The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1)

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The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) Page 12

by Andrew Wareham


  “That is the young man who died recently?” Tom kept quiet about the word he had had from Mason, interested to hear the gloss that Clapperley might put upon the matter.

  “Drowned in the canal, sir, the body smelling strongly of brandy – an easy mystery to solve, and so the coroner held. The young man never drank, sir, not more than a glass or two of wine and port with dinner, never ardent spirits.”

  “Ah! A conundrum!”

  “I might prefer to call it a murder, sir, whilst accepting that he might well have given a number of gentlemen very good reason to murder him. An unfortunate affair, sir, but not necessarily a tragedy.”

  “You would seem to have had very little liking for the young gentleman, Mr Clapperley.”

  “Without breaching any confidences, Mr Andrews, I can say that I had been consulted about his, behaviour, shall we say, with some of the local youths and had had to say that I knew of no remedy at law that would permit action to be taken without a concomitant public scandal. Discreet soundings of young Mr Roberts found him very unwilling to mend his ways – indeed, he announced his willingness to stand up in court and name names, very loudly, rather than do so.”

  Tom shrugged – the young man would seem to have provoked his own end; another care-for-nobody who had discovered that nobody cared for him – no great loss to the wider world.

  “What should I say if Mr Roberts should come back to me with an offer to negotiate, sir? I believe that he has already tried to sell out locally, but has found none who wished to talk to him.”

  “I will not increase my offer, Mr Clapperley. The firm has much in its favour, I would, in fact, like to possess it, but, regrettably, I can find very little in Mr Roberts’ favour. He can go to Hell, and the works with him, before I offer him so much as another penny, sir.”

  Clapperley appeared at Tom’s inn two days later, begged the favour of private speech with him.

  “Strange news, Mr Andrews! Miss Roberts visited my chambers this morning, not an hour ago, dressed all in black. Her father was seized of an apoplexy in his sleep, was found dead in his bed yesterday morning! Miss Roberts has spoken to her father’s attorney, and has discovered herself to be sole beneficiary under his Will, as is only to be expected, and wishes to sell. Probate cannot be granted for some months, of course, but precedent in plenty exists to allow a business to continue to run; she would lose almost all of her inheritance if the firm shut its doors and she can seek a court order to permit the sale. Your twelve thousand to be placed in trust in the court’s hands and you may walk in immediately. There are no known relatives with a legitimate interest – no uncles, cousins, nephews, the Roberts running to few children in the past two generations, so you should be quite safe, sir.”

  “Miss Roberts to retain the house?”

  “Life-tenancy, determined on her marriage, if such should occur. Her twelve thousand invested carefully will be worth at least four hundred a year, sufficient for her to keep up the house.”

  “Then it should be so, Mr Clapperley. I would be very glad to buy, sir.”

  “Good. I can apply to the court for an immediate interim order, the Roberts’ attorney consenting, as he will, and you should be able to enter the premises on the day after tomorrow. I will pass word to Mason that wages will be paid on Friday, as normal?”

  “Yes, very definitely. Tell him that all is well in hand and ensure that he knows he can spread the word.”

  “He will undoubtedly be pleased to do so, Mr Andrews. He will be glad to see stability returned to the firm.”

  “Yes, the Roberts family has been unfortunate this year.”

  “Short-lived indeed, sir – one trusts no bruises will be found on Mr Roberts’ brow!”

  “You think, perhaps…”

  Clapperley cut him short.

  “As a lawyer, I am no friend to idle speculation, sir; equally, as a lawyer, I have a profound disbelief in coincidence, particularly when it is so convenient to the interests of a family member.”

  “One would have thought the family to be above suspicion in such a case, surely, sir!”

  “Mr Andrews, murder is no light matter! Most people have to hate very thoroughly before they will kill, and that means they must know their victim well – and who do you know better than your own papa, or brother? Good day to you, sir, I will send you a note as soon as may be telling you exactly when you may enter the premises.”

  Book One: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Six

  It took Joseph a month to realise that the putting-out system was no longer sensible or necessary for spinning but was an unavoidable evil of weaving.

  The demand for cotton had outgrown the old methods of supply, the market was unbalanced, out of kilter, had no stability, needed to be modernised. Weaving was insoluble, for the while, in the absence of workable powered looms that could be operated by semi-skilled hands in a factory, but the major problems of spinning had been solved – the manufacturer had a choice of the older water-frames that could be run by unskilled women or the new mules that produced a finer thread but demanded the strength of men.

  At the moment raw cotton was taken out to the cottages and came back, eventually, as thread or yarns, no two cottagers producing at exactly the same thickness and strength or in the same time-span. ‘The cotton was of poor quality or too dirty or adulterated or was still on the wheel’ – the excuses came every Saturday, the finished goods came back less frequently. Joseph suspected that some of his yarns went out the back door, sold against cash to other factors, but he could not prove it. The weavers were worse, being mostly men – cloths that came back were often too loosely woven or stretched beyond belief in an attempt to get something for nothing, quality was take it or leave it. Where the weavers were good in quality they were too often wholly irresponsible, working just enough to live and pay the week’s bills; Saturday morning was pay-day; Saturday afternoon and evening and the whole of Sunday was drunk; Saint Monday was for recovery, too often hair of the dog, meaning that Tuesday went to recuperate from the excesses of Monday. Work for many started for the week on Wednesday and then the men pushed sixty hours production out of the three days, quality disappearing from sheer fatigue.

  Quality, quantity, reliability, all demanded the new manufactury, yet the great mass of the men hated the very idea of giving up their freedom, of surrendering to the discipline of the knocker-up rattling his pole on their windows before five to get them to the mill-gate to sign in for six o’clock. The few weavers who were prepared to work in a mill were almost invariably feckless drunks or ham-fisted bodgers, unable to make their own way and sacked within a very few days.

  The only answer was to get the spinners under control and then slowly pressure the weavers into responsibility and pray for the power loom to be perfected so that unskilled labourers could take their place and consign the feckless drunks to the gutter and then, as they died, to the history books.

  Joseph paid a visit to one of the few spinning mills, sat up bold on its hillside, a pair of waterwheels powering at least a hundred of frames, clattering and clacking deafeningly. The owner was proud of his enterprise, was only too pleased to boast of it, unworried by competition because he could sell at least twice his output without any effort – but he was rich already, was not concerned to expand his own premises. Joseph nodded and smiled and looked intently – the organisation was obvious enough, the machines known to him and, as he had heard, the workforce was almost entirely women and children.

  “They queue up to work here, Mr Star! A housemaid in service gets her keep, and half a crown a week, paid quarterly; a chambermaid in a hotel or an inn gets a few pennies more, and the chance to earn extras if she’s pretty and willing; both will work twelve hours a day, at least, six days a week with a half-day on Sunday, if they have a good employer. My girls get eight bob a week, cash in hand on Saturday morning when they go home at midday, and they get all of Sunday off, and I give them half an hour for dinner,
free and gratis! The children are off the Poor Law and from the Foundlings Hospital, and they work no more than eight hours a day and they get a breakfast and dinner, and a good meal, mutton and spuds each time – no bread and scrape here, sir; they don’t get any money, of course, that goes to the Vestry, but the girls can come back to work here when they are twelve and we put the word out for the boys if they have shown willing, can normally find them a place.”

  Slaves were treated worse, Joseph knew, but mostly they did not have to smile and say thank you to their masters; this country was not the heaven on earth he had imagined when he was a little boy wanting only to get out of Antigua. However, it would do…

  “Land, Mr Clapperley, on a good, year-round stream that will take a header-pond. Twenty acres, at least, more if you can get it at a sensible price, waste ground or moor, for the best. Where can I find an engineer? Can you put me in touch with reliable builders who can throw up a good, solid mill?”

  For his fee Clapperley could provide any and all of Joseph’s needs, and in quick time. A fortnight and he was inspecting two hundred acres of poor land backing onto the Manchester road, within a couple of furlongs of the canal and not three miles from Lodge Cottage. The soil on the hillside was acid and grew little and the bottom was boggy. Enquiry disclosed that the area belonged to no parish and so paid no Poor Law rate.

  Four hundred pounds bought the land from the farmer whose family had held the acres for years and had never been able to make sensible use of them other than to run goats whose milk was unpopular and meat was spurned. Three thousands would build the mill and the waterwheels and put fifty frames inside for the carding and spinning. That left nearly two thousands for his working capital, enough to buy a part-load at auction and pay wages for six months. He expected to be selling thread within three months, splitting his output, some to go to his own weavers, more to go onto the market – there was a demand for good yarns from the hosiers and the glovers, both wanting strong, coarse threads for their knitters.

  Two successful years and he would be looking to expand – the profits were there because cash-money was not. The banks would not lend to new firms, and preferred to put their money out to old-established merchants rather than manufacturers, not understanding the new industry; private investors were few and far between, most wanting security, unprepared to take any risk at all with the inherited wealth that was their status and their power in the land. For those who would take a risk, the rewards were high and taxation was non-existent; a fortune could be made very rapidly, provided there was a lesser fortune to invest in the first instance.

  John McKay, a young Scottish engineer – English schools produced none - appeared, introduced by Clapperley as an expert in his field and drawing a very pretty plan of his proposed mill; hired on for three hundred a year he stood over the builders as they brought bricks to the site and burned their clay and lime to make mortar, and then watched them cut footings down to the sandstone, finding it to be solid and unfaulted. The design was quickly amended and the natural stone formed the floor to the mill, saving money and adding strength; the spoil they cut out was carted straight downhill and tipped into the edge of the bog, helping it to firm up more quickly. As an experiment, McKay built large windows into the roof and upper walls of the big brick box that was the mill, hoping to save on lamp-oil and make it easier to watch over the machines; there would be no openings in the lower ten feet, of course, the operatives not to be encouraged to waste time looking at the scenery.

  It was a busy few months for Joseph, teaching himself the cotton trade whilst setting up house and learning how to make a life with a young wife of a very different social order. Fortunately for both, Bennet – and where she had gained her knowledge they did not enquire, though Joseph had some suspicions of the major – had very carefully explained a wife’s marital duties to Amelia and had led her to expect to thoroughly enjoy her husband, thus bringing a very smug expression to the faces of both newly-weds; it made the give-and-take of marriage much easier for both.

  They concentrated on the coarsest yarns at first, it being much simpler to spin them and achieve a high standard in their output, and meet all of their orders on time. In a year or two, when they had the expertise, they would go for the higher prices of the finer threads but they preferred to walk first, run later, a sentiment Clapperley applauded as well-expressed, mindful of his commission.

  Marks acted as buyer at the auctions and continued to work with his weavers, men who had known him for some years and had a tenuously friendly relationship with him, when they were sober. The dyers were all larger firms, fairly long established and reliable enough and, again, knew Marks and found it easy to deal with him. Joseph worried about Marks – he had shown himself to be a good worker, a reliable employee who gave of his best, and that was not a natural state of affairs for a man who had been treated as he had been – he should have been harbouring a grudge, surely could not be so docilely obedient as he showed. Joseph had no knowledge of ‘respectability’, the new god of the middle order of people, and of the horror of debt and stigma of imprisonment that had broken Marks’ spirit and left him terrified and cringing.

  The girls who worked in the mill were all that had been forecast – obedient beyond belief, they walked their two or three or four miles from their parents’ cottages or terraces in town, almost none coming from the villages, and queued up to be ticked off on the paymaster’s register and be at their places ready for the six o’clock start, and then they worked, silent, heads down, hands busy until the belts stopped for their dinner when they filed out into the fresh air, and very often the rain, and unwrapped the piece of cloth from their bread and cheese, or dry bread alone at the end of the week, and ate it quickly and neatly and queued up at the necessaries and then trotted back to be ready for the wheels to start turning again; in the afternoons they worked up to the second of six o’clock and then quickly swept up round their machine before making their number on the roll again and setting off home in twos and threes in the cold and darkness of winter or the long evenings of summer. And they competed for the privilege! They would beg to write their sisters’ names into the books for any vacancy that might arise and chance that could occur.

  It was years before Joseph fully understood the girls’ desperation to get into the mills, realised just how slight were the opportunities open to them. They could go into service, rise perhaps to cook in a middle-class house, unwed and always fearful of losing their place and having nothing and nowhere to go; a few could take employment as counter-jumpers in the big new shops just starting to open, eighteen hours a day, six days a week, living-in under discipline, badly paid and worse fed; more could go to the mills. The rest must either stay at home, unpaid drudges contributing nothing to the family budget, or, as perhaps a quarter of them did, they could go on the game, making a precarious living walking the streets in regular or occasional prostitution until age, disease, desperation and the gin bottle brought them to the river. A mill girl numbered herself amongst the aristocracy of the unwed working class, earning enough to save six pence a week, every week, so as to bring a very respectable sum with her on marriage in her mid-twenties to a husband with a trade of his own, an end which many actually achieved. As a result the workforce in the mills was both grateful and obedient, and highly profitable, bringing the mill well into the black inside six months.

  Roberts Iron Founders returned a profit from the very first, but it was a tiny, miserable, inadequate trickle of cash; even allowing for the low price Tom had paid, it was a poor return, less than he was earning from the funds remaining in Martin’s bank.

  Within three months Tom had called George Mason into conference, asking the single question.

  “Why, George?”

  “Like I said when first I met thee, sir, we still ain’t got enough contracts – we work flat out for three days of the six, potter for the other three, and I’d like to go to seven day working, never let the furnaces get cool, except when it’s
time to change the linings, save a load of coke that way. Second thing, most of our cast goes to low price jobs, we don’t do sufficient of the big, expensive stuff, the trusses and pillars for mills and bridges in particular. Third problem is the wrought iron – we just didn’t ought to be doing it, Mr Andrews, not using coke. If I had my way, sir, we’d shut down on wrought and turn to crucible steel, making parts for steam engines and factory machines and forging hammers and presses – skilled, top of the line stuff, where the money is.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I know how, and I knows where to lay my hands on four good blokes what have worked at Huntsmans before moving on to another master who tried to cut their wages when times got a bit hard last year. They told ‘im where to stick ‘is wage cuts, and came on down here when they found every door in Sheffield was closed to ‘em, they being marked men, you might say. Two pound ten a week, they’d cost, and worth twice as much in profit to us.”

  “But, George, they’re stroppy buggers, be forming a combination and calling strike at the drop of a hat.”

  “Best we don’t drop our hats then, master. Besides, they’ll be taking home twice as much as any other man in the works, there won’t be any wanting to listen to them if they calls for a strike, and they’ll ‘ave too much money to lose by going out. As well, if we builds on four more cottages up the lane we can give them to ‘em while they works for us, like a farmer’s tied places, only decent; all four are married with wives and little ‘uns back in Sheffield living with their mums for the while. On the one hand, we keeps them grateful, on the other they’re out in the road if they shouts their mouths off, and they’ll know it.”

 

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