24 May 2026
We watched you, brother,
As your feet passed us on the street.
We wrapped our blankets tighter
To ward the clay-cold of your soul
They calls me wandering Joe
The handcart king
"I's" picks up the castoffs
And today it's your eyes in the cart
Whitechapel Lady Gin sees you
She collects the bottles of sin
Yet your scamp indifference
Be the only thing she drinks in
Gin, she whimpers to me
By Crikey Joe
This ones differint
His eyes they be dark
An I know hims
I was there when
He saw me sick Aunt Bessy
Rest her soul
He's the Doctor does the house calls
I jst cant recall his name
Why high class be walkin
The dark alleys
This slum, this night, Joe
Perhaps Gin
He looks for a three-penny upright
Willin to pay a proper price
For some Nanty Narking fun
I only want to ask his name
I only want to ask his name
Me gut's all a-quiver
When Gin slunk after top hat
She wouldn't stop gabblin
Over and over
I only want to ask his name
I only want to ask his name
And then came the scream
Sounded like Gin
Screaming something
Like Heckle or Jerkle
The next time I saw Gin
Was on the ice slab
I asked the Cold-Cook
Do you know a doctor named
Heckle or maybe Jerkle
Lyrics by John Osinga
Thank you, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886, updated © 2026 John Osinga. All rights reserved. St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada.
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A Note on Heckle – Jerkle
This piece is set in the East End of London, 1885. The language spoken by Joe and Gin was carefully researched to reflect the street dialect and slang of Victorian England — specifically the world of Whitechapel, one of London's most impoverished districts.
Whitechapel sat on the east side of the city, a world away from the gas-lit drawing rooms and gentlemen's clubs of the West End. It was a place of rag pickers, handcart men, and women who survived however they could.
The unseen figure in this story wears a top hat. He does not belong here.
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Glossary of Terms
Nanty Narking — great fun. Documented in J. Redding Ware's Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909).
Clay-cold — cold as the grave. Clay being the earth of burial. In Victorian England it was understood as the chill of death itself — not weather, but something deeper and darker.
Three-penny upright — Victorian street slang for the most desperate form of prostitution.
By Crikey — a period exclamation of surprise, common in British working-class speech.
Me gut's all a-quiver — East End street expression for a deep physical sense of dread. The body knowing before the mind does.
Gabblin — Victorian working-class dialect for talking incessantly, unable to stop. Joe couldn't silence her. He knew what was coming.
Whimpers — a low fearful cry. Period-authentic working-class speech, used by Dickens and common throughout Victorian England. It suits Gin perfectly.
Whitechapel Lady — a woman of the Whitechapel slum. The term carried the full weight of what that life meant in 1885.
Handcart king — Joe's kingdom is a handcart. Wire shopping carts weren't invented until 1937.
Ice slab — the mortuary cold table of the era. Mechanical refrigeration came later.
Cold-Cook — Victorian street slang for an undertaker. The man who deals with the cold and the dead. Joe wasn't being polite about where Gin ended up.
The narrator is Joe. He doesn't know the doctor's name. He never will.
That is the oldest story on these streets.
Based on real-life high-class, well-respected people of his time, Robert Louis Stevenson was shocked to discover that they led evil double lives. His novella was published the following year in 1886. Joe and Gin never made it into his wondrous book, so in 2026, John Osinga wrote their story.
Thank you for reading about the research of words and terms I completed to write this — John Osinga
