I want to succeed at all I do, but not every attempt is successful.

Very few have managed to escape me. These men are too arrogant to notice me behind them, too arrogant to notice that anything is awry. But those that do escape, those that try to hide from me, are always found eventually. I do not see these escapes as failures. They are a learning experience.

My first escapee came two weeks after Mr Richards.

I had found my target easily enough. He was a factory owner, an arrogant man with no regard for human life other than his own, but it wasn't just the way he treated his employees that angered me.

This man treated his own children as though they were employees, people he can throw away if they no longer serve their purpose. Alongside his factory, he would use his own children to clean the chimneys of London's wealthier members. He disregarded the law, using a loop-hole that allowed him to use his children since he could not employ other children to do his dirty work.

One of his children had died and yet he continued to allow his other children to follow the same path until they grew too big. When they had outgrown their purpose, he put them to work in his factory.

This man, much like the others, needed to be disposed of.

I watched him from a distance. He would leave his children to their daily chimney sweeps and return to the brick walls and wrought-iron fence of his factory. There, he would stay for several hours. From an upstairs window, I could see him pacing. His face would contort in anger when another person joined him and the chimneys sent thick smoke into the sky.

Once his work at the factory was complete, if one could go as far as to call it work, he would emerge from the factory and head to the nearest public house. He abandoned his children to spend his night with an ale and the drunken men that lorded over the city at night. No one would miss him. Not even his own flesh and blood.

On the day I intended to strike, he returned to his favourite public house. I stood in the shadows, keeping out of sight from passing officers and men who had already had too much to drink. Time ticked by, each hour moving slower than the last as I waited for him to emerge. Darkness seeped in once more and time slipped past.

My time was running out.

Eventually, he stumbled from the public house. The scent of stale sweat and alcohol mixed with the smell of the Thames and the fading smoke from above. I waited, and allowed the other men he was with to stumble their way up the cobblestone street and leave the man on his own. Like most nights, the man would stumble home on his own with no one else by his side.

That night was different.

Not only did he spend more time at the public house than usual, at least a few hours by my estimation, but he was accompanied most of the way home. I waited nearby, buying my time and hoping for a moment, a small window, where I could strike. All I needed was a few seconds. The smallest of opportunities were not to be passed up, but the opportunity did not appear.

The man was accompanied home by his companions, the three of them cheering and singing down the cobblestones. Anger boiled beneath my chest as I watched him swing open the door to his house and disappear inside.

I pulled the hammer from my waistband and turned to the nearest wall, swinging it as hard as I could. The metal end of the hammer connected with the brick, sending a shower of red dust to my feet. My heart beat in my chest, threatening to erupt as I listened to the sounds of the night and the noises of the other men stumbling up the road away from me.

He might have thought he had escaped my clutches, but he hadn't.

I would get him when the time was right. All I had to do was bide my time and wait for the moment.

He would pay eventually.

They all would.

~~~

First Published - February 5th, 2023