Chapter 325: Liverpool’s Chip Problems
Chapter 322 – Liverpool’s Problem of Chips
Liverpool, Georgian Quarter, 92 Duke Street, Munro’s Tavern.
If there is one thing that should be the most important thing to do when arriving in Liverpool by train from London, then coming to a pub and ordering a few glasses of good gin and wine would surely be high on the list of Britain’s referendums.
While the quality of the drinks in London’s pubs may not be as bad as Liverpool’s, when it comes to price, London, at the foot of the King and at the root of the Royal City, is certainly not as cheap as the relatively deregulated Liverpool.
Although Arthur did not have a special addiction to drinking, but at this particular time, drinking became an excellent way to prevent himself from getting seriously ill.
Sitting on the seat facing the street, Arthur could smell the pungent odor coming from the street with a gentle shrug of his nose.
In the guidelines issued by the Central Board of Health to local authorities for the prevention of cholera, emphasis was placed on the need to clean the streets with lime water, hot lime water, bleach, and to paint and smoke crowded and dirty areas.
And in a related recommendation, the committee also politely stated that it would be better if house owners could be required to repaint all walls inside the house from floor to ceiling with lime.
However, since the government did not have the legal authority to mandate the cleaning of private premises, most of the newly formed local health committees came up with the idea of distributing brushes, buckets and disinfectant materials free of charge to the poor so that people could paint their own houses.
This zero-dollar disinfectant promotion was soon an unprecedented success across Britain, in the spirit of the cheapest son of a bitch, from the lavish Buckingham Palace where the king lived, down to the leaky shelters of the poor.
In just a few weeks, at least a third of Britain’s houses were given a fresh coat of paint.
Not everyone responded to the government’s call, however, and there are still a significant number of people in Britain who don’t take cholera seriously.
Due to a lack of knowledge about this unfamiliar disease, many people believe that cholera is just a scam created by the government in conjunction with doctors and businessmen.
Arthur had noticed a story that had appeared in the Newcastle Morning Chronicle a while back.
It was reported that cholera had become a word in Newcastle with almost as much meaning as irony. If you said to a Newcastle man’s face that he was at risk of contracting cholera, what awaited you was likely to be a sandbag-sized fist, or perhaps a spit from the women.
And when a local Newcastle reporter visited an all-night tavern, a bottle-clutching drunkard even claimed, “I’m not worried about such little ailments, sir, as you can see, drinking cures everything, I’ve been doing it for half my life, and I’ve never had a problem. The only thing I’m worried about is never collapsing in any stinking gutter when I’m drunk.”
While drunks are usually inaccurate in their judgment, in the case of cholera alone, Arthur had to admit that the old boy was actually right on a rare occasion.
Arthur would have liked to try to suggest this to the Board of Health, but since he didn’t have much of a reputation in the medical profession, and since the idea that alcoholism could prevent or cure disease was contrary to nineteenth-century medical common sense, Arthur could only keep his mouth shut for the time being for fear that his words would cause the doctors to rebel against him.
But Arthur does not speak, does not mean that other half-knowledge laymen do not speak.
As the earliest barefoot doctors in the entire Christian world, but after entering the modern era, they have been reduced to the dilemma of practicing medicine without a license, the clergymen, after discovering that cholera had descended upon them, began to manipulate their set of sayings that had been handed down for more than a dozen centuries again.
Cholera is not a physical disease, but a spiritual and moral defect!
It was God’s punishment for society’s descent into darkness!
The Bishop of Exeter’s earlier language criticizing London’s imminent descent into a sinful hell was being realized!
In these difficult times, we need to strengthen our own faith, and consistently attending church to hear sermons and read the Bible will effectively reduce the probability of getting sick.
Normally, when Arthur saw a news headline like this, he would always think it was the clergy being sick again.
But he had to admit that the clergy had helped in the fight against cholera.
For example, the Bishop of Exeter, who had criticized the problem of prostitutes in London only a while ago, not only did not flee from his diocese after the large-scale outbreak of the epidemic, but instead took to the streets to call on the faithful to collect donations for the poor who could not afford to pay for their medical treatment, and in the meantime, he had insisted on conducting the funeral rites of the patients who had died of cholera.
And the bishop’s leading the charge went some way to stabilizing the volatile situation in Exeter, where in the past, whenever there was a large-scale epidemic of this kind, the middle classes of Britannia would surely have fled the city, dragging their families with them.
This time, however, the cholera had not shattered the social order; the stores were still open, the factories were still producing, and the harbor was still in operation.
One small shopkeeper even wept as he listened to the sermon, saying that he was sorry for his past sins, and that from now on he would give up his bad habits, such as drinking and smoking, and turn over a new leaf.
Not only that, he also called upon all the people in his trade association to stand up in the face of difficulties. They, the middle class, derive their wealth from the city, so they should not stand by and watch it fall into ruin when it is in trouble.
And with this gentleman’s call, Exeter raised over £300 in just a few days. Although this may not sound like much, it was definitely an achievement to be proud of for Exeter, which has a population of only a few thousand.
Although Arthur didn’t know if this gentleman could be called wise for giving up alcohol during the cholera, but if he could survive this cholera pandemic, Arthur felt that he would definitely be able to make a lot of money in the future, as his good deeds had spread to all corners of Britain through the newspapers in a matter of days.
Arthur flipped through pages and pages of the assorted newspapers he had picked up from the newsstands this morning, Exeter’s good deed was certainly touching, but there was more news than he could be happy about.
The medical journals about the various potent cures for cholera looked like nothing short of a battle of the gods and the mighty.
Even though Arthur hadn’t systematically studied medicine and couldn’t give a professional opinion, he couldn’t help but feel that the reliability of these various methods was questionable.
Whether it was using an enema made of saline, turpentine and aromatics on the patient, or making the patient take an emetic mixed with magnesium oxide, rhubarb and castor oil, none of them seemed to work very well.
However, these methods were not the most puzzling to Arthur, he found the most puzzling was the use of blistering therapy for those patients who were on their deathbed by dripping boiling water, nitric acid or applying drugs such as spotting cream on the body acupuncture points and special areas such as the heart socket and abdomen.
Doctors insist that the formation of blisters through skin stimulation can achieve the effect of dredging the meridians, promoting qi and blood circulation, regulating internal organs and eliminating toxins, thus realizing the purpose of internal and external treatment of diseases.
But although it seems a bit appalling, but compared with the clergy’s reading of the Bible, Britain’s old English doctors at least have been able to make Arthur initially accepted.
But among the flurry of papers, it was the Lancet that Arthur paid most attention to for proposing a new treatment, and this group of leading doctors from the London Physicians’ Society emphasized that hot air baths, hot water in cans or bottles, were always desirable therapies.
They strongly recommended that hospitals with the means to do so simply steam their patients in a hot air bath, preferably followed by the use of some soothing, friction-induced massage techniques.
And they cite the case of one who recovered from such a treatment, Dr. Dutton of Birmingham, who wrote that an eight-year-old child named Barratt had been dehydrated, moaning constantly, and in a critical condition that could have killed him at any time.
In response, Dutton immediately gave the patient soda water with brandy and laudanum added. At the same time, he had an assistant put about six gallons of water and three ounces of nitric acid in the bathtub.
Dutton describes himself as saying, “I had him lifted into the tub and allowed his body to be completely submerged, the water held level to the chin. While bathing, I had my assistant give him a full body rub for twenty minutes.”
And by the time Barratt had been in the tub for about ten minutes and had not yet been carried out, his pulse was racing and his dry, cold tongue, though not yet at a normal temperature, had become moist and warm. Barratt himself said he felt much better and wanted to lie down on the bed and rest.
And Dr. Dutton, who had saved a life, could not help rejoicing in his paper, “My little patient now seems to have recovered from that state of near collapse.”
Closing the medical journal in front of him, Arthur muffled a sip of wine with one hand on his head.
Though he didn’t think he was competent enough to dictate medical work, perhaps it was due to the fact that the Chancellery felt that since lawyers could do forensics in the courtroom, it made sense to send a policeman studying history to direct health care. At the very least an academic gold medalist in history at the University of London must have known a lot about how the Black Death was fought in the Middle Ages.
So on this trip to Liverpool, Arthur will not only have to do his smuggling job, but he will also have to oversee the work of the local health board.
And in order to be able to give relatively sound advice at the sanitary meetings, he has to choose from a host of cures the ones that are relatively reliable.
In Arthur’s opinion, the job was much bigger than his duties at Scotland Yard, where the Criminal Investigation Department could go on for weeks on end and only solve one murder. And if the cholera is not handled in a timely manner, it is a matter of minutes before Scotland Yard’s KPIs for decades are blown up.
As he pondered how to proceed, the door to the pub was suddenly pushed open.
Louis Bonaparte looked around with a thin document cupped in his hand, and he quickly found Arthur’s place and walked over to sit across from him.
“Arthur, Mr. Mill and the others have roughed out the information on the customs declaration. There are quite a few errors and omissions in there, and a preliminary count should involve at least six thousand pounds or more in taxes.”
“Hmm?” Arthur didn’t reach for the documents, but looked up at Louis, “Finding the mistakes so quickly?”
Louis smiled and nodded, “That’s right, quite a bit better than we expected. The investigation went so smoothly, Mr. Mill and the others didn’t expect it either.”
Arthur sniffed his arm on the table and slightly pondered, “Six thousand pounds …… Liverpool’s annual tariff revenue is around four hundred thousand, and a 1.5 percent error is not unacceptable.”
“No, no, no.” Louis waved his hand and said, “Arthur, Mr. Mill said that this six thousand pounds is just a preliminary estimate. If we wait for everything to be settled, it is estimated that it will have to be more than doubled.”
Arthur pushed another glass of wine in his hand in front of Louis, “Then it’s four and a half percent at three times that, which is in the realm of reasonableness. But to be able to find these errors and omissions in the customs declaration at least means that Liverpool’s Customs and Excise Department didn’t put us on a special white list. Do you know what that means?”
Louis hit the cigarette and took a sip, “They’re willing to cooperate.”
“Exactly.” Arthur nodded, “Since they are willing to cooperate, let’s play with the chips on the card table first.”
Hearing this, Louis fished out another document from his pocket and placed it on the table, “Since we are playing on the poker table, you should put this document away first, it should be useful when you raise the stakes in the future.”
Arthur glanced at the document and said, “This is about the Port Authority expanding the harbor?”
Louis nodded slightly, “Liverpool isn’t like London, we don’t have reliable informants here, so I had to go to the docks myself to ask around. I pretended to be a French tourist at the docks this morning and had a brief chat with the local shopkeepers.
One interesting thing they mentioned to me is that the upper classes in Liverpool are very fond of buying property, whether they are rich businessmen or executives of government agencies. Wow, maybe I can’t say that, after all, in this part of the world executives and rich businessmen are almost equals. According to those shopkeepers, about thirty percent of Liverpool’s real estate is held by those guys.
And these chatty fellows swore to me that the most powerful body in Liverpool was neither the City Council nor the Port Authority or the Customs Department, but a private business organization called the Liverpool Association.
The Liverpool Association is a two-century-old organization, and how can I describe its power in Liverpool? It is said that the Liverpool Association has given birth to seven mayors of Liverpool, and at its peak, 90% of the members of Liverpool’s city council were members of the Liverpool Association. To this day, it still holds over 70% of the city council seats.”
Arthur swirled his glass, his reddened eyes fixed on the clear fuchsia liquid, “Like to buy plots of land, the councillors of the Liverpool Association ……”
He suddenly leaned back in his chair, “Councillors don’t buy all that real estate just to put it away to look pretty. Let me guess, they must also like to speculate on land, right? And it’s quite successful. Real estate is bought without buying it, but once they buy it, they buy it in the planning area for the expansion of the harbor.”
A mysterious smile appeared on Louie’s face, “Arthur, you really have an imagination.”
Arthur lifted his glass and sipped his wine, “How much did the four new ports in Liverpool cost?”
Louis returned, “On average, around thirty thousand pounds each. The construction cost of each of those ports was around six to eight thousand pounds, and the remaining twenty thousand pounds or so were spent on acquiring land for new warehouses and ancillary facilities.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk ……”
Louis smiled and asked, “What’s going on?”
Arthur shook his glass and returned, “Nothing, I just find the Liverpool wines a bit spicy on the throat. Originally the London brandy I felt was already quite heavy, compared to the Liverpool wine, it was just bland.”
Louis sniffed and also raised his glass and took a sip, “Well …… the wine is a bit heavier in flavor, but the water of the Mersey River is clearer than the water of the Thames!”
Arthur raised an eyebrow and put down his glass and nodded slightly, “That makes sense. I said why Liverpool’s port authority asked for money three times towards the council’s public works committee, but it turns out it’s because the water quality is different, that’s why the cost of building the port has to be constantly added to. When I first rented a house to a friend of mine, he thought the price I offered was too high and said my house was made of gold. Now it seems that he must never have been to Liverpool, the house made of gold turned out to be here.”
Louis also joked, “Arthur, you must have never read Marco Polo’s Travels, what’s so rare about a house made of gold, Marco Polo said that at the easternmost tip of the continent, even the streets are paved with gold. Oh yes, and silver is used on that island to the east of the east.”
Arthur nearly sucked the wine that had reached his mouth into his nose when he heard this.
He hastily took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth to cover his embarrassment, “I’ll make a note of the harbor. However, this aspect is not within the scope of my supervision, and there is no need for us to get into that kind of trouble with them for the time being. At least from the customs declaration, they still showed some sincerity.”
Louis replied, “I also think that we are overstepping our boundaries in this matter, so we don’t need to use this as a last resort. Moreover, Liverpool shouldn’t be the only ones doing this, there are many people who make a fortune from this, if we rashly reveal this matter, we will definitely cause a lot of trouble.”
Arthur adjusted his mood, smoothed his hair and asked, “Anything new besides this?”
Louis recalled and opened his mouth to add, “Aside from the Port Authority, the Dock Committee shouldn’t be clean either. I briefly went through their directory, the place has been held by a few families for a long time, and the company that provides services for the Dock Commission’s public business is rather homogenous, with most of the purchasing lists being supplied by a company named Grindrod. There’s definitely something going on here as well if we keep looking into it.”
Hearing this, Arthur roughly also had a basic understanding of the local ecology of Liverpool, and he raised his hand to interrupt, “In this regard, we can just have an idea in our hearts. Give them a credit here for now, but these things can’t be played on the table. I need something a little slight, but not so much that it lifts the whole of Liverpool off the ground.”
Louis sniffed and put on his hat and nodded, “Okay, I’ll ask around some more then.”
Arthur opened his mouth and instructed, “Take care to dress well in disguise and remember to carry a gun when you travel. Without a police uniform, you’re really just an ordinary foreign tourist. If you get smothered with a stick somewhere, I won’t really know how to fish you out of the country for a while.”
Louis pressed one hand to his chest and bowed slightly, “Of course, don’t worry, sir.”
Arthur watched him out the door and was about to do some more research on the medical journal at hand.
Suddenly, the door to the tavern was pushed open again.
A man walked into the tavern and looked left and right for a while, and suddenly saw the clothes Arthur was wearing, and then he came to Arthur’s face with a smile and asked, “Excuse me, is this Mr. Arthur Hastings?”
(End of chapter)