Moriarty (38 page)

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It is, of course, still maintained by many aficionados of the Sherlock Holmes tales that the professor's youngest brother ended his days as a railway stationmaster in the West Country. Undoubtedly he did hold such a job for a time, but we have no hint of how or when he left to further his criminal activities.

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A favourite word of nineteenth-century pornographers, meaning the penis of man or beast. Favoured because of its supposed Greek connections: Greek πηγη, a spring or fountain.

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This weapon had been presented to Moriarty by Wilhelm Schleifstein, the head of organized crime in Berlin at the time of the attempted grand alliance of the continental criminal families with Moriarty's own London organization in the spring of 1894 (see
The Return of Moriarty
). The Borchardt automatic was the precursor of the famous Luger pistol. Hugo Borchardt had successfully invented the design as early as 1890 while living in America, but no manufacturer in the United States showed any interest. Finally, Borchardt took the design—virtually the same as the later Luger—to Germany, where Ludwig Loewe put it into production in 1893. It was one of the first automatic pistols to be sold commercially in large numbers, being loaded by a magazine in the butt and automatically recocked by the gasses from the explosive charge of the cartridge.

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At this point in history,
gay
had three meanings: gay as in light-hearted and carefree; gay as in a colourful pattern; and gay as in sexually promiscuous. Eventually (in the 1970s, via U.S. tramp speech) this word was hijacked by the homosexual community and nowadays it is used, almost exclusively, to indicate a homosexual or lesbian. As a rule, in 1900 a gay lady was a prostitute.

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Now the site of the Old Bailey.

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Where the Odeon Cinema is today.

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For full details of this plot, see
The Return of Moriarty
.

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Unthinkable and inappropriate today, but in 1900 blackface was perfectly acceptable.

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Among those who appeared at one time or another with Fred Karno were Stan Laurel and Charles Chaplin. Fred Karno's name, of course, lived on in the World War I soldiers' song “We Are Fred Karno's Army,” sung to the tune of “The Church is One Foundation,” finally immortalized in Joan Littlewood's
Oh What a Lovely War
.

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All but forgotten now, Martin Chapender was a huge draw in London at the turn of the century who played in Maskelyn's show at the Egyptian Hall. If he had lived, he would have been one of the legends of magic today. Alas, he died a year or two later.

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Once more, something that would be vaguely repellent today, but at the turn of the century she was a top liner.

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There is some argument about this spell or curse. Many hold that it comes down from gypsy lore, but it has, in some places, slipped into the lore of the playground, where it still comes to light occasionally (in remote areas) as a children's counting mantra, in the “One-ery, two-ery, ick-ery, Ann” mode. Yet it seems to have had a more sinister meaning to Moriarty, who quotes it no less than three times in the manuscript of his journals.

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Somebody familiar with the modern expression “coppers' nark” will wish to complain about my spelling—something my splendid English teacher, the famous J. M. Cohen, did constantly. However, in the nineteenth century it appears that
nark
was spelled
knark
.

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In the early 1890s, Fanny Jones had come to London to make her fortune. She had been a servant to a good family in Warwickshire, somewhere near Kenilworth, and had excellent references that were passed on to Sir Richard and Lady Bray, who had a fine London house in Park Lane. Within days of starting to work for the Brays, Fanny ran foul of their butler, a Mr. Halling, who tried to force himself on her. Finally constant refusal brought Halling to report her, using vile lies and calumnies concerning her morals. Lady Bray had her thrown out without even listening to Fanny's side of the argument. She met, and fell in love with, Pip Paget in 1894 and became one of the women kitchen workers and cooks at the old Limehouse headquarters. Albert Spear was responsible for seeing that the butler, Halling, was “dealt with.” The detailed story can be found in
The Return of Moriarty
.

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Coals. Rhyming slang:
coals
and
coke
=
broke
.

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In 1860 when Bertie, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), was doing military service with the Grenadier Guards in the Curragh, just outside Dublin, his young brother's subalterns introduced a young woman, Nellie Clifden, into the prince's bed, after a farewell party. She had, according to Stanley Weintraub (see
Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert
, The Free Press, New York, 1997), “a talent to amuse.” And she undoubtedly amused the Prince of Wales considerably, and for some time.