Field of Dust

by Angela Jean Young

  Left on her own for a while, Flossie stared at the pictures on display. The pitiful images of ragged, sad-eyed scraps of humanity were more reminiscent of the scavenging mudlarks wading in the Thames after the Princess Alice went down than of herself and Lottie.

  ‘Dr Barnardo is a great believer in documenting the plight of poor children,’ Miss Adams said on her return. ‘Many are orphans rescued from the East End gutters; “street Arabs”, he calls them.’ Peering over the top of her spectacles, she looked Flossie up and down and sniffed. ‘But the Doctor also removes children from neglectful parents to save them from corrupt influences.’

  So that’s how they see us, thought Flossie. It had all happened so fast. Struck dumb with fear, the girls had been whisked away even whilst Mary was pleading her case for abandoning them. By the time they were brought back to the reception house, their mother had been shown out, leaving only the carpet bag behind with a scribbled note on top. Be good, it said.

  Inside Primrose Cottage, Lottie lay shivering, unable to sleep. Her sister crept in beside her and they huddled together for comfort. In turmoil, Flossie tried to make some sense of what had happened. Their world had been turned upside down. They were in some kind of a workhouse and been told that family contact wasn’t encouraged. Were they never going to see their mother again? Was that what Mary wanted? Was that why she had abandoned them? Did she feel nothing for them? It didn’t make sense. And why had she used a false name? Their name was Grant, not Oxer. How could Sam, whom they loved dearly, find them if their names had been changed? And how did Mary come to hear about this Dr Barnardo, so far away from everything and everyone they knew? Why would he care enough about destitute children to build such a home?

  The London into which medical student Thomas Barnardo had arrived from Dublin fifteen years earlier was, by now, a city struggling to cope with the effects of the Industrial Revolution. The population had more than doubled over the previous fifty years, much of the increase being concentrated in the East End. New railway lines cut through former residential areas, pitching thousands of families from their homes at a time when the dispossessed from rural areas, and Irish immigrants fleeing from starvation, were flooding in. Overcrowding in bad housing, unemployment, poverty and disease were rife, with one in five children dying before their fifth birthday. London had a higher illegitimacy birth rate than anywhere else in the world. Rather than face the humiliation of being branded ‘paupers’, many families did anything to survive outside the workhouse. Thousands of children slept on the streets and many were forced to beg after being maimed in factories.

  So disturbed by the plight of these destitute children was the philanthropic Barnardo that he opened an all-night shelter at 10 Stepney Causeway. Initially concerning himself with the welfare of boys, he soon realised that though fewer girls were evident on the streets, their plight was greater than that of the boys. With the age of consent being thirteen, girls were in grave moral peril, being bought for five pounds for local brothels. In an extraordinary act of charity, when he and his new wife Syrie were given Mossford Lodge in Barkingside as a wedding present, the Barnardos converted the rear of their home to accommodate sixty girls. With the help of her Christian lady friends, Mrs Barnardo set about turning these starving, half-naked girls with street cunning into industrious, respectable, God-fearing servants. Whatever their background, she believed Christian influence, stern love and industry would mould the children.

  After only a short while, however, Thomas Barnardo declared that they were failing, having discovered that the barrack system of large dormitories was ‘propagating evil’ through older street girls corrupting younger ones with their appalling tales of degradation and inhuman behaviour. He therefore embarked on creating a Girls’ Village Home in the sixty acres of grounds adjoining Mossford Lodge. A series of doll’s-house cottages were built clustering around a village green, each offering a home for fifteen to twenty girls of mixed ages. Placing a ‘mother’ in charge, he wanted each home to function as near as possible to a normal family. A perfect world in miniature.

  The upper classes viewed poverty as shameful and a result of laziness or vice. They lived in terror that the ‘dangerous classes’ would cause the breakdown of law and order, with mobs of juveniles threatening their peace and security. Orphaned children were summarily placed in institutions where they were clothed in pauper uniforms, ticketed, drilled and herded into vast workhouses filled with thieves, beggars and other examples of human failure. This offended Barnardo. He refused to discriminate between the deserving and undeserving poor and accepted all children, including disabled and illegitimate ones, stressing that every child deserved the best possible start in life whatever their background. Soon, news of his innovative Home for Destitute Girls, where no one was turned away, had spread far and wide.

  As dawn broke, the sound of birds chirping in the trees came as a surprise to Flossie. Uncovering her face, the air felt cold, but not damp. There was no howling gale rattling the window frames, and no piercing foghorns or factory sirens either. Peering round the bright yellow room, she counted three other beds besides her own and Lottie’s, all occupied by sleeping girls. A fireplace, its mantelpiece heavily laden with ornaments, was on one wall and a washstand complete with jug and bowl against another. Over the door was an intricate embroidered sampler, bearing the message Barnardo will be your true family.

  Seconds later, Miss Adams appeared at the door. Drawing a watch from her breast pocket and pulling it towards her face as far as the chain would allow, she flicked open its case with a fingernail and, pointing at the two new girls, whispered, ‘It’s six o’clock. Collect your new dresses and pinafores from the laundry room and be ready for breakfast in one hour.’

  Flossie and Lottie hurriedly dressed in their own clothes for the last time while the other girls continued to sleep soundly. Closing the door quietly, they followed Miss Adams across the green. In the daylight, the grounds looked immense. Flossie counted twenty-four ivy-clad cottages in all, surrounding a large green with pretty flowerbeds and almond trees. Lottie nodded towards the wrought-iron gates that Mary had led them through the evening before. They clanged in the wind as if to remind the girls of their loss of freedom.

  Issued with fresh clothes, Miss Adams told them to memorise their number as every item of clothing had that number chain-stitched on it. Braiding their newly-washed, unruly hair took some doing, but finally they were ready to join the other hundred or so girls performing physical exercises on the green before breakfast.

  ‘Your Sunday bonnets will be waiting for you later,’ said Miss Adams as she forced Lottie to let go of her sister’s hand. ‘All the girls have ribbons to match the flower their cottage is named after.’

  After breakfast, with unlimited bread, the girls had time to take stock of their new bedroom. Flossie admired her snowy-white quilt, proper cotton sheets and rag rug. Further investigation revealed a straw paillasse covering a rust-free green iron bedstead.

  ‘Bedding gets changed every week,’ an enthusiastic girl, who turned out to be called Betsy, told them. ‘We gets meat twice a week too. I ain’t ever ’ad so much meat.’

  Delving under her bed, Lottie pulled out a round chamber pot with her name freshly painted on the enamel underside, followed by a wicker basket filled with neat clothes.

  ‘They come from well-wishers,’ Betsy added gleefully. ‘It’s like Paradise ’ere.’

  Cleanliness of person and property was an early, and important, lesson for the girls to learn. During their medical check-up later that day, they were given a toothbrush which Miss Adams had to teach them how to use. Fresh water was plentiful, Barnardo having sunk a three hundred-foot-deep artesian well to serve all of their needs.

  ‘At home,’ said Lottie to an unimpressed Betsy, ‘we only get water for two hours a day, and that includes Sundays too.’

  As the days and weeks turned into months, Flossie slowly began to ap
preciate her new surroundings. It seemed impossible that there could be such a peaceful place, graced with an abundance of fresh, clean air. To be able to walk far from a foul, poisonous river without the relentless din of factories was bliss, and she woke every morning with a huge sense of relief that her chest wasn’t clogged with damp cement dust.

  Living in a totally feminine world was hard to get used to, but she found the reliability of the routines and schedules preferable to her haphazard life in The Creek. Her cottage seemed like a palace, with a kitchen, a large dining room, a playroom with pigeonholes for toys, four bedrooms and a bathroom. You could see your reflection on the polished floors and there were pictures on the walls, albeit all of religious scenes. Miss Adams had her own room, which, when the opportunity arose to peek inside, was seen to be small but cosy, with fresh flowers on the table and a patterned carpet on the floor.

  Primrose Cottage’s spinster ‘mother’ was a strict total abstainer, according to Betsy. Such self-control impressed Flossie. A Christian lady of private means, she had apparently answered an advertisement for volunteers in the early days and the work had become her vocation in life. She seemed content to spend all her free time alone in her room.

  Miss Adams ensured that the girls’ physical welfare was always attended to, with a guaranteed one-course hot dinner every day and clean, dry clothes, which Flossie received gratefully. Nevertheless, she found the emphasis on moral welfare somewhat tedious. No organised games were allowed on Sunday, only Bible studies at half past ten and half past six, followed by choir practice. The extra devotional service at half past seven on Wednesdays was bad enough, but on rainy days, when the girls were unable to exercise, they were made to sit silently and memorise psalms.

  As far as their emotional well-being was concerned, sympathy was in short supply. Two new girls who cried constantly over the loss of their parents, having been abandoned on the grounds of extreme poverty, tried the patience of their new ‘mother’. It was well known that some parents decided to separate in order for their children to be taken in – desertion by at least one parent being the qualification for entry.

  Flossie understood their grief, having by now given up hope that her father was coming to claim them. She missed Jessie, Kate Bailey and old Annie Devonshire, even silly Henry Luck, yet she didn’t miss her old life in The Creek. Lottie, being younger, was finding it much harder.

  The whole tone of the children’s upbringing in all the cottages depended on the disposition of the housemothers. There were general rules, but the way an individual mother interpreted her duties varied greatly. From what Betsy was saying, some were clearly kinder than others.

  Every hour of the children’s day was organised, starting with the older girls getting up at half past five to light the fires. Once breakfast was over and all the chores done, elementary lessons took up the rest of the morning, leaving the afternoon free for domestic training. Barnardo had started his village at a time when employing servants was increasingly a mark of social status. Well-turned-out and properly instructed plain cooks and maids were difficult to obtain, so the girls were taught from a young age to make beds, lay and light fires, clean grates, scrub floors, sweep and greet visitors.

  Suspecting that Mary had sung her daughter’s praises over the weekly washing in The Creek, Flossie found herself working in the vast new steam laundry that undertook all the washing for the houses. It was a soul-destroying environment. The girls washed over six hundred sheets and garments on a Monday and ironed them all on a Tuesday. The washing was tedious enough, but ironing was worse. Eight girls were positioned around a huge ironing board, four on each side, pressing sheet after monotonous sheet using a heavy box iron. Flossie counted ten such boards side by side and several other tables where linen was being folded.

  Fainting from exhaustion was common. When one young girl collapsed alongside Flossie one day, the intolerant laundress shouted, ‘Take her outside for some air, and make haste!’

  As she helped the fragile, exhausted girl up from the floor, Flossie saw that her legs were encased in heavy metal braces.

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for her, she’s a hopeless cripple,’ the laundress snapped. ‘You’ll find yourself helping all sorts here – blind, deaf and dumb, deformed and diseased. No one gets turned away here.’ The sarcasm in her voice was biting.

  Ethel, as Flossie discovered, was fourteen, though she looked no more than twelve, such was her tiny frame. ‘I’m a factory cripple,’ she whispered as she began to recover. ‘Started in the rag factory before me tenth birthday, but me bones were too young, couldn’t stand up to the job.’

  As the girl continued, Flossie was appalled by the awful conditions in Bethnal Green.

  ‘I reckon there were over two dozen lodging in our ’ouse and most of ’em ’ad been in clink one time or another. Rotten ’ouses like ours was all us poorest could afford; last stop before the work’ouse. That’s where me ma is now, as it ’appens. We used to call it Sweaters Hell, down the old Nichol.’

  The Nichol, a notorious area where Ethel had lived in one room with her mother and father and seven brothers and sisters, had been described in The Illustrated London News as a monotonous round of vice, filth and poverty, where people huddled in dark cellars and bare and blackened rooms reeking with disease and death and without the means for the most ordinary observations of decency or cleanliness. The houses, if they could be called that, were constantly damp, having been built with ash bricks and billysweet, a rough mortar made from street dirt mixed with the by-products of soap-making from local factories, which led to sagging and unstable walls that never dried out.

  During Ethel’s short lifetime every back yard and open space had been built upon. Homes doubled as workshops producing anything and everything, from clothes pegs to couches. Carts and barrows constantly plied their way through the maze of yards and alleyways. Fetid cowsheds and donkey stalls were everywhere. Tailors, hawkers, pawnbrokers, pie shops, fish curers and drunkards lived side by side.

  ‘Every blighter earns just ’bout enough to ward off starvation,’ Ethel added matter-of-factly. ‘Me pa was an ivory turner and could turn ’is ’and to French polishin’ given a chance, but he got taken with consumption and we ’ad to move to Boundary Street. Fings went from bad to worse then. In the end, there was only the workhouse left. I’m the lucky one. Dr Barnardo took pity on me.’

  Relishing having escaped the steamy atmosphere of the laundry for a while, the girls carried on talking, warming to each other as they did so.

  ‘So you don’t know yer real father then?’ Ethel asked after hearing a little of Flossie’s story. ‘He wasn’t the geezer who brought you up, then?’

  Flossie shook her head, long past shedding tears over it. ‘So I’m told,’ she said ruefully. ‘They say my ma left me here to go back to him. In Ipswich. That’s why I’ve got the name Oxer. Never, ever heard it before.’

  ‘You’ll find out the truth one day, don’t worry,’ Ethel said, touching her new friend’s arm. ‘She’s got some nerve, yer ma ‘as, I’ll say that fer ’er.’

  At that point the door opened and the laundress shouted for them to return to work, lest they fancied going up before the governess.

  When two of the older girls in Flossie’s room secured employment, Ethel moved in, along with another waif from the East End, Rose Roberts. They were only too glad to get away from their old housemother as she had a way of punishing her girls by locking them in the bathroom or making them lie under their beds all night.

  Flossie found her new friends refreshing. They were down to earth and irreverent, though Lottie was less impressed.

  ‘I can’t see why you find them so entertaining,’ she said grumpily. ‘You’d never make friends with their sort if we were back in The Crick.’

  Though Flossie couldn’t disagree with that, over a year had passed and her attitude towards others had changed. Lottie still declined to
mix with those she considered below her.

  ‘If I remember rightly, we didn’t mix with the matchgirls when we were off hopping. Now you chat to that common Rose Roberts all the time.’

  Dismayed at her sister’s snobbish tone, Flossie saw no point in arguing. There was little difference between any of them as far as she was concerned. They were all destitute.

  Rose was fifteen and an orphan. She’d first been employed as a matchgirl at Bryant & May, aged ten.

  ‘Told ’em I was twelve, of course. Worked fourteen hours a day fer five bob a week. Mind you, never got that much, ’cause we was always gettin’ fined,’ she told Flossie. ‘Lost ’alf a day’s pay if we was a few minutes late, thruppence if we was caught talkin’ and even more if we dropped any of the lucifers. White slavery, they called it.’

  Prolonged exposure to white phosphorous produced a condition called ‘phossy jaw’. Many suffered, and even died, making the ‘strike anywhere’ matches. Rose was one of the lucky ones. She escaped necrosis of the jawbone, but three years carrying boxes of matches on her head, as the younger girls were made to do, had taken its toll. Her hair had been rubbed off, causing baldness.

  ‘Think it looks bad now?’ she said, when she saw Lottie staring at her one morning. ‘Take a look at this.’ Fumbling in her pillowcase, Rose pulled out an album of picture postcards which she opened and held up to the sisters. Before them were two ‘before and after’ images. ‘This is me when I first come ’ere. This one’s after six months.’

  Flossie was stunned. She could hardly believe Rose was the same person in the pictures. The left-hand photograph was of a pale, bald and undersized urchin standing in rags. The one on the right was of a slightly healthier-looking girl dressed in a smart pinafore and bonnet, holding some embroidery. Lottie snatched the album from Rose’s hand and stared at the cover. Titled Once a Little Vagrant, Now a Little Workman, it was a collection of pictures, each one showing the transformation from orphan in a state of neglect to child scrubbed clean and full of promise.