They left Mitre Square and headed east once more, crossing back into Metropolitan Police jurisdiction, and made their way up Middlesex Street, jammed with the clothing stalls which had given the street its nickname of Petticoat Lane. Margo and Shahdi pushed their way through the crowd, recording the whole scene on their scout logs. Women bargained prices lower on used petticoats, mended bodices and skirts, on dresses and shawls and woolen undergarments called combinations, while men poked through piles of trousers, work shirts, and sturdy boots. Children shouted and begged for cheap tin toys their mothers usually couldn’t afford. And men loitered in clusters, muttering in angry tones that “somefink ought to be done, is wot I says. We got no gas lamps in the streets, it’s dark as pitch, so’s anybody might be murdered by a cutthroat. And them constables, now, over to H Division, wot they care about us, eh? Me own shop was robbed three times last week in broad daylight by them little bastards from the Nichol, and where was a constable, I ask you? Don’t care a fig for us, they don’t. Ain’t nobody gives a fig for us, down ‘ere in the East End . . .”
And further along, “Goin’ to be riots in the streets again, that’s wot, mate, goin’ to be riots in the streets again, an’ they don’t give us a decent livin’ wage down to docks. I got a brother in a factory, puts in twelve hours a day, six days a week, an’ don’t bring ‘ome but hog an’ sixpence a week, t’ feed a wife an’ five children. God ‘elp if ‘e comes down ill, God ‘elp, I say. Me own sister-in-law might ‘ave to walk the streets like that poor Polly Nichols, corse I can’t feed ‘er, neither, nor ‘er starvin’ dustpan lids, I got seven o’ me own an’ the shipyard don’t pay me much over a groat more’n me brother brings ‘ome . . .”