The Reverend Henry Whitehead said a short and mumbled prayer over the body of John James Morters and quickly re-covered his own nose and mouth with a scented hankie. He turned and nodded to the undertakers. They took the shrouded body and half threw it into the waiting cart. They didn’t want to hang around in a cholera house; neither did the Reverend. He had attended a few such deaths recently. He thought there were far too many deaths. He walked out into the stench filled air of Soho’s Broad Street, took a short breath and covered his face again. The undertaker coughed and forcefully spat out a gobbet of phlegm, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at the Reverend, ‘’Pologies Sir. It’ll be the stink what gets ‘em too Sir. Taken a few from round ‘ere.’ ‘I don’t subscribe to the theory of bad air my good man. It may stink but it carries no disease.’ ‘That’s as well as like Sir. But we seen ‘em all off. Usually from places such as this stinking hole.’ ‘Have you had m
As the man came in from work, he looked on the hall table as he did every night, ostensibly for any letters that had been delivered that day. There were none that day. There was, however, a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. The label on it was addressed to him, ‘To Harry, With Love’ it read. It looked like his wife had bought him a book, which was unusual for her to even go into a book shop let alone buy him a book. He picked it up and felt its weight it was quite a weighty tome. He unwrapped the book and looked at the title: A Goode Wyfe: The Sojourn Of The Soul. He noted the archaic spelling of the title; she had chosen well. It looked very interesting and was certainly very old, the leather binding and the gold lettering on the spine and cover gave that away. It was well thumbed too and the pages fell open on their own. He looked at the imprint, last imprint 1818, first imprint 1313. He did a quick sum in his head, those two dates added together made 3131, a mirror image of t