May 31 2022 28 mins 11
OBITUARY. At special behest, we mark this October 9th, 1832, the passing of one Abraham Farley, eighteen years of age, of late a hired hand in The Prospect of Pye, Smithfield. Farley was laid to rest in Blackshaw Cemetery and will be mourned by his mother and sister in York. “Come to me, all ye who are weary and burdened, and I shall give you rest.” Matthew 11:28-30.
It is a curse to go to your grave as a young man and yet still breathe and weep. A lad shouldn’t feel the worms slithering over his skin and the beetles nipping at his ears. A spider, outraged in the dark at the invasion and crawling over a fluttering eye—the eye of a man such as I. Amongst the fruit, the salt beef and the jug my fellows gave me, here I rest in a narrow hell, my spine aching, with no pillow for my head. On my chest, no cross or flowers; instead, two pistols primed with powder, which cost a pretty penny from a jaded soldier down at the Knightsbridge barracks, and more to secure his silence. A twitch and my brow might knock on wood, bring the night watch running. My nails bite into my palms, my teeth a rictus to rival a corpse, keeping me still as the insects riddle and crawl, delighted by the blood-warm feast.
In a shallow grave, in the cemetery of Blackshaw Road, I lie awake in the coffin.
Oh, the taste of dirt and the waiting . . . Come, Hunter, I am your dead! Come at midnight like you always do, with the half-moon high, with your lackeys, your sack and your wooden spade, creeping past the watchmen with your lanthorn shielded. Come, come, I am your lad, your sweet Abe, who you took under your wing down Smithfield way, and then like a man takes a woman, in shadows, secrets and sin. In grunts as you yanked down my breeches and took me roughly over the hop sacks all those weeks ago.
You said I was your golden boy. I was never as golden as Harry.
Aye, I was a green thing then, soft in the head like my mother used to say, with an ear for your pretty lies. I was tall and sinewed enough to gain employment in your tavern, but that wasn’t why you hired me. You had me up and down the stairs, hefting your crates, your inebriated patrons and soon enough you, sweating in the gloom with your hand over my mouth lest the drunkards upstairs should hear us.
And later hefting bodies too, fresh and pale from the grave, bound for a handful of willing anatomists from Lambeth to Bethnal Green. Riding St George in the cellars or digging up cadavers would see the both of us swing and no mistake. They did for Burke up in Edinburgh, the notorious ‘resurrectionist’ hung in the square, his accomplice and the doctor they sold to escaping the arm of the law. But your own labours furnish you with guineas and guineas are your true love, are they not? Though you wailed to find me in the kitchen, silent, pale on the floor, the both of us know the devilment that squirms in your heart, Jebediah Hunter.
And so I wait, your Abe, your Lazarus, for the hour of my unearthing.
The days of our labours and passions, how well I remember them. In the smoky bowels of the Prospect of Pye, there wasn’t much trouble slipping them the poison; often your quarry was blootered enough. The air in your establishment curdled with pipes, lanterns and sour gin breath, with the laughter of merchants, soldiers and whores, the slap of hand on bosom and thigh while I made your foul acquaintance, running trays to this and that table, lugging barrels and swabbing floors. Outside the stink of London, the belch of factories and Thames fog pressing against the windows, the wind blowing the odd traveller in like how it blew in Harry.
Before all that, you’d watch me with eyes dulled by laudanum and drudgery. On occasion you’d lick your chops, a dog staring at scraps. When you trusted me enough, when we’d made sufficient congress for me to know that to snitch was to risk my hide—not that anyone would take my word over yours—you showed me the powders you procur...
It is a curse to go to your grave as a young man and yet still breathe and weep. A lad shouldn’t feel the worms slithering over his skin and the beetles nipping at his ears. A spider, outraged in the dark at the invasion and crawling over a fluttering eye—the eye of a man such as I. Amongst the fruit, the salt beef and the jug my fellows gave me, here I rest in a narrow hell, my spine aching, with no pillow for my head. On my chest, no cross or flowers; instead, two pistols primed with powder, which cost a pretty penny from a jaded soldier down at the Knightsbridge barracks, and more to secure his silence. A twitch and my brow might knock on wood, bring the night watch running. My nails bite into my palms, my teeth a rictus to rival a corpse, keeping me still as the insects riddle and crawl, delighted by the blood-warm feast.
In a shallow grave, in the cemetery of Blackshaw Road, I lie awake in the coffin.
Oh, the taste of dirt and the waiting . . . Come, Hunter, I am your dead! Come at midnight like you always do, with the half-moon high, with your lackeys, your sack and your wooden spade, creeping past the watchmen with your lanthorn shielded. Come, come, I am your lad, your sweet Abe, who you took under your wing down Smithfield way, and then like a man takes a woman, in shadows, secrets and sin. In grunts as you yanked down my breeches and took me roughly over the hop sacks all those weeks ago.
You said I was your golden boy. I was never as golden as Harry.
Aye, I was a green thing then, soft in the head like my mother used to say, with an ear for your pretty lies. I was tall and sinewed enough to gain employment in your tavern, but that wasn’t why you hired me. You had me up and down the stairs, hefting your crates, your inebriated patrons and soon enough you, sweating in the gloom with your hand over my mouth lest the drunkards upstairs should hear us.
And later hefting bodies too, fresh and pale from the grave, bound for a handful of willing anatomists from Lambeth to Bethnal Green. Riding St George in the cellars or digging up cadavers would see the both of us swing and no mistake. They did for Burke up in Edinburgh, the notorious ‘resurrectionist’ hung in the square, his accomplice and the doctor they sold to escaping the arm of the law. But your own labours furnish you with guineas and guineas are your true love, are they not? Though you wailed to find me in the kitchen, silent, pale on the floor, the both of us know the devilment that squirms in your heart, Jebediah Hunter.
And so I wait, your Abe, your Lazarus, for the hour of my unearthing.
The days of our labours and passions, how well I remember them. In the smoky bowels of the Prospect of Pye, there wasn’t much trouble slipping them the poison; often your quarry was blootered enough. The air in your establishment curdled with pipes, lanterns and sour gin breath, with the laughter of merchants, soldiers and whores, the slap of hand on bosom and thigh while I made your foul acquaintance, running trays to this and that table, lugging barrels and swabbing floors. Outside the stink of London, the belch of factories and Thames fog pressing against the windows, the wind blowing the odd traveller in like how it blew in Harry.
Before all that, you’d watch me with eyes dulled by laudanum and drudgery. On occasion you’d lick your chops, a dog staring at scraps. When you trusted me enough, when we’d made sufficient congress for me to know that to snitch was to risk my hide—not that anyone would take my word over yours—you showed me the powders you procur...
