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April the 29th, 1887
Dear Miss Gibson,
A fortnight has passed since your last letter. I fear that my tone has offended you, and for this I must offer my apologies. This was certainly not my intention. I have sat and stood by the window, morning and evening, day upon day. The strong young woman has not returned to the gate, at least not that I have spied. She may well have watched us and she may have seen enough, her fancies of a cloistered life dispelled by glimpses of the dull reality: a gaggle of geese clucking and squawking as they trundle from psalms and prayers to barley soup and potato bread. I know I shouldn’t talk this way, the Sisters have been very kind to me. But merely being alive is not much of a life. All that aside, it grieves me to think that I, or that we, might have frightened you off. We are barely kind to each other, no wonder they shut us up away from the likes of strangers.
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Sister Catherine is here with me, as she is most days, wrinkling her nose at my rudeness and rightly so. She is delicate and fine and fair, where I am coarse and stiff like an old bristle brush. She comes to me in the afternoon between None and Vespers to help make my words pretty for you. She thinks I was born to tell a story, and that my tales would give your readers at the Post a window through which they could observe our devotion and works of mercy. I wish I had her grace. I went for a few years to the charity school at St. George-in-the-East, near Ratcliff, where I was born and raised. My father was a butcher on the Row, and he needed me to be good with numbers and to read and write a little; to help my mother, who stood out front hawking while he worked in back salting and hanging and smoking and carving the meat. I only ever learned a little but I make use of what I did. My tender Sister has been so kind to me, and in such times of trouble. The Reverend Mother is still in care, her days are surely numbered, and we are all beside ourselves in despair. Young Estelle has left us; her nasty prank on Eleanor turned back upon her like a wave, all the youngers refused to sit with her or speak to her. Sister Eleanor remains, and has passed her silver bauble on to Sister Augustine for safekeeping. She uses a plain brass thimble like the rest of us now, every one the same as every other. Some of her vanity has been passed off as well. No longer a giggling girl, she sits alone most days, and at odd moments displays a quiet dignity. An improvement.
Have you found another avenue to pursue in your quest to unearth your murderess? I expect if we are to have newspapers then we must have them sold. Unlike the odious Lovett, I am alive and present, and would gladly unburden my soul to you if I thought it would uplift another, if only someone might listen.
I doubt you’ve ever been to the Row. A different world for you. I can see you in a clean corner shop, picking out a neatly trimmed joint, getting it all wrapped up in paper and tied nicely with a length of string, tucking it under your arm as you step out into the sunshine. No stink, no filth, no vermin, no screams and squeals. You can forget that something’s throat was slit to make its flesh your supper.
Growing up as I did, I learned quickly about man’s place in the world, and the place of all our lessers. Meat was meat, you were lucky to have it, and you didn’t enquire too deeply whence it came. Life was not so precious then. Creatures lower in the natural order were beasts of burden, food on the table, and little else. They weren’t to be pitied, even though they led miserable lives and met gruesome ends. They were better off dead, all things considered. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.
Little went to waste in our shop. There was barely a scrap left at the end of the day, apart from what fell to the floor. Every part was good for something, from the ends of the ears to the tips of the tails, blood, gristle and bone.
Each day I would awaken well before dawn to the bleating of terrified sheep being strung up and slaughtered, to the smell of blood and muck flowing out into the gutters. My father was always hacking and sawing big hunks of mutton and beef, striding about with a whole side of cow slung over his shoulder. I would watch him pierce the slabs with massive iron hooks and hang them by the window where they swung all red and dripping into the fresh sawdust strewn across the floor. Then he would sharpen his knives, saws, cleavers and skewers, and ready the buckets and bowls to collect the offal. My mother and I would don our aprons and wash down the butcher’s blocks, stained pink and slashed with deep knife cuts, and sweep the gore-soaked dust out of sight of the customers. Some mornings my mum would call for me to help her make short crust for rolls and pasties, stuffed with scraps that we had chopped and seasoned and baked into brawn. Then when we opened she would stand out front shouting the wares of the day: pork loin, side of beef, tender leg of lamb, a chant not unlike those you hear in the oratory. I’d hang back and watch her without her knowing, to see how she dealt with haggling housemaids, belligerent hawkers, drunks and beggars and thieves.
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Demchuk, David; Clark, Corinne Leigh. The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett (pp. 18-20)
