title: Childhood and Death in Victorian England
author: Sarah Seaton
description: The scandalous way in which poorer peoples lives impacted on their children and their brief, unhappy lives is brought into stark reality in this amazing social history bySarah Seaton. (<i>Books Monthly</i>)
zlib_text: By Sarah Waters
  Fingersmith
  Sarah Waters
  To Sally O-J
  
  2
  
  Part 1
  1
  My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. People called
  me Sue. I know the year I was born in, but for many years I did
  not know the date, and took my birthday at Christmas. I believe I
  am an orphan. My mother I know is dead. But I never saw her,
  she was nothing to me. I was Mrs Sucksby's child, if I was
  anyone's; and for father I had Mr Ibbs, who kept the locksmith's
  shop, at Lant Street, in the Borough, near to the Thames.
  This is the first time I remember thinking about the world and
  my place in it.
  There was a girl named Flora, who paid Mrs Sucksby a penny
  to take me begging at a play. People used to like to take me
  begging then, for the sake of my bright hair; and Flora being also
  very fair, she would pass me off as her sister.
  The theatre she took me to, on the night I am thinking of
  now, was the Surrey, St George's Circus. The play was Oliver
  Twist. I remember it as very terrible. I remember the tilt of the
  gall