The Silver Locket in Shrines of Gaiety: A Symbol of Lost Identity and Evidence

What the Locket Is and Where It Appears

The silver locket is a small piece of jewellery found on the body of a teenage girl pulled from the Thames. It hangs on a thin chain around her neck and opens like a diptych to reveal two photographs: one of a woman, presumed to be the girl's mother, and one of a slightly out-of-focus terrier. The photograph of the woman survives immersion undamaged. The locket first appears in chapter 15, “The Fisher King,” when Detective Chief Inspector John Frobisher examines the girl's body at the Bow Street police mortuary. Alongside a bruise on her cheek and a single silver dancing shoe, the locket is one of the few objects recovered with the body.

The locket recurs at key moments across the novel. In chapter 16, “In Haste,” Gwendolen Kelling receives a note from Frobisher asking whether either of the missing girls wore a locket, and she realizes he has found a body. She writes to Cissy Murgatroyd asking if Freda wore one and whether the Ingrams know if Florence did. In chapter 44, “Pierrot,” Frobisher walks the beat through Soho's catchpenny jewellers, hoping someone will recognize the locket; none do. In chapter 58, “The Waste Land,” Mrs Taylor reports her fifteen-year-old daughter Minnie Carter missing from Colchester, and Frobisher shows her the locket. She identifies it as Minnie's, and he tells her the river took her.

The Locket as Evidence

The locket functions first as forensic evidence. The police doctor Webb determines the girl was stabbed in the carotid artery with a small knife, drowned before bleeding to death, and would have died of hypothermia regardless. Webb calls her the third female victim that month; Frobisher corrects him to four. The locket is the only personal item that might connect the anonymous corpse to a name.

Frobisher removes the locket from the girl's neck and carries it with him. In chapter 44, he makes the rounds of Soho's jewellers and pawnbrokers, but none recognize it. The longer the locket lingers in his pocket, the more he feels responsible for the dead girl who wore it. The search is a long shot, but it is something to tick off a list.

The identification comes in chapter 58, when Mrs Taylor identifies the locket as Minnie's. This moment completes the locket's evidentiary function: it gives the dead girl a name and connects her to a family. But it also confirms a loss that cannot be undone.

The Locket and Lost Identity

Before Mrs Taylor's identification, the locket is the only trace of who the drowned girl was. The novel emphasizes how easily young women vanish in Soho—Frobisher worries about at least five girls disappearing in recent weeks, suspecting they enter clubs and never leave. The locket stands against this anonymity. It is a small, intimate object that carries the girl's family with her: her mother's face and the family dog. The dog photograph is particularly affecting. Frobisher finds it sadder than the mother's portrait, perhaps because it speaks to an ordinary domestic life the girl will never return to.

The locket's meaning shifts as it moves through the novel. On the body, it is evidence of a crime. In Frobisher's pocket, it becomes a burden and a promise—a reminder that the dead deserve to be named. When Mrs Taylor identifies it, the locket completes its transformation from anonymous evidence to a link between the living and the dead. It gives Minnie Carter back her name and her family, even as it confirms their loss.

The locket also connects to the novel's broader treatment of institutional corruption and the failure of justice. The drowned girl is one of several young women who vanish into Soho's clubs, and the locket is the only thing that restores her identity. It does so only because Frobisher refuses to let the case go.

Frobisher and the Locket

Frobisher's relationship to the locket is central to its symbolic weight. He is a detective on loan to Bow Street to root out corruption, and he is haunted by the girls disappearing in London. The locket makes the abstract problem concrete: here is one girl, with a mother and a dog, who will never come home. His refusal to let the locket go—carrying it through Soho, showing it to jewellers, eventually presenting it to Mrs Taylor—is a refusal to let the girl become just another statistic.

The locket also connects to Frobisher's personal history. His own childhood dog Jenny died of poison meant for crows, and the memory still pains him. The dog in the locket's photograph triggers this grief, blurring the line between professional duty and personal feeling. The locket is not just evidence; it is a small object that makes the dead girl feel real to him.

The Locket and the Novel's Themes

The locket ties together several of the novel's central concerns.

Lost identity and the failure of justice. The drowned girl is one of several young women who vanish into Soho's clubs. The locket is the only thing that restores her identity, and it does so only because Frobisher refuses to let the case go. The novel's broader critique of institutional corruption—police officers like Maddox and Oakes running prostitution rackets—makes the locket's quiet work of identification all the more significant.

Exploitation of vulnerable young women. Minnie Carter is fifteen years old. The locket, with its photographs of her mother and the family dog, is a reminder of the ordinary life she left behind when she came to London. It humanizes a victim who might otherwise be reduced to a police report. This connects to the novel's treatment of the exploitation of vulnerable young women.

Performance, disguise, and the blurring of appearance and reality. The novel is full of disguises—Nellie Coker's theatrical self-presentation, the clubs' glittering facades, the characters who perform versions of themselves. The locket is the opposite of performance: it is a private, unglamorous object that tells the truth about who the girl was. This resonates with the novel's exploration of performance, disguise, and the blurring of appearance and reality.

The lingering trauma of war. Frobisher's reflections on his Shropshire childhood and his dead dog Jenny connect the locket to a broader sense of loss. The novel is set in the aftermath of the First World War, and the locket—a small object carrying memories of home—resonates with a generation's experience of holding onto the past. This connects to the lingering trauma of war.

The Locket and Other Objects

The locket is not the only object that carries symbolic weight in the novel. The single silver dancing shoe found with the girl reappears when Frobisher searches the Sphinx and finds only a silver shoe—a trace that connects the dead girl to the club world. The bluebird brooch stolen by Florence from Mrs Ingram is another object of connection and loss, sold by a pawnbroker before it can be returned. But the locket is unique in its function: it is the object that names the dead.

Study Questions

1. Why does Frobisher carry the locket with him rather than leaving it with the police evidence?

Frobisher carries the locket because it makes the dead girl real to him. The longer it lingers in his pocket, the more responsible he feels for her. It is a personal commitment to a case that the official system might otherwise let slide—the novel makes clear that girls disappear in Soho and are not always found. The locket is his way of refusing to let Minnie Carter become anonymous.

2. What does the photograph of the dog add to the locket's meaning?

The dog photograph is unexpected—Frobisher expects a father's portrait on the other side of the diptych. The out-of-focus terrier speaks to an ordinary domestic life, and it is the detail that most affects Frobisher, connecting to his own childhood dog Jenny. The dog makes the dead girl feel like a real person with a real home, not just a case number.

3. How does the locket's meaning change from the morgue to Mrs Taylor's identification?

In the morgue, the locket is evidence—one of the few objects recovered with the body. In Frobisher's pocket, it becomes a burden and a promise. When Mrs Taylor identifies it as Minnie's, the locket completes its transformation: it restores the girl's name and connects her to her family, even as it confirms their loss. The locket moves from anonymous evidence to a link between the living and the dead.

4. What does the locket reveal about the novel's treatment of the girls who disappear in Soho?

The locket is the novel's answer to the anonymity of the missing girls. Frobisher worries about at least five girls disappearing in recent weeks, and the locket is the only object that gives one of them back her identity. It insists that these girls have names, families, and ordinary lives—that they are not just statistics in a corrupt system. The locket is a small act of justice in a novel where justice often fails.