McCarthy The Mercury

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80381-985-3
Verlag: Grosvenor House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 425 Seiten

Liverpool 1818. It was time for Liverpool's leading newspaper The Mercury to recruit a 'young investigative journalist' who it would it train and steep in its reformist outlook. Fighting for social and economic justice in England's 'port of empire.' On his way to interview, Edwin Kearney had taken a shortcut through storm-battered Old Dock. What occurred that morning would shape his life and affect those of all about him. In the aftermath, he would encounter dark forces feverishly at work in this hectic, tumultuous place. Across its quays and warehouses. On its streets and in its shadows. Forces and their instruments, locals and their out-of-town allies, devoted to unrelenting crime, privation and misery. The lives and circumstances of its people little more than a commodity to be weighed, bartered and discarded. The brutal physical removal of one community and to enable the imposition of another. Civic dispossession and the pre-emption of rights. An assault on the undefended by the indefensible. In their way, stood the town's fearless newspaper The Mercury, its remarkable owner and the young man who had unwittingly crossed into Liverpool's netherworld and now found himself at the very heart of The Mercury's proposition that 'the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.' Lives and communities were at stake, the forces against them -native and imported - vicious and formidable- led by one of London's most ingenious and elusive criminals and bolstered locally by his feared Liverpool counterpart. The very existence of Liverpool's crusading newspaper in jeopardy, until a remarkable group of friends and allies also emerged from the shadows.

Michael McCarthy was born and raised in Liverpool and has a continuing association with the city. He is the author of three non-fiction works in Politics and Political History. His most recent book 'Citizen of London', described by Simon Jenkins as 'A masterly London biography' is a detailed social and political account of medieval London's famous four times mayor, Richard Whittington. Cited as one of The Financial Times 'Books of the Week' February 2023, and the subject of a BBC History Extra Podcast. He has also written 'The House That Trust Built -William Brown and the Rise of Brown Shipley in 19th Century Liverpool' a short, commissioned history to mark the 200th anniversary of Brown's arrival in the city. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Liverpool History Society. The Mercury is his fiction debut and was sparked by a lifelong passion for his home city and by a chance purchase of an early issue of The Liverpool Mercury. Igniting a keen interest the newspaper's zeal for social reform and economic progress. Michael has a particular interest in the fine lines between fact and fiction. The rest, as they say, is history... and, of course, storytelling.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mccarthy, Michael

Leseproben

2
Suited and Booted
Edwin Kearney had risen 15 minutes before 6am. It would give him time to ready himself, scoff his breakfast and to complete, at a leisurely pace, the 20-minute walk to the small civic garden just up the street from The Mercury office and printworks in Pool Lane, where he intended to pause and gather his thoughts. He aimed to be there by 7am giving a precious half hour to compose himself, read his notes and ready the questions that his mother insisted were important to have to hand should the proprietor seek to ambush him with that favourite dislocation ‘now do you have anything to ask me’. He had told her during supper the evening before, that he could not for one second imagine someone as important as Mr Egerton Smith, not only the newspaper’s proprietor and editor in chief, but also one of the most esteemed figures in Liverpool, allowing him the time or having the inclination to answer a prospective employee’s own questions. It was he who was the supplicant not the other way round. But Martha Kearney said that he must be prepared for every eventuality and seize even the smallest opportunity. For what? He queried. To present yourself in the best light of course, she had replied, to demonstrate that you have a fine enquiring mind, that you are clear thinking like your blessed father and that you present well to those you represent and to those you will meet on their behalf. What else did he think! She turned to pour him a cup of thick black tea and slid a chipped bowl of mutton stew to him across the slatted pine table. The intricate black and white glaze had crazed through inferior firing and overuse, the last of the Herculaneum creamware his father had presented to her on their marriage. Edwin Kearney thought about him for a few seconds, recalling what he could of his thick red beard and strong feathery arms, his long thin fingers discoloured by his artistry as a potter and illustrator at the acclaimed pottery works. Tomorrow, he would pass by on his way to what he feared would be not only an examination of his capabilities but also of his manner and comportment. He must remember to hold his sleeve across his mouth to ward off the plumes of white acrid smoke that settled above the rooftops of Toxteth’s narrow cobbled streets, many now under redevelopment to meet the aspirations of those with deeper pockets and higher prospects. He flinched at the thought. It was only a matter of 2 weeks before his mother would be served formal notice and then a further 2 weeks to pack what was left of their belongings and get out. Their neighbours on either side had been given just half that, but the elderly landlord, now retired across the river at Heswall, held a kindly disposition towards his mother and had known and liked his father. He had waived 2 weeks rent on her husband’s premature death and was now offering this second relent. What had seemed a reasonable time to prepare was now closing like a speeding carriage and bound to produce casualties. ‘Making Way for Progress’ the hoarding at the bottom of the hill proclaimed. The very place where the smoke from the kilns collected most densely. Recently someone had daubed over it in crimson ‘May the Lord Prevent Our Ruination’! Too late, Kearney thought to himself, the fight was over before it could begin. On returning recently from an errand to the haberdashers in neighbouring Paradise Street, he had stopped to tie a lace and now reminded himself that he must bring his only pair of serviceable shoes to a presentable shine. He was about to ask his mother where she kept ‘the essentials’ when a light prod reminded him that she still awaited a response, that he had grasped the importance of always being prepared for opportunity to present itself in the most unlikely circumstances. He nodded in agreement. She was always right, the wisest, most generous spirited person he knew. Edwin Kearney searched for a spoon to stir the treacly tea. She had sent him last week to purchase a quarter pound at Foundlers, the tea merchants on Castle Street. The honey-coloured Chinese large leaf she favoured on the few occasions she could afford it. Good for the digestion she insisted. He was hopeless at remembering such worldly detail and had returned with what his mother described as the flaked residue at the bottom of a kerosene lamp. It would have to do, but he offered to drink the lion’s share. It would be easy to ‘stir it thin.’ She gave a weary look and pointed behind him. He rummaged in the top draw of the leeched oak sideboard for the last of their fine silver teaspoons, another wedding gift, from her family, who had held themselves a cut above the man she had married. She was better educated, more cultured, she could do far better they had insisted. And they could do better, or so they believed, until her father finally relented and accepted that her personal happiness outweighed any social or professional uplift, they had sought for her. Edwin’s forefinger alighted on the first of the spoons. Only three now remained of the original set, thirty-six pieces designed for six placings. He rubbed all three and plucked out two. Leaving the last in the drawer, feeling sorry for it, an almost familial transfer he invested in inanimate objects. He had done so since he was a small child. They were not sentient, he knew that, so it must be the memories he associated with their origin, the occasions of their use or the feeling of loss he attached to them. They were old friends, comforters, objets de vertu. It troubled him that his parent’s few remaining chattels had been sold or exchanged piece by piece to see them through the spartan years immediately after his father’s death. Thank God he had secured a long tenancy, but that too was now to be parted from them. Martha Kearney smiled at him, lips fastened, no words, eyes searching gently. She sensed when her son dwelt on the past and what might have been. She recalled the blows and setbacks that she had endured since her husband’s demise. There had been no other children, the boy was five when his father had died in 1802 and the promise of further children had passed with him. There was just Edwin and she had invested all she had in him, including her own displaced ambitions. He must be ready to grasp the opportunities that she knew would come his way. She drilled it home. He would be the measure of their family. **** He rose early and drew the short curtain across its’ string, using the back of his hand to wipe an icy glaze of condensation from the window. It rattled as he did so. He shivered at the sight of the fine drizzle and the clinging mist drifting up from the river, dousing the feeble efforts of the anaemic sun to offer anything more than slender spokes of pallid light in the advancing haze. Martha Kearney had already left at 6am for work far up the hill in the village of Everton. The incline was a hard slog, especially in the rain, and she must keep her skirts clear of the constant spattering of mud coughed up by the carriages charging downward to the distended perimeters of England’s fastest growing town. A breakneck expansion, severely cramped by the very topography which had done so much to encourage it in the first place, its’ outward looking, inward forcing river. Liverpool’s giver and taker. Edwin Kearney had gazed with wonder at the arrangements she had put in place for his big day. Neither he nor his mother could afford to purchase a suiting of the new fashion for short-fronted tailcoats complemented by a fitted waistcoat worn typically over a plain white or cream chemise. However, his mother, a skilful seamstress, had laboured for six or seven evenings adapting his father’s barely worn full length black coat. He was astonished and relieved. She had somehow achieved a faithful representation of what Liverpool’s young bucks were wearing these days. The essentials were to ensure that the tailcoat was drawn into the waist, the front cut inwards towards the hips and the shoulders padded to enhance the male silhouette. The tail must splay a little below the buttocks and most important of all the finished article should ideally be of a black or charcoal hue. His mother had accomplished the transformation to a tee and had even managed to acquire and handful of old nickel buttons from a ship’s chandler on Wapping, to give a subtle flourish to the jacket’s otherwise sedate overture. They were six in all, set in two columns of three. As she had cleared the table and ushered her son to bed, she had reminded him that he must have a story ready if someone examined the trimmings too closely and enquired of his non-existent naval career. She had no idea whether they were associated with a particular rank or company, so he resolved that if asked he would simply say that they had been handed down in his family to his deceased father who had kept them in an old shaving box intending to pass them on to his son. He would say that a distant, unknown relative had somewhere served with valour and that he now sought to honour the memory of that person and salute his own father. That would do it. He did not need reminding that the king’s press gangs were rampant in the port at the present time, so it was wise to be cautious and not give any truth to the lie that his was a seafaring family. He took some reassurance from the fact that, in fashion at least, restraint was the order of the day. No boasting or flaunting of the expensive, garrulous concoctions that had so marked the courtly ‘dandyism’ of George Brummell. It was two years since the former favourite had fled to France. Gaming debts and various other instances of licence widely reported as the cause. And...