Street Child. Berlie Doherty

      

      

       Copyright

      First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton

      First published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 1995

      This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

      HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

      HarperCollins Publishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

      The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Berlie Doherty’s website address is

       www.berliedoherty.com

      Text copyright © Berlie Doherty 1993

      Why You’ll Love This Book copyright © Julia Golding 2009

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

      Cover illustration © Giodarno Poloni 2016

      Berlie Doherty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007311255

      Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780007397631

      Version: 2016-06-14

       For Hilda Cotterill

      With thanks to the children of Lynne Healy’s class at Dobcroft Junior School in Sheffield, who helped me with their advice and enthusiasm, and to Priscilla Hodgson, Deborah Walters, Mike Higginbottom, the Barnardo Library, Dickens House, The Ellesmere Port Boat Museum and Sheffield Libraries, who all helped me with their knowledge.

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Why You’ll Love This Book by Julia Golding

       Tell me Your Story, Jim

Chapter One – The Shilling Pie

Chapter Two – The Stick Man

Chapter Three – Rosie and Judd

Chapter Four – The Workhouse

Chapter Five – Behind Bars

Chapter Six – Tip

       Chapter Seven – The Wild Thing

       Chapter Eight – The Carpet-Beaters

       Chapter Nine – The Jaw of the Iron Dog

       Chapter Ten – Lame Betsy

       Chapter Eleven – The Spitting Crow

       Chapter Twelve – Shrimps

       Chapter Thirteen – The Lily

       Chapter Fourteen – The Waterman’s Arms

       Chapter Fifteen – Josh

       Chapter Sixteen – Boy in Pain

       Chapter Seventeen – The Monster Weeps

       Chapter Eighteen – You Can Do It, Bruvver

       Chapter Nineteen – Away

       Chapter Twenty – The Green Caravan

       Chapter Twenty-One – Circus Boy

       Chapter Twenty-Two – On the Run Again

       Chapter Twenty-Three– Shrimps Again

       Chapter Twenty-Four – Looking for a Doctor

       Chapter Twenty-Five – The Ragged School

       Chapter Twenty-Six – Goodbye, Bruvver

       Chapter Twenty-Seven – Barnie

       The End of the Story

       More Than a Story

       About the Author

       By the same author

       About the Publisher

       Why You’ll Love This Book By Julia Golding

      It could’ve been you – that might be the slogan on the movie poster if this story of an ordinary boy up against impossible odds was put on to the big screen. Street Child does something quite extraordinary. It dissolves the gap between just reading about the poverty in Victorian London and makes you live it. This is no dry history lesson, but an adventure into the dark underbelly of those times. Within these pages, you will find monsters and heroes, comedy and tragedy, all set against the backdrop of the scary docklands of London. As I read Berlie Doherty’s brilliant and moving book, I was constantly challenged. How would I have fared if I had been left an orphan with no money or friends to help me? Where would I have gone for love and help? What would you have done?

      This is the crushing fate that the main character, Jim Jarvis, faces when his mother dies. He journeys through the horrors of the workhouse, finds brief happiness in a fragile existence helping a street seller and comes to a state close to slavery working on a coal boat where he is treated worse than his master’s dog. The book is full of vivid characters, some of whom could be plucked from a horror novel: Grimy Nick and his dog Snipe, Shrimps, the boy named for the toes showing through the end of his boots, the glittering but treacherous Juglini circus troupe. Acts of kindness – a hug from a woman in the workhouse, Rosie’s care for Jim, Josh on the Newcastle collier ship, the boys tending to a dying friend – these are rare moments that shine out from the darkness like diamonds in a shovel of coal.

      But what really works is that you can’t help but fall in behind Jim, rooting for him to find a way out of the traps continually sprung