Field of Dust

by Angela Jean Young

  On opposite sides of the street the fishmonger and butcher competed with each other to see who could out-yell whom.

  ‘Three a penny, Yarmouth bloaters. Beautiful whelks, a penny a lot.’

  ‘Buy my bags o’ mystery, it’s only me what knows what’s in ’em.’

  Holding up salted, fried sprats and strings of sausages, they exhorted their customers to buy as their young assistants darted amongst them eagerly displaying their wares by the light of brown-paper flares. The air was full of tiny specks of soot which smudged on touching, yet somehow it all just added to the excitement of the evening.

  From somewhere nearby, Flossie could hear a familiar refrain. ‘Hot chestnuts, penny a score!’ Spotting the handcart with its crimson fire glowing inside a brazier, she opened her palm to reveal the few coins she’d been holding on to tightly and nudged her friend.

  ‘C’mon, Jess – hot chestnuts!’

  Heading home down College Road, they were glad of their woollen mittens as they tossed the chestnuts up and down to cool them. Flossie had Jess in stitches with her tales of what she had seen whilst hopping.

  ‘I wish I could’ve been there with you,’ Jessie sighed. But they both knew that was unlikely ever to happen. Her father, George Larkin, worked for Robins. Sam was at Bevan’s. They didn’t mix as the two cement factories didn’t see eye to eye.

  The mistrust had been building for years, ever since Knight, Bevan & Sturge opened up right next door to the well-established Robins in The Creek. The rivalry had become fierce, leading to a riot, which the local newspaper was quick to report:

  A barge loaded with bricks tied up at high tide next to the public landing stage slipway. Bricks were being unloaded onto a horse-drawn cart before being hauled the four hundred or so yards to the site of Thomas Sturge’s new cement works, when the horse, on being released from the cart shafts, lost its footing on the slippery surface and fell into the water. As Sturge’s men were scrambling to retrieve the poor beast, the works bell of Robins & Cox cement factory – opposite the slipway – rang and sixty men emerged from the gates. On seeing their competitors ranged along the slipway ramp, all hell broke loose.

  Some of the men got onto the barge to try and stop the unloading, and fights broke out. Subsequently seven of the men were arrested.

  Nathaniel Larkin, Jess’ grandfather, had been one of Robins’ men defending ‘their territory’. He was found guilty of assault and fined five shillings, though he reckoned he’d got off lightly. If the jury hadn’t been sympathetic, they would have transported him to the colonies.

  Of course, Samuel Grant had known nothing of this when he first arrived from Ipswich looking for labouring work. Grateful for the job offered to him at Bevan’s, he soon realised that not everyone was happy about the cement factories encroaching upon the surrounding villages.

  The materials used in making Portland cement in North Kent came from mud and clay deposits along the Medway and white chalk dug from the ground locally. After mixing with water, the slurry was dried to form a slip, which was then burned off with coke in kilns to form clinker. Unfortunately, during the burning process noxious gases were emitted, which caused some members of the local gentry to complain about the foul air. When the Gostling cement works announced plans to build more kilns, there was vigorous opposition, led by the Reverend Southgate, on the grounds that the factory was much closer to the village than the others and the resulting pollution presented a danger to people’s health. So, in a bid to avoid a costly court case and compensation, Gostling increased the intended height of his new brick chimney from 100 feet to 220 feet. At the official ‘topping-off’ ceremony on the 2nd October 1873, a young worker was hoisted up the inside of the chimney on a bosun’s chair to fix a flag on top. As he stepped out onto the scaffolding, the chimney gave way, bursting out at the side, sending masonry cascading down onto the onlookers below.

  Sam heard the rumble first, followed by the crash, and it sent a chill down his spine. All the workers around him stopped shovelling and stood rooted to the spot as the reverberations echoed across the river. Within seconds, factory whistles from near and far began blowing.

  ‘Half the new chimney’s collapsed,’ someone shouted. Downing tools, the men surged towards the Undershore.

  On reaching Gallopers Wharf, Sam and Joe Ollerenshaw fought their way through gritty dust and fallen bricks until they could hear Gostling’s men scrambling around in the rubble looking for their mates. When the body of the boy who had fallen to his death was retrieved from the top of a kiln, the true scale of the disaster unfolded. Six more workers were dead, buried under the debris. Many others were injured.

  Alehouse talk laid the blame for the disaster squarely at Reverend Southgate’s door.

  ‘If he hadn’t complained,’ people said, ‘Gostling would have kept the chimney to a safe height and no one would have been killed.’

  Four days after the tragedy, waiting solemnly outside The Royal Charlotte public house at the top of Dock Row, Sam swallowed hard as the coffins of Cornelius Bruce, Charles Tremain, Thomas Yates and John Allen came into view, carried on the shoulders of their fellow workers. Bevan’s had given their employees an hour off to pay their respects. Joining the procession of families and friends, Sam walked slowly to the church lych-gate where the body of John Allen was placed in a shillibeer carriage and taken on to the Roman Catholic church.

  St. Botolph’s was besieged by crowds of locals, many keen to know if the Reverend Southgate was going to conduct the service. Sam stood by the Huggens Memorial, idly studying the state of the church’s crumbling stonework. It was late afternoon and the sun was already going down.

  ‘Cornelius was my brother’s lodger,’ a voice from behind him said quietly. It was the docker, Tom Luck, whose company Sam had enjoyed over a pint or two in The Huggens. ‘He was a widower, not yet forty. Left behind three little ones.’ Turning round, Sam saw that Tom had his young nephew, Henry, alongside him.

  ‘They bunk up with me and my brother,’ Henry confirmed. ‘Me ma’s kept them at home today. They’re too young to understand.’

  Sam had to smile at that grown-up remark, Henry being only five years of age himself.

  ‘Lord knows what will happen to them now,’ sighed Tom. ‘Workhouse, in all probability. Did you hear they can’t find a next of kin for the Catholic? John Allen’s not his real name, by all accounts. Turns out he’s a deserter from the army.’

  They stood patiently until the heavy oak church doors opened and the Reverend Southgate emerged carrying a large lantern to lead the pallbearers to the freshly dug grave where the three men were to be buried together.

  ‘He’s got some nerve, I’ll say that for him,’ Tom whispered as the crowd fell silent. Sam nodded in agreement.

  When wealthy residents, led by a local JP, sought to have White’s cement works at Galley Hill closed by court action a few months later, tempers boiled over. Incensed by what they considered an attempt to deprive them of their livelihoods, White’s labourers decided to demonstrate. Workers from neighbouring factories, men working on the river and shopkeepers fearing loss of income joined them. The cry went out that the ‘great unpaid’ were aiming to close all the cement works in the area. After all, they had nothing to lose from the closures. For the thousands of workers and their families, though, the threat to jobs was very real.

  Excitement mounted as the procession came into view in a blaze of torchlight, at the head of which was a white horse adorned with blue ribbons. Flossie and Henry waved frantically as Sam and Tom Luck passed by, holding up banners saying Cement forever! People carrying loaves of bread on sticks made their way along the gaily decorated High Street. Stopping on the hill, they swelled the crowd already massing in front of the hastily erected hustings. The Greenhithe Brass Band struck up, lifting everyone’s spirits on the cold autumn afternoon, before various speakers, including dignitaries who opposed the
closure plan, took the stand.

  The crowd roared its appreciation when promises to keep White’s open were given, then broke into wild applause as one of their own held up a loaf in one hand, shouting, ‘See this? Our daily bread. Without work we’ll starve!’

  The thrill of having seen her father marching alongside men like Tom Luck, who’d come in support of the five thousand-strong cement workers, was something that neither Flossie, nor Henry, would ever forget.

  4

  The rest of the year was bleak for Flossie. The warm sunshine that had enveloped her in the hop fields felt like a distant memory as winter’s grip tightened. Thick fog rolled in across the river, merging seamlessly with the choking cement dust, so you could no longer see Tilbury on the other side. The Thames was dangerous at the best of times, but especially so when an impenetrable layer of fog clung steadfastly to the marshes. Barges and lighters on the overcrowded waterway had to blast their horns to be heard over the remorseless din of the surrounding factories.

  The smog made everyone weary. It was only when you were sent to the butchers at the top of the cliffs, or on a Sunday when the family climbed the hill up to the church, that there was some welcome relief from it. Babies cried all day and night, unaware that rubbing their sore eyes made them sting all the more. Tempers were short and fists quick to fly. Fred Coulter from number 22 got taken away by two policemen one night after losing a fight in The Hope and then taking it out on his landlady.

  ‘Pity he didn’t have a wife to belt,’ John O’Connell scoffed as he tucked into his bread and bloaters at the Grants’ tea table. ‘Wouldn’t have been arrested then.’

  Mary visibly winced, knowing what he was saying was true. Marriage wasn’t all it was cut out to be. For a woman, her identity virtually ceased to exist. By law she became the property of her husband and she was expected to obey and support him at all times. Their children belonged to him, as did any property and money that she brought into the house. Married women often had to suffer abuse from drunken or violent husbands, the option of divorce being virtually impossible both legally and practically.

  Standing on her usual spot outside The Huggens, shawl sodden and the braid from her pigtails slowly slipping, Flossie’s thick hair descended into an unruly mess down her back despite its liberal coating of Rowlands’ Macassar Oil. She could hear familiar voices down near the water, and wandered over to have a look. A group of children were watching something going on beneath the slipway as men rolled barrels of cement down onto a vessel that was all but invisible in the murk.

  Suddenly, with a howl, two ghostly faces caked in chalk, with sooty black rings around their eyes, leapt out from the darkness, rattling and clanking the mooring chains, their eerie noises scattering the children in all directions. Flossie gasped and then laughed as she caught sight of Henry Luck and Albert Bull looming out of the fog, wrapped in tattered sheets, shrieking with delight at their achievement.

  ‘We’ve got the ague,’ Henry squealed. ‘Watch out, it’s catching.’

  ‘No they haven’t,’ Flossie shouted crossly as the boys chased around, making some of the younger children cry. ‘Hardly anyone’s caught the ague since the cement came.’

  It was true. The ague – malarial fever, once prevalent in the Northfleet marshes – hadn’t troubled the Creek-dwellers for some time, but the fear was still there.

  ‘You and Jess going souling tonight, Floss?’ Henry yelled, aware that he now had her undivided attention. ‘The Dock Row soulers are meeting the Crick soulers by the old bottle kiln.’

  Having been considered too young to go souling on last All Hallows Eve – something that still rankled her – Flossie nodded appreciatively, flattered at finally being asked, even if it was by Henry Luck, who knew she didn’t like him calling her ‘Floss’.

  Henry’s older brother, Edward, was lighting and sharing out flares just as Flossie and Jessie arrived for the rendezvous.

  ‘Have you brought one?’ he asked, eyes darting, searching for a flame.

  The girls shook their heads.

  ‘Oh well, you’ll have to make do with this.’ A pathetic piece of driftwood with a candle tied each side at the top was handed over. ‘Just watch out for dripping wax. Don’t blame me if it gets on your boots.’

  Edward could be even more obnoxious than Henry as far as Flossie was concerned.

  ‘You wouldn’t know,’ he continued superciliously, ‘that it’s our tradition to form a circle round the old Beehive with our torches, to show our respect and all that.’

  Manhandling Flossie into a space against the crumbling red bricks, he then jumped up onto an upturned crate and launched into a speech about how the beehive-shaped kiln was where William Aspdin first made Portland cement in Northfleet, and built a twenty-foot-high wall around the site of the renamed Robins & Aspdin’s factory, to keep the invention a secret. It was all too complicated for Flossie, so she daydreamed until she felt Jessie tugging at her sleeve. Both girls raised their eyebrows, knowing that this was more about Edward having just secured a job at Robins, now he was twelve, than anything to do with tradition.

  Flossie had seen him of late, stamping the Three Kilns label on cement bags in Robins’ yard – that was when he wasn’t running to and from The Hope fetching beer for the gang filling them. He left a trail of cement dust several inches thick.

  ‘I’m getting a penny for every hundred I stamp,’ he’d shouted, clearly pleased with himself.

  As the lecture ended, everyone held their torches aloft, forming a circle of flames round the crumbling kiln. Flossie had to admit it looked spectacular in the twilight.

  Well wrapped up, the motley gang eventually set off, following Albert with his large hurricane lamp. The girls giggled in anticipation. This was going to be an adventure indeed. Standing outside The Plough Inn, they debated where to start. From previous experience, they all knew there was no point in walking down the drive of Grove House, or bothering the elderly ladies in the Huggens College alms houses, but the chaplain’s vicarage certainly seemed worthy of a visit. Albert led the tribe up Grove Road to the tradesman’s entrance. Tentatively opening the small wooden door in the brick wall, the children filed in one by one. As she entered, Flossie could just make out around four dozen pleasant-looking dwellings and a graceful spire surrounded by immaculate lawns and gardens. It was a haven of peace and tranquillity.

  ‘Look over here,’ shouted Henry, pointing towards the massive wrought-iron gates in front of the alms houses. ‘It’s John Huggens sitting on an armchair, and there’s a plaque underneath.’

  The sun was disappearing fast, so Albert rushed over and lifted his lamp to throw light on the ornamental arch with a statue on the top.

  ‘Says he was the Good Samaritan and all that.’

  ‘Not for the likes of old people like Annie Devonshire,’ Jessie said, rather more loudly than she meant to. ‘Make a perfect home for her, but she ain’t high-and-mighty enough for Huggens.’

  It was true. Huggens’ philanthropy wouldn’t stretch to Annie. His homes were built for educated, middle-class ladies who found themselves in ‘reduced circumstances’, not the lower orders.

  ‘Come on!’ yelled Edward Luck. ‘Let’s get on with what we came for.’

  The group shuffled across the chaplain’s courtyard and huddled together by the kitchen door, then, prompted by their leader, burst into song:

  “A soul, a soul, a soul cake!

  Please, good missus, a soul cake!

  An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry

  Any good thing to make us all merry

  One for Peter, two for Paul, three for Him who made us all.”

  It didn’t take long before a burly, red-faced housekeeper appeared with a wicker basket full of warm, enticing cakes. ‘Here, share ’em out. Keep the basket in case you strike lucky again. I don’t need no prayers saying for me, so be off with you.’
>
  They didn’t need telling twice, so off they set again. Sticking to Warwick Place and York Terrace, the alleyways they knew best, the children thrilled to the sights and sounds of Soul Night and the intoxicating aromas wafting from their burgeoning basket. As they started to sing outside Jessie’s house, the door opened and all were hit by the overpowering aroma of spice. Nell Larkin’s soul cakes were bursting with currants and raisins, with marzipan across the top – as good an offering for the dead as you were likely to get anywhere.

  ‘Eat up,’ Edward shouted, passing the delicious morsels round. ‘Remember, each cake eaten is another soul released from Purgatory.’ Flossie and Jessie didn’t like the sound of that, but it didn’t hinder their enjoyment.

  At the end of November Mary lost the baby she had been carrying. The labour started far too early and progressed with alarming speed, leaving Sam in no doubt that the child would not survive. Flossie was sent next door to get Kate Bailey and her eldest daughter to help Mary through the worst and to clean up afterwards. Sam scurried the girls out when the screaming got bad and then made himself scarce.

  Mary took it badly when she found out that the tiny scrap had been another longed-for boy, and frightened the girls with her ramblings. Kate was reluctant to leave as Mary became weak and delirious with such a heavy loss of blood, and sent Sam to get the doctor. There was just enough money to pay for the prescribed iron tablets, but after that they had to rely on a cure-all tonic from Sylvester Lee and regular bowls of nourishing broth proffered by neighbours.