Date: June 12, 1753
Location: London, England
On June 12, 1753, a thick fog blanketed London, settling over the Thames and muffling the clatter of hooves and the creak of carts on the cobblestone streets. In Spitalfields, where narrow alleys drowned in the shadows of weaving workshops, the air was heavy with the scent of coal and damp wood. Elizabeth Crowe, a 22-year-old weaver, barely noticed as she hurried home after a grueling 12-hour shift. Her coarse woolen dress, sewn from fabric worth 3 shillings, was soaked with sweat, and her hands trembled from exhaustion as she turned onto Fournier Street, passing a group of drunken sailors belting out a sea shanty. One of them, a man with a faded anchor tattoo on his arm, called after her:
“Hey, lass, join us at the Ten Bells!” His voice was hoarse, but Elizabeth quickened her pace, head lowered. She knew better than to draw attention in Spitalfields—a district teeming with poverty, where 40% of its 20,000 residents lived below the breadline, according to historical records of the time. Crime thrived here; the Bow Street Runners, London’s first organized police force established by Henry Fielding in 1749, reported 150 thefts in Spitalfields that year alone.
Elizabeth slipped into the Ten Bells tavern, a popular haunt for weavers and sailors in 1753. The green-painted wooden sign above the entrance swayed in the wind, while inside, the clamor of voices and clinking tankards filled the air. A pint of ale cost 2 pence, but Elizabeth had no spare coins—her weekly wage of 6 shillings barely covered bread and rent for a shared room on Brick Lane, where she lived with three other weavers. She wasn’t here for ale; she needed to pass a note to her friend Mary, a 19-year-old cleaner with red hair and freckles, who was wiping down a grimy table near the bar.
“Elizabeth, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Mary whispered, her voice laced with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“I heard something in the basement,” Elizabeth replied, glancing around nervously. “There are men down there… doing things to children.”
Mary frowned, but before she could respond, a stout man in a leather apron—the tavern’s owner, Mr. Griffin—lumbered over. His face was flushed from ale, his eyes glinting with irritation.
“Stop your chatter, Mary!” he barked. “Get back to scrubbing the floor, or I’ll toss you out!” He shot Elizabeth a suspicious glare, but she quickly lowered her gaze and slipped toward the basement door, her heart pounding. The note she meant to give Mary remained clutched in her hand.
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The basement was dark, lit only by the dim glow of two oil lamps hanging on the damp stone walls. Elizabeth hid behind barrels of ale—each worth 5 shillings, the tavern’s main stock—and peered out. Five men in dark cloaks stood in a semicircle around a 10-year-old boy named Thomas, an orphan she’d seen begging on Spitalfields’ streets. Thomas was pale, with bruises under his eyes, trembling as he clutched a tattered shirt. A tall, gaunt man with gray hair peeking from beneath his hood held a glass of murky liquid—an “elixir of endurance,” he called it.
“Drink this, boy,” the man said, his voice low and cold. “If you survive three days in the cold, we’ll know you’re ready for the heavens.”
Elizabeth held her breath as Thomas, tears streaming down his face, drank the liquid. She knew this was no magic but cruelty: the Order of the Starpath, a secret society, believed humanity would one day reach the stars. They conducted experiments, mixing herbal concoctions with mercury, to “prepare” people for journeys beyond Earth. The boy was locked in a freezing corner of the basement, where the temperature barely reached 5 degrees Celsius, left without food or water to test his endurance.
Unable to watch any longer, Elizabeth fled the tavern, her legs shaking as she ran to the home of Henry Fielding, the magistrate who led the Bow Street Runners. Fielding lived on Bow Street in a two-story red-brick house worth 200 pounds in 1753. She pounded on the door, and a young constable named Jonathan Wilkes, a 25-year-old man with sandy hair and a serious expression, answered, holding a quill from the report he’d been writing.
“What do you need?” he asked, his tone sharp.
“I saw them torturing a child at the Ten Bells,” Elizabeth said, her voice quivering. “They call themselves the Order of the Starpath.”
Fielding, a 46-year-old man with broad shoulders and a piercing gaze, emerged from his study, overhearing her words. His face remained impassive, but his eyes burned with resolve.
“We’ll raid the place,” he said to Wilkes. “Gather the men.”
That night, the Bow Street Runners stormed the tavern. In the basement, they arrested four members of the Order, but their leader, William Grey, escaped through a back exit, leaving behind a journal filled with writings about “humanity’s future among the stars.” Elizabeth took the journal, hiding it in her room on Brick Lane, and passed it down through generations of her family.
In 1753, London was a city of change: Parliament passed the British Museum Act, leading to the founding of the British Museum, while Samuel Johnson completed his Dictionary of the English Language, containing 42,773 words and priced at 9 shillings. In the scientific world, Benjamin Franklin received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society for his experiments with electricity. But for Elizabeth Crowe, the first in her lineage to confront the darkness, these events were distant. Her encounter with the Order of the Starpath laid the foundation for a battle her descendant, James Crowe, would fight 272 years later.
