Ben Bolt

by Thomas Waters

Ben Bolt was the sobriquet or nick-name—stolen, I am told, from an old song—of one of the most scampish of scamps I have ever met with. He dwelt, or rather burrowed, in Bermondsey; in one of its slummiest streets too—Pasley-street. He was also known as Cast-iron Jack; I suppose, because he kept a rag and old iron shop. Many persons will remember him. He was killed at the great fire where Mr. Braithwaite lost his valuable life. His real name was Edward Summers. This I did not know till some time after this story commences. The name, painted very cheaply I should say, over his door was Jarvis—Thomas Jarvis. He was not however all bad, as the sequel will show. He was a good-looking fellow enough,—sported “lovelocks,” as such spiral hair-twistings used to be called; believed himself to be irresistible with girls of his grade, and it may be for that reason acquired the appellation of Ben Bolt.

In the crypt of that man’s memory there gleamed, or I was much mistaken, a grim, ghastly skeleton. That merriment, philandering of his was but ghostly merriment, philandering—the parody of a long-since passed, dead-and-buried reality. This notion came thus wise into my head.

Rag, bottle, and old iron shops are marked spots, so to speak, in the ordinary policeman’s beat. Frequently, too, they are honoured with the superior solicitude (excuse me) of a first-class detective. Twice, as I know by my diary, ordinary business took me to 27, Pasley-street, Bermondsey.

The first time I had occasion to call upon Thomas Jarvis, was to inquire if he had purchased certain articles of clothing, which had been worn by the infant-daughter of one Sidney Giles, a grocer, established in business at Swansea, who, with his family, had come to London, to see the Great Exhibition (1851).

He at once admitted that he had purchased… Read More