Average Taxpayers: A Local Alternate History c.1890

Average Taxpayers: A Local Alternate History c.1890


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“In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of a 'grand passion' than of a grand opera.”

Israel Zangwill

“You don't take these people seriously 'cause they don't get anywhere nationally, but they don't have to. All they have to do is, bit by little bit, get themselves on the Boards of Education and city councils. 'Cause that's where all the governing that really matters to anybody really happens.”

President Josiah Bartlet, West Wing, “The Midterms” Season II
 
Preface

January 13th 1890

Will Thorne watched as the rain, coming down in soft pattering waves, showered the Camden skyline. There was movement in the parlour behind him, the soft hushed tones of a house knowing it was about to enter into imminent mourning. Throughout the morning a steady stream of what could only be described as mourners in waiting had been in and out of the house, their anticipation almost as palpable as that of the press men outside.

Thorne could see one of them now, hurrying through the sheets of rain to rejoin his fellows under a nearby eave. Mugs of steaming coffee were clutched in his hands, presumably from some costermonger still desperate enough for money to ply his trade in the foul January weather. He thought he recognised one or two of them from outside the Old Bailey during the Cohen Trial. A travesty, Thorne thought. Even if the man had been guilty of the murders in Whitechapel, and how anyone could ascertain that was beyond him, he had been in no fit state to stand trial. He was practically raving, a lunatic more dangerous to himself than others. How the Police who had sent him to the gallows slept at night Thorne did not know. Especially with what was going on in Whitechapel now. He let out a ragged breath, only to stifle it when he realised it had attracted the attention of some of the others lingers in the house who, like he, were waiting for the inevitable death of the owner.

Thorne himself had tried not to make eye contact with anyone in the house, even as he heard doors open and close behind him carrying the soft murmur of quiet conversation around the well-furnished rooms. This was a far cry from the houses of mourning he was used to. His own father had died when he was seven, struck a deadly blow by an enraged horse-dealer over grazing rights. His father had shrugged off the blow at the time, laughed about it even, but by the next morning he had collapsed at work. Thorne could remember him, face still streaked with the dirt of the brickworks, lying in the hospital bed. It had taken him almost a week to die, a strong body built by work like Will’s own, but die he had. The wake, the funeral, the coffin, the mourning – all had been cheap. His mother was a young widow with children to feed and Will…little Will had gone to work in the very brickworks where his father had collapsed the very next week.

He watched a rivulet of rain pass down the window pane to join more. Flow together like a miniature stream onwards into a river and then a pool at the base. Hyndman’s funeral would not be like that. It would be grand; already people were talking about a grand procession through London although how they had the appetite after the rough brawl with the police at the Unemployment demonstrations three years earlier Thorne did not know. Still, Hyndman, for all his socialist principles, was a Cambridge man and had come from money. His funeral would be suitably grand.

A soft hand descended on his shoulder and he did not need to look around to know the owner. It was a delicate hand that had taught his own, clumsy with a childhood of manual labour and hard-graft, to write. ‘I am surprised you were allowed through the door Eleanor’ he said with a wry smile, still watching the journalists outside. ‘Is Edward with you?’

The dark woman beside him, coming into view alongside him at the sill, ignored that last barb. Her husband was hardly the most popular figure in the socialist movement; she knew for a fact he owed money to at least a dozen men and women present here today in the Camden home. ‘Being the daughter of Karl Marx still has its perks’ she said, amused, her finger tracing patterns in the foggy glass of the window pane.

Thorne knew it was coming. She was deliberate, Eleanor, and easy to read when you got to know her. She was winding up like a prize-fighter ready to land a blow. ‘Now that Henry is dead you know this changes things. Changes the dynamic. We can take the Social Democratic Federation in new directions. You, and John, and Champion…’.

He was about to hold up his hand, to chide her lack of discretion in the home of a dying man, when the door to the far bedroom opened. Thorne could feel the air in the house still, as all conversation ceased and all eyes turned to the small figure of the Doctor. That sad, side-ways glance as he left the room was all Thorne needed to know. It was a signal, as sure as was Eleanor’s tight grip on his forearm, that things in East London were going to change.
 
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