The Fiend in Human by John MacLachlan Gray

From the Publisher

It’s 1852, and the ranks of the London poor have doubled. In the swollen shadow of the great St. Giles Rookery, fallen women attract perfumed dandies of the West End in a vicious circle of venality, vanity and vice.

Edmund Whitty, correspondent for The Falcon, the city’s second-best sensational tabloid, writes whatever will stimulate the reader, delay his (increasingly physical) creditors, and supply him with the alcohol and opiates required to see him through the day. His most recent triumph was to supply a name to the fiend in human form who has murdered God knows how many prostitutes with a white silk scarf: Chokee Bill. To the correspondent’s satisfaction, Chokee Bill incited a garrotting panic that paralyzed the business of London — until the arrest of one William Ryan. Normality has returned. The hangman, Mr. Calcraft, as dusty and dreary as death itself, awaits.

Broke again and in search of crisp copy, Whitty makes a shocking but not altogether surprising discovery: the white-scarf slayings have continued. When he endeavours to find the real Chokee Bill, he is greeted with emphatic hostility, both offcial and unoffcial.

This Dickensian tale offers galvanizing suspense and an evocative and witty vision of life in Victorian London — in which the hallmark of a gentleman is perfection without, putrefaction within, and the hallmark of a lady is to have snared a gentleman.

Publishers Weekly

Canadian writer Gray portrays the mean streets and byways of 1852 London with a skill worthy of Dickens, but handles the mystery elements of this uneven debut with less success. A cloud of fear over the city has been lifted by the arrest of William Ryan (aka Chokee Bill), a Jack-the-Ripper precursor who has strangled and mutilated five prostitutes. Edmund Whitty, a dissolute and struggling freelance journalist, attempts to improve his fortunes and stave off his debtors by using the upcoming execution of the monster as the basis for a series of articles. He decides to credit the accused's protestations of innocence to justify his own inquiry into the killings and his printed attacks on the hypocrisy that tolerates the desperate poverty and squalor of London's slums. Evidence that the murders have continued despite Ryan's incarceration bolsters Whitty's crusade. Gray masterfully conveys mid-Victorian society, from the haughty upper classes to the oppressed poor. Even minor characters, such as the bartender at one of the reporter's favorite haunts, come to vivid life. Unfortunately, the entrance of the real Chokee Bill into the action rather spoils the suspense, while a plot twist toward the end will surprise few readers. The author may not be the next Caleb Carr, but his considerable gifts bode well for future forays into crime fiction. (Sept. 15) FYI: A performer and composer, Gray is best known for his stage musical, Billy Bishop Goes to War. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

First-time novelist Gray has turned his pen from the writing of stage musicals to the exploration of the seamy and violent London of 1852. The murderous rampage of Chokee Bill, a.k.a. the Fiend in Human Form, has finally ended with the arrest and conviction of one William Ryan. City dwellers breathe a sigh of relief and eagerly anticipate his execution for his brutal slayings of local prostitutes. But Edmund Whitty, special correspondent for the Falcon newspaper, doubts Ryan's guilt and openly speculates whether the real Fiend could still be at large. Teaming up with Henry Owler, a "patterer" who sells crime stories on the street, he attempts to uncover the guilty party in time to save Ryan's life. Meanwhile, Owler's daughter and young ward are on an investigation of their own, bringing them dangerously close to the killer. Gray's Victorian thriller is noteworthy for the lovingly detailed (if sordid and unappealing) scenes of London and the period style in which Gray writes. However, the proceedings themselves are sadly lacking in spunk. Suitable for large public libraries.-Laurel Bliss, Yale Arts Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Canadian composer, performer, and now first-novelist MacLachlan attempts a penetrating look at man's vile desires in a same-old serial killer tale, transported in time to 1852. "It is impossible to overestimate how truly unbalanced London became during the Chokee Bill panic," so why try? But that's the question posed by this examination of press sensationalism, mid-19th-century-style. The murderer in question, already in custody, was nicknamed by London columnist Whitty, who, unlike his editors, at least has a soul: "When the racy ones come a cropper, what hope remains for the high-minded stuff?" But Whitty's not so high-minded as to turn it down when Owler, a seller of crime stories, offers a partnership to interview Chokee Bill. And when the interview happens, might Whitty begin to wonder whether the right man is really in jail, and might Chokee Bill know who the real killer is, and might he help them find him, and might this all smack a little too much of similar tales already deeply lodged in the collective unconscious? No matter. Beneath the surface here is the suggestion that the lurid hunger of the modern imagination owes its craving to a time even more removed than Jack the Ripper. Whitty's tour will take him through the bowels of a London on the brink of a sadistic modernity: seedy brothels, cellar mazes, the offices of unscrupulous editors, the parlors of women whose appetites are the invention of erotica, a Piccadilly that "churns in a grey whirlpool of hard-shelled beings like stones in a river, clattering across the cobbles," and into subterranean chambers and passageways. But as exhaustive as all this is, one wonders whether Gray ever stopped to consider that his artifactwasn't exactly the object he hoped to criticize: more than the murderer here, the media is the target, but it's never clear that the project manages to escape the gravity of its own critical insight. Smart, but echoing too familiarly. Agent: Helen Heller

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Reading Group Guide

Question: The author has described The Fiend in Human as resembling distressed denim or leather: "something new that looks old." What seems new and what seems old about the themes and the story?

Question: What do you think of Edmund Whitty, both as a man and as a reporter? What about Henry Owler? How are the two alike, and how do they differ?

Question: Discuss the women and girls in the book. To what extent do the differing social positions of Phoebe, Dorcas, Clara, Mrs. Plant, and Mrs. Marlowe determine their fates? Do their strategies for survival ennoble or degrade them?

Question: The title is based upon the phrase, "The Fiend in Human Form"-a phrase sensational journalists used in referring to a murderer. How does the meaning change in its shortened form? Is the "fiend" inhuman, or is he all too human?

Question: Did the London environments described in the book seem authentic? On what basis do you think the author selected the details?

Question: The author wrote the first draft of the book at a time when Vancouver was reeling over the murders of dozens of prostitutes, with no interest or action from the police. Does knowing this change your understanding of the book in any way?

Question: How do the actions and attitudes of the Victorian sensational press compare with those of the media today?

Question: The novel, unusually, is written in the present tense. Do you think John Gray's background in the theater influenced his decision to write it this way? How did it affect your experience as a reader-a historical novel, written in the present tense?

Question: What kind of humor is evident in The Fiend in Human? Where does such humor stem from? What does the humor in the book contribute to your sense of the period?

Read an Excerpt

A HANGING AT NEWGATE
Notes While On The Town
by Edmund Whitty, Correspondent
The Falcon


LONDON, 11 May 1852

For the better part of Monday 10 May the vicinity of Newgate Prison took on the aspect of a seasonal fair. Beginning at nine the previous evening, pilgrims crowded onto the square, past the abattoirs of Snow Hill and the approaches from Newgate Market, while surrounding streets echoed with the heavy boots of the great unwashed. Some came by rail, some by cart, still more on foot, from Hackney, Newham, Greenwich and Hammersmith, as well as the extremities of Greater London (Stinking Lane, Pie Corner), where the potteries, ironworks and slop shops, as though commanded by the chimes of St Sepulchre, disgorged their working poor for an unscheduled treat.

After all, what could provide a better tonic for the oppressed human spirit, than to witness the fate of one more wretched than oneself?

Cold fowl and cigars, pickled onions in jars
Welsh rabbit and kidneys — rare work for the jaws
And very large lobsters with very large claws
And there is McFuze and Lieutenant Tregooze
And there is Sir Carnaby Jenks of the Blues,
All come to see a man die in his shoes!

Few retired to rest that night and all were too excited to sleep, passing the hours over draughts and cards, rattling the dice box while indulging in insulating potations, those who drank deepest jarring the night air with chorus after chorus of that depressing anthem for a hanging: ‘O My! O My! Think I’ve Got to Die!’ Among them wandered enterprising businessmen, renting out the last of the better positions:Beautiful prospect! Excellent situation! Favoured view!

As a professional your correspondent was permitted to observe the proceedings from a privileged position opposite and above the gallows, from which viewpoint the quality gather to take in the spectacle at £10 per seat. Indeed, the two young gentlemen beside us, Oxford men with an eye for the ladies and a patrician taste in cigars and brandy, seemed to regard the spectacle as existing purely for their own edification and amusement.

Below, more frugal enthusiasts paid in discomfort what their pocket-books could not afford; as early as two in the morning they took up their posts, stubbornly withstanding the pelting rain through six weary hours. Haggard and pinched they appeared by morning, especially the wretches accustomed to the airless factories and unwholesome abattoirs, with starved cheeks, toothless jaws and a moist milkiness of the eye. Not that the fellmongers, the glue-renderers, the carpenters and shoemakers appeared any more hardy or vigorous.

None the less, never did a more willing audience assemble to witness the most extreme penalty England has to offer the public other than a drawing and quartering — and the latter, while still a sentencing option, has not been performed in fifty years.

To the chagrin of my two lusty companions, few females honoured the company with their presence, only a few gaudily dressed kept women with skin like peeled fruit, their more foresighted escorts having procured their company as an enjoyable prelude and epilogue to the coming event.

As a trickle of pale sunlight appeared between the clouds and over the slate of the eastward rooftops, an impatient throng could be discerned monotonously tracing the outline of a circle six persons deep, as though working a treadwheel, backed by the shadow of Newgate, their faces self-consciously gloomy in keeping with the enjoyment of sorrow. Within this moving wall of woe, children disported in the first rays of the sun, like drab butterflies, mistaking the aroma of gin for flowers.

No matter their physical occupation, every mind in the square turned in the same direction: to imagining the event to come, to savouring the knowledge that such horror was about to be inflicted upon somebody else.

In a few moments the clock of St Sepulchre will chime, and he will ascend the scaffold steps to the drop, a temporary machine connected to the wall of the prison by means of iron hooks; where a rope will be drawn through a chain and around his neck; and when the Chaplain pronounces the dreadful words, In the midst of life we are in death, Executioner Calcraft, as dusty and as dependable as death itself, will draw the pump-like handle, release the bolt, and a carcass will be all that remains of a man named Christopher Walden. Thereafter, the body will be cut down, to be interred an hour later within the walls of Newgate, dignified by neither coffin nor shroud, covered with lime and water, then buried and the ground smoothed so that, within the shortest time possible, the Fiend in Human Form — this week’s edition at any rate — will have been erased from the face of the earth, like a mistake in spelling.

And yet as a regular spectator of such public offerings at Newgate of a Monday morning, your correspondent cannot but wonder whether a second Fiend is brought to life by the elimination of the first — a Fiend unconfined to the material remains of Christopher Walden, free to spread and drift like the black smoke from surrounding chimneys, to be inhaled by the population as a whole.

Not that the earth will be any the poorer for Walden’s absence.

Swell, fraud, corrupter of any misfortunate with whom he came into discourse, our man stands condemned for a brutal murder, under circumstances which your correspondent must refrain from repeating, by order of the Chief Magistrate of London. Let it suffice to note that Walden’s hanging is an eventuality akin to a long-standing infection laying claim to a voluptuary.

Yet again one wonders where the malignancy stops. In what society does such a Christopher Walden encounter a person of the rank of Arlington Fogg, and in such circumstances? What explanation exists that might entirely remove this blot to the legacy of Arlington Fogg? Like blood on bed-sheets, the stain will remain. A frisson of scandal to heighten the coming drama and to entertain the throng, while business is transacted for profit.

First come the refreshment peddlers, with food and drink made from putrid ingredients or adulterated with toxic substances. Next come the flying patterers and balladeers, to market their similarly unwholesome chronicles at five pence a page. In decades previous, when a man was condemned on Friday and summarily hanged on Monday, there was no time to prepare and print a ‘Last Confession’; now the condemned man is given at least a week’s grace and sometimes two — and a commercial opportunity is born.

Prominent among these merchants of false news stands an author promoting a work entitled The Sorrowful Lamentation of William Ryan, Otherwise Known as Chokee Bill, an account distinguished by its utter disregard for the fundamental requisites of journalistic veracity, a work of fiction in all but name, whose unabashed purpose is to exploit the macabre achievement of its principal (in comparison to which Christopher Walden is a Piccadilly pickpocket), and the public dread it inspired, to lucrative effect.

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