(work in progress) The dead pigeon lay in the central guttering of the piss stenching alley. The shit strewn cobblestones and Bangladeshi graffiti being further testament to the urban blight that pervaded in this world of stinking skip bins at the back doors of filthy kitchens. Rats scurry through holes in the brickwork as rain now falls on the dead pigeons unseeing white eyes. Even the night holds it’s breath halfway through intake. Nothing changes here. Nothing ever changes in this plague pit, this pocket of poverty, destitution, dereliction and murder.
“Here comes summer, do dah do dah dah dah dah dahah”A solitary figure. That discarded KFC will come in handy. His movements like that of the scurrying rats.“Yes, the rattsies. I know all about you. I see you. Yes, your there. Nothing to be scared of.”And like the rats he disappears through a whole in the wall.The first part was easy, straight up the broken bricks that jutted out. The next bit a little harder, a bicep climb up the rope to the ledge; now reach over a little to far to the left and grab the bottom rung of the broken fire escape for the final scramble and climb up onto the roof.Now this place is the Guntz: here is a world of magical and mythological beings. Unseen inhabitants of a rooftop architecture. This is where Ethan can be. This unseen place. His place.“Hey chick! How’da like to come back to my pad? A little tricky getting’ there but it’s home.”And home is the central point. From here to the west you can reach the griffins and saintly protection of Spittlefields and to the east the Angels of Whitechaple. Turn and it’s a short jaunt to the Gods and Demons of the city. A good sprint and a few daring leaps Ethan and the others can travel the city faster than a London bus. A secret city within a secret City. FrkhutwbMlhGFEbyHHhhHnLhyTfvNmKLlLKjbbgffvbJtyrefbsmngloyjbmgidfhjdcbnbnbswjjdmmmfjmx zjsm nnb`nxnvjjNNVDVMHGBFnbmsc,l,,nMNGMkx ,kp98 Speaks a Sphinx, presently residing above Bread St. A voice beyond sound, beyond hearing. Ethan responds by twirling and whooping. If only he could just…………. He can’t quite………. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! “………” Build up speed, faster now, don’t think just run, faster, faster and faster, the veins in his neck purple bulging heart pounding and now…….. a giant leap, soaring across shit alley, flying; still; silent; escorted by Dragons. Aeons pass in a moment and Nike correctly lands on the flat roof of the Kosher butchers and springs off again onto the ledge eighteen inches wide seventy foot down to certain death don’t look down keep going keep up speed careful of the loose slab not yet must time it right don’t look down look straight ahead not quite yet….and…..NOW, a forward summersault onto the sloping lower roof, slide down to the ridge and up the roof ladder to ‘Chimney acre’. This is the roof top night garden of angels and chimney stacks, smoke and ghosts, pestilence and poverty. Angels will whisper here to a man as he stands here alone in the quietest moments of the cities night in that darkest moment just before the dawn.
This is the roof of THE ROYAL LONDON HOSPITAL, screaming in surgical terror, dark and horrific in the heart of deadly Whitechappel, cutting through the East End, razor sharp. Look down now, look down with the angels to number 259 Whitechapel Rd, now an emporium of exotic robes and Indian sowerys but formerly a place of special entertainment, where one Tom Norman, showman, exhibited here, for the delight of night revelers, in a squalid, shadowy rat infested back room a man with such horrifically unimaginable disfigurement to his skin, bones, face and body, (caused as we now know by neurofibromatosis) that the very sight of him repelled all who paid to see. The man was discovered here cowered and pathetic by Frederick Treves, a Royal London surgeon. Treves brought the man over to the hospital and placed him in rooms in Bedstead Square. This room is now a walk in freezer, being part of the hospitals kitchens. The mans name was Joseph Merrick who, during his show career, was billed as The Elephant Man.
Move our eyes and our awareness now to the left, to Vallance Rd, where after after having given birth to twin boys in nearby Hoxton on 17th October 1934, Violet Kray brought her boys, the pride of her life home. Ronald and Reginald Kray became part of the areas fear and folklore. “Leave yer doors open, let the saucepans loose” but remember to doff yer caps or Ron will not be pleased; and you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. It was nearby in the Blind Beggar public house one night, where Ron, (taking exception to being called ‘a fat puff’ ) shot through the head at point blank range, one George Cornell, local villain, hard man and ultimate loser. There were over 30 people in the bar that night and no one saw a thing. Some say that Cornell was punished to harshly as he was technically correct in what he said. Ron Kray was overweight, and was indeed by all accounts a practicing homosexual. The merest flight now of the imagination takes us soaring above the rooftops through the London smog and across to Brick Lane and the Brick Lane music hall. Here the Ghostly tones of Marie Lloyd float on the breeze as she sings of a life ‘up west’.
‘I live in Trafalgar Square, with four lions to guard me,fountains and statues all over the place,and the Metropole staring me right in the face,I’ll own it’s a trifle draughty,But I looks at it this way you see,If it’s good enough for Nelson,It’s quite good enough for me’. A few rooftops along, and here captured in time, like old forgotten and yellowing photographs found in some attic, is the shop of Mr. Katz, stringseller, a lone remaining testament to the areas Semitic past. Opposite in Princelet Street is the old Synagogue, closed now and empty save for the phantasmagoric presence of David Rodinski, ex caretaker, who one day vanished without trace. Had he really found (as some said) the secrets of cabalistic flight? Not only had he, it seemed, escaped this worldly plane, but he had also escaped all memory. It was some 10 years later that Rodinskis room hidden away on the top floor of the building was discovered, the door being opened for the first time in over a decade. Untouched by time the room shrouded in secrecy remained exactly as Rodinski had left it. The mystery was to occupy the mind of Rachael Litchenstein, a Hoxton artist, whose search for David resulted in a collaboration with urban shaman Ian Sinclair. The book, Rodinski’s room is a work of magick and mystery and is an insight into life in the Jewish East End. One block along and we come to Hanbury St, where on the 8th September 1888, local prostitute Annie Chapman became the second victim of the areas prowling and predatory evil. Having no money to pay for her bed that night, her last words to her landlord were; “Don’t sell my doss, I’ll be back with the money, just look at the pretty new bonnet I got”. Her body was found a short time later in the back yard of number 29, her entrails placed around her neck and her few belongings arranged neatly at her feet; a comb, a handkerchief, a halfpenny, a small hand mirror. The only witnesses to this, and the four other killings in the seriel being the Saints and Angels engrained here within the rooftop architecture. They surely saw everything, and they alone know for certain the true identity of ‘Jack the Ripper’. But even the Angels here keep the east ends code of silence.
This London then, or this hole in the map of London to the east seems to attract into it certain forces: it is a magnet. Nothing changes. Crime, murder, disappearance, poverty, bloodlust, magic, mystery and danger are all at home here. And always have been. Come now then, stay close together as we delve deeper now into the abyss, and cut off into Old Nicholas Street as Jack himself surely must have done. Now renamed Old ‘Nichol’ street, this ‘resort of thieves’ was in the 1880s at the centre of the most depraved and violent group of streets in London; a rendezvous for street fighting gangs. It was here that Fagin came to visit Bill Sikes in order to recruit the captive Oliver Twist into the profession of burglary. It was either this or something much worse.
By Rob Goodman
e mail reelmagick@hotmail.com
al
Recent Comments