LITMIR.BIZ

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       Chapter 71: Smothering to Death

       Chapter 72: A Perfect Circle

       Part 4: Home

       Chapter 73: Headlines Across the World

       Chapter 74: A Fleet of Carriages

       Chapter 75: An Audience with the Queen

       Chapter 76: The Bravest

      Chapter 77: Never Forget

      Chapter 78: Not a Day Goes By

      Afterword

      Notes on the Real Victorian World

       Footnotes

       More from the World of David Walliams

       Also by David Walliams

       About the Publisher

      

       The year is 1899

      and we’re in Victorian London. Meet the characters in the story…

      Elsie is a homeless orphan, who lives on the streets of London.

      Dotty is the cleaning lady at the Natural History Museum. She is as daft as her brushes.

      Private Thomas is Dotty’s boyfriend, the shortest soldier who ever served in the British Army. His fellow soldiers call him “Titch”. He is now retired, and lives at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, making him a “Chelsea Pensioner”.

      Mrs Curdle is the nasty old boot who runs : Home for Unwanted Children.

      Mr Clout is the brute of a security guard at the museum, infamous for his hobnailed boots.

      Commissioner Barker is the fearsome head of the London Metropolitan Police, famous for his tiny moustache.

      Many years ago, the Professor was the top scientist at the museum, until one of his experiments went catastrophically wrong.

      Lady Buckshot is an aristocratic big-game hunter. Across Africa she shoots elephants, giraffes and lions and brings their bodies back to the museum to be stuffed and put on display.

      The admiral is the only sailor to live at the hospital. He was thrown out of the old sailors’ home for being drunk and disorderly.

      The colonel and the brigadier are also Chelsea Pensioners.

      The one-eyed sergeant major is in charge of everyone and everything that comes in and out of the hospital, and don’t you forget it.

      All the Chelsea Pensioners are overseen by the Royal Hospital’s formidable Matron.

      Queen Victoria is the ruler of the British Empire. In 1899, she had been on the throne for what was the longest reign in British history, a staggering sixty-two years.

      Abdul Karim is always at the Queen’s side. He is her handsome young Indian attendant, also known as “Munshi”.

      Sir Ray Lankester is the museum’s portly director.

      The sandwich-board man roams the streets, trying to convince everyone that “THE END IS NIGH”.

      The captain is in charge of what was, in 1899, one of the Royal Navy’s most modern warships, HMS Argonaut.

      The Sticky Fingers Gang is a rough and tough band of child robbers, who are infamous for being the greatest thieves in London.

      Raj the First has his own confectionery emporium – or sweet trolley.

      And last, but certainly not least…

      …is the Ice Monster itself, a woolly mammoth that died ten thousand years ago. The lifeless animal was discovered by Arctic explorers, perfectly preserved in the ice.

      

      One bleak winter night, in the back streets of London, a tiny baby was left on the steps of an orphanage. There was no note, no name, no clue as to who this little person was. Just the potato sack in which she was wrapped, as snow fell around her.

      In Victorian times, it was not uncommon for newborn babies to be abandoned outside orphanages, hospitals or even the homes of upper-class folk. Their poor, desperate mothers hoped their children

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