Although most of these establishments remained open all day, I had discovered that it was in the evening and nighttime hours that one should expect to encounter the fullest range of their offerings. And so it was that I would venture out after supper every evening and pay my penny at the doors of establishments both gaudy and drab, populated by crowds of people or empty. In every place I asked the same question, and in every place I received the same response. No one had ever heard of the fair-ground doctor.
November grew older and greyer, and each night it snowed a little more. I decided to confine my investigations to my own locality until such time as the weather improved, although I confess that by that time there was barely a waxwork or living skeleton in London that I had not already seen. However, I had been told of a new premises on the Whitechapel Road, opposite the London Hospital, formerly the site of an undertaker's, and, previously to that, a drapery business with which I had been familiar. So, after a small supper of bread and dripping, I set off on foot towards Whitechapel Road. My journey took me past the Jews' Burial Ground and the back of the Coal Depot and then along the southern side of the workhouse behind Baker's Row. Not for the first time I experienced the direst of premonitions that, if I did not succeed in my undertaking, my own family would be forced inside such an establishment. I did not imagine worse, because I knew of no worse.
I followed the railway line down towards the London Hospital, looking behind me all the time for the thieves who dwell in areas such as this. I was not carrying very much money with me but I had of course read the horrible stories of the new breed of East End thieves who, if they find you with only a few pence, will easily kick out one of your eyes—or worse—as thanks for it. The snow fell softly on me as I walked through the smoky air, with coal dust from the depot mingling with the smog already thick around me. I coughed a little, and rubbed my hands to keep warm. I thought then that if I were fully in possession of all my senses I would surely not have been out on a night such as this one. Yet on I walked.
As I turned into Whitechapel Road, my eyes almost immediately fell upon the establishment of which I had heard. The upper part of the house was adorned with a large sheet of canvas, on which various entertainments and spectacles were depicted, including yet another Fat Lady, along with the World's Strongest Woman and various other oddities. It is alarming how one so quickly tires of these sorts of spectacles, especially when one visits these establishments with such regularity as did I over those months, and if one chances, as I did, to observe the dreary reality behind the lurid and gruesome teratology presented by the showmen. Once, early on a Saturday morning, I happened to walk past an establishment I had visited two or three nights previously. There, in an overgrown garden, I observed the 'amazing' bearded woman, who by evenings was a sombre, backlit, half-human spectacle, pegging out her washing and engaging in an argument with an African 'savage' who was to be found after sunset adorned with a straw skirt, golden tunic and hoop earrings, and who apparently made only the utterances 'Ug, ug', but was at that moment wearing the rather less exotic outfit of shabby stockings, corduroy britches and a grey cloth cap, and was demonstrating an advanced grasp not only of English, but of its myriad vernacular words and expressions. I also once chanced upon the Boy With the Gigantic Head, a child of perhaps twelve or thirteen years, outside of his darkened room, and removed from all costume, lime-light and painted advertisement. He was no longer a gaudy freak but clearly a sick child who required medical attention.
Feeling rather half-hearted, I paid a penny to enter the Whitechapel establishment. On the ground floor, and requiring no further payment, were the usual trivial spectacles of ships-in-bottles, shrunken heads and the like. There were also various waxworks of prominent political figures, and a scene depicting the glories of Empire. There were also, seated at small card-tables, various scoundrels engaged in the dark art of hiding the 'Lady' from those gentlemen who would find her for a shilling, and other similar forms of petty embezzlement. As I left this room and made towards the stairs, a young girl attempted to entice me into a back-room in order that I might have my fortune told by a Madame de Pompadour. I assured the woman that all the possibilities of my fortune were already well-known to me and proceeded up the stairs. Here I found a troublesome display indeed : eleven waxworks, each depicting one of the victims of the Whitechapel Murders. I confess I had to avert my gaze after briefly regarding a mutilated copy of Mary Kelly lying on a bed in a chemise with thick wax blood coming out of her neck. However, something about this gruesome little scene—something beyond the basic horror of the spectacle—troubled me as I walked into the next room and beheld a red-headed young woman lifting weights with her long plait of hair. Presently I returned to the waxwork exhibition and regarded the scene of Mary Kelly's demise once again. And, sure enough, there it was. The gaudy red lamp that I had last seen in the fair-ground doctor's tent was now serving as a prop for this morbid tableau.
I immediately strode over to a woman sitting in an old armchair in the far corner of the room. I presumed that it was she who was keeping watch over the waxwork display. I stood facing her for some seconds before she looked up from a costume in her lap, onto which she was sewing sequins over frayed and greying sections of material.
'Can I help you?' she said to me.
'I wish to enquire after the owner of that lamp,' I said to her.
'You mean that poor girl Mary Kelly?'
'No,' I said, quickly becoming exasperated. 'No, a gentleman. A fair-ground doctor. Perhaps he is engaged here?'
The woman looked down at her embroidery. 'Sorry, sir,' she said. 'I don't think there is anyone of that description here.'
She then briefly flashed her small eyes at me and I understood what she wanted. I found a shilling and showed it to her.
'Are you certain you do not know him?' I asked.
She eyed the shilling and then reached out and took it from me.
'Try the fortune-teller downstairs,' she told me quickly, in a half-whisper. 'The man who owns that lamp is her husband.'
Without hesitating further I made may way down the stairs and, full of impatience, burst into the fortune-teller's salon. There sat a bony, pale woman, with her hair arranged in a colourful scarf. Before she even began to speak, I addressed her directly.
'I am looking for your husband.'
As she began assuring me that she had no husband and that I could pay her directly for her services, which were of a most superior nature, there suddenly came a blast of cold air into the room, and the fair-ground doctor entered.
'Mr. Y,' he said. 'How pleasant.'
'Good evening, Doctor,' I said.
'I understand that you have been looking for me,' he said.
'How—' I began, and then stopped. We both knew the effects of his medicine. I quickly worked out how this present fortune-telling act worked. The doctor presumably read the minds of all the people to enter the establishment and primed his wife with their biographies, ready for her to exploit them. Therefore, I reasoned, he had already read my mind and knew what I was looking for. I guessed that there was a chance he would give it to me—for a price.
'You want the recipe,' he said to me.
'Yes,' I said, but hesitated to tell the doctor just how much I longed for it.
'Very well. You can have it,' said he, 'for thirty pounds and no less.'
I cursed my own mind. This man, this back-room showman, already knew that I would give everything I had for another taste of his curious mixture, and, of course, he planned to take everything I had and no less.