“So much, sir, and is it all for sale to ordinary folks?”
Tom nodded, told them he had made arrangements with a stallholder here, a farmer, to pick up a little food for them until they had been paid and could get in the way of buying their own in town.
They loaded twenty one-hundredweight sacks of potatoes, eighty cabbages and strings of onions and four flitches of bacon; as an afterthought, a treat, Tom had a bag of apples put up for each family at thruppence a time, an extra pound, but he had not realised just how badly-off they had been, felt a rare compassion for these people who had been less than slaves for not even having a sale value.
It was raining when they reached the pithead and looked about them for their cabins; pointed towards the brick houses with slate roofs, dry and on two floors, they could not believe their luck.
“Get coal from the heap, get your fires lit and put the cooking pots on. There’s not much in your places – a kitchen table and a couple of stools and a bench, pallets and blankets, a stewpot and a kettle and a few plates and knives and spoons and mugs. Anything else you must buy for yourselves.”
There was a couple of ounces of tea and a jug of milk and a teapot as well, George Mason having said that the Irish lived on tea and ‘taters’ and could not function without either.
Every man woman and child was silently outside at first light, waiting to work.
“Are any of you tradesmen – carpenters or masons, perhaps?”
Two chippies and a blacksmith identified themselves.
“Good, that will be very useful! The rest of you get picks and shovels and wheelbarrows.”
They set to levelling a path for the trackway to follow from canal wharf to coke ovens to coal heap and then into the drift itself. The three skilled men set to building a first tub and then cutting sleepers to lay the rails to exactly the gauge of the tub they had made; it was a wooden box on wheels, about five feet wide, six feet long and a yard high, would carry some three tons of coal, half that of coke, could, just, be shoved along by two or three of the older children. A week and they pushed a first tub along the whole of the roadway they had built, and then they laid rails inside, almost to the working face.
The seam sloped slightly downwards and was, inevitably, wet; they dug a drain, a leet, along the side of the track. Dakers had ignored the problem, cutting his coal only above water level, often leaving half of the thickness of the seam untouched, but that made no sense at all that Tom could see. The ditch, a yard wide and five feet deep at first was run diagonally across the slope to reach the stream below the header pond; it was black and full of dust, but that hardly mattered as long as it was kept clear of the canal.
By the end of the month they were cutting coal, men at the face and the carpenters with a couple of hands apiece measuring and wedging props behind them, the gallery more than fifty yards wide and giving working room for the women and silent children to shovel and sort.
It had surprised Tom at first that the children were so quiet, until he had looked closely, so many of them dull-eyed and listless, starved as babies and never developed inside their heads as they should have; there was nothing to be done now, it was too late for them. They worked, performing the simple repetitive tasks of wheeling the tubs in and out, would probably do nothing else in the whole of their lives – Tom had no religion, was rather glad that as a result he need not examine the condition of his soul, but he had no love for himself at the end of the working day in their company.
Patrick Reilly, the smith, took charge of the coke ovens, it being natural that he should work with fire and things mechanical, soon showed a talent for organising his little domain; two months and he was running all of the above-ground operations, pocketing an extra two pounds a week, riches beyond his previous imagining; the two carpenters, Edward and Michael, naturally became chargehands below ground for they were in a position to see everything that was going on and to direct the hands to where they were needed.
“Frederick! Coal tar, from the coke ovens – how do we get rid of it? Has it any use? Can we sell it?”
Frederick did not know, pledged himself to find an answer, came back in a fortnight.
“Soap, sir. There is one manufacturer over on the Cheshire side who makes toilet soap using the tar, though he does not say how; he will supply his own clean barrels and will collect them – he pays very little, but it gets the problem off of our hands. I visited Baxter’s pit where they have ovens and just burn off the tar - I have never seen so much smoke and filth in my life, sir! And at Norton’s they throw it away, just dump it, and the stream runs black and the ground stinks and the wells nearby taste of the stuff. We would need to use the labour of one man to fill the barrels and the price we will be paid will barely cover his wages, but I think it will keep us cleaner and healthier. The shipyards will pay four shillings a barrel, delivered to them, us to supply the barrels – too much effort, I think, sir.”
“I agree, soap it is. See to it for me, please. As well, can you discover the market for occasional surpluses of coal and coke? Not regular contracts, but it will be best to run the pit at full every week, and Roberts may not need all of our output, when the furnaces are being cleaned and relined, for example.”
Frederick nodded and noted the instructions in his little journal.
“They have iron coal barges working on the River Severn below Ironbridge, sir; I understand that the iron sides take the bashing from coal being thrown on and off much better than the ordinary wooden narrow boats, require much less in the way of repair.”
“What would the costs be?”
Frederick pledged himself to find out.
A year, during which Tom forced himself underground every working day, and the coal seam dipped sufficiently that they needed to deepen the leet, making the expected discovery of a second stratum, another seam; they began the digging of their first shaft at that point, Tom ordering in a new-built steam engine, powerful enough to run a pump and turn the wheel. Reilly rubbed his hands in glee – he had heard of steam engines, had never expected actually to see, and work, one; he suggested that they build another terrace as well, and then hire on another fifty or so families to make a thorough start on the second level.
“Certainly, Patrick – but I will not be having the running of it,” Tom replied. “You must train up another man to run the ovens and yourself take over the whole pit, above and below ground. Will you do it?”
“A Paddy from the Irish bogs, sir? In charge of everything? And will your customers and suppliers be willing to take that? Will it not besmirch your name, sir?”
“Probably, Patrick – but not enough for them not to take my money – and if they say a bloody word, I shall build a bloody church here and hire one of your priests on to say Masses in it – and that would learn these chapel-going buggers a lesson!”
Tom was finding the businessman’s life increasingly tedious; he knew that he ought to be seen in chapel twice on a Sunday if he was to stay in the area and expand; as well, it was time for him to take a wife, a respectable daughter of one of his associates, chosen for her virtue and her portion rather than any personal attributes; he had to fit in, to be one of the community, and he did not need the money sufficiently to do so. He was well-off, could easily become rich if he crossed the border from medium-size to big; Joseph wanted to, he did not.
The weaving mill had been a success; despite early teething problems the demand for cloth had been so great as to make them a profit from the first, but Joseph was worried.
“The problem is, Tom, that the looms need the strength of men and a little skill as well, though that can be taught easily, it’s mainly about keeping an eye on quality, not a dexterity of hand and eye like the cottage looms demanded. The hand loom weavers won’t come into the mill still, that has not changed, and they are starting to complain that I am undercutting them, driving their prices down – and they’re right! Next year I shall produce nearly twice as much, going onto double shifts, and the price wil
l fall for sure, more for them than for me because I will guarantee quantity and quality. Sooner or later, they are going to try to do something about it – burn me out, I expect.”
“What can you do about that? Must you hire on watchmen?”
“One for Sundays, yes. The best bet will be to insure heavily. A few guineas in a local broker’s hand and he will arrange for a policy to be underwritten at Lloyds in London for a couple of thousands more than mill and machines together are worth – then if we burn we rebuild better.”
Tom laughed – it made good sense.
“What of your men? If you can’t get local weavers, what do you do for hands?”
“Youngsters who come in off the farms, mostly. A few of the Irish, but not too many.”
“I employ only Irishmen at the mine, and they work like hell for me.”
“Only because you overpay them, Tom!”
“They produce more for being better paid – only in June I put my wage-bill up by fifty a month by putting a bob a ton into the pot as a bonus for everybody to share; I got a hundred pounds worth of coal more this month, fifty quid straight profit. What I’m doing with that is ordering ten tons of spuds each month – you wouldn’t believe how much of them they eat, Joe – because I can get them for a farthing a pound, £2 6s 8d the ton. They will buy them at cost from me, and that’s half the price they pay in town and they don’t have to carry them three miles home; they appreciate that, but more importantly, they know that we will never run short – to men who’ve starved and watched their children die, that’s important, knowing that they’re safe.”
“Maybe – it’s different in coal, of course. I don’t think I want too many of them in the mill – you can’t really trust a Papist!”
Tom gave up. The argument was pointless because neither could win it, and he did not really care enough to jeopardise his relationship with Joseph, who had taken up chapel-going recently.
He visited Mary that night, found her in contemplative mood, reserved and withdrawn from him, her greeting very subdued.
“Problems, my dear?”
“Yes, Tom.”
She would say no more, poured him tea, asked how his day had gone, tried to chat lightly.
“Tell me, Mary.”
She sat plump down in her chair at the table, dropped her head in her hands, would not meet his eyes.
“I am with child, Thomas, I am going to have a baby.”
It was only to be expected, the surprise was that it had not happened long before; a nuisance, more for her than him.
“That will be a little difficult for you, Mary, but there will be money to bring up the child and keep you both, you need have no fear that you will be turned away.”
“If I have a baby here, where some people know me, and know that I am not wed, they will point fingers at me and the babe. ‘Nameless’, ‘Love-child’, they will say. The whole neighbourhood will know, they will make sure of that.”
They would – there was nothing the old tabbies loved better than to cast the first stone at girls who had sinned and been found out, and the chance to display their hatred and malice to a bastard child would never be missed.
“You must go, then. It would not be fair to you to make you stay here, and it would be worse for the child. Some distance from here, have you any preference for another town?”
“Do you know Dorset, Tom?”
He was taken by surprise, admitted, defensively, that he did, not saying that his ear was always cocked for the sound of the low-pitched Dorset burr on a stranger’s voice. He wondered if she had heard something, if there was a rumour doing the rounds and where it had come from.
“My mother came from Dorset,” she continued, to his relief. “She came from Corfe, where the castle is, and her mother still lived there when I was little. I expect she is dead now, for I remember her as an old lady then. We visited her three times that I recall, and I always wanted to go back there, to live there one day because it was beautiful. Was I to put a ring on my finger, I could be a widow, my husband suddenly dead of the fever, leaving me in the family way and living respectably on the income he left me.”
She had been brought up to ‘respectability’, the true god of the new middle classes, and would be able to achieve the status again as a widow. She would not herself be known, but she might hear word of her family – there could be other relatives, unknown cousins, who might befriend her in her need. She had a brother and two sisters, might just get the occasional word of them.
“What if the old lady is still alive? Your parents might very well visit her.”
“Then, perhaps, I might just see Mama, at a distance.”
He had never realised just how lonely she was – but she had never been more than a convenience to him, it had not occurred to him that she had emotions. He supposed, when he considered the matter, that he was lonely, too – but it was less important to a man. He could, if he wished, make some sort of social life with his peers in trade, he was sure; he wondered vaguely how he would go about it, and whether it would be worth the effort.
He considered how he would go about settling Mary in Corfe – he was certainly not going down there himself, that would be foolhardy in the extreme. Clapperley would do the job, very willingly, but he rather preferred not to acquaint him with the details of his personal life out of a general sense of caution. Blackmail and Clapperley seemed natural friends, and he had no wish to give him what might become a future weapon. He went instead to the premises of his banker, Martin, where he was granted an immediate personal interview, as he had expected without really considering the matter – Andrews and Star commanded the attention of any country banker.
Martin, a quiet, highly intelligent, soberly dressed, unobtrusive gentleman, stood courteously to greet Tom, ushered him to a chair and gave him good morning.
“A correspondent in Dorset? Yes, sir, in the town of Wareham and another in Dorchester, bankers whom I would recommend and who have performed commissions for me, and I for them, in the past.”
“Good. I wish to purchase a house of some four or five hundred pounds in or very close to Corfe village, to be put in the name of Mrs Burley. Payments currently made to Miss Amberley to be increased to two hundreds a year, for her life, and made in the name of Mrs Burley at her new address. Staff to be hired on and paid from my account here, separately. The house currently occupied by Miss Amberley to be put into my name, purchased from her.”
Martin made a brief note of the instructions, said they would be put in hand immediately. It was obvious why they were being made, but it was equally obvious to him that it was none of his business at all to comment or to query.
“Whilst you are here, Mr Andrews, it occurs to me that you are holding a larger than normal balance in your account, sir?”
“Yes, Mr Martin – I am putting cash together this year in anticipation of a speculation in house building I intend to make next spring. I will put some fifteen thousands into four hundred terraced houses on a piece of land on the outskirts of Manchester, building their roadways as well, and then renting them out and selling them as solid investments, income earners, to folk with a few hundreds saved.”
They discussed the figures for a few minutes, Martin impressed and approving and eventually suggesting that eight hundred would be better than four and he would be willing to match Mr Andrews, pound for pound, at the very reasonable rate of eight and a half per cent interest, the risk seeming to be very low. Tom was pleased to accept, having budgeted for a fifteen per cent return.
“For the meanwhile, Mr Andrews, it would be better to put your money to work; with your permission I would purchase discounted bills with the spare funds in your account, thus earning three or four per cent safely.”
The second half of the Eighties was a period of unprecedented boom, industry expanding massively and families flocking to the towns of the Midlands and North. The new industrial towns were chronically short of roofs, whole families living in a single room and thinkin
g themselves lucky to have any place to lay their heads and house prices rose far above their cost of construction, to the great profit of the few builders who could fight the factory owners for land and capital. Mills were built on every stream that would turn a wheel and the late-comers were forced to the experiment of putting beam engines into their works; the demand for house and steam coals rose massively, as did the price. Roberts was inundated with contracts for cast pillars and roof trusses and built a fourth and then a fifth furnace and worked night and day, unstopping. The steel shop added new crucibles as the demand for machine parts grew every day.
Joseph presided over two hundred looms, most of them worked by Irishmen, despite his prejudices, and he doubled the size of his spinning mill and looked about him for new opportunities.
Frederick Mason married Miss Roberts and she produced a son within the year – he might, indeed, have been a fraction premature if one was very strict about counting the months since the wedding, however none would wish to be so intrusive of the privacy of so respected a couple, not, at least, to the lengths of commenting publicly. He continued to work for Roberts, taking increasing responsibility for the steel shop and its contracts with steam.
Mary had left Tom’s life; he intentionally severed all contact with her after he was made aware of her safe delivery of a boy – if she was to be respectable then she did not need his presence in her background – his money would suffice. Mrs Morris supplied a somewhat more commercially minded young lady to take Mary’s place, and she was good fun for a year before growing bored with the reclusive life; another had taken her place and a third after that – good girls all, happy and honest and not attempting to demand extra presents or a cut of the housekeeping. They made no demand on Tom’s emotions, and very little, relatively speaking, on his purse, and they kept him physically content.
Book One: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Eight
The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) Page 18