The Real Mary Kelly (28 page)

E.T. Craig was growing old. Although he still kept up a steady output of pamphlets, letters and articles, he no longer held the influence he once had. He finally wrote the story of Ralahine that he had neglected to do for more than 50 years, but by now few people remembered it or were interested. The great days of co-operation and living in communes had passed. It is a good book but diminished by the passage of time and memories that had become blurred. He was anything but modest in retelling his part in the story but probably that is with a good deal of justification.

What is not contained in the book or in anything else he ever wrote is a direct reference to his son. There are numerous mentions of his wife Mary in the book and in various of his papers, but nowhere was Francis ever recorded. It was mutual. Both Arthur Lane and Francis’s friend Edward Warren, stated categorically at his inquest that Francis had no relatives. Admittedly, by 1903 both his parents were dead, but Warren said that he had never known anything of his relatives in all of the 30 years that he had known him and yet, for almost the
whole of that time, Francis was living under their roof in the same borough in which Warren collected the rates. It seems that despite living together, neither father nor son publicly acknowledged the existence of the other throughout their lives and that speaks volumes for their relationship.

E.T. supplemented whatever small income he still received from writing articles – mostly for socialist organs like the
Cooperative Weekly
which did not pay generously – by continuing to sell health improving medicaments and devices by mail order. He advertised in local newspapers and in some of the political journals for which he wrote, and the stock was stored at the Craigs’ house in Andover Road. No doubt in the years after he left the East End Francis helped his father to pack the parcels before taking them to the post office in Hammersmith Broadway for dispatch. When he was not at the
Indicator
’s office in Harrow Road, Paddington, it was probably his only occupation.

Possibly the piece that gives the best insight into Francis’s state of mind in the months immediately after he left the East End is the poem of his that has been quoted earlier, which was published in the
Indicator
on 27th December 1889:

As poetry it leaves much to be desired but the whole tone of the piece chimes, like the bells of St. Nicholas, with his probable mood at the time. It is that of a lonely man immersed in self-pity, beset with feelings of failure and being under-appreciated. The description of a man with holes in his shoes creeping in to dingy lodgings at the end of a long day is probably an accurate enough picture of the three years he had spent in his digs in the Mile End Road, and the table piled with ‘the bills and the notes for which he was sued’ reflects his constant anxiety about money.

The line, ‘The sight gave his head a most terrible shock’ and the phrase ‘his head must be wrong’ need to be viewed with caution and are probably there more to provide suitable rhymes than because Francis at that time considered himself to be in any way mentally disturbed.

More interesting, in view of the ‘Dear Boss’ letters, are the Americanisms that have crept in. As well as the word ‘den’ he spells the colour ‘gray’ at a time when the usual spelling in England was ‘grey’ and, although this could conceivably be a typographical error, the name of the game could not be. ‘Hide and go peep’ is the American name for the game which in Britain is, and was, more commonly known as ‘hide and seek’. The construction ‘dreamed him of fame’ is also more commonly encountered in American vernacular than in English. It seems that Francis’s two years in the USA had a profound and lasting effect on him.

The references to the bells of St. Nicholas is interesting. The nearest church of that name to his lodgings in the Mile End Road was the Wren church of
St. Nicholas Cole Abbey in the City of London. In 1883 the Rev. Henry Shuttleworth, a cleric of progressive and socialist views, became the rector. Surprising though it sounds, he installed a bar and instituted political debates and musical concerts. As a result his congregation grew to several hundred and it seems that Francis might well have been amongst it. It was possibly his only source of solace and comfort during the time he spent in the East End.

After his return to the family home in 1889 Francis would accompany his father to evenings at William Morris’s house in Hammersmith and political discussions at Hammersmith town hall. E.T. was a well-known figure locally, usually wrapped in a plaid shepherd’s cloak and wielding a long ear trumpet. His temper did not improve with the passage of time and Francis must have found the task of looking after his parents, in addition to editing a successful newspaper, increasingly burdensome. E.T. must have been an exceptionally hard man to live with. There is abundant evidence of his irascibility. One day in the 1880s he was in the garden of Kelmscott House when George Bernard Shaw asked to have his head read – presumably as a joke since for most people other than Craig phrenology was well and truly discredited by then. E.T., who certainly did not consider it a laughing matter, duly complied and during the process Shaw mischievously asked, ‘Do I have a bump of veneration?’ E.T. is recorded as having shrieked, ‘Bump! It’s a ’ole there!’ and to have savagely thrust his walking stick into Morris’s lawn. Morris’s daughter May said that at that period E.T. would, ‘make speeches in a fife-like voice which sometimes recovered its old chest register in a sort of bellow that beat upon one’s ear drums’.

On 15th December 1894 E.T. Craig died. The death certificate gives bronchitis and heart failure as the cause of his demise. He was 91 years old, a very good age in the 19th century, so maybe his years of abstemiousness and physical exercise paid off. His funeral took place on 22nd December, no doubt organised by Francis. He was buried in plot A15 on the north side of the Avenue in the Old Hammersmith Burial Ground off Margravine Road. There was a choice of burial in consecrated or unconsecrated ground and Francis – or maybe his father – chose the former, curiously for a family that was probably atheist.

The plot is next to the main path, not far from the cemetery gates, and would therefore have been one of the more expensive ones. The burial service was read by Thomas Gage Gardiner, Rector of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, rather than by the cemetery chaplain who usually conducted the services in the Old Burial Ground. E.T. Craig had been a figure of national importance in his time and there were fulsome tributes in
The Manchester Guardian
and the
Cooperative News
and, in due course, an entry in the
Dictionary of National Biography
. William Morris, who would himself be dead within two years, wrote a funeral ode but he did not attend the ceremony.

Francis resigned prematurely from being editor of the
Indicator
in 1896 at the age of 58. It seems to have taken the proprietors by surprise and, judging by his evidence at the inquest, it seems that Arthur Lane, the managing director, would have been more than happy to let him continue in the role. During his seven- or eight-year editorship the circulation of the newspaper had grown and, because it was attracting a greater volume of advertising, its size had been increased from four pages to six. Francis did, however, continue to contribute articles and to report inquests and court proceedings.

Possibly because Lane had tried his best to persuade Francis not to resign, he became paranoid and formed the delusion that the owners of the
Indicator
were going to pursue him through the courts for breach of contract, something that they had no intention of doing. Money appeared to be a major issue for him. He seemed to have an embedded horror of becoming insolvent, maybe as a result of the small fortune he had spent in the pursuit of Elizabeth which may have taken him to the brink of bankruptcy. In the period after the death of his parents he gave large sums of money to both Arthur Lane and his friend Edward Warren for safekeeping and in order for them to issue it back to him in regular, small, manageable amounts like a child’s pocket money.

It seems that by 1896 Francis’s health, both physical and mental, was beginning to give way and his recognition of this may have contributed to his decision to resign from the
Indicator
. He had also suffered a prolonged and painful attack of writer’s cramp the previous year; the condition, now known as repetitive strain injury, would have been a serious handicap for a professional writer. There was an additional reason.

After the death of her husband, the health of Francis’s mother Mary also started to decline. She became progressively senile and suffered from respiratory difficulties. Towards the end of her life she became bedridden and no doubt Francis struggled to look after her as he carried on with his job at the
Indicator
. It was probably the strain of coping with this situation that finally led him to resign although, typically, he would not have told Arthur Lane the reason. In the Craig household family matters were strictly hidden from public scrutiny.

In October 1896, a few months before his mother died, a letter, written in the familiar red ink, was received at Commercial Street police station, Spitalfields. It read:

The letter was immediately forwarded to Scotland Yard where it underwent careful scrutiny. A Metropolitan Police memorandum dated 18th October 1896 reads: