London, 1805. Blackfriars Bridge. The Thames at low tide. If you crossed that bridge in the early 1800s and looked down at the exposed mudflats, you might have seen her: a woman, about forty years old, with striking red hair, wading waist-deep into the river, bare feet feeling through the filth for lumps of coal that had fallen from barges. Her name was Peggy Jones. And she was a mudlark. Mudlarks were scavengers. The poorest of the poor. Women, children, the elderly, the disabled—people with no other way to survive. They worked the banks of the Thames at low tide, picking through stinking mud and debris for anything they could sell: scraps of coal, bits of metal, old bones, lost coins. Anything. The work was brutal. The mud could trap you if you weren't careful. The tide could turn fast. And the river—the Thames in 1805—was a open sewer carrying human waste, animal carcasses, industrial runoff. The smell alone would make you retch. But Peggy Jones was there every day. Passengers on Blackfriars Bridge would stop and stare at her. She was a spectacle. An oddity. A woman doing something so degrading, so painful, that people couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. They didn't see a woman trying to survive. They saw entertainment. In June 1805—just months after she disappeared—her story was published in Kirby's Wonderful and Eccentric Museum; or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters. It's one of the only written records we have of her existence. And it's voyeuristic as hell. The description lingers on her appearance: her red hair, her ragged petticoats, the mud caked on her legs. It marvels at the strangeness of watching a woman wade into freezing water to scrape coal from the riverbed with her feet. It doesn't talk about her hunger. Her exhaustion. The impossibility of her life. It treats her like a curiosity. A freak. Something to be gawked at. But here's what we know: Peggy Jones gathered coal that had fallen from the lighters—the flat-bottomed barges that carried freight along the Thames. She used her bare feet to feel for the coal in the mud because gloves would have been useless, and shoes would have made it impossible to detect anything in the thick sludge. She tied her apron up as a makeshift bag and carried her haul through the streets of London, selling it for pennies. Most of that money went straight to gin. The magazine made sure to mention that. They were "sorry to be obliged to state" that Peggy Jones "was not exempt from a failing to which most individuals of the lower orders are subject, namely, inebriety." Translation: she drank. Heavily. And why wouldn't she? Gin was cheap. It dulled the cold, the pain, the gnawing awareness that this was her life and it would never get better. When you're wading through sewage for coal scraps, gin isn't a vice. It's survival. The article describes her stumbling through the streets with her load, drunk, becoming "the no small amusement of mischievous boys, and others, who...never failed to collect around her." They laughed at her. She was a joke. A drunk woman covered in mud, falling down in the street. But among the men who worked the river—the coal heavers, the bargemen, the laborers who understood what it meant to break your body for a few coins—there was a rough kind of respect. They knew what she was doing. They knew why. And sometimes, when no one was looking, they'd kick a large piece of coal over the side of the barge into the water. Pretending not to notice. Letting her gather it up. It was the closest thing to kindness she received. In February 1805, Peggy Jones vanished. She stopped appearing at her usual spot on the riverbank. No one saw her wading into the water. No one heard her moving through the streets. She was just... gone. The coal heavers noticed first. The men who'd silently helped her, who'd kicked coal into the water for her to find. They were the ones who realized she wasn't there anymore. No one knows what happened to her. Did the tide pull her under one freezing February night? Did she slip, get trapped in the mud, drown before anyone could help? Did she die of illness in some squalid lodging, alone, with no one to notice until the smell gave it away? Did she just walk away—leave London, leave the river, try to find some other way to survive? There's no record. No investigation. No search. No obituary. Just absence. The magazine article—published in June 1805, a few months after she disappeared—notes that "nobody can tell what is become of her." It speculates, almost casually, that she was "probably taken by the river." Probably. A man who looked like a coal heaver took over her spot after she was gone. He stepped into the work she'd done for years. Wading into the Thames. Scraping for coal. Selling it for pennies. The river kept flowing. Life kept moving. And Peggy Jones became a footnote. She was remembered—but not because anyone mourned her. She was remembered because she was strange. Because watching a red-haired woman wade waist-deep into the Thames was entertaining to people crossing Blackfriars Bridge. She was recorded in a magazine dedicated to "wonderful and eccentric" characters. Filed alongside freaks, hermits, misers, child prodigies. Remarkable people who were remarkable because they were odd. Not because they were human. Not because they suffered. Not because their lives mattered. Because they were spectacles. Peggy Jones lived in a city of a million people, and she died alone. If she died. We don't even know that for certain. What we know is this: She was one of thousands of mudlarks—mostly women, children, the elderly, the disabled—who worked the banks of the Thames in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were invisible until they became inconvenient or amusing. She survived by wading into freezing, filthy water and feeling through sewage with her bare feet for lumps of coal. She drank to cope. She stumbled through streets while people laughed. And when she disappeared, no one looked for her. The Thames has erased her story, as it has erased so many others. But her name survives. Peggy Jones. Mudlark. About forty years old. Red hair. Blackfriars. And somewhere beneath the city, buried in the mud or carried out to sea, she is still there. Forgotten by history. Remembered only because she was strange. Not because she was brave. Not because she endured the unendurable. But because people on a bridge found her fascinating to watch.