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By Root 637 0

Dr Silkin’s House of Wonders, for I heard it long before I saw it; the grinding of an organ, the beat of a drum, and a man’s voice shouting into the night. Jackdaw Lane was a narrow passageway running between the Whitechapel and Commercial Roads, with buildings, mainly shops and warehouses, rising three storeys on either side with windows that seemed too small for the amount of bricks that surrounded them. An alleyway opened out about halfway down and it was here that a man had imposed himself, dressed in a frock coat, an old-fashioned four-in-hand necktie and a top hat so beaten about that it seemed to be perched on the side of his head as if trying to throw itself off. He had the beard, the moustache, the pointed nose and the bright eyes of a pantomime Mephistopheles.

‘One penny entrance!’ he exclaimed. ‘Step inside and you will not regret it. Here you will see some of the wonders of the world from Negros to Esquimaux and more besides. Come, gentlemen! Dr Silkin’s House of Wonders. It will amaze you. It will astonish you. Never will you forget what you see here tonight.’

‘You are Dr Silkin?’ Holmes asked.

‘I have that honour, sir. Dr Asmodeus Silkin, late of India, late of the Congo. My travels have taken me all over the world and all that I have experienced you will find here for the sum of a single penny.’

A black dwarf in a pea jacket and military trousers stood next to him, beating out a rhythm on a drum and adding a loud roll every time the penny was mentioned. We paid over two coins and were duly ushered through.

The spectacle that awaited us took me by quite surprise. I suppose in the harsh light of the day it might have been revealed in all its tawdry shabbiness but the night, held at bay by a ring of burning braziers, had lent it a certain exoticism so that if you did not look too closely you really could believe that you had been transported to another world … perhaps one in a storybook.

We were in a cobbled yard, surrounded by buildings in such a state of disrepair that they were partly open to the elements with crumbling doorways and rickety staircases dangling precariously from the brickwork. Some of these entranceways had been hung with crimson curtains and signs advertising entertainments that a further payment of a halfpence or farthing would provide. The man with no neck. The world’s ugliest woman. The five-legged pig. Others were open, with waxworks and peep shows providing a glimpse of the sort of horrors that I knew all too well from my time with Holmes. Murder seemed to be the predominant theme. Maria Martin was there, as was Mary Ann Nichols, lying with her throat slit and her abdomen open just as she had been when she was discovered not far from here, two years before. I heard the crack of rifles. A shooting gallery had been set up inside one of the buildings, I could make out the gas flames jetting and the green bottles standing at the far end.

These attractions and others were contained in the outer perimeter, but there were also gypsy wagons parked in the courtyard itself, with platforms constructed between them for performances that would continue throughout the night. A pair of identical twins, orientals, were juggling a dozen balls, hurling them between them with such fluidity that they made it seem automatic. A black man in a loincloth held up a poker that had been made red-hot in a charcoal burner and licked it with his tongue. A woman in a cumbersome, feathered turban read palms. An elderly magician performed parlour tricks. And all around, a crowd, far larger than I would have expected – there must have been more than two hundred people there – laughed and applauded, wandering aimlessly from performance to performance while a barrel organ jangled ceaselessly around them. I noticed a woman of monstrous girth strolling before me and another so tiny that she could have been a child, but for her elderly appearance. Were they spectators or part of spectacle? It was hard to be sure.

‘So, what now?’ Holmes asked me.

‘I really have no idea,’ I replied.

‘Do you still believe this to be