Excerpted from my short story, Secrets in the Mist

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5 May 1861 - Liverpool

She moves quietly through the streets, this lady of the night. Few occupy the streets after sunset, except for those spilling from the pubs, seeking a bit of comfort for a short time. She can provide that, and it puts food on the table. She steps across the broad, cobbled street and takes her usual spot.

The sun, reluctant to give up its feeble reign, hangs stubbornly for a time in the west. Shadows—long and foreboding—blend silently with the coming night, reaching skeletal fingers out from the waterfront toward the city as the fiery orb, now barely visible, slides behind an uncertain, hazy peach colored horizon. A man, cloaked in black, head covered with a broad-brimmed hat, hobbles along on crooked legs, poking at lamps atop posts with a long pole, a timid flame at its end. Once a slave to the Jenny Lind, he is now a slave to the Liverpool lamps. He doesn’t mind, though.

She left me here with me mangled legs—whilst she went off to die on the shoals, she did. Wahll, good riddance, I say....

He chuckles quietly to himself about the irony that landed him in his current predicament and scurries along in a sort of sideways shuffle like a small crab in an effort to stay ahead of the coming mist. The fog, creeping in on cat’s paws, stalks him, swallows him, dims the lamps thus lit—covers all in wet beads trickling together. He never wins his race, but remains undaunted. Tomorrow he will do it again, just as he has for ten years now.

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The train in the picture has the nickname of Bulgine and the song is about that train. It was originally a capstan song, but that's all I know about it. I suppose the history is around somewhere.