Isabella, by contrast, flourished in their new setting. She was used to being in service and she had long ago overcome homesickness. Never one to waste time or effort, she resorted first to her brain to devise ways get their work done quickly. While her sharp manner put off some of the other servants, Grace observed that if something wanted doing well, it was Isabella that they asked for advice or help.
Grace’s money problems didn’t ease, but her aching muscles eventually did, and she increasingly looked forward to going out on her afternoons off. By the time harvest came around, she was happy to join Isabella and the others for a night of dancing and good cheer. Unfortunately, the attention of a handsome young thresher and the beer and the moonlit haystacks were her undoing. Again.
As her stomach began to crowd her apron, all thoughts of reuniting with infant Thomas were driven out by the problem of what to do with the baby on the way. Isabella was furious with her, as much because she had foolishly undone Isabella’s attempt to rehabilitate her as for her pathetic plight, and her parents back in Dalton felt completely helpless in the face of this new disaster.
To try to keep herself and this second child out of the workhouse, an increasingly desperate Grace obtained a place near Bolton-by-Bowland, where she could earn her keep until the baby arrived. The work was very arduous, especially for a pregnant woman, but Grace was relieved to have a situation of any kind.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Creary heard rumours that Grace was about to have another child, and fearing she would never see the money she was owed, hastily returned the child to Grace’s parents, who equally quickly found a woman named Jane Gordon to look after him, promising that Grace would be good for the cost of his care. Fortunately for all parties concerned, except Mrs. Gordon, she and Agnes Creary were not acquainted.
Meanley Without Jane
They had so little time to enjoy their dream.
With the move to Meanley, John had gone out and surprised Jane and the children with the purchase of a horse, not just to help with the farm work and chores but for the children to ride on as well. There had been considerable debate about a name. Jane wanted to call it something silly like Dilly or Flo, and the boys favoured dull, obvious names like Grey or Stormy, but it was little Maggie who was let decide.
“Come sit on my knee, you bonny girl,” said her pa, “and tell me what you would like to call this fine animal.”
“Bonny,” said Maggie, clapping her hands. “Let’s call her Bonny.”
So Bonny it was.
He should have known that all their cheery laughter was tempting fate. Jane’s death came as a dreadful reminder that happiness is something you have to hold onto tightly, or it can just slip away.
In the exhausting and painful months after Jane died, John found it comforting to talk to her as he went about his farm work, or as he carefully fitted stones together for a new house for the squire’s estate manager, sharing his worries about Matt’s nightmares and Maggie’s schooling. Sadly, as time went by he found that he was losing the ability to keep Jane in his thoughts. And at night his recurrent dream was of struggling through fields thick with mud to get home to her, throwing open the door at last, and looking about, only to find that no one was there.
Often he was trailed about Meanley by a gaggle of his children, in an unconscious imitation of geese following behind their mother. He was kind to them, even when they were underfoot, because he knew how frightened and disoriented they must all feel. Jane’s sister and his own were doing the best they could for the littl’uns, but it was hard for everyone.
As he looked down at his children, solemnly throwing bits of dry bread at the ducklings, he realized that he must hire someone to help him run the farm and look after his family. He sometimes wondered how Jane had managed everything so efficiently, but he was past that. He would happily settle now for just another pair of hands and a woman’s skill in the kitchen.
A Slaidburn Wedding
It had been a difficult couple of years for both of them.
In his search for hired help, John had found that a farm widower with five children, no matter how well-intentioned he may be, did not have many applicants for the combined job of servant and surrogate wife and mother knocking down his door. He put out the word to his friends and acquaintances that he was looking for someone and waited impatiently to see who might turn up.
Meanwhile, though she found Grace irritatingly weepy and depressed whenever she stopped by to see how she was faring, Isabella kept on looking for a new situation for her, one that would take her with all of her baggage. And when Isabella heard of the job at Meanley, she felt relieved and hopeful. As she said to Grace: “That job might be your salvation.”
Wisely, Grace agreed.
The chance to be hired girl over at the Isherwoods near Slaidburn sounded like hard work, but by then Grace had considerably less fear of hard work. She had learned to be afraid of other things, prospects she found much worse, such as a life in the workhouse with no hope of a reprieve.
Instead, Isabella had found her a miracle. In just months she had been transformed into an honest woman. She smiled at John across the room. There he was, standing up tall, almost afraid to believe his good fortune, and here she was, in love with a good man at last.
It was a joyful event for all involved, a new-year celebration and a wedding and a birthday all rolled up into one. Grace had just reached the age of twenty-five when she married John Isherwood on January 3, 1885, and it was clear that the two of them were very happy.
The fact that the bride was known to be pregnant did not even slightly dampen the celebrations — in fact, John was delighted that another baby was on the way and as he said to his mates at the Black Bull, “Why would such a sweet woman bother with an old man like me with five littl’uns, if she weren’t going to have one of his herself.”
When Grace first arrived to work at Meanley she already had a fatherless baby in her arms, so the locals knew that she had been no better than she had to be, but the combination of her quiet ways and John’s need made most people happy to have her as part of their community. As Mary Rushton’s mother-in-law was heard to remark, “That Grace does brew a fine cup of tea.”
After the quiet ceremony in St. Andrew’s Church, the Isherwood children and their cousins ran wild, full of excitement and wedding cake. Maggie organized the older children into a mock ceremony of their own, although no one could keep a straight face when Richard decided to wear the baby’s shawl as a veil. Even Maggie’s scolding about little James catching a chill without his shawl was interrupted by her own laughter.
Isabella had a fine time at the wedding. Not only did she attract the attention of one of the Robinson boys, but also she felt secretly proud that she had played such a big part in bringing Grace and John together. Her mother was too ill at the time to attend the wedding, and travel in the winter cold did take the stuffing out of you, but she was glad to see sister Jane again. It was Jane who needed cheering up those days, and Isabella felt that it was her responsibility to help Jane get over the news that Sykes had married a girl from Moorcroft.
Matt and Maggie were pleased to see their father so happy. He had been so careworn during those long months since their mother had died, and now he seemed his old self again.
Neither Grace nor John was a big talker, but as they sat by the fire that evening they shared a sense of deep contentment. While John believed he would never forget Jane, he felt he had his life back on track again and that Grace would make a fine wife and mother to his children. He hoped that the new baby would be a girl, perhaps a miniature of Grace in the way that Maggie was of her mother.
After the sadness and confusion of the last few years, Grace felt as if she could finally let out her breath. Ever since she had first fallen pregnant she had been frightened, frightened of what her friends and family would say, and frightened that she would end up in the workhouse where she felt certain she would die of shame. Isabella had been very impatient with her when she fel
l pregnant a second time, shouting at her that everyone would think that the Gardner girls were slatterns. Grace understood that Isabella feared for her situation as well as her reputation, but it still pained her to see the anger in Isabella’s eyes.
Now she had a kind and loving husband. She had become a respectable farmer’s wife, and that would make her respectable too. John had even suggested already that he might give baby James his name. What a good man.
Everything would be fine now if it were not for young Thomas, back in Cumbria. He’d been in the Ulverston workhouse for a bit, and maybe that was the best place for him. With the speed at which events had overtaken her and John, somehow the moment had not yet come to mention Tom’s existence.
She hoped that Thomas would be safe and find his way in the world, but she just couldn’t see how he could ever become part of her new life.
Murders Large and Small
Once she retired from her job as a lawyer, my older sister Penny (the one with the middle name of Dale) caught the genealogical fever. Penny has been adept with computer technology since the sixties, when she worked as a programmer, so she took to hunting up things on the Internet as if it was second nature. Her proficiency with complicated spreadsheets and family-records programs belies her claim that she has no clerical aptitude.
Although we were raised in western Canada, we both love a change of scene. In the early southern hemisphere spring of 2001, I was living in Australia while Penny was living in New Zealand.
When she called me at my rented home in Canberra from her own temporary home in Wellington, on the evening of September 11, 2001, she was terribly excited. “You won’t believe what I have found,” she said in a voice filled with emotion. “I have found the family murder!”
Then came the modern day instruction: “Go to www dot Slaidburn dot org dot uk, forward slash suspected underscore child underscore murder underscore 1885 dot htm and read it! Our grandmother was even required to testify! It’s amazing!”
I had to repeat the address back to her a couple of times and then I promised that I would look at the site immediately and call her right back. Our home computer in Canberra at that time required the use of the phone line to access the Internet.
“By the way,” I asked, “how did you ever end up on a site called that?”
“Oh, I was just playing around on the Internet and I found it. “
“How many hours have you been on the net?” I asked sternly. Her answer was vague. It must have been another very rainy day in Wellington.
It was rather cold in the room in Canberra where we had set up our computer. Canberra is big on sun in the outdoors but, because it is inland, during the winter it can have very chilly interiors. Penny had called me on an evening that felt more like winter than spring, so it was dark, and I sat shivering and keyboarding away in the cold until I found the site and its amazing contents.
I quickly phoned Penny back to marvel together. It was the kind of family mystery you dream of finding as you plod through old records. Only part of it was there, of course. So after spending some time speculating about what she had discovered, we began to try to figure out how to learn more.
I had missed the 9:30 p.m. news in all the excitement, so I tried to combine watching the late night news with tooth brushing (it helps to have an ensuite near the TV) before going to bed. As I tuned in, Sandra Sully, Channel 10’s blond late-night anchor, was announcing Breaking News and the coverage immediately went live to the scene. A plane had just flown into the World Trade Center in New York.
As I stood transfixed in front of the television, toothbrush drooping from my gaping mouth, a second airplane appeared on the screen like a car whose curious driver is slowing to look at the scene of an accident. And then it flew right into the second tower. In the antipodes, the dreadful day that was America’s September 11 was beginning to unfold through our night.
I called Penny in Wellington again, this time to tell her to wake up and turn on the TV.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it was some weeks before I really thought again about the 1885 Slaidburn Child Murder.
The Morning After
September 12, 2001, was a very strange day in Canberra. It was beautiful and sunny, but most people were cheerless and bleary-eyed from exhaustion after being up most of the night trying to make sense of events half a world away.
I went to a lunchtime speech that I had previously been eager to attend because it was to be given by the clever and interesting Australian Senator Kate Lundy. But when I got back to the office I could not remember a thing that she had said.
I had spent an anxious period during my night of September 11 trying to find out if my son Matthew, a journalism student in New York, was safe. I got reassurances at about 4:30 a.m. through family in Toronto, although as it turned out, because of his own derring-do, they were a bit misleading. While Matthew had escaped any initial danger, he then tempted fate by using his newly minted press pass to head for Ground Zero and see what he could find to report on down there.
All over the world, friends and colleagues were facing the dawning horror of twenty-first-century terrorism, not to mention the massive dislocation and inconvenience that it brought in its wake. Some personal stories could be told with humour, like that of a friend returning from San Francisco to Hong Kong, who spent days on a hot, smelly jumbo jet parked amidst many other downed jets on the tarmac in Juneau, Alaska. Others, like that of our corporate doctor, scheduled for a presentation in the World Trade Center that day, who found himself literally on the ground at ground zero performing triage, simply reflected the shock of war.
Fearful of what the terrorist events might mean about the future, I turned away from the past. After printing out the information from the Slaidburn Suspected Child Murder site, I just put it aside.
Much later, as the world began to settle into a post–September 11 “new reality,” and I began to consider resuming such previously ordinary behaviours as riding on airplanes, I remembered Penny’s amazing discovery and returned to the Slaidburn site to reread its contents.
I found the site both amazing and tantalizing.
SUSPECTED CHILD MURDER 1885
These extracts were taken from the Preston Guardian of the time contained in a Victorian scrapbook kept in Clitheroe Library.
INQUEST PROCEEDINGS
Wednesday, 20th of May, 1885.
SUSPECTED CHILD MURDER NEAR SLAIDBURN. ARREST OF TWO WOMEN. THE INQUEST.
Considerable commotion has been prevalent in the Slaidburn district since Monday, in consequence of a suspected case of child murder. About seven o’clock on Sunday evening the dead body of a child was found in a brook, close to the highway between Slaidburn and Bolton-by-Bowland, and about 1 mile distant from the former village.
Black Bull Inn, location of the inquest.
Photo by Sue Burton.
The discovery was made by a farmer’s wife, named Bargh, who was walking alongside the brook with her husband. The child, which was apparently about two years old, was laid in the water with his head and shoulders under a curb stone. Yesterday, Grace Isherwood, wife of John Isherwood, farmer, Newton and Isabella Gardiner, her sister, were taken into custody on suspicion of being concerned in the murder. It is suspected that Mrs. Isherwood is the mother of the child, but Gardiner has made a statement to the effect that she had had the child to nurse the last four months, but gave it back to its mother, who was a stranger, on Saturday night, at Slaidburn. This statement, however, is somewhat discredited.
Yesterday afternoon, Mr. A. I. Robinson, coroner, opened an inquest at the Black Bull Inn, Slaidburn when the following evidence was taken:
John Bargh, Farmer, Field Head, Slaidburn, deposed: On Sunday evening, at seven o’clock, I and my wife went for a walk. We went up under Langcliffe Cross bridge, and in the fields along the waterside. About 30 yards distant from the bridge at the bottom of the pavement we saw a child lying in the water. My wife saw it first, and called my attention to it. It was
lying face downward. Its head and part of its shoulder were under the edge of the pavement, and one leg was between the stones. After we had left the waterside we turned back to see whether the child was really dead. From the appearance of it, and the mud upon its legs, we saw that it must have been there some hours. Iwent for a policeman and returned with him, and saw him take it out of the water. I did not know the child. It is the same child that I have just seen. I had not seen anyone about there that day. My wife and Mrs. Camm, who are neighbours, and I met two women with a child on Saturday night, a little after nine o’clock, just above the bridge. They were going in the direction of Bolton-by-Bowland. They went up the hill in front of us, and then turned back and met us. It was dusk, and I cannot identify the women, nor can I say how they were dressed. One of them was carrying the child. They would be 40 or 50 yards above the bridge when we passed them. A conveyance was passing at the time, and drove between us just as we were passing it. There is no road down the brook side, and no one could get to the place where we found the child without getting over the wall. The water forms a pool at the end of the pavement of about a foot or 18 inches deep. The brook is the Easington Brook. I cannot speak as to the kind of shawls the women wore, or anything, except that they are nearly both of one height.
P.C. Sutcliffe said: a little before eight o’clock on Sunday night the last witness came for me. I went with him to Langcliffe Cross Bridge. In the water about 28 yards from the bridge, down the stream, he pointed to the body of a child. I examined it minutely, and found it was lying face downward; the arms were folded in front, and it was in a stooping posture on its knees. The right foot was under a large stone, but the stone did not rest upon it. The head was under the curb stone of the pavement, but was quite loose. The water was about 18 inches deep. The child had two petticoats and a shirt on and was without a hat. The clothes produced are the same as worn by the deceased. I went to Meanley Farm about ten o’clock that night, and saw Mrs. Isherwood and Isabella Gardiner, also John Isherwood were sitting each side of the fire. I said, “I suppose you have a little boy, Mrs. Isherwood?” She replied, “No.” Gardiner then said that she had had one to nurse for the last four months, but had taken it to its mother. Mrs. Isherwood then said that they had had a letter from the mother of the child asking them to meet at Clitheroe on the previous day (Saturday), at twelve o’clock, with the child. They went there at twelve o’clock, but did not see her until four o’clock in the afternoon. Isabella Gardiner said she wanted £4 from the mother for nursing the child, but the mother said she must take the child back to Slaidburn and she would meet them there and pay the money. Gardiner further stated that they met the mother of the child at Slaidburn at ten o’clock the same night. She only paid her two shillings instead of the £4, whereupon they (Mrs. Isherwood and Gardiner) took off the child’s frock, shoes, and stockings, but left its hat on. The mother, however put it a little coat on. They were waiting for more money, when a man came out of the Black Bull Inn and accosted them, and said if they were not off he would do for both the child and them.
The Slaidburn Angel Page 4