Bruce Alexander - Person or Persons Unknown

“With me? Why, yes, certainly, Mr. Donnelly.”

“Good. I shall be by for you at about seven.”

With that and no more he bade us both goodbye in taking his leave.

“Well,” said Annie, quite consumed with envy, “dinner with the doctor. Ain’t that a grand thing?”

“Yes, quite an astonishment,” said I.

“What might he have to discuss with you?”

‘I’ve no idea, none at all.”

Although, because of the sordid nature of the Raker’s crimes, every effort had been made by Sir John and the Lord Chief Justice to shield him from the public eye. the law called for his execution by hanging, and custom demanded that it be done publicly at Tyburn. They feared riot. He was. at least in legend, so well known and was so loathed by the populace, that when hanging day came (which followed the next after Mr. Donnelly’s visit) all precautions were taken that he be given safe passage from Newgate to the triangular gallows. If the crowd were large and unmanageable, he could be pulled down from the can and trampled to death or his body torn asunder. Therefore, in addition to the usual ca\airy escort, who made their way with sabres drawn, there was a squad of foot immediately surrounding the cart, and they marched with muskets at port arms and bayonets fixed.

I. having long before promised Sir John I would attend no public hangings, was not present — nor indeed would I have wished to be. There is to my mind no amusement and little edification to be gained watching a man in the throes of strangulation at the end of a rope. However, my chum Jimmie Bunkins, who is not in the least squeamish, did attend the ceremony and brought back a report which he gave me following our instruction from Mr. Perkins, which I had that day resumed.

“Well,” said Bunkins, “I went to Tuck ‘em Fair this noonday to see the Raker get crapped, and first off there weren’t no riot.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” said I.

“There should’ve been, ‘cause I never seen such a rum crowd with such queer intentions. They covered the whole hill, from the gallows back as far as you could see. There was some stones and shit-bits heaved at the cart, but as many hit the rum tom pat and the two others who were set to get crapped with him as hit the Raker. But each time there was a move at the cart to stop it or to pull the Raker down, those who tried would get a whack with the flat of a sabre or nudged with the point of a bayonet. So that way they brought him to the gallows. And the horse soldiers and the foot soldiers made a ring round him as they got him and the two others off the cart and marched him up the stairs.

“And when he shows, there’s a great roar that went up from the crowd. I was up front, on’y I wished I wasn’t, for first of all every drab and bawd in Covent Garden was up there with me, screamin’ the foulest curses they knew. Oh, he heard ‘em, he heard ‘em fair. And you know what he does? He puts a great big smile on his ugly mug, like he’s never had such a grand time before. He’s standin’ there, grinnin’ away like an eejit, and the crap merchant is circlin’ the noose round his head. And then he starts to do a little dance on the floor of the gallows, like he’s tellin’ them he’ll soon be doin’ a dance like that up in the air. So the rope was set, and he shouted out somethin’ none could hear for the screamin’ of the whores. Then, just before he went up, he lets fly this great gob of snotty spittle, and it hits the whore next me in the face. He got her with a rum shot, and she the loudest of all, I swear. So that was the other reason I wished I’d stood back in the crowd. I got a bit of the splatter on me coat.”

“Did he take long to die?” I asked, having oft wondered if death for Mariah had been immediate.

“Not long,” said Bunkins, as a connoisseur of such matters. “Yet he jumped around right queer on the rope. Though he was plain daft, I give him credit. He died damned hard and bold as brass.”

I confess, reader, that I had wished his dying prolonged.

“What then are you two jawin’ about?”

It was Constable Perkins spoke to us, descending the stairs from his rooms above the stable, dressed proper and wearing his red waistcoat, ready for his night’s work. We three would walk together to Bow Street.

“About the Raker,” said Bunkins. “He crapped today on Tyburn.”

“He did, did he? And good riddance.” Then, coming up to us, he fixed me with a look and asked: “You, Jeremy, how do you feel about it?”

“Good riddance,” said I.

Thus is it so that when merciful principles are challenged by bitter personal experience, our principles must sometimes give way to the desire for vengeance.

Though Mr. Gabriel Donnelly and I had talked of many things along our way to the Cheshire Cheese, and many more once we were within and at our dinner, I was quite sure we had not touched upon those matters he had said he wished to discuss. I had indeed told him the story of how I had come to drink a cup of coffee with a “flash of lightning.” And so was I able to tell him, too, how Mr. Tol-liver’s rhyming name had made him memorable to Ben Calverton and removed the cloud of suspicion that hung above the butcher’s head.

And for his part, he told me further of his experiences in medical studies at the university of Vienna; amusing stories they were, as had been those he had told at table. It occurred to me that perhaps he wished to offer me an apprenticeship to him in medicine. If he were to do that, what should I say? I had not for some time talked with Sir John about my hope to read law with him. Perhaps he had forgotten — or worse still, hoped I had. Medicine I held to be a great calling, nor could I ask for a better master than Mr. Donnelly, but nevertheless I had a great longing for the law.

At last, midway through our meal, he began rather abruptly to explain.

“No doubt you wonder, Jeremy, why it is I’ve asked you to dine and what this great matter is that I said I wished to talk about.”

“Well, yes, sir, I have.”

“It is simply this: I shall be leaving London next week for Portsmouth to apply for a berth on a Navy ship as surgeon.”

“Mr. Donnelly, you would give up your practice?”

At that, he smiled a sad smile. “What practice?” said he. “I have been here in London near three months and have had only the autopsy work that Sir John has generously given me. You have been my patient, as has Mr. Goldsmith. I regret to say, by the bye — and let it be in confidence — that he is not a well man. But that is neither here nor there. The bald truth is that I simply lack the funds to maintain a practice in this city until it becomes profitable; and indeed it may never become profitable. Perhaps there are simply too many medicos here, though indeed their quality is abominably low. Perhaps it is, as Mr. Goldsmith has suggested, that there is an inbred prejudice amongst the English against the Irish. He himself, during his years of struggle, applied for one paid position after another as surgeon or physician, and he said that all that was needful for prompt rejection was that he show them his unmistakably Irish face.”

I knew not what to say. Having grown used to his presence these months, I was now sad to think he would no longer be about. I had confidence and trust in him of a particular nature that I had not in others. He was like a much older brother to me, or an uncle. Or so it had seemed to me when he so willingly obliged my wish to have Mariah properly buried.

All I could do in these immediate circumstances was lower my eyes and say: “I shall miss you greatly, sir.” My sad tone of voice, I’m sure, conveyed far more than my inept words could do.

“Had I not gone larking off to Lancashire,” he continued, “in pursuit of that widow, things might have been different. When first I came to London two years past, I had quite a sum laid aside from my years as a Navy surgeon. I might have managed then had I stuck it out in the city. Yet off I went and spent it all a-courting. I was not so much in love with her as in love with myself and my own ambition. Ah well, let my experience be a lesson to you, Jeremy. Vanity will always exact a price.”