devouring cakes, their digestion unfettered by nasty old stays.

Why this long recital about the political and social activities of my landlady? Not merely to be frivolous. Indeed, there was a point. It"s important to understand what the Dress Reformists" meetings were usually like, in order to fully grasp how different those same gatherings would (over the next several months) become. More, how vitally important those gathering would become to me.

I heard a lot of rumors, probably some truths, and what must have been a great many whoppers over the next three weeks, mostly from Mrs Griggs. She told me of the stories in the streets, increasing daily, regarding the horrible murder in George Yard. I tried to stay off the streets myself, not knowing what anyone – particularly the police – knew (I mean, really knew) about the murder or the murderer. I went to work, because I had no choice. Otherwise I kept to myself in my rooms… with one exception.

I will relate that exception in time. Until then, know, I kept to myself and let Mrs Griggs and her Dress Reformists bring me the world.