by Colin Murphy
Owen wiped the spit from his face, then closed his eyes against the misery. He felt the cart trundle along beneath him and heard the cries pursue him. Tears ran from his eyes at the awful prospect that awaited him around the next corner.
‘There she is, your new home,’ he heard the driver snigger and opened his eyes. They had left Corn Market but the hordes still lined the street that led from the town. They crossed a stream and up ahead on his right, beyond some wintry, leafless trees, loomed walls of perhaps twelve feet, and beyond them he could see the upper floor of a sepulchral, sombre structure of near-black stone.
He could barely see the ground for all the people gathered outside its grim walls pleading for admission. Their convoy forced its way along and the soldiers continued to beat the clawing hands away all the way to the huge wooden doors. As they swung aside, a building was revealed of two stories in height topped by five triangular stone apexes. Six or seven suited or uniformed men and women stood at the entrance. The train of soldiers, horses and carts drew to a halt in the cramped space between the wall and workhouse, and he saw Captain Ackroyd dismount near the entrance.
He suddenly began to wonder why they were here. Surely they had not risked bringing the consignment of oats through the hostile mass just to deliver him to the workhouse? He had assumed they would simply have him escorted here. Captain Ackroyd disappeared inside the building with a portly, suited man. Presently he reappeared and stood at the top step, the portly man at his side.
‘Right, men, let’s get these sacks unloaded and carried to the storerooms.’
There was a general groan from the soldiers as they began the process. Owen sat there in a confusion of emotion as the captain approached him.
‘The Master has agreed to allow your admission. They are in need of educated staff as a result of recent losses through typhus, so you will not be one of the general inmates but a staff assistant. Good luck.’
He started to walk away but Owen called after him. ‘The oats were always coming here, to the workhouse?’
‘Correct. I was ordered to safely convey this stock to help relieve the stress the extra inmates have placed on the enterprise. Had you been successful, you would have been stealing from the mouths of the starving. Oh, and on that subject, it was a fine tactical move, releasing the horses. Really only blind chance we caught you,’ he smiled faintly.
‘Captain. How did you persuade them to admit me when there are thousands at the gates?’
He shrugged. ‘The Master is my uncle.’
A clerk recorded his personal details: name, sex, age, marital status, occupation, religion and townland of residence, and he was then taken along a corridor that looked into a large interior yard. The man accompanying him was silent and bore a vacant expression on his drooping face. At each step Owen could hear cries and moans carrying through the walls, some sounding uncomfortably like the voices of children, others like the ravings of lunatics. The man, who was maybe thirty and wore a drab, grey uniform of coarse fabric, admitted him through a door marked ‘Examination Room – Male’. The room was bare but for a long table in the centre and a single chair. Only a tiny square window of white glass admitted light. His apparently mute guide pulled at his clothes and nodded towards a tiled washing alcove off the room.
Owen reluctantly stripped, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor. The washroom was perhaps ten feet square, walls and floor covered entirely in smooth white tiles. A single copper tap protruded from a wall beneath which sat a bucket of water. He’d never seen a room like it before. He turned at a sound and was struck by a wave of icy water, the suddenness of which caused him to lose his breath and fall back against the wall. As he stood there shivering, the man began to refill the bucket, then pulled a slab of white soap from a pocket and tossed it to him. It struck the wall and Owen watched it slide into the drain, still too taken aback to protest.
The man appeared to take no cruel pleasure; in fact, he seemed entirely detached from his task. Owen did as ordered. Soap had been a rarity in their home and mostly the girls had made use of it anyway. He was unfamiliar with the suds it produced and he briefly examined a handful of them before rubbing them against his body. Two minutes later the man re-entered, lifted the bucket and threw its freezing contents over him again, then tossed him a shabby towel. Trembling from the cold, he emerged to find the room vacant and stood clutching the towel in front of his privates, unsure what to do next. The light had faded and the room grown dim.
He squirmed with embarrassment as a thin, mannish woman of forty or so suddenly entered, clutching an oil lamp. She wore a dress of pale grey with a white collar, a white apron extending from her shoulders to her feet, and a white bonnet, which almost completely concealed her hair. She regarded his shaking figure with disdain.
‘What is your name?’
‘Owen Joyce.’
She walked directly up to him and perused him slowly from head to toe, holding the lantern close to his body. He pressed the cloth tighter against his groin.
‘Turn around.’
He remained frozen to the spot. Besides his mother and his sister when he was a small boy, he had never been naked in the presence of a woman.
‘I said turn around, boy.’ She grabbed his arm with a surprisingly steely grip, forcing him to turn. Having closely examined his hind side she pulled him around again. She drew up so close to him that he could feel her breath on his cheek and detected a vaguely repulsive smell, like the stink that emanates from the very sick. She opened his eyes wide with thumb and forefinger and stared into them, then probed his mouth with a flat stick.
She told him to sit and handed the lantern to the man, pulled a comb from a pocket and proceeded to slowly drag it through his hair, separating it with her fingers and peering at his scalp. This mysterious task completed, she pointed to the table. ‘Lie there.’
He awkwardly tried to conceal his nakedness as he climbed up. When he was on his back the woman grasped the towel and tore it away before he could react. He gasped and covered himself with both hands. She went to lift his hands and he instinctively grabbed her wrist, at which point she drew back and slapped him hard across the face.
‘Don’t dare touch me or I’ll have you lashed. Remove your hands. Now!’
Utterly abashed and shamed, he drew his hands back and laid them at his sides. To his bewilderment the woman commenced to repeat the same procedure with her comb and fingers as she trawled his pubic hair, her face only inches from his genitals. When finished, she returned the towel to him.
‘You may sit up.’
Shivering and feeling humiliated, he sat upright on the table’s edge.
‘Can you read?’
‘Yes.’
‘You will address me always as Matron. Now, can you also write?’
‘Yes – yes, Matron,’ he chattered.
‘English and Irish?’
‘Yes, Matron. And a little…Latin.’
‘We don’t get many Romans, fortunately. Quite enough to cope with,’ she said without humour. ‘Can you do arithmetic, add and subtract and so on?’
‘I can do algebra and trig–’
‘I don’t require your academic résumé, Joyce. How old are you?’
‘Sev…eighteen, Matron.’
‘Hmm,’ she muttered doubtfully.
She turned sharply to the man in attendance. ‘Fetch him clothes. And a brown apron. He may assist in the children’s dormitories and the male infirmary.’ She turned back to him. ‘The male medical assistant died three weeks ago, from typhus, we believe. You will have to help fill in.’
Owen shook his head. ‘But I know nothing about–’
‘We will train you, and let’s hope you’re as bright as the Master’s nephew seems to think you are, as you will have to learn fast. You are not compelled to take this post. If you wish you may join the general workhouse population. But if you accept you will be accorded staff privileges, without remittance of course.’
The vacant-ey
ed man re-entered with a bundle of clothes.
‘What is it to be?’
Owen nodded. ‘Thank you, Matron.’
‘You may not thank me in a few days, boy. Work commences at six-thirty. Flynn here will take you to the kitchens. Tell them that Matron instructs them to feed you.’
And with that she vanished with the lamp and left him in the darkness.
Owen followed Flynn along a long, central corridor. Not a single inmate could be seen. As they walked among the echoes of their own footfalls and the dancing shadows cast by a candle, he could identify open spaces beyond the windows to either side, hemmed in by more buildings, and he realised the workhouse was designed around four internal courtyards. They arrived at the double doors of the kitchen. Flynn knocked, then turned and walked away as a thin, vexed voice beckoned Owen in. Timidly he stepped into the yellow glow of the kitchen. To his left a man sat by a fire smoking a thin cigar, a bottle of whiskey on the floor beside him. He lowered a newspaper.
‘What is it, boy?’
Owen glanced around the room where he could see an array of huge pots sitting on four brick ranges. Tall metal chimneys rose from these and disappeared into the ceiling. The rear wall was a washing area where a youth stood scrubbing a pot. He gave Owen a nervy, fleeting glance.
‘The…Matron…said I was to be fed.’
‘Did she now?’ the man snickered. He was about forty, almost bald but for a few greasy clumps of hair. His narrow eyes appeared half-closed as though he was permanently squinting. His cheeks glowed red either side of a squat nose. But it was the scoffing smirk that most prompted Owen’s instant dislike. The man rose and walked over to him. ‘And who would you be that Matron sends te me after my kitchen has closed?’
‘Joyce, sir, I’m to be an infirmary assistant.’
He laughed aloud. ‘Joyce? Now would that be your first name, Joyce, my darling?’ The man touched Owen’s cheek, and he instinctively drew back.
‘Owen Joyce, sir.’
The man nodded contentedly. ‘I’m Mr Rice, Kitchen Superintendent. The rapscallion there is Patrick Mooney. Mooney! Give him bread and buttermilk and be quick about it. I’m off home now and if there’s a mark on those pots tomorrow I’ll thrash ye meself.’
He turned back to Owen. ‘No hot food. Too late.’
‘That’s fine, I–’
But Rice had already grasped Owen’s face, pressing soiled fingernails into his cheeks. ‘Oh I know it’s fine, Joyce. Whatever I say is fine, whether it’s fine or not fine.’
He let go and Owen rubbed his face as Rice gathered his coat, hat and whiskey. He grinned and gave a mock salute as he departed.
‘Goodnight, gentlemen.’
Mooney silently fed him four slices of stale loaf and a jug of buttermilk, responding to Owen’s questions monosyllabically. After they’d cleaned up, the youth led him to a tiny, ground-floor room already cramped with men on bunks. Climbing into a lower bunk, Mooney turned away towards the wall. There were a couple of aged men, one as thin as a rake, snoring wheezily, the other so still he appeared dead. On another lower bunk sat Flynn, the apparent mute, his face hidden in the shadow cast by a candle. The man above Flynn swung around and allowed his legs to dangle over the side. He extended a hand to Owen.
‘Dia dhuit. Mick Caffrey.’ He was thirtyish and handsome, with unruly black hair.
‘Hello. Owen Joyce.’
Owen sat on the remaining bunk, which had a torn, faeces-stained straw mattress and a single blanket.
‘What’s wrong with that man?’ he whispered, nodding towards Flynn.
Caffrey frowned and made a twirling motion with his finger to the side of his head. ‘Poor bastard. Came in six months ago with his wife and four young ones. Around August every one of them died of typhus. It’s like his brain still works but his soul’s departed us.’
They were silent for a while as Owen wrapped his blanket about his shoulders.
‘Can I ask, Mr Caffrey…’
‘Mick.’
‘Mick…the Matron…she searched my hair…y’know, down below…why did sh–’
Caffrey chuckled. ‘Yeah, me too. Our new “eminent physician”, Dr Gill, has a theory that the typhus is spread by lice. Load of bollocks, ye ask me. Spread by rat’s piss, most say. She was searching yer balls for lice.’
Owen nodded. Somehow the knowledge lessened his humiliation.
‘Eh, Mick, where is everyone? All the corridors are empty.’
‘In their dorms by seven-thirty. Lights out at eight. Anyone outside their dorm or room after eight gets caned or flogged. You’re found stealing food or near the women’s dorms, they’ll flog you within an inch of your life. Don’t upset these bastards. Obey their rules and you’ll be fine. Where you workin’?’
‘The infirmary.’
‘Jaysus. Oiche mhaith, boyo. Better get some sleep, ye’ll need it.’
He had been roused during the night by a pitiful sobbing, which he guessed was emanating from Mooney. Other than that he’d slept soundly. A piercing ringing, loud enough to raise the dead, startled him to life and the door was flung open.
‘All up and about!’ the bell-ringer yelled. ‘Joyce? Joyce?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Matron says ye’re te do the boys’ ward.’
‘What?’
‘Get the piss-pots emptied and conduct them te the dining hall.’
Caffrey pointed along the corridor. ‘Up the stairs te the left. Dining hall’s on the ground floor towards the back. Good luck.’
He donned the full-length apron bearing a black cross and hurried out. In stark contrast to the empty silence of the previous night, the place was suddenly crammed with male bodies, each dressed in the same drab grey uniform, sneezing and coughing their way towards the dining hall. He located the boys’ dormitory and went through the door to a long, broad room, windows opened to the cold November air. There were hundreds of children in the dorm, yet only about fifty cots. Mattresses had been laid between each cot and along the central aisle. The stench of urine and excrement was almost overpowering. The children were still clambering from the mattresses; the smaller ones crying, their older brothers trying to comfort them. Two middle-aged women, dressed in similar fashion to the matron, were shouting above the clamour of small voices.
‘Up up up! Lickety split!’
Owen made his way through the mass of small bodies to the nearest of the women.
‘Who are you?’
‘Joyce. Matron sent me to help.’
‘Right. You may address me as Miss Smith. Make sure every mattress is stacked and every chamber pot collected and emptied in the yard, then return the pots to the dormitory and conduct the boys to their dining hall. Get about it.’
Small, expectant, frightened faces turned to him. Compelled to action by a bark from Miss Smith, he raised his hands and yelled above the din. ‘Boys! Mattresses gathered, quickly! Then collect the pots. Hurry now.’ Many were already carrying out his orders, used to the routine, and a line of boys aged from six to twelve formed at the door, each clutching an enamel bowl of piss and shit. He averted his eyes. They trooped down the stairs behind him, each one careful not to spill a drop for fear of some harsh rebuke. The pots were emptied in an enormous pit within an enclosed wall, which was half-filled with the foulness of a million deposits of human waste. When the pots had been returned to the dormitory, Miss Smith told him to escort the boys to the dining hall. About to depart, he noticed a boy asleep on the floor.
‘What about him? Shouldn’t I wake him?’
She was grim-faced. ‘You’ll have a task. He’s dead. The Matron will want to inspect him. Get along now to the hall.’
He turned away dumbly, then conducted the boys down the stairs again and into a wide hall crammed with long benches and tables. The children clattered along in line to one side, each clutching a metal bowl and cup, into which was spooned a dollop of dark gruel and a drink of buttermilk. When all were seated, a man’s voice bellowe
d for silence and was instantly obeyed. Prayers of thanks were offered and then with a clap the hundreds of boys set about scraping every morsel from their bowls with a thunderous clattering of spoons.
As a staff member, Owen was permitted to eat a larger portion of the same thin porridge, made no doubt from the very oats he’d tried to pilfer, at a side table with a few others. The meal ended, the boys were conducted to a number of schoolrooms where they would remain for the day.
A man informed him that he was required in the male infirmary and, after several wrong turns, he found himself in a walled path that led outside the main workhouse walls to the hospital building to the south. It was an H-shaped structure, considerably smaller than the main building, with the sexes housed in opposite wings. He entered the male ward and once again was struck by the swell of human suffering, the smell and the noise. The room, designed for thirty, currently was home to a hundred men, who lay on cots, on the floor, or simply lolled incomprehensive in chairs, some shrieking, others crying openly like small children. The room was almost icy and he saw that every window was open wide.
‘Joyce!’ It was the Matron, standing beside a bespectacled, balding man who wore a brown coat over a suit. As he crossed the ward, the hands of the sick clasped at his legs, pleading for help or in some cases, death. He pushed his way forward to the Matron. The man glanced briefly at him, his eyes weary, face drawn and pale as though he hadn’t slept in a week.
‘Follow me,’ the Matron snapped.
She led him into an anteroom filled with bottles and wooden boxes and began to dispense white powder into cups. ‘All the fever patients have a white X on their breast. This quinine can reduce the fever in some. Stir a spoon into water and give each fever patient a dose. Then you may assist Doctor Gill in applying poultices.’