The Underground train pulled into one of the above-ground stations common on the outer edges of London. I stepped off the Tube, alone on the eastbound platform. I just wasn’t as alone as the guy on the opposite, westbound side. He was being robbed in broad daylight.
The victim looked in his 20s. He was face down, shouting and clinging to his bag as he was set upon by three men of similar age. One kicked him as he lay on the ground. The second prised his bag from his desperate clutches. The third picked up his mobile phone and other valuables that spilt from his jacket on to the platform in the afternoon sun.
Welcome to Plaistow in Newham borough, in London’s fruitier East End. Crime is higher here than in many other boroughs. So, too, is deprivation. Child poverty levels touched 50 per cent during the Covid pandemic.
For the first time in two years in London, I felt physically vulnerable as the assailants clocked me across the track – three younger men staring down a lone, dopey middle-aged one. I stood out, dressed in a suit with a laptop bag – worthwhile quarry. There was nobody else around should they cross the track. And I had no viable escape route should they come at me across the bridge.
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I guessed they wouldn’t come over the track, not unless they wanted to risk being barbecued on a live rail. So I took my chances and headed to the bridge where the exit was, hoping to emerge first. We all arrived at the same time, as they left their victim, who didn’t seem too badly hurt, screaming obscenities from the westbound platform where they had relieved him of his possessions.
At that moment staff at the exit realised what had happened. The three thieves ignored me and ran through the gates. A station attendant walked down towards the victim. Now acutely aware that I stood out in a way that I didn’t want, I stepped out on to the streets of Plaistow.
I was there because of Baby Elsa. Just over a year ago she was discovered, barely an hour old and in a Boots carrier bag, abandoned at night on a road nearby. It was the coldest night of the year – minus four degrees. Social workers named her after the character from Disney’s children’s film, Frozen.
A family court heard two weeks ago that Elsa had just taken her first steps in foster care. Her biological parents were never found. Police believed the birth mother, at least, lived nearby.
Elsa, it was revealed last summer, had a brother and a sister. The three full siblings were separately abandoned soon after birth in the same area in similar circumstances. DNA testing proved the babies, all of black ethnicity, shared the same parents.
The oldest, Harry, was found in a bush near the entrance of a park in September 2017. His sister, Roman, was found in a Sainsbury’s bag by a bench in January 2019, also in freezing temperatures – she had a sheen of frost on her forehead. Elsa was found five minutes away from where Roman was discovered.
Eight weeks ago, Metropolitan police offered a £20,000 (€23,700) reward for information on the parents.
I wanted to get a feel for this area where three newborn siblings could be dumped in the black of night in separate occasions over six years without explanation. I left Plaistow station clutching my laptop bag tighter than the guy who had just been robbed. I tried to conceal my insecurity by puffing out my chest, as though I owned the place, and striding on. I doubt it fooled anyone.
I reached Harry’s spot of abandonment first, a park on Balaam Street, 10 minutes from the station. The area felt rough, even at 2pm. Next door was a Barnardo’s children’s charity unit.
A 15-20 minute brisk walk from there down an isolated greenway to the other end of Plaistow took me to the spot where Elsa was found in January 2024 on a pavement outside the entrance to the track and beneath a clearway sign. Notices adorned the greenway: “Thieves operate in this area.”
Around the corner on Roman Road, Elsa’s older sister, Roman, was left in a playground directly beneath the elevated greenway amid streets of terraced two up, two downs similar to what you’d find in old council estates all over Dublin.
Metropolitan Police are stumped by the case. They worry about the mother in particular. Is she being abused? Is she in danger? Is she a victim or a perpetrator, or both? How complicit is the father? Does he even know he is a father? Is he related to the mother? Is he her abuser, her tyrant?
I circled back to Plaistow station, feeling better the closer I got. And I had only witnessed a little robbery, just another statistic of London that happened to play out in person. What had Elsa’s mother seen, behind the walls of some grubby flat in Plaistow? What might she see next?
