Written in 1896, A Child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison, was the sad story of a young boy getting caught up in crime, culminating in him being killed in a knife fight. Although the book was less famous than Dickens’ Oliver Twist, it caused a stir at the time, dividing opinion, with some critics saying it glamorised inner-city violence and others saying it exaggerated it. After reading the book, I couldn’t help feeling that this portrayal of a young London life was the same story taking place in 21st Century London. Britain in many ways had once again become ‘Victorian’.
As part of my research journey I took a walk to the very area where this story took place: a slum called the Old Nichol, now called the Boundary Estate. I soon discovered that Arnold Circus – its round park I was standing in – was built upon the torn down bricks of that Victorian neighbourhood. The poetry struck me like a cosh round the head on a foggy night in Limehouse. It was the beginning of my next story, and it just wouldn’t leave me alone. The opening words of the book introduced this idea:
Arnold Circus
In 1889 the demolition teams came.
They levelled The Old Nichol, only leaving fragments of the past behind – Boundary Passage, Old Nichol Street, Chance Street. Some others.
By 1900, The Boundary Estate was built. Tall, orange-bricked flats sprang up, with shared stairwells and large windows that let in the light from wide tree-lined avenues.
A round central park, Arnold Circus, was built in the estate’s centre. It was constructed on a six-foot mound using thousands of bricks from the old torn down houses.
For some reason, the architect had insisted that precisely six trees be planted in a circle.
They remain there to this day.
But I needed an angle, a twist. After a few weeks down the research rabbit hole, I came across a strange, illustrated book from the 19th Century called Thunder and Lightning. The author and adventurer, William de Fonvielle, was a sort of Phileas Fogg character who was also obsessed with lightning and had catalogued all his research in meticulous detail while floating around the world in his air balloon.