Escaping the Jago
For most people in the novel Child of the Jago (1896), by Arthur Morrison, (especially those who move into the Jago as a result of poverty), the Jago “gets them”. This means that moral standards go down the drain all in the pursuit of escaping poverty and the wretched life in the Jago.
Mr. Beveridge’s statement is not true across the board; in some cases, characters do escape their fate. In the case of Josh and Hannah Perrott, they do not escape their fate, which is also true of the hunchback boy, Bobby Roper. When each of these characters moved into the Jago, there was a moral decline in all of them, and this decline causes destruction to those around them. However, there are characters who do escape the clutches of the Jago such as Kiddo Cook, Mr. Weech, Father Sturt, and lastly, Dicky.
Each, in their own way, escape the Jago, which is usually done by joining the High Mob, going to jail, or being sentenced to the gallows. There are more ways to escape the Jago than Mr. Beveridge thinks, and the novel mostly challenges this notion by the use of the introduction to Father Sturt to the community.
Josh Perrott was initially not from the Jago, but from a respectable job somewhere else in London. However, there is a snowball effect that his character undergoes, starting with when his wife is attacked in the feud war. He then calls for justice where he will duel Billy Leary, the brother Sally Green who attacked Hannah, his wife. He wins the duel and becomes rich—by Jago standards—and gains a reputation in the Jago that carves out his initial downward spiral.
As depicted in “Moral or Outside View of Josh” (Benvenuto, 156) it shows the decline in morals and how each of his decisions shaped his fate. When he went to jail, (gaol), it left his mind in shambles because he had a lot of time to think, and the second he got out, he sought revenge and it sent him directly to his death. The theme of justice is ironic because with Josh’s case, none is shown. Now, in our courts, we have innocent until proven guilty, but his trials are all decided prior to his arrival in both times. Josh was unlucky in that he received both jail and the gallows for his escape.
Hannah Perrott also came from outside the Jago, and though she tried to escape the Jago, it still caught her. Initially, she was a respectable woman, but in the Jago, that’s frowned upon. She didn’t drink, smoke, gossip, or fight, and she rarely left the house. However, when Josh wins his fight against Billy Leary, she starts to come out of the house more, and starts to drink and gossip. This is also the same day that their daughter, Looey, dies, and neither parent cares much for it. In fact, both seem relieved by her death, as it means one less mouth to feed. She also seems to have some sort of mental issue, perhaps depression, where she’s so crippled by her reality that most days she can’t get out of bed, let alone leave the house or work. Even when faced with work, she has her children do a lot of it when Josh is in jail.
Though her situation when Josh and Dicky die is not explained, I imagine she would not be doing very well, especially since Dicky and Josh were the breadwinners of the family. Without them, and with two young children, funds would be consistently low. I think with her mental state, she too would end up finding an alternative to escaping the Jago because she doesn’t seem to care for her children very much.
The hunchback, Bobby Roper, was another character from a respectable family who only had to move to the Jago because his parents lost their jobs. When Dicky steals the Roper’s clock, this starts a feud between Bobby and Dicky, one that consumes them both for the duration of the story. Feuds are a large part of the Jago, as seen between the Rann’s and Leary’s, and they never end well. Bobby holds onto his anger and injustice, and uses Dicky to purge that emotion, but he always holds onto it instead of letting it go. Despite the family moving to the outskirts of the Jago, closer to ‘civilization’, he is still touched by the Jago because he just can’t seem to let it go. He still involves himself instead of steering clear, and as a result, he actually ends up killing Dicky because of a theft nearly a decade prior.
In Jago terms, theft, if you get away with it is just and normal. Despite this, Dicky still felt remorse for what he did and tried to make up for it by giving the family a music box. Bobby’s anger towards Dicky is mostly unjustified, and should not have ended up with a death. Though not explicitly stated, it is highly implied that it was Bobby that stabbed Dicky in the lung during one of the feuds because it ends with Bobby running away from the scene. Though he does not act by the code of the Jago, (snitching) he still involves himself in the Jago, and as such, doesn’t seem to be escaping its clutches any time soon.
Kiddo Cook, despite being from the Jago, actually escapes his fate of the Jago when he meets Father Sturt. The Jago, (known for its clicks (theft), lies, corruption, and feuds), is not an inescapable entity. Kiddo Cook proves this first when he makes a living for himself by selling fruits and vegetables after encountering Father Sturt. He even helps out Hannah when Josh is in jail, by occasionally dropping by with food for the family. By living honestly, and by becoming more financially stable, he removes some of the desperation that comes from poverty in the Jago, which is something Mr. Beveridge did not anticipate being possible. In doing so, he escaped the clutches of the Jago, and if he saved money properly, eventually he’d be able to move somewhere nicer.
Mr. Weech too escaped the Jago, though in his case he was murdered. He had a comfortable lifestyle by using others to make money; this lifestyle ensured he stayed out of the messy parts of the Jago, and in this way, he escaped the Jago. The first encounter we see Mr. Weech in is with Dicky. For years, Mr. Weech blackmailed Dicky to keep funds coming in because Dicky was great at clicks. He’d keep Dicky indebted to him by giving him food that Dicky would later have to pay for with a future click, and if he didn’t, Mr. Weech would snitch on Dicky for his clicks.
Once again, it is Father Sturt who intervenes to try and salvage the people of the Jago. Sturt sees potential in Dicky and arranges for Dicky to have a job, but Mr. Weech sabotages this opportunity because he misses the money Dicky brought in. Mr. Weech was great at being a snake, and he got exactly what he deserved. He messed with the wrong family, and when Josh finds out it was Mr. Weech that lost his son’s job, and got Josh sent to prison, Mr. Weech’s fate was sealed.
Father Sturt is a saint of the Jago. He is an instigator of change and he spreads hope and positivity to the forlorn of the Jago. He is the reason for Kiddo Cook changing his lifestyle, of living honestly, and he tries to help the Perrott family by aiding in Dicky obtaining job, and of supporting Hannah in desperate times when Josh is in jail. Though the Jago never gets him at all, it is important to note his contribution to the novel because without him, nothing could have changed in the Jago. He gains respect in the Jago, not by religion, but by connecting with the people, and it made the difference.
The people of the Jago were not religious in any way, shape, or form. He recognized this and he instead turned his church space into a hangout spot, a safe place in a sea of dangers. It became a refuge, and he housed people who were continuously not able to pay weekly rent. Father Sturt was a catalyst for change in a place that was stuck in their ways.
When Dicky was a child in the beginning of the novel, Mr. Beveridge tells him,
“The Jago’s got you, and that’s the only way [out of poverty in the Jago] except for jail, or the gallows.” (Morrison, page 61)
This shapes a lot of Dicky’s aspirations and beliefs throughout the novel, and this defines his interactions with people. As a child, he aspired to be in the high mob, which was one of the ways Mr. Beveridge told him as he pointed to Mother Gapp, the pub in the Jago. When the novel begins, he is seen as wicked by his parents, and is beaten by Josh for stealing the clock when that’s exactly what is expected of those living in the Jago. What is different about Dicky is that he feels remorse for Mrs. Roper when he steals the clock, and he goes out of his way to try and compensate for what he stole by stealing a beautiful music box for her instead. After that he steals for Mr. Weech, and this goes on for years until Father Sturt intervenes and gets him a job.
Once he has a taste of actual working, his mind goes from high mob to shop owner. He fantasizes about a potential future if he works long enough and hard enough to start his own shop. Fantasizing when living in such a desolate place is only natural, seeing as it acts as an escape from reality, but when he loses his job, courtesy of Mr. Weech, this fantasy crumbles to the ground, and once more he dreams of being a High Mobster, which to him is a major step down. He justifies his loss as only natural as someone from the Jago should never aspire for anything greater.
“Who was he, Dicky Perrott, that he should break away from the Jago habit, and strain after another nature? What could come of it but defeat and bitterness? As old Beveridge had said, the Jago had got him.”
This mentality is what stops him from striving for more, and once more works for Mr. Weech, which is terrible because Mr. Weech orchestrated the entire thing.
Dicky escapes the Jago when battling in another feud where Bobby Roper stabs him. Dicky’s last words,
“Tell Mr. Beveridge there’s another way out—better.”
Not only does he not have to fight anymore, though dark because the way out is death, he believes he is free and he goes in a positive light as opposed to a negative light like his father. Josh died with no one he loved by his side, and as an enemy for murdering in cold-blood. When Dicky died, those he loved were by his side, and it ends not happily necessarily, but perhaps with an air of calm, or peace.
Father Sturt is sure to take care of Dicky’s family as is Kiddo Cook, and it’s because of Dicky, not Josh, that this happens. It is not Josh that is called Mr. Perrott, but Dicky, which is interesting because Dicky is seventeen, while his father is the head of the house, and was respected in the Jago because of his fight. Perhaps the reason Dicky says there is a better way out is because he didn’t do anything wrong when he died. He wasn’t subjugated to the shame of jail time or the gallows where humility and pride is ripped away.
Mr. Beveridge was wrong when he said there were only three ways out. There are more if one refuses to accept their reality and strive for more. If one has ambition for a better life, a better life one shall have because happiness is not all environment; it is outlook too, and Dicky always had ambition, and he always had a dream.
If you don’t have a dream or a goal, you are sure to be miserable like Hannah, Bobby Roper, and even Mr. Beveridge. They were bogged down by their reality, and their emotion instead of accepting it, and moving on, while Dicky, who was subjected to the same environment and poverty, still had something he wanted to achieve instead of dwelling on ‘woe is me’.
Escaping the Jago is not impossible; Mr. Beveridge’s ideas about escaping the Jago is a pessimistic view, and one that is not set in stone. Multiple characters escape the Jago in their own way without the shame that follows when it’s from jail or gallows. The difference between Josh’s death and Dicky’s death, is that one was shameful, without integrity, while the other had honour with dying side by side with family. The characters that fulfill the prophecy are not used necessarily to ‘fulfill the prophecy’ but to show how it is possible to change ones fate if one doesn’t succumb to the negative aspects of life.
It gives strength to the characters like Dicky and Kiddo Cook because they took charge and decided they wanted something more. Dicky’s words going into battle were that he stood behind Father Sturt, who was basically a saint in the Jago. He fought for himself and his people, while Josh murdered a man in a way that seemed to be cold-blooded murder. To the fullest extent, Morrison’s novel challenges Beveridge’s prophecy by using both the idea of honour in life and death as a tool to show that lifestyle despite environment is integral, and essential, and that how one thinks is more important than where you come from.
[WORKS CITED]
Benvenuto, Richard. "The Criminal and the Community: Defining Tragic Structure in A Child of the Jago." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, vol. 31, no. 2, Apr. 1988, pp. 152-161.
Morrison, Arthur; Miles, Peter. Child of the Jago. Oxford University Press, 2012.