Roman, Kirk, Grieveson, Workman, others.
In for thieving. For false pretenses. For more thieving:
money, boots, a donkey, another donkey, more boots
and clothing. Their own coats (buttons all missing) pinned
on freak diagonals. Tweed coat stretched untenably across
a growing boy’s stuttering and unfixtured chest.
For the record, they’ve never been photographed before.
But you can see that.
Old John Roman
(with his conqueror’s name and his rococo sideburns)
hasn’t had the art to compose himself. His eyes
are like Hadrian’s wall upon the moor, a candid ruin.
No. Rather, they’re like the space the wall
had wanted to contain.
Ann Kirk: two months in Newcastle Gaol
for stealing. Doughy, and an ancient thirty,
she is—says the sententious photograph—
finally caught.
John Grieveson served four months in Newcastle
for a pigeon-stealing gambit. His necktie settles into
his waistcoat, its own maculate quail. The photo
is lightly vignetted, and Grieveson is listed as a clerk:
born in the city, grey-eyed, single and twenty-one.
Ellen Workman, just eleven, she’s a hard one. She
could be sitting for the constable or flying on a trapeze.
Sent down by the magistrate for thieving iron
with Rosanna from over the road, her eyes
show a relish for her seven days’ hard labour.
No worse than the work I been doin’ for me mam.
Neon now, the figures (scrubby girl / spare man /
scrubby boy / spare woman) flicker around the solid things
that were not theirs. Two bob. Wool coat. Rank leather.
New linen. (Roman.) Three rabbits. (Kirk.)
Silver watch. Good shirt. Black boots.
Work–
wrought iron
man.
Grieve–
rock dove
son.
