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142 pages

English

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Barefoot on Baker Street is set in late Victorian London where a life of crime is the only way to escape poverty and servitude for one bright young workhouse orphan. The narrative follows Red on her incredible life-journey as it twists and turns through poverty, riches, infatuation, loss and love. A dramatic escape from the workhouse at thirteen propels Red into a world of slum housing, street gangs, prostitution and petty crime as the rapidly expanding city groans under the weight of the industrial revolution. A chance meeting with the mysterious and eccentric Sherlock Holmes prompts an infatuation which cuts through her street-wise bravado. Red's blossoming criminal career also brings her to the attention of Professor James Moriarty. An autistic savant riddled with obsessive compulsions, Moriarty is a dangerous criminal who draws Red into his life and onto a collision course with Holmes.

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	16 décembre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780922546
Langue	English

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Title Page
BAREFOOT ON BAKER STREET

Charlotte Anne Walters

Publisher Information
First edition published in 2011 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2011, 2012 Charlotte Anne Walters
The right of Charlotte Anne Walters to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.
Cover design by www.staunch .com

Acknowledgements
This novel has been inspired by the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring characters and ideas recognisable from his original stories. I fully acknowledge this and have used endnotes to indicate where I have included direct examples.
I wish to thank my friends for not dismissing me as bonkers, Alex and Charlie for being all-round wonderful, my parents for their support and especially my husband Tim for always believing in me and being my world.
Lastly, to Rob Hess for taking a rambling, error-ridden document and helping to turn it into what it has become.

Prologue
Life in all its complexities is stranger than any fiction and full of so many intricate twists and turns that we sometimes lose track of ourselves, of who we really are.
I think that’s what happened to me. I sprinted into a whole new life and just kept on running; afraid to look back, fearing the memory of the person I used to be.
So, I decided to write it all down. Begin an account of my epic progression from child poverty and criminal endeavours to the person I became.
I thought it would be cathartic; a little project written essentially for my own reference and emotional well-being. A sort of homage to the person I used to be, however inappropriate that seems. It is my goodbye to her, a process of letting go.
This is a documentation of all those twists and turns, the things that shape us, that shaped me. Growing up as I had under the shadow of the Industrial Revolution, the time of empire and social change, experiencing both the very worst and best of the Victorian age.

Chapter One
I know very little about my parents save the few details which were passed on to me as a child in one of London’s most-wretched workhouses - Whitechapel and Spitalfields Union Workhouse.
I was told that they were simple country people before arriving in the city. My mother was a pretty woman with florid cheeks and red hair, my father a poor farmer who toiled on the land in the hope that it would yield enough to feed his family. I presume I had siblings, but do not know what became of them.
During the early 1870s, just before my birth, life was very difficult for rural folk like my parents. It is mere supposition I know, but I believe it was when my mother discovered she was pregnant with me that they made the decision to follow the drift of so many others and head to the bustling city of London.
They would have been seduced by tales of unlimited opportunity amid the huge explosion of industrial growth in the capital.
This was a period of intense urbanisation and the city of London had expanded at a rapid rate. The docklands welcomed goods shipped in from around the world, trade generated by the country’s imperial endeavours. Giant filthy factories belched smoke into the perpetually foggy air, the Thames was rancid with waste. Many people lived in desperate poverty, but my parents probably knew nothing of this and would have arrived full of hope.
My father became a labourer on the railways, the arteries of this ever-growing new organ, transporting the raw materials of industry all over the country. But the occupation was dangerous and my father was killed in an accident at work. My mother was now alone in the city and destitute.
The only assistance available to the poor at that time was to enter the workhouse where squalid shelter and basic food was on offer in return for labour. Conditions were harsh and the work arduous, menial and unpleasant. The house was like a prison, where residents were referred to as inmates and watched constantly by overseers. Families were torn apart as men, women and children all had to be contained separately. It truly was a place of last resort.
Heavily pregnant and with no means to support herself, my mother came to the workhouse in the desperate hope of assistance for herself and her unborn child. But instead she died during my birth in the workhouse infirmary which was administered by promoted inmates without any medical training. I was made an orphan, left completely at the mercy of the house.
The Whitechapel and Spitalfields Union Workhouse had been built in 1842 on the corner of Charles Street and Thomas Street. It was a huge purpose-built structure, with more than a thousand inmates, mainly widows, unmarried mothers, orphans, the old and infirm. There was an infirmary, infant nursery, a huge female block to the north and male area to the south. The Charles Street block was more than five storeys high with a foreboding entrance hall.
This poorly-ventilated, fever-ridden, filthy, grim building was the place of my birth and became my childhood home. I spent my early years in the Infant Nursery, a dormitory without ventilation, which I never left except for an occasional transfer to the workhouse infirmary if I surrendered to a particularly persistent fever. We children all slept four to a bed and fever regularly spread like fire through tinder. Even in the fever wards, we slept two to a bed, such was the overcrowding.
All children received four hours of education a day at the workhouse school. We were instructed in reading, writing, maths, but mainly taught Christianity and usefulness, anything which would make us fit for service. Poverty was understood to be hereditary. It was believed that we couldn’t possibly possess any natural intelligence and the best we could hope for in our future lives was to be a factory worker or servant.
I longed to learn more than what this pitifully restricted curriculum offered. I was bright, quick-witted and a natural with figures. But instead I was taught to pick apart old tar ropes called oakum with my bare hands, needlework and laundry. I was made to pick away at those ropes for hours on end until the skin of my fingers was torn open and splinters of rope became permanently embedded in my skin.
Generally it was able-bodied men and boys, not girls, who were forced into the harsh physical work, but I was very strong and it was this strength that condemned me to more and more intense labour. I think it was simply forgotten that I was a girl - I certainly had no sense of it myself.
I spent my days in toil and was physically powerful despite having severe fever on two occasions and nearly dying of consumption. How I managed to avoid the dreadful cholera which was so prevalent at that time throughout the London poor, is a sheer miracle of God.
It was not customary for someone to stay for prolonged periods in the house and I was slung out many times over the years, each time full of childish hope but always ending up back there starving and desperate.
I endured spells at orphanages around the city which were always overcrowded and full of intense, overzealous religious discipline. I was wilful, strong and often violent so would always end up being thrown back out onto the streets of the East End to fend for myself. I was alone and poor, and would have no choice but to return to the place of my birth, the only real home I had ever known.
I did not grow up with any sense of the proper way for a young lady to act. I was without manners and grace, simply a raw and almost androgynous being, shaped by poverty and physical labour. This freed me from the conventions which ruled respectable society; the intense morals advocated by Queen Victoria and slavishly aped by the middle classes.
Spending so much of my early life in a workhouse taught me endurance. I gained mental strength beyond my years and my experiences gave me an inner steely toughness which fortified me like a rod of iron running through my very soul. I watched as other people became broken by the struggles and perpetual humiliation, shaking and weeping endlessly from the day they arrived. They were unable to accept the unpleasantness of their situation and struggled to cope with the demands of forced hard labour. But for those of us who had been born there, we bore our hardships with fortitude.
I did not see myself as a victim, or wallow in self pity, because I simply did not know of any other life.
By the time I reached puberty, my labours had provided me with a strong and powerful body, though I did remain short due to malnutrition. The skin of my hands was as hard as leather and my arms were defined and punctuated by an impressive muscle structure. My body was tight; my stomach hard as a board and every part of me was shapely and well defined.
I was very different to the other girls in my dormitory and their skinny fragile