Connie stared at him, her eyes widening and her stomach swirling. The workhouse. Just the words had the power to create a dread that was more than legitimate if only a quarter of the stories she had heard were true. On the few occasions she had passed the extensive series of buildings between Hylton Road and Chester Road which accommodated over nine hundred people and had its own hospital, mortuary, farm and so on, she had, ridiculously, she admitted to herself, averted her eyes and hurried past as fast as her legs would carry her. And now Father Hedley was suggesting she work there. But what else was there? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And with her being so young, and the stigma attached to her mother’s name following her . . .
‘Thank you, Father.’ She forced a smile even as her blood curdled and made herself ask, ‘Who do I have to see?’
‘I’ll take you along there the day after your mother’s funeral, which I’ve arranged for Wednesday incidentally, but we’ll talk with your grandmother about that in a minute or two. You’ll be having an interview with the matron – Matron Banks – in the morning, and if she is satisfied you will begin work the next day. I see no problems.’
‘No, Father.’ No problems. No problems in voluntarily walking into the place that haunted young and old alike? ‘Thank you, Father.’
The post mortem recorded that Mrs Sadie Bell of West Wood Cottage died of a heart attack on Monday 19th June, 1905, and the day after the funeral, on Thursday 29th June – the same day the House of Lords rejected the bill for compulsory Sunday trading, much to the delight of the fervent church faction – Connie entered the grim confines of the Sunderland workhouse with Father Hedley.
They were shown to the matron’s office by a female inmate clothed in the ugly workhouse uniform of grey shapeless dress, white apron, starched cap, and big, stout, hideous boots, and Connie was immediately aware of the faint odour that seemed to permeate the air. It was unpleasant but as yet she couldn’t put a name to it, and it had the effect of sending the butterflies in her stomach into a further frenzy.
‘Ah, Father Hedley.’ Matron Banks was sitting writing at a large, solid-looking oak desk as their guide opened the door after a respectful knock, and as she raised her head and smiled, her rather dour features mellowed somewhat. When she rose to her feet Connie saw that although the matron was dressed in a uniform of a kind, the beautifully cut, if severe, black dress was of the finest material and the small buttons that fastened the bodice were mother-of-pearl. ‘And this must be Miss Bell? Do please be seated.’
The only smell in the matron’s office was the perfume from a large vase of freshly cut flowers on one corner of the desk, and with the sunlight streaming through the window which took up most of the facing wall, and the other two walls lined with bookcases, the room was not unappealing. But it didn’t quieten Connie’s unease, and when Father Hedley said, with a reassuring pat on her shoulder, ‘I’ll leave you to it. I have an appointment at The Little Sisters of the Poor Home shortly, I’m on the board you know and we need to finalise the old people’s summer outing,’ she felt like the last friend she had in all the world was leaving her.
Connie was still standing in front of the great desk when the door had closed behind Father Hedley, and when Matron Banks said again, with a wave of her hand, ‘Do be seated, Miss Bell,’ she sank down on to one of the two hard-backed chairs placed strategically three feet apart from each other and eighteen inches either side of the corners of the matron’s desk.
‘Father Hedley speaks highly of you.’ There was a long pause and Connie was aware that she was being scrutinised intently; it was with some effort that she resisted the impulse to fiddle with the collar of the plain blue serge dress she was wearing. It wasn’t a summer dress, and with the high neck and long sleeves it was stifling in the fierce heat of the June day, but it was the only garment she possessed that was nearly new and smart, having been bought at a fraction of the original cost from one of the second-hand stalls in the Old Market for her mother’s funeral.
Oh, her mam . . . Connie swallowed hard and tried to answer the matron’s questions as clearly and succinctly as she could, but all the time the knowledge of where she was – the very place her mother had fought so hard to keep her family from entering – was making her stomach churn.
‘And I understand your birth certificate is missing? That your late mother lost it?’
Connie nodded. If she had spoken the truth she would have said she wasn’t even sure Sadie had ever registered her birth; the fact that her mother had been unable to read or write and the remoteness of the house in the wood made that eventuality all too probable, in spite of the law stating that all births had to be registered within forty-two days.
‘Do you want to ask me any questions?’ The matron’s tone had softened somewhat in the last ten minutes or so. She knew this girl’s background and she had been more than a little wary of employing her – she already had enough trouble among both the inmates and her officers with regard to discipline and standards being upheld, and she couldn’t afford any looseness or immoral behaviour to infiltrate the ranks – but the slim and quite startlingly beautiful girl in front of her was not at all what she had expected. In fact she was a pleasant surprise. Matron Banks prided herself on being a good judge of character, and from what she could ascertain the mother’s profligacy had not tainted the daughter.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t think so, Matron Banks.’
Connie coloured and repeated quickly, ‘I don’t think so, Matron Banks.’
‘Then let me tell you a little about the workings of the institution. The accommodation is for 938 persons, and the children are lodged and boarded apart from the adults and educated at neighbouring schools. The same wise principle which has caused the Guardians to keep the children apart from the adult inmates, and the consequent contamination, has made them discard the uniform for the children so that they are spared the stigma of a special workhouse brand. The Guardians feel they are breaking new frontiers in this liberal approach.’
The matron paused, obviously expecting some appreciative comment, but Connie merely nodded quietly. The poor children, and the poor parents. It was awful.
‘On a Saturday, and of course with permission and with an officer present, the inmates may receive visitors. These may be family or friends from outside the confines of the institution, or perhaps a husband from the male side visiting his wife, or a parent visiting a child. It is doubtful that you would be asked to perform this duty as you will be working in the laundry, but occasionally it might be necessary to stand in for an officer who is ill. You understand me?’
Connie managed a ‘Yes, Matron Banks,’ this time.
‘In a moment, Mrs Wright, the assistant matron, will get someone to show you round the officers’ mess and sitting room, the recreation room, kitchen, and the officers’ accommodation which consists of individual bedrooms. All this is quite separate to the inmates. Then you will see the inmates’ kitchen and dining hall, the hospital and the infirm wards, the nursery, the chapel, the laundry, the dormitories and so on. The laundry staff have every Sunday free from eight in the morning until ten in the evening, one Saturday a month off, and every other evening from half-past five to ten o’clock. You will be paid two and fourpence a week which will be reviewed in six weeks if you prove satisfactory, and given four meals a day.’
Another pause and a hasty, ‘Thank you, Matron Banks.’
‘I understand you wish to take up employment as from tomorrow?’
‘Yes, Matron Banks.’ After the funeral they had been left with just a couple of shillings and their vegetable patch, plus the odd egg or two from the hens and the milk from the goat, on which to survive.
‘Then you may still take the Sunday leave this week.’
This last was spoken in the manner of one bestowing a great concession as the matron picked up a large brass bell from the desk in front of her and rang it. The door opened immediately to reveal Connie’s previous escort, who
must have been waiting outside for the summons, and as the girl shuffled into the room the matron’s voice changed to one of cold authority when she said, ‘Show Miss Bell to Mrs Wright’s office, Maud.’
Once outside the matron’s office Connie followed the shambling figure in front of her down the narrow corridor to a door some fifteen feet on the right, and there Maud stopped, her voice nasal as she turned and said, ‘’Er’s in ’ere,’ before continuing on her way, head and shoulders bent and looking with every step as though she was going to trip over her own feet.
Oh, what was she going to do? What was she going to do? She’d never be able to stand working in this place. Connie stood looking at the brown-painted door as her mind raced and the smell assailed her nostrils again. And then she wet her lips rapidly, her back straightening as she breathed in deeply and lifted her hand, knocking sharply on the wood.
Mrs Wright turned out to be a large, stout personage who looked more like a man than a woman, but under the iron-grey scraped-back hair and bristling moustache her manner was not unfriendly. Within moments one of the young junior officers Mrs Wright had summoned to conduct Connie arrived, and so the tour of the many areas of the workhouse and its grounds, which consisted of endless corridors, confusing sections leading one into another, iron staircases and door after door after door began.
Connie thought the officers’ communal areas and the small individual bedrooms were nice enough, if a little stark and austere, but it was when she and her guide left the staff quarters and progressed into the workhouse as a whole that the smell got stronger and the atmosphere became one of gloom and doom.
The laundry itself was a huge barn of a place, and the machinery was old and noisy and worked by line shafts and endless leather belts clicking above the vulnerable heads of the workers. A massive mangle with several cylinders stood in the centre of the room, and either side of this machine there were big tables piled high with wet washing waiting to be squeezed and pressed.
Behind the mangle at the far end of the room stood enormous wicker baskets containing the dirty and soiled linen waiting to be soaked in the poss-tubs and beaten with the poss-sticks – great wooden beaters on four legs which measured four feet high. To the front of the mangle were lines of long wooden benches, above and to the back of which ran big metal frames. These supported the flexible gas pipes leading to each individual flat iron of which there were five per station.
Apart from the roof lights and long narrow windows every six feet down the left-hand wall, the only lighting looked to be provided by six gas mantles, which on a dull day would make the dangerous working conditions twice as bad as the workers struggled in the dim flickering light. Connie noticed that even now, on a sunny June morning, the army of mainly female workers consisting of inmates with a few officers supervising, all wore the same dead expressions. And this was going to be where she would spend every day, apart from Sundays, from now on. It was a daunting thought.
But there was worse to come. The inmates’ kitchen showed the presence of cockroaches and the food, which was being dished up ready to be taken through to the dining hall, made Connie feel sick, but it was the infirm wards that presented the cause of the smell that had seemed to permeate into every nook and cranny to a greater or lesser extent. The stench of urine and other strong objectionable odours was so acute that Connie found she was holding her breath, and yet she could see the place was kept scrupulously clean and the green-painted walls and stone floors scoured daily.
Nevertheless, the thought of her granny being confined in such surroundings – as Peggy undoubtedly would be if she ended up in the workhouse, due to her arthritis making her virtually helpless – was unthinkable, and for the first time Connie truly understood her grandmother’s inordinate terror of the place. It was the end of hope, of dreams, of love, even life itself. A living death.
‘Here, you all right?’ The officer who had been consigned to show her round – a young girl called Mary O’Donnell – was peering into Connie’s face and took hold of her arm, almost manhandling her away into the main hospital, as she muttered, ‘Eee, come away out of it, lass, I’d forgotten how it affects you the first time. I’ve bin workin’ here a year an’ more an’ I hardly notice it now.’
‘Don’t you?’ Connie didn’t know if she found this comforting or disturbing, but she tended towards the latter. The thought that she might become anaesthetised to such conditions was frightening.
‘You won’t see over much of this side anyway,’ Mary continued cheerfully as she led the way towards the nursery annexe where the babies and very young children were housed and cared for. ‘You might be asked to relieve one of the infirm ward attendants when you’re on duty on a Saturday, but it’ll be once in a blue moon. The worst duty, I always reckon, is Saturday visitin’ in the hall, although it don’t bother some of ’em. But I tell you, lass, some of the sights are pitiful, especially when it’s an old married couple that’s been split up an’ they cry like babies. You feel like cryin’ with ’em, or I do anyways.’
Connie glanced at the small mousy figure as a warm feeling of relief pierced the oppression. She could like this girl, she told herself silently. She hoped she would see something of her; it would be good to have a friend – someone she could talk to – in these depressing surroundings. As she caught Mary’s warm, kind eyes she asked, ‘Where do you work?’, her manner a little shy.
‘Me, lass?’ Mary blinked her eyes and adjusted her spectacles – thick, hornrimmed monstrosities – which seemed to slip down her small snub nose every two seconds. ‘Same as you, in the laundry for me sins, but it’s not so bad when you get used to it. An’ we have some right good cracks on the quiet like, an’ of an evenin’ there’s a group of us walk into town an’ have a look in the shop windows in High Street West or pay a visit to the Palace.’ They have some good shows at the Palace. Course, some of ’em are just on the lookout for lads; there’s a couple of ’em here who’d drop their drawers for anythin’ in trousers.’
And as Connie laughed – something she would have thought impossible just minutes before – Mary grinned at her, revealing a set of beautifully even white teeth, and whispered conspiratorially, ‘I tell you, lass, if old Battle-axe Banksy or the Wardress Wright knew half of what we get up to once we’re clear of this place, they’d split their corsets for sure. An’ what a sight that’d be, eh?’ she added gleefully as she dug Connie’s ribs. ‘Don’t bear thinkin’ about, does it?’
Oh yes, it would be very good to have a friend like Mary . . .
Two hours later Connie was home again and sitting at the table, Larry on her knee, sipping a cup of tea whilst telling her grandmother all that had transpired, but in spite of making much of Mary’s quips she couldn’t raise a smile from her.
It was the same the next morning only more so, and a stranger would have presumed Connie was leaving for two months rather than two days, such was the intensity of the family’s farewells.
‘I’ll be back on Sunday mornin’, Larry, I promise. You look after Gran for me, all right, pet?’ Connie knelt down and took her brother in her arms, the pressure of his thin little arms as he hugged her causing a massive lump in her throat. ‘An’ you know your jobs, don’t you? You have to see if the hens have laid every mornin’ an’ milk the goat, an’ Gran’ll tell you which vegetables to water the most. An’ don’t forget to put the bucket by the back door ready for when you need to fetch water the next time.’
‘Connie, Connie . . .’ In stark contrast to the way the child had behaved when his mother had been carried out of the cottage Larry was distraught, and it was only after prolonged hugs and kisses that Connie could extricate herself from his grip, and then the little boy’s face was wet with tears.
But was it any wonder? Connie asked herself silently. Their mother had been a fleeting shadow in the child’s life after the vicious beating of his father, seeing him only for an hour or so each day. It had been his sister who had bid him rise each morning, dressed him, fed him
. Her hands that had mopped his tears when he’d hurt himself, tucked him into bed at night, talked to him, played with him.
‘Connie? Mo-mo.’
Connie swallowed deeply when she saw what Larry was offering her. Mo-mo, a ragged piece of cloth that the boy had clung on to and treasured from when he was a baby, was his prize possession. It was his friend and his comforter, and he always went to sleep with the piece of frayed linen beneath one cheek.
‘No, Larry. You keep Mo-mo.’ She tried to smile but it was beyond her. Oh, Mam, Mam, you should be here! It wasn’t her mother’s fault, she emphasised in her mind as though her thoughts were a betrayal, but she – his sister – had had to take the place of mother and father in the boy’s life, and that was making this doubly hard for both of them. And then, when Larry thrust the tattered piece of cloth at her again, she took it. It was his way of making sure she would be back, she realised suddenly, as she bent and hugged him again. ‘Two days, Larry. Two days and I’ll bring Mo-mo home. All right?’
He nodded slowly, the tears stopping, and she acknowledged that a promise had been made as she looked into the small face that was so like Jacob’s. Nevertheless, Connie’s eyes were moist when she turned to Peggy, and she found she was unable to speak.
‘Eee, lass, it fair makes me blood run cold to think of you in that place, even as a paid helper. I can’t help it, lass, I can’t. Your grandda’ll be turnin’ in his grave an’ no mistake,’ said Peggy tearfully.
‘Now come on, Gran.’ For a moment Connie felt she was dealing with two children instead of one, and with Larry clinging to her skirts and her grandmother’s wrinkled, sweet face all crumpled up she felt like howling herself. ‘We’ve been through all this a hundred times, an’ we’ve decided there’s no other way, now haven’t we? I’d never get set on anywhere else, it’s only Father Hedley who’s got me in as it is. Some girls of my age might pass for fourteen but I look twelve, you know I do, an’ there’s scarcely any work for grown women let alone bit lasses.’
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