Status Updates From The Great Train Robbery

Ch. 14 The Victorians hated the Georgian style of architecture but could not afford to tear it down. Critics blamed the architecture of Newgate for Willie’s escape. Police searched for all the rookeries in London and could not find him. After about a month, they tagged a floating body in the Thames with Willi’es name. As if!

Fortunately, his hands are completely calloused from being a chimney sweep as a child. He does cut himself and he bleeds but nobody notices him during the hanging. When he arrives in the room, the Pierce gang drugs him to numb the pain and wake him up. They tend his wounds and the wives dress him in women’s clothing. They lack Victorian modesty. They act like he’s a woman who has fainted and they carry him out.

Hangings are not an exact science and usually the person swings for an hour before they are dead and hauled off in a coffin. The crowd is loud, jeering, and singing raucous songs during a haning. This one is no exception. Willie, who has been a model prisoner and would have been granted parole early for good behavior, makes his escape during the hanging. He cuts his hands up terribly because of the spikes.

A woman named Emma Barnes is going to be hung outside Newgate Prison. The poor schleps have to stand in a crowded square to watch, but people with money can rent a room that overlooks the square to get a better view. Pierce, his accomplices, and their wives take advantage of the situation. They come with bandages, drugs, and woman’s clothing, especially a bonnet. The hanging is the perfect distraction.

Ch. 13 We moderns think we aren’t so barbaric as medieval folks with their hears on a pike, the Elizabethans with their bear baiting, and the Victorians watching a good old-fashioned hanging. There is so much violence on display in MA television shows and rated R movies that we have become desensitized to it. And, now with cameras everywhere, people can look up horrific crimes that happened in real life.

Then he says some outlandish, disgusting things about buffalo hunters and raw intestines. Mrs. Trent looks peaky and leaves and Mr. Trent goes after her. Nobody hears what is said between Pierce and Elizabeth when they are alone. Clearly, he surveilled the situation long enough to have known how it would go. The daughter is glad because now she has a prospect.

It isn’t revealed about other siblings. She’s probably a burden to her parents. Pierce is masterful--just minding his own business and trying to help someone buy a made dog. He acts like he had no idea that Trent had a daughter. He goes to shake her hand and blushes. Blech. At tea, he talks about his travels in America and what he knows about buffalo hunting. He pretends to be deferent to the delicate ladies.

CM was 12 yo at the time of this chapter. She was in this predicament. Her parents were educated but not wealthy. She went to school in her teens, knowing she would have to become a teacher because that was one of the few respectable job for women who were not lower class. Edgar Trent’s daughter sounds like Mary Bennet--not the most desirable catch--and, with the lack of eligible me, she didn’t have any prospects.

Ch. 12 Each chapter ends with a little nagging question being dangled and it’s usually answered in the next chapter. At the end of the last chapter, Pierce says that he’s single but always on the lookout for prospects (ha, ha--gold). Clearly, he has done his homework because Trent has an unmarried daughter in her late twenties. I did a little digging and the Edgar Trent subplot is fiction, but fun, nonetheless.

They compare notes and then Pierce offers to find him a made dog. In the conversation, he lets Trent know that he is single, even though he hopes to marry. He also acts like he’s rich without a care in the world.

After an obscure announcement is made, some go to another room with their dogs. Another announcement tells the crowd they have until a certain tie to decide what to do (place bets). Several dogs compete to determine which one can kill the most rats before the bell rings. An announcer narrates the action to the crowd. Pierce uses this chance to talk with Trent whose dog does not win.

Ch. 11 I remember reading in a Wodehouse that folks in England will bet on almost anything. While animal fighting had lost its luster, three forms of dog fight sports still existed: dog on dog, dog on badgers in chains, and dogs on rats. Training and selling dogs to fight was illegal in the Victorian Era, therefore these sports were popular. Trent takes his dog to a pub where dogs are welcome.

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Ch. 10 Pierce goes to see a dog trainer and, after long conversations, going back and forth, he negotiates buying the best "made dog" which is trained to catch rats. The trainer assumed Pierce has an infestation of rats. However, it has something to do with the dog.

Ch. 9 The "bungled" pickpocket told Pierce what he needed to know. He has a serious problem. The street is patrolled. The help is honest. Trent and his wife live a predictable routine life. They don't seem to have vices. After a month of surveillance, he is getting desperate. Then he sees something that gives him an idea than getting hit by a vehicle in front of Trent's home.

He seems to know the area well. He asks for and finds a tween girl who knows the whereabouts of Willie, his potential snakesman. He gives her a gold coin and she tells him he’s at Newgate, which he already knows. He bribes her to give Willie a very strange message, but clearly it’s intended to give Willie a tip-off about a potential escape. If he can escape Newgate, he’s got the job.

At the time, it was called a rookery where criminals and prostitutes lived. The images are interesting: crows (which are thieves) and their haphazard nests. A large rookery near St. Giles was called the Holy Land and there was nothing sacred about it. The police abandoned patrolling this area because it was so danger. Pierce walks in, dressed as a gentlemen, but bulges implied that he was heavily armed.

Ch. 8 There is a lot of padding to help readers understand the Victorian which I love because I’m learning more about that time and place in history. The author mentions what contemporaries thought of London’s size (Henry James, Nathanial Hawthorne, Dostoevsky). Even though slums was a thing, the growth was so explosive they didn’t have a name for it even though they were seeing the pattern.

Ch. 7 Pierce watches a team of pickpockets practice their trade in London. Then he has an odd request. He asks if they could bungle the job in a way that doesn’t look obvious. Pierce offers him five quid and the guy turns him down. He accepts the job for ten quid.