The children were displayed, as was mandatory, Tom discovering a degree of affection in him for them – there was much to be said for grandchildren and these seemed like to become a handsome pair.
“The little one has been christened, sir – Mary Verity Frances Burley.”
Tom said the appropriate words, throat closing as he did so, tears forced back.
“Is all well in the neighbourhood, Captain Burley? I heard rumour of some amount of unrest amongst the hinds.”
“New enclosures and old problems, my lord. The greatest single complaint is that schooling is no longer available to the boys. There was a long tradition of literacy in this area, but the Dame School closed on the death of Miss Potter and no replacement has come forward. The school in Poole is far too expensive, and difficult to reach, so boys are taught of an evening by the father where possible, which is not ideal.”
“There is a call for labour in the North Country, if the men could get there, with wages at twice or thrice the local rate. A coaster out of Weymouth or Poole would not be impossible if men could be persuaded to go, we could easily pay their way. For those who stay, well, it should be possible to set up a charity school. Two teachers and monitors, the Lancasterian system, for cheapness. I would be willing to build the school itself and put a regular sum to its maintenance, shall we say one hundred a year? I am sure that others of the locality could add their mite.”
There were ten or more of local gentlemen who could put five or ten or twenty pounds a year into the kitty, Burley thought. The Bench might publicise the new charity and beg the Lord Lieutenant to offer his verbal support for the good cause.
“Are you a magistrate, sir?”
Burley was, since the beginning of the year, rather to his pleasure. It was a sign of acceptance, the gentry of the locality having put his name forward to the Lord Lieutenant as being the right sort.
“I understand that there is a possible candidate as headmaster, a sailorman who was pressed as a boy and has come back a warrant officer and now working as an usher in Poole. He would quite possibly welcome a school house and a better salary, I should imagine.”
“I have heard of the man, my lord, though I do not know his name. He is said to be a Red, sir.”
“A hundred a year in his pocket and he is likely to become much more of a pink, I suspect. A full belly does tend to reduce the crusading fervour – and if he should take a wife then he would very soon become more the thing. I must make sure that there is a very large garden attached to the house; growing his own vegetables for the table will lessen the time available for politicking.”
“You are quite ruthless, my lord! And so much wiser a way of calming a trouble-maker – there is no sense in creating a martyr when one can turn him into a dedicated smallholder instead!”
Tom protested that he was made to seem cynical when he was doing no more than consideration of Utility demanded.
“One must never waste scarce resources, Captain Burley – whether they be people or coal or iron ores, they should be put into a productive mode, for the benefit of us all.”
“Adam Smith?”
“Ricardo as well, an able man given insufficient respect, I believe. He has much to say about the way the economical world works. He says it clearly, too – I can understand most of it!”
Burley made note of the name – a soldier from boyhood, he was now conscious that his reading had been too little and poorly guided.
“There is a piece of land in the village of Tolpiddle that came to us from my wife’s grandfather last year, and which we have been at wit’s end to use. Five acres with a broken-down old cottage in the middle so that it would not really make a field, and inconvenient to us in any case. School and house built on one of the acres, the rest attached to the residence as garden as you suggest – it would be a sensible plan, and would do my name some good in the area!”
“I will arrange for a builder, Captain Burley. My people will make contact with this fellow Lancaster and obtain a recommended plan from him and we will make an early start to the business. I will see this usher myself – better than a lawyer who might cause his hackles to raise.”
A day to identify the gentleman and send a message to inform him that Lord Andrews ‘begged the honour of a conversation with him’ – an honour that he was quite at liberty to refuse if he was very foolish, and had no wish to retain any freedom at all.
“Mr Arthur English? Thank you for consenting to see me.”
Tom had been granted the use of the High Master’s study at the day-school where Mr English worked as a junior teacher, employed because he had his mathematics and navigation and many of the boys would go to sea.
“Briefly, Mr English, there is to be a free school built in the villages for the benefit of the local children, boys in the first instance. It is proposed to use the Lancasterian system to enable the greatest number to benefit from the very start. There will be a house attached, rent-free, for the master in charge and the salary will be in the region of one hundred pounds per annum. Your name has been put forward as a dedicated gentleman who will understand the needs of the villagers and who is capable of assisting the local folk in a trying period.”
“Why, my lord?”
An unexpected question – and its meaning unclear.
“Why you? Because you are a local man, known in the villages and from a respected family.”
English’s father was a doctor and a poor man for his habit of treating those who could not pay but were in need.
“Why the free school and why am I involved in it? I have some connections with this area – I am a Dorset man by birth and my wife is daughter to Lord Paynton.”
He did not need to know of any other relationships.
“I have been threatened with dismissal from this post for becoming involved with local men in need of advice and assistance, my lord. I am known as a friend of the poor and downtrodden, which is no recommendation in this area.”
“Your name was offered to me as a man who would do a difficult job that was of value to the local people. This is in many ways a free country, Mr English – when compared say to our European neighbours, remarkably so – and your politics are your own concern while you stay short of espousing violent revolution. I believe that you would not wish to preach your beliefs in the classroom, sir – we are neither of us Jesuits and seeking to bludgeon children into conformity with our ways – and I would not demand that you teach blind obedience to your charges.”
“Would there be any fee to be paid by parents?”
“None – the intention is that the school would be entirely free. Where there are too many would-be pupils then selection to be wholly by contiguity – those who live nearest to be favoured above the more distant. You are familiar with the use of monitors, I presume?”
English was, and did not like the system whilst accepting that it enabled very large classes to be taught with some efficiency.
“One hundred children to one paid teacher, the more senior learning their own lessons and passing on their knowledge to those below them. From my reading, it seems that it is effective in teaching barebones literacy and the basic use of number, my lord, but offers little of a liberal education.”
“It will serve to give boys a sufficiency to make them more useful to an employer by the age of twelve – enough that they will be able to serve an apprenticeship or become improvers with a chance of learning a trade. At the moment too many have nothing and are able to do no more than follow a plough all their lives; they can go nowhere, take no work outside of villages where there are fewer jobs every year.”
“What of scholarships, my lord?”
“The most able to go to education beyond the elementary level? An excellent idea, if you can organise it, but I shall not be putting my hand deeper in my pocket. I have offered to build your school and I will guarantee that your salary is paid and your roof kept mended, and the provision will be protected after my death. More than that – if you
will take the post then you will be in charge, and the responsibility will be yours, and that would include raising money for scholarships, if you can.”
It was an opportunity to be of use locally, and probably the only chance that would arise in his lifetime. It would demand so much work that he would be almost unable to spend time on any other activity – he would be unable to campaign for justice, to raise his voice for the oppressed, which was why the post had been offered him, he was certain. To refuse would be to deny education to a generation of children, because he doubted that the offer would be made elsewhere.
“I believe I must accept the place, my lord.”
“I can see no alternative, Mr English. I have instructed my people to discover the proper design for a school of the Lancasterian persuasion and building will commence in the immediate future. Footings for the master’s house are digging now; given a dry winter and you will move in before spring, salary paid from the day the key is put in your hand. There will be much to do before you take your first pupils after harvest next year.”
“Must I be single, sir, or is marriage permitted in your house?”
“There will be five bedrooms, Mr English, in the expectation that you will take a wife.”
Book Seven: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Seven
New York was the best of places – a man could be free here, rich and wholly at liberty to be anything he wanted.
Godby sat in his favourite saloon, at his own table, back to a brick wall, street door to his left so that he could cover it with his pistol hand, passage to the back door within two strides. He held court here for two hours of every day, normally late morning so that he could eat his steak as well. There was a glass of beer in front of him, for form’s sake – a man could not sit in a drinking house empty-handed but only a fool drank hard liquor in the daytime.
His own men were sat at three other tables, close to the one window and watching the doors; they would be busy making collections and acting as enforcers for the rest of the day, but their first job in the mornings was to form his retinue, to announce his importance in his world.
It was a small world, perhaps, a few blocks of downtown New York, twenty thousand or so people, but he was undisputed king in it. Every store, all of the taverns and saloons, each boarding house – they all paid him protection, Friday morning without fail – a few dollars apiece, but it mounted up. Three of the saloons were gambling houses, and they used his services as debt collector and provider of muscle, at a higher price. There were four brothels, servicing a wide area of the city, and he kept competition away and ensured that no freelance girls walked his streets, again at a price.
A number of housebreakers and less exalted street thieves lived in his area – each sold their takings exclusively to his fence, and paid a straight tithe on their earnings besides.
As well, he contracted services outside of his own manor – those who knew the right contacts could hire a killing of an intemperate lover or the beating of a union organiser from him; businessmen who wanted rid of a rival could buy an arsonist for a night; family men or politicians who wished to preserve their reputation could pay him to speak to the editor of a newspaper who had inconvenient information about their habits.
He had taken over from a less able gang leader, running a far smaller operation, on his arrival in New York – he had had money in his pocket and had used it to buy information. Just one week after walking down the gangplank he had ordered a beer at the bar of this saloon and had then joined the boss at his table, nodding in the friendliest fashion to his single bodyguard, a large but not very bright individual. He had pulled the glove onto his left hand while introducing himself.
“Jonas Higby, I believe? My name is Flash and I am here to replace you.”
Higby had not believed what he had heard, was sure he must have got it wrong.
Godby had pulled the revolving pistol from inside his jacket and shot him in the head while he was deciding what to do.
“You’ve got a new boss, mister,” he said to the bodyguard.
“No I ain’t!”
“Your choice!”
He shot the bodyguard twice in the chest, he being a larger man and needing more stopping.
“My name is Flash,” he announced in a loud voice. “You lot can call me Mr Flash.”
An older man, grey-haired and soberly dressed, stood from a nearby table, waved a placating hand, told two at the back to sit down.
“Why should we call you anything, Mr Flash?”
“I just took over, that’s why. Higby was bloody useless – but I ain’t. You’re going to make more money doing what I tell you, and you don’t need to worry about policemen no more.”
They had given him the chance to prove himself – they could always kill him on another day, they told themselves. The two corpses went into the river, as was normal enough, and they waited for his orders.
He had his initial area under control within the month and then spent money to discover who his neighbours were. He shot two of them personally and sent a dozen of his hardest men to subdue their territories. By the end of his first year he was recognised as the big man of the downtown, paying the highest and taking no mouth from anybody, including the police on his payroll. He kept Higby’s number two always at his side – the Old Man knew the town and every significant person in it, or so it seemed, so much so that Godby wondered whether Higby had been no more than his front man.
“What’s the word on the street, Old Man?”
“Nothing new, Mr Flash. A couple of fellows in off the last boat from Ireland saying that there’s another famine in the making so there’s goin’ to be ten thousand more of Paddies here in the next few months.”
“They’ll have to go up the river, Old Man. The canal needs more hands on the digging and the rest can take up land, like it or not. There ain’t room enough for ten thousand roofs.”
“There’s talk of building upwards, Mr Flash – tenement buildings like they have in Glasgow and Edinburgh, five and ten storeys high.”
“There’s no work for so many.”
“Will be – there’s more cotton and woollen mills every month.”
“I’ll talk with the builders then – if they want their tenements to stay up they can pay the price.”
Even ten or twenty cents a room would mount up when there were thousands of them – a useful weekly income needing only a few men to make the collections.
“Who’s to see me today, Old Man?”
“Ma Battensby needs to talk, Mr Flash.”
He went through to a back room kept for the purpose – women were not permitted in the saloon itself.
Ma Battensby was a hard-faced forty year old, lean, tough and unused to asking favours of any man. If she wanted to talk then she would have good reason.
“Got a problem, Mr Flash, can’t deal with it meself.”
She ran a brothel, girls only and little out of the ordinary way of services offered.
“Got a son of Van Rensberg, come in last week for the first time, only about twenty. Took a cane and beat one of my girls bloody, the little bastard. Last night ‘e came back and Jock threw ‘im out for me, kicked 'im right down the block. I’m told that the word’s out on me this morning and that Jock’s due to be cut.”
Van Rensberg had money and knew a few politicians; he was a financier and straddled the divide between criminality and honest dealing. Almost certainly he would be able to call in favours with the police and he could definitely hire hard men. Ma Battensby was in trouble and her bouncer was likely to die.
“Don’t you worry none, Ma. This is what you pay me for. Tell Jock to be extra careful for the next couple of days – it may take till the end of the week to tidy everything up.”
Godby returned to his table, waved one of his men across.
“Nick, take four good blokes and watch Ma Battensby’s for me. She’s got a problem. Look after her hard man as well – ‘e’s
a good enough fellow for the job, but there’s likely to be a contract on him.”
“Will do, Mr Flash.”
“Extras for everybody if you look after the place, Nick.”
Godby walked a quarter of a mile from the saloon, three men behind him, one in front by a hundred yards, and turned into the police station, nodding to the man at the desk.
“Go on up, Mr Flash, sir.”
Twenty dollars a month on top of a poor salary was very welcome, as was the turkey and trimmings at Christmas and the occasional payment of hospital fees for sick children – the policemen all respected Mr Flash.
“Van Rensberg, Mr O’Reilly. He has a son who likes beating up on the girls, and he won’t hear a word against the lad, it would seem.”
“Is that what it’s about then? I was given the word just an hour ago that Ma Battensby was to be shaken over. I wondered why it might be so.”
“I hear, just the odd rumour, that there’s a Chinaman set up with opium down the block a way, Mr O’Reilly.”
Opium dens, and the Yellow Peril, were fashionable bogeys at the time, made a more than fair exchange for protection of an unjustly accused brothel. O’Reilly set up his raid and promised to explain the facts of the situation to his superiors – there would be nothing to fear from the police, he promised.
“Do you know who Van Rensberg might have given a little contract to, Mr O’Reilly?”
“Danny Powers is in with him, I believe, though I cannot swear to it, Mr Flash.”
Flash thanked him and made his way to his apartment. O’Reilly picked up two hundred every month, and would earn it – if he wanted Danny Powers dealt with then that could be arranged, and he might even be the man they wanted.
“Would you be so kind as to ask Jimmy to see me, Old Man?”
Jimmy was a little chap, five feet nothing and one hundred pounds at most; he made up for his size with a very sharp knife.
“I would like to bring Danny Powers’ troubling to an end, Jimmy. It needs to be done quickly though – he has, or he might have - some bugger has - a contract on Ma Battensby’s hard man, Jock, and I would wish him to be protected. Do for Danny Powers and keep an ear to the ground for any other contract on Jock.”
The Old Order (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 7) Page 18