I do not know the name I was given at birth, nor the face of the woman who bore me. They told me I arrived at the parish workhouse in London sometime in the winter of 1881, swaddled in a blanket too fine for the place and too clean for the story they told. No one claimed me. No one came back. I was entered into the ledger as “Boy, Approx. Age: 0,” and that was the last time anyone tried to define me.

The workhouse was not cruel in the way stories often say. It was worse — it was indifferent. The walls were damp, the food was grey, and the days were measured not in hours but in chores. I scrubbed floors before I could read, carried coal before I could write, and learned silence before I learned speech. Names were not used unless necessary. I was called “boy,” “you,” or “that one.” I answered to all of them.

I remember the smell of boiled cabbage more vividly than any lullaby. I remember the cracked tiles in the corridor, the way the light never quite reached the corners, and the sound of coughing in the dormitory at night. I remember Clara — older than me, sharper than me, and always watching. She never spoke to me, but once she gave me half a crust of bread when I was too weak to stand. I never forgot her face.

I do not know what made me run. Perhaps it was the cold. Perhaps it was the silence. Perhaps it was the way the matron looked at me one morning — not with cruelty, but with weariness, as if I were already fading. I was seven years old. I had no plan. I simply walked out during the midday bustle, slipped through the gate behind a delivery cart, and kept walking until the buildings changed, and the air smelled different.

I found myself in Whitechapel.

It was louder there. Dirtier. But it was alive. The streets were narrow and crooked, the people fast and forgetful. I learned quickly: how to sleep in alleys, how to steal bread without being seen, how to vanish when the constable turned the corner. I became a shadow. A watcher. I spoke to no one. I trusted no one. I survived.

And then came the night of 25 November 1888.