“I am here falsely accused by my daughter and the court will see that soon enough. Now I must get some sleep.”
Prowling the men’s courtyard the next morning, cursing the chevaux de frise, Ephraim loitered once again under the water cistern that protruded immediately below the revolving spikes at the corner of the yard. And once again he saw that the turnkeys did not keep a constant watch on it. Back in his cell he roused the old boatman with gin and tobacco and pleaded with him to resume his tale.
“But where was I?”
“Mr. Back had been sent off to search for supplies and the rest of you were driven to eating deer skin.”
“Aye, for we had been abandoned by vile Akaitcho and his band of heathens. And by this time poor Mr. Hood was much inconvenienced by dimness of sight, giddiness, and other symptoms of sin, and we had to make frequent halts. Now did I tell you that Belanger and Ignace Perrault, unable to go on, had been left behind in a tent with a gun and forty-eight balls?”
“No. You did not.”
“That was the case. And then one morning Michel Teroahauté claimed that he had seen a deer pass near his sleeping place and he went off to chase him. He couldn’t find him. But, he said, he had come by a wolf which had been gored by a deer and he brought portions of it back to camp. Only after we had eaten it did we grasp that it must have been a portion of the flesh of either Belanger or Perrault, both of whom the savage had slain, and then gone at their frozen bodies with a hatchet.”
Such was the failing boatman’s increasing agitation that the rest of his tale was too garbled for Ephraim to comprehend, but he did sort out that in the days that followed the gale was relentless. Teroahauté, left alone with Mr. Hood in a tent, apparently murdered him with a shot of his gun. The priapic Mr. Hood died by the camp-fire, Bickersteth’s Scripture Help lying next to his body, as if it had tumbled from his hand at the instant of his death. A raging Teroahauté then heaped scorn on the rest of the company. Dr. Richardson, alarmed to see Teroahauté now armed with two pistols, and an Indian bayonet, took advantage of an opportune moment and killed him with a shot through the head with his own pistol.
The boatman suddenly clutched at Ephraim, his good eye bulging, a rattle rising in his throat, and then fell back, dying, his tale incomplete. Searching his person Ephraim found a soiled and torn sketch of a beautiful nude Indian girl, whom he would learn years later was Green Stockings, the daughter of Kesharrah, the prize that made such unforgiving enemies of Hood and Back.
Also years later, once he himself had become familiar with the barrens, Ephraim would discover that it was the vile Akaitcho and his Indian band that ultimately rescued the starving party, bringing them dried deer meat, some fat, and a few tongues.
Before parting with the survivors of Franklin’s party, Akaitcho, denied his promised reward of goods, said to them: “The world goes badly, all are poor, you are poor, the traders appear to be poor, and I and my party are poor likewise; and since the goods have not come in, we cannot have them. I do not regret having supplied you with provisions, for a Copper Indian can never permit white men to suffer from want of food on his lands, without flying to their aid. I trust, however, that we shall, as you say, receive what is due to us next autumn; and in all events it is the first time that the white people have been indebted to the Copper Indians.”
Hours after the Orkney boatman had died his body was dumped into a cart and taken to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to be privately dissected.
The next morning in the exercise yard Ephraim saw that the wall by the water cistern was still unattended. Back braced painfully against the rough stone, he slithered up the wall, just as he had once been taught by a sweep’s climbing boy. He grasped the cistern and shot over its crown. His back badly torn, he then made a grab for the rusty bar supporting the chevaux de frise and edged along it until he came to the Press Yard buildings. There he risked a jump of nine feet to the roof, spraining his ankle, but still managing to hobble clear of Newgate and the adjoining buildings. Emerging on the sloping roof of a house on a nearby street, he rested briefly, concealed behind a chimney stack, hugging his throbbing ankle. Then he slid down a drainpipe to the street and made directly for Izzy Garber’s lodging in Wentworth Street, where he could count on a healing salve for his torn back, a warming fire, meat pies and wine, and ribald stories.
Three
THE
NEWGATE CALENDAR
IMPROVED
Being
INTERESTING MEMOIRS
of
NOTORIOUS CHARACTERS
Who have been convicted of Offences
AGAINST THE LAWS OF ENGLAND
During the seventeenth century; and continuing to the present time, chronologically arranged;
COMPRISING
Traitors,
Highwaymen,
Pickpockets,
Murderers,
Footpads,
Fraudulent Bankrupts,
Incendiaries,
Housebreakers,
Money Droppers,
Ravishers,
Rioters,
Imposters,
Mutineers,
Extortioners,
And Thieves of every
Pirates,
Sharpers,
Description
Coiners,
Forgerers,
WITH
Occasional Remarks on Crimes and Punishments,
Original Anecdotes, Moral Reflections and Observations
on particular Cases; Explanations of the Criminal
Laws, the Speeches, Confessions, and
LAST EXCLAMATIONS OF SUFFERERS.
EPHRAIM GURSKY
Several times convicted—sentenced once to Coldbath Fields, once to Newgate— And finally, on October 19, 1835, transported to Van Diemen’s Land.
Perhaps never natural talents were more perverted than by that notorious Jew, Ephraim Gursky, celebrated for his daring escape from Newgate in The Weekly Dispatch and The People’s Journal. We could scarcely believe that even in the melancholy catalogue of crimes, a young man proficient in Latin, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish (the patois of his people), could be found descending to the degraded character of forgerer of official documents and letters, ravisher, panderer, and gentleman pickpocket.
Ephraim Gursky was born in Liverpool. By his own account his father, Gideon Gursky, was a Jew of Russian origin. He had been a well-known opera singer in Moscow until an affair with the Baroness K., a favourite of the Czar, had led to a scandal, and the lovers had been obliged to flee for their lives. Ephraim claimed to be the issue of that ill-starred union. After his mother died in childbirth, he was raised as a Jew by his father’s second wife, whose maiden name was Katansky. Gideon Gursky earned his living as a cantor in a Liverpool synagogue. Though not affluent, he sent young Ephraim to school. Ephraim made indifferent progress, and gave early evidence of a daring and wicked disposition. While among his companions, if any mischievous project was set on foot, young Ephraim was sure to be their leader, and promoted it as far as in his power. Weary of the floggings he endured by the hand of his cruel stepmother, who constantly reproached him for both his bastardy and Christian blood, Ephraim ran away from home at the age of twelve. He worked in the coal mines in Durham and added to his income by delivering newspapers in a nearby village. There he was noticed and patronized by a gentle schoolmaster, Mr. William Nicholson, who taught him Latin and penmanship. As a reward for such kindness, Ephraim absconded with Mr. Nicholson’s sterling silver candlesticks and, consequently, a complaint to this effect was made to the local constabulary by Mrs. Nicholson.