The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [7]
Pyke pushed his way through the mass of bodies gathered in the tiny room and chose to ignore the stares of ill-concealed antipathy from those who either recognised him or simply disliked being watched by a stranger.
Collapsed between empty pewter ale pots and gnawed pork chops was the unconscious frame of his uncle’s drinking companion. Pyke recognised the Reverend Foote, Ordinary at Newgate prison. Godfrey often plied Foote with drink in exchange for stories of woe and despair that Foote collected or overheard from the prison’s condemned men and women. It was Foote’s task to compile an account of their lives. For a small fee, he would pass these details to Godfrey, who would then print and sell them for a penny to the assembled crowd on the day of the execution.
As far as Pyke could tell, these stories carried several contradictory messages: on the one hand they suggested crime did not pay, that it was a sin against God, and that the most heinous crimes were still punishable by death; and on the other hand they made it clear that crime was exciting and heroic, and that criminals acted as they did because society left them no other option. Pyke thought all these explanations were too simple. For him, crime was simply a means to an end. If stealing was the only available means to achieving one’s freedom and well-being, then it made sense to steal.
In his earlier life, Pyke’s uncle had been a respectable publisher of radical political pamphlets and as a much younger man had counted figures such as Paine, Wollstonecraft and Godwin as his friends. He had long since abandoned such lofty inclinations, and for the last twenty years had scraped a living publishing sensational tales of criminal wrongdoing which he cobbled together from the annals of old Newgate calendars and from confessions sold to him by Foote. His editorial policy was to concentrate on tales that were especially gruesome and dwell upon specific instances of deviance. In each case, he would try to remove attempts by previous writers to impose moral judgements on the stories. The published sheets were cheaply reproduced and sold for a penny, mostly to the working poor. Godfrey would often tell Pyke that his readers found more of their own lives reflected in his stories than in tales penned by Jane Austen.
Godfrey was the closest thing Pyke had to a father. But theirs had always been an ambivalent relationship that reflected their shared desire both to remain independent and to cultivate familial support and companionship. It was a bond that had finally found its own equilibrium. While they no longer shared the same living space or felt any compunction to intervene in one another’s lives, a certain degree of warmth had begun to emerge in their dealings.
As a surrogate parent, Godfrey had never imposed even a modicum of discipline on him. Rather, he had provided Pyke with a small room in the attic of his Camden Town apartment and allowed him to come and go as he pleased. It was an arrangement that had suited Pyke, and one that permitted him to gain his education in the ways of the street, in such a manner that if things ever got too dangerous or intimidating, then the door of his uncle’s home was always open.
‘Oh, it’s you, dear boy. You know Arthur, don’t you?’ At the mention of his name, Foote did not actually move but, for a moment,