All Standing

by Kathryn Miles

  The anticipation and dread experienced by the Reillys at that moment must have been excruciating. Margaret was still quite weak from Nicholas’s birth. Would it show in her mouth? Would she be detained—and if so, would Nicholas be allowed to remain with her? If only Margaret were detained, it would be the last she and Daniel would see of each other for some time; visits to the ill were strictly prohibited. Daniel would be ferried by the Jeanie to Quebec City; he would have no way of knowing if and when Margaret was released or when a steamer would deliver her to the bustling city docks. In the minutes that remained until she was called, Daniel surely thought of nothing else.

  Whether it was her own fortitude, Blennerhassett’s studious care, or the sheer grace of God, George Douglas passed Margaret Reilly and ordered her and Nicholas and the children to stand on the healthy side of the rope. The family would remain together—at least for now. But their ordeal was far from over. Douglas conferred briefly with Attridge and Blennerhassett, then departed the vessel without another word. It was left to the doctor and captain to explain to the passengers what lay in store for them.

  While Margaret waited on board with Nicholas, Daniel and Robert disembarked to undergo an elaborate disinfection process. The solidity of dry land felt jarring and unfamiliar as they stepped from the ship’s deck to the pier, and they swayed unsteadily as their bodies fought to find new equilibrium without the ocean’s endless rocking. Under the watchful eye of one of Douglas’s assistants, Daniel unpacked the family chest, scrubbed each dish, pair of trousers, and shoe in muddy river water, then found places on the crowded rocks to dry them. He helped Robert bathe with soap and washed his face with vinegar. It took him the rest of the day to complete these tasks.3 Then he returned to the ship to collect Margaret and Nicholas.

  As the Reillys slowly climbed the forty steps that would lead them to the island proper, Attridge and Donovan looked on. The passengers were thinner and dirtier than when they had embarked. Still, they were alive. Up they rose, ascending the wooden stairs and joining the others congregating on the wharf, from where they would eventually make their way to the island quarantine sheds and into an unknown future.

  FERGUS FALLS, MINNESOTA

  MAY 1885

  Jim O’Brien was playing a shell game—that much seemed clear. Nicholas had seen the evening tills, had stayed up late into the night counting the money. The bar was always crowded, and at the end of each night profits were high. Jim didn’t let him touch the bar’s ledger, but Nicholas was responsible for filling its safe with cash every night. Where it went after that was a mystery. The man from Pabst had taken to dropping by the saloon every week looking for his payment. Whenever Nicholas opened the safe, he found it empty. In exchange for his weak apology, he was given yet another bill and the promise that the collector would be back. There were other invoices as well—from breweries and distilleries, from the ice man and the glass factory. They all said the same thing: if Jim O’Brien didn’t settle up fast, they wouldn’t be doing business together for much longer.

  It wouldn’t be much of a pub if they couldn’t sell drinks, and that was beginning to seem like a distinct possibility. Not only were the brewers threatening to stop supplying the saloon, but the temperance movement was gaining in strength across the United States. Just a few years earlier, Kansas had succeeded in outlawing alcohol throughout the state. The movement was also growing in Minnesota, and officials were cracking down on saloon owners. Jim O’Brien was feeling the pressure from them as well.

  Jim never bothered with formalities, and he rarely had the patience or money for legalities like taxes and licenses. That had come to a head recently when inspectors discovered that the saloon had been selling alcohol without a license. During Jim’s trial, Nicholas sat in the back of the courtroom, flummoxed by reports of unpaid taxes and abandoned debts in Michigan. He didn’t dare talk to Jim about it, though. His brother-in-law had always been bellicose, and the stress of whatever funny business was going on had brought out a new rage in him that frankly made Nicholas nervous. At a recent meeting of the fire brigade, another firefighter had questioned Jim’s character. He responded by punching the man hard in the face. The police officer on duty seemed downright pleased about arresting Jim for assault.

  After that, Jim became more scarce than ever, all but living in Chicago. Despite Harriet’s growing distress, he was as vague as ever about what he did there. On those rare occasions when he returned to the Grand Hotel, it was with a stack of whiskey bonds that he cached in the safe before so much as removing his hat or saying hello. Whiskey bonds were as good as gold when it came to loan collateral, and the ones in Jim’s safe would have been more than enough to pay the saloon’s creditors. But Jim never seemed to give the creditors a second thought. Instead he went to the race track or on another of his mysterious jaunts to Chicago, leaving Harriet, Nicholas, and Cecilia to pick up the pieces.

  Jim was a schemer, and more than ever Nicholas didn’t want to be a part of that. William was now five; Helen was two. The Reillys needed a little space of their own. But when it came to Nicholas’s paycheck, Jim always seemed to come up a little short. That, Nicholas was learning, was pretty much always the way with Jim. There was the court summons for falling delinquent on his mortgage and the unfortunate coincidence of the fire at his brewery, which occurred just before he was forced to resign as brigade chief for the Wide Awake Hose Company. Then there was his equally ill-advised plan to buy and sell debt: foreclosed homes, threatened bankruptcies, insurance liability—it didn’t matter what form it took, Jim would wheel and deal it, always staying one step ahead of an angry creditor or a town official who thought to ask questions. That too made Nicholas nervous. They were family, yes, but even family had to draw limits.

  When Jim announced that he had entered the real estate business, Nicholas was more than a little skeptical. When Jim explained that he intended to buy the disused grand old schoolhouse on the hill and relocate it behind the saloon, Nicholas thought Jim was crazy. Still, his brother-in-law had a way of making things happen, and before long, a team of draft horses and burly men arrived as promised. How Jim managed to get the biggest building in all of Fergus Falls down a hill and into town—all in one piece—was a mystery. It barely fit in the lot between Rat Matthews’s racehorse training stable and the roller-skating rink turned National Guard armory.

  Jim was beside himself with pride over this newest venture. Every day trains arrived in town overflowing with people looking for work. They all needed a place to stay, and an apartment in the town’s best-looking building would no doubt be snatched up in a heartbeat. He didn’t have much money for the school’s renovations, but that didn’t matter. Surely Nicholas would be willing to help out in exchange for a deal on rent. He could even have his pick of the units.

  Against his better judgment, Nicholas became Jim’s first tenant. With Harriet’s help, he and Cecilia moved their belongings into the first-floor flat and settled into the grand building. It didn’t take long for them to discover that the school looked a lot more impressive than it was. With no insulation to speak of, it became bone cold in the winter and broiled in the summer. Still, for the first time in their lives, they had their own place. And that too was as good as gold.

  19

  Adrift

  1849

  ANOTHER NEW YEAR. While much of the world was celebrating, Captain James Attridge and his crew were making their way to the River Shannon before finally laying anchor in the Bay of Tralee. The barque sat heavily in the water, filled this time not with people but with 360 tons of Indian corn, 1,000 barrels of superfine flour, 1,100 barrels of Indian meal, 30 tons of white wheat for seed, and 21,000 timber staves, all collected from the Coenties Slip on New York City’s East River. There, amid the steamers, canal boats, and ocean liners, Attridge had filled the vessel with New England timber and grain brought all the way from the American Midwest, goods that would soon be available for purchase (and for a discounted price, no less) at John Donovan
& Sons’ brand-new—and fully bonded—warehouse in the heart of Tralee.

  The Jeanie’s return to Ireland was already being heralded as a triumph, yet Attridge would hardly call the previous year a success. After depositing his passengers in Quebec, the captain had tried to maintain order among his exhausted crew. The stress of storms and ice and ferrying two hundred seasick immigrants showed. Immediately after docking, John Daly was arrested for public drunkenness and impeding traffic on the street.1 Two days later, John Gordon and Alexander Matthews, two seamen in their late twenties, deserted the vessel. From Quebec’s docklands, the United States appeared tantalizingly close. And so, unnoticed, Gordon and Matthews ducked from the Jeanie and away from the docklands. They were bound for Matthews’s native New York, carrying all of their belongings in their sea chests. They were apprehended by authorities the next day and promptly arraigned. What followed was a week of court appearances for the men and Attridge, who was summoned to give testimony. Gordon and Matthews both pled not guilty; however, the strength of Attridge’s statement was enough to persuade the judge. Both men were sentenced to thirty days in jail, a punishment meant to threaten other would-be deserters as much as to penalize the two seamen.2 It was an insufficient warning; by the time the Jeanie Johnston departed Quebec for her long haul back to Ireland, five additional crew members had abandoned the vessel, leaving just Attridge and eleven sailors to man the timber-laden barque as she once again plied the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

  No matter how benevolent or fair, a nineteenth-century captain had to expect desertions in his line of work. But on this most recent trip to New York, the scale of desertions had distressed Attridge greatly. The same day that he filed his paperwork with New York Customs, no fewer than seven crew members, including two sixteen-year-old apprentices, had jumped ship. These men and boys were no doubt lured by promises of an American dream and a Gotham already dazzling in what the writer Lydia Maria Child called a “long string of vituperative alliterations, such as magnificence and mud, finery and filth, diamonds and dirt, bullion and brass-tape, &c., &c.”3 The AWOL sailors slipped easily into the tangled forest of ships and cargo on the docks before making their way the short distance to Five Points, already the world’s most notorious Irish slum. From there, they began a life of anonymity, lost forever to official record keeping and reports.

  The life in Ireland to which Attridge and his remaining men were returning was no less uncertain. In their absence, Parliament had pushed through the Encumbered Estates Act, which allowed heavily indebted estate owners to auction off their properties in exchange for loan forgiveness. Eager to capitalize on the liquidated real estate, speculators swooped in and bought up the land, then promptly evicted tens of thousands of cottiers still living there. In response, tenant groups were forming across Ireland and threatening agitation. Meanwhile insurrections demanding free rule erupted in force, and guerrillas attacked police with guns and pikes. Scattered across the country and with military force, these bands of rebels had forced a six-month suspension of habeas corpus across Ireland. Initially it seemed as if martial law would end the rebels’ momentum, but then there were rumors that a new outbreak of violence would soon begin. Home owners throughout Ireland reported strange robberies in which perpetrators stole lead from roofs and shovels from barns. Many were confused by the strange choices of the thieves, until it was pointed out that the lead could easily be cast into bullets and the shovels rendered into pikes. Newspaper articles in rural papers ran columns about how to build weapons, and thick envelopes arriving from places like Boston and New York ensured that secret societies had the funds they needed for such enterprises. Violence against landlords also continued, and many of the landed class no longer felt safe moving about the countryside.

  Neither did Britain’s much-beloved queen. At the height of the uprising, she and her family had taken refuge at Osborne House, their estate on the Isle of Wight. Now back in London, she was finding the threat to her safety all too real. On a temperate evening, she took a carriage drive through the parks of Buckingham Palace. The carriage was within yards of returning home when a loud pistol shot rang out across the grounds. William Hamilton, a wiry young Irishman dressed in corduroy trousers and a flannel jacket, was quickly subdued by palace guards. Once in police custody, Hamilton calmly explained that he was a bricklayer from Limerick who had emigrated to England a year prior, buoyed by the promise of work and relief from the famine. Not surprisingly, he had found neither. The queen, he said, ought to pay. Plenty of his countrymen agreed.

  • • •

  At 14 Downing Street, Henry Grey railed in equal measure against the plight of vessels like the Jeanie Johnston and the Irish unrest. Both were evidence that his policies were flawed, if not altogether failing. Grey did not take defeat lightly. And frankly, the timing for this one couldn’t be worse: 1849 was supposed to be the year for new Navigational Acts, a lynchpin in the battle for a free market. If passed, the acts would bring an end to strict restrictions on British trade and would allow foreign-flagged vessels to import goods directly into Britain. As far as Grey was concerned, passage of the acts was integral to Britain’s dominance as a global power. Still, conflict continued, mostly in the colonies, who feared for their livelihood if they lost their preferential subsidies. In Canada, agitators were threatening to secede; protests against Grey in Australia were building in force; and a bloody insurrection on the Cape of Good Hope was creating what he called “difficulties and embarrassments.”4

  Ireland was likewise in rebellion. Under Grey’s initial emigration scheme, it was the peasants who were supposed to vacate Ireland in favor of British North America. But instead of the poorest of the laborers, emigrant vessels were increasingly filled with people like the Reillys—successful, respectable farmers. Their absence was seen as a significant drain on any possibility for future economic well-being in Ireland. Why send some of the island’s greatest capital to America? Or even worse, allow them to die on vessels like the Londonderry, where 72 of the 206 steerage passengers had recently suffocated to death below deck?

  Instead of debate over free trade, Grey found himself mired in yet another parliamentary investigation concerning the safety of immigrant vessels.5 It was not an investigation he welcomed. Grey made no bones about accusing his fellow parliamentarians of using this discussion as a way of deflecting attention from his new policy. He scolded them, insisting that everything about their new attention to the safety of immigrant vessels seemed “calculated to create and to keep a most mischievous agitation against” the idea of further colonization—even in North America.6 Worst of all, much of London was now jumping on the bandwagon, staging protests in which otherwise reasonable people were appearing at state events wearing sackcloth and ashes as a sign of protest against Grey’s policies.7

  It was, Grey had to admit, an exceptionally effective campaign. In Parliament, Lord Redesdale had taken the floor, speaking at length about “dreadful cases” on immigrant ships where women were observed holding dead babies, children were killed by exposure, and emigrants huddled together in unsanitary conditions more deplorable than the world had ever seen. Redesdale was joined by the Earl of Harrowby and the Earl of Mount Cashell, who spoke passionately about similar accounts: immigrants were complaining of mistreatment; no one was protecting their interests; England had failed to curb the villainy of ship masters and owners.8 The crusade was no less impassioned in the House of Commons, where Thomas Chisholm Anstey had effectively halted discussion on the Passenger Acts with reports from his time aboard an immigrant ship. The proceedings of the speech, published throughout London, recorded Chisholm Anstey as saying “he could assure the House that not a day passed in which the passengers were not in fear of plague, pestilence, and famine; and on looking into the law, on their arrival at port, he found they had no remedy whatever.”9

  It would take a deft hand and diplomacy to quell this latest bout of dissension, neither of which Grey possessed. He had always been considered
something of a blunt instrument when it came to politicking, and the harshness with which he had treated his opposition over the past two years would clearly not be forgotten. He attempted concession: more clearly needed to be done, he admitted, to ensure the safe passage of Irish emigrants. He assured members of Parliament that he was “perfectly ready to admit that many of the suggestions which had been made were well deserving of consideration.” But surely, they ought not “risk the Bill by attempting more than what it already embraced.” And didn’t these extra mandates serve to further infantilize the emigrants? To suggest that they were incapable of acting on their own accord? “It was his opinion that if persons who were about to emigrate would make proper inquiry of respectable ship owners, they would have no reason to complain of the accommodation afforded to them, or of the provisions with which they were supplied.”10

  Grey would have liked to believe that what occurred in Ireland was also of little consequence, but of course he knew otherwise. This new year was already bringing a whole host of problems. Private charity had all but evaporated in Ireland. Even the Quakers were ceasing aid, citing their frustration with the government’s handling of Ireland as the chief cause. Charles Trevelyan lobbied hard for them to remain, even offering them cash if they would do so, but the Quakers refused. What Ireland needed, they wrote in response, was “far beyond the reach of private exertion[.] The government alone could raise the funds and carry out the measures necessary in many districts to save the lives of the people.”11 Perhaps, they concluded, the government ought to begin by considering the new raft of evicted cottiers desperate for shelter and support.