Orders were sent down to New York for seed potatoes by the ton as well as for Indian Corn, as it was locally called – the farmers having decided that they wanted a cereal crop with a shorter growing time than wheat. Most had calculated that they could get a wheat crop into the ground immediately after the last frost and have just sufficient time to harvest it before first snowfall, but it was wise, they thought, to have another food source safely in the larders as well. If they grew too much, the pigs and cattle would have a fat winter; if the wheat failed then they would not starve, although there would be many fewer hogs by spring.
Caleb Witherspoon built himself a soddy close to the forge, showing them all how it was done, in case they ever needed a quickly-built place – any shack could burn down, he pointed out. He chose a slope a few feet up from the valley bottom, dug a squared off pit, five feet deep at one end, and some twelve feet long by six wide, a week of solid labour in itself. He banked the spoil solidly along the sides, holding it firmly in position with poles driven into the ground because he felt the soil was rather loose – it was better where there was a lot of clay, he said. He roofed the pit with untrimmed branches from fir trees, laying the turfs he had carefully put to one side across the top. A log wall across the front and a door hung on leather straps completed the dwelling. There could be no fire inside but he built a stone hearth a few feet from the door with a stone wall to act as a reflector and put a raised pallet indoors, covered in waterproof leathers and two heavy bearskins, said that he could be more than warm enough on the bitterest of nights. A promise of a loaf of bread whenever he wanted and a seat at the fireside sent him out into the forest after bear and by spring most of the houses had at least one thick hide for the children’s bed.
Immediately after Christmas they had an inaugural town-meeting, needing to answer one important question – what was the name of their new community?
“Whose money has enabled us to start afresh here?” White demanded. “Caleb tells me we are the richest, best-equipped settlers he has ever known. Most new villages lose a quarter of their folk in the first winter, so he says, but we have the food and the tools to live well from the very beginning – that is why he has stayed with us, he says. We should give our thanks to the Good Lord, that goes without saying, I hope, but we should also recognise our good fortune in our benefactor. I say we should be Andrewstown.”
It was agreed – it was only polite, after all, and cost them nothing.
It was a busy winter in London as well – Mostyn had agreed to finance the new shipyard, actually saying that he had come to believe in steam for ships, having watched the untidy proceedings on the crowded river in London where vessels dependent on the vagaries of the wind fell afoul of each other almost every day. He had underwritten the purchase of eleven acres on the Isle of Dogs, a small existing and almost derelict yard and several hundreds of slum dwellings in terraces and courtyards surrounding it. The land had been owned by the Church of England and due to the difficulties of rent-collecting the bishop was pleased to be rid of it. There were several thousands more of such properties providing a reliable income, he said, and the money would be better invested in the Funds, earning a safe three and a half per cent.
Mostyn scratched his head and commented quietly to Robert that he had thought it was the Jews who were into usury, to the dismay of all good Christians, but perhaps he had got it wrong. Robert, who had inherited his father’s form of respect for all things religious, grinned and made no comment. The freehold was theirs early in January and they set immediately to work.
The first problem was the rookery, more precisely the thousands of the poorest who dwelt in it, uncounted, faceless, anonymous, potentially violent. Drunks and whores and thieves and blaggers and bumboys and mudlarks mixed with peddlers and tinkers and casual labourers and knife-sharpeners and piemen and flower-girls, honest and viciously criminal, simple and sophisticated, naïve and corrupt all at once. The area was dangerous and it had to be cleansed.
The authorities had nothing to offer, could give no assistance of any sort, but they would not interfere, either, primarily because they could not. There was no police force to be used as a political militia and the army itself was now so few in number as to be ineffective in the capital – the battalions and regiments of the Home Establishment were mostly in the North Country, trying to keep order in the new towns, far too busy to be marched south again.
“Navigators, Mr Mostyn – they will provide us with the answer we require. In the winter they are to be found at a loose end, drinking their savings and very pleased to be employed at all.”
Mostyn did not know the term, said so.
“Canal and turnpike builders, sir, itinerant workers, the fiercest and hardest of them all. They cannot make their roads or cut their ditches in freezing weather and so they are laid off each winter, their employer sometimes paying a retainer, more often letting them run up debt in his own store and boozing-ken so that they are bound to him by the next spring. They earn at least twice as much as any farm labourer, and spend three times as much on drink, I believe, gaining very little from their hard lives.”
“Are they to be found in London, Mr Andrews?”
“Michael will find them.”
Four gangs of ‘navvies’ stood waiting in the sleet of mid-January, three hundred and fifty of the most frightening men Robert had ever seen. Thames barges had brought them into the old yard on the previous evening and they had camped out in the sheds by the slip, content to sleep rough in the blankets provided and eat the hot stew ladled out in massive bowlfuls as they arrived. There had been one or two fights over the evening, but nothing serious, no deaths, mere playfulness, or so the gangers said; four of them, foremen and bosses of the men, thrown up by the navvies themselves as workmates they respected and would obey, while they continued to respect them. Robert introduced himself, having been very forcibly told that he must extend all formal courtesy to these men in all of his dealings with them. He had been warned that they were no respecters of persons, had no awe for titles. He had also been warned that they tended to be playful and lived by their own rules but that they were loyal to any employer, providing he was worth being loyal to.
“Good morning, gentlemen! I am Robert Andrews, from the Roberts Iron Foundries, and I intend to build a shipyard here on this land which I have bought. Steamships, my brothers and their people will be making, the first to swim in these waters. If you have been in Liverpool this year you will have seen our first steam tugging boat working the Mersey – two years from now and there will be a dozen on the Thames!”
They liked the sound of that – steam was the future and they were to be part of it.
“I believe Mr Michael has discussed pay with you, gentlemen?”
The spokesman of the gangers, again their own choice, stepped a pace forward.
“That ‘e ‘as, Master, but I likes to ‘ear the words from the organ-grinder, not from ‘is monkey. For each man, ‘e said, three sovereigns a week, a place to lay ‘is ‘ead, rough but dry, and three good meals a day. Us saw the food last night and this morning and that’ll do for me – beef what didn’t come from a ‘orse do make a good change. The sheds ain’t very warm, but they’ll do. When do us see the money?”
“Knock-off time on Saturday, sundown, cash in hand, Sunday free time but the food will still be cooked morning, noon and night. Work again dawn on Monday.”
“So ‘e did say, Master, and ‘twill do I. What about the work, what do us be doin’?”
“Clearing this place, knocking it down flat, burning the rubbish and everything that cannot be used, laying and rolling the bricks to make a solid base for the yards and slipway. The sheds are cold, but they are within reason clean and dry – if you can find a better place to lay your heads – the big old houses perhaps - then use them, knocking them down last of all.”
The rookery had grown around a pair of old merchant houses, residence and warehouse combined, built probably in Elizabethan times a
nd abandoned when the families had moved to more salubrious parts of the town.
“People, Master?”
“A lot of them, and they must all go.”
They were being watched, fearfully by some, opportunistically by others.
“Rabbits, master – they won’t be no bother to the likes of we.”
“Good, can you start now?”
The four glanced at each other, nodded agreement – they would take the job and work together for a month or two.
“My hand on the deal?”
Robert pulled his gloves off, held his hand out, waiting stoically for it to be crushed in their grips.
“Rumpo Willy, Master.”
“Sheepy Sam.”
“Crocodile Bob.”
“Nobby.”
Each shook his hand as he gave his name, a polite, sensible, firm clasp, to his relief. He had been warned to accept the names and not, under any circumstances, to demand their provenance – if they liked him he would be told in time, their own good time.
“What about tools, gentlemen? I have put together a couple of hundred each of pickaxes, sledgehammers, shovels and wheelbarrows and fifty each of felling axes and smaller hatchets. Will you need horses and carts? If so, how many and of what size?
“I’ll tell thee the answer to that in a couple of days, master. For the while, like, can you lay yer ‘ands on a dozen of muskets, just in case they’s needed, like? Most of the blokes ‘ere was army or sailors.”
“Certainly not, Rumpo Willy, under no circumstances will I be seen to provide you with firearms! If you look in the locked shed immediately behind the cookhouse you should be satisfied with all that you happen to come across. Here’s the key.”
Nobby took the key – he had been a gunner’s mate, they said, on a seventy-four – came back ten minutes later, silently nodded.
Robert understood – he had not seen them himself – that there were fifty muskets and five thousand rounds as well as a dozen of fowling pieces and forty dragoon pistols, sufficient, he trusted to deal with any mob that might present itself.
“Well and good, master. When do ‘e want the job finished?”
“I would like to get the builders in as soon as the frost is out of the ground and they can lay bricks. As for finishing – the slipway must be built, and wharves as well and a roadway out to the nearest highway, and that is all navvy work, as I understand it. As well, there will be forges and iron plate work on the hulls – hard labour, well paid and suitable for a strong man of the likes of those I see here – and I will give first preference to any of your men who want it, our rule in Roberts is to look after any man who works for us. I will need foremen as well, gentlemen.”
They grunted and nodded and made no commitment, they had all heard fine words before, would wait to see the reality.
The Surveyor and Clerk of the Works, a Mr George Barrow, introduced himself to the four gangers, told them he proposed as a first measure to mark the limits of the site. He asked for two men with brushes and buckets of whitewash to accompany him, suggested that it might be felt wise to provide a guard of sorts as well.
“No need, Master George, us’ll keep a weather eye out, like, and end anything that starts quick time. If us goes out ten strong ‘twill look like us might be afeared, like, and that’d never do. Best they daft buggers do think they can bash a couple up quick-like and then show they it ain’t nowise a good idea.”
Barrow led the way, as was his job, hoping Rumpo Willy could be trusted to make good on his promises, and consulted his plan very publicly before directing his two men where to mark their white crosses. Ten minutes and five houses in, he was interrupted by a dozen toughs, ostentatiously hard men, kings of the local streets.
“What the fuck you bastards think you doin’?”
“These houses are to be demolished tomorrow. We are marking the right ones for the workers,” Barrow replied, continuing to glance at his plan.
“Get that shit off the walls! You touch another one, you’re fucking dead, you poncey little shit!”
The local men drew knives and short billies, two of them making a play of settling brass ‘knucks’ on their fingers. A small crowd formed including several of the local girls and they made a show for their benefit. The crowd became silent and they thought that it was in anticipation of the next stage of their performance.
“We owns this street, mister. Fuck off!”
“Beest thou havin’ trouble, Master George?”
Rumpo Willy’s voice, low pitched and deferential, came from behind the toughs. They turned and saw him with five navvies at his side, stepped threateningly towards him – at two for one they expected no trouble, especially as the navvies were bare-handed.
The spokesman stepped a pace ahead of the others, opened his mouth as if to say something, raised a hand carrying a knife, doubled over and started a panting half-formed scream, trying to clutch his crotch and the arm that had simultaneously been broken in three places.
Rumpo Willy looked down at him, an expression of concern on his face.
“Now, young feller, thou shouldst not be so impatient, a wise man ever watches first!” He emphasised his words with a boot in the face that caught the open jaw and broke that too.
He looked at the others, raised an enquiring eyebrow, said nothing as four stepped back while the remainder jumped at him.
Barrow estimated that it took thirty seconds to finish the business, the six navvies standing, one of them sucking at a cut across the back of his hand, the only injury they had taken, seven bodies laid out next to the original spokesman. One of them had to be dead, live people never looked like that, their heads faced the other way. Two stood slight chance of surviving, he thought, especially the one whose own knife was driven up to the hilt in his belly. The other four might well live and three of them would probably walk again, though the one with both legs thoroughly broken just below the knee was certainly crippled, but he was very strong, Barrow had never heard a man scream so loudly before.
“Twelve men, all armed, who attacked six – I do not think the authorities will be too concerned, gentlemen. Now then, we have some more properties to mark, I believe.”
Rumpo Willy nodded his approval, the gentleman had hit exactly the correct note.
“Wast thou a soldier, Mr Barrow?”
“A sailor, Rumpo Willy, I had the honour to be a Master’s Mate serving His Britannic Majesty, but never saw prize money or promotion and was sent on land when the wars ended and was so lucky as to fall into this trade. Many another gentleman’s son who had been a midshipman has found himself unable to earn a living at all, but I have a roof over my head and food in my belly, so have reason to be thankful.”
“True indeed, Mr Barrow, we should all count our blessings.”
Book Four: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Eight
“Factory Acts, Tom! Politicians who know nothing of business and think they have the answer to the world’s problems. What would they say if I offered an Act to interfere with them chasing their foxes and killing their tame pheasants? They’d tell me to mind my own damn’ business, and quite rightly, too!”
“Yes, Joe.”
“It’s not as if I force my hands to work in my mills, Tom – if they don’t want to they can walk out any time. There’s always a queue of girls begging to be signed on, and the children get better food from me than they do in their orphanages or workhouses.”
“Yes, Joe.”
“I’m going down to London and stand up in the Lords and say so!”
“No, Joe!”
“No?”
“It would serve to make you a target, that’s all. You are one of the better employers in this area – almost as good as me! That’s why they want to work for you, and me. This Act they’re talking about won’t affect us. We don’t work children for more than twelve hours a day, we don’t pay in tokens or in the boozers, we don’t let the foremen beat the hands or fine them
for nothing and if any of our people are hurt at work we pay them – and that’s more than the Act will demand. This Act won’t do us any harm, and it will put one or two of our competitors out of business if it’s enforced properly, not that it will be, of course, that would cost money and the government has better things to do with its cash, there’s always a hungry mistress to pay off!”
“What about the next one? Once the politicians have started interfering they won’t stop. This man Owen – big-mouthed bugger will be bashing his Bible even more now that he thinks he has had one success.”
“Quite right, too – and we will be in Downing Street, as friends to Reform seeking to ensure that all he does is sensible and moderate. After all, Joe, we don’t want the Reds jumping on the bandwagon and abusing the process for their own ends!”
“Next thing you’ll be telling me to set up a Trades Union, Tom!”
“Good idea, Joe! One Union for our skilled hands who have learned on the job, another for the time-served tradesmen to look after their interests and talk to us first whenever there is a problem. Much better than a bunch of outsiders poking their nose into our firms.”
Joe thought about the proposal, a slow smile surfacing.
“We have always been on the side of our men, after all, Tom, as they know, that’s why we pay high. As the firms grow bigger so it becomes more and more difficult to keep in contact with all of our people, so we ask them to help. No need to worry about the unskilled, they could never be organised, there’s too many of them and all from different places, most of them don’t even talk to each other – the English hate the Paddies, the townies sneer at the hicks, nobody likes the Welsh! So we just help each different set of skilled men to organise themselves, for their own good.”
The Pain Of Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 4) Page 22