TF, still classed as a boy sailor, had another year to serve before he became an able seaman, but he was involved in the fierce, bloody hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Sebastopol and witnessed the death of several close friends. The musket was the new weapon of choice for the British and French, but the blades of their opponents flashed and inflicted mortal wounds. The booming of the guns from the waiting ships was deafening, and he suffered from ringing in his ears for the rest of his life. The nightmare of Sebastopol, the memory of maimed men who cried out in foreign tongues, would never be erased, although he was fortunate not to have been badly wounded.
The independence of the Ottoman Empire was guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris in April 1856 and by order of the Admiralty, the Crimea Medal was awarded to sailors and marines present during this campaign between September 1854 and September 1855. TF received this medal, along with four clasps awarded to those present not only in Sebastopol, but in Inkerman, Balaclava and the Sea of Azoff, an arm of the Black Sea.
*
After four years, TF changed course, and went to the Impregnable in Devonport for signalman training. Following this, he joined the St Jean d’Acre as a yeoman of signals, the equivalent of a petty officer. This large wooden battleship, a two-decker, was the navy’s first 101-gun screw, with a crew of 950. She had also served in the Crimean War and later took dignitaries to the coronation of Czar Alexander II at St Petersburg in 1856.
Despite his promotion and further prospects, during the following two years, TF had doubts about completing his promised ten years’ service with the Navy.
*
While her brothers pursued their maritime careers, TF and Rob’s sister Mary, with a sick father unable to work, left school in 1856 when she was ten years old and became a fur puller. It was a common industry in London and in other city areas, like Newcastle. It was thoroughly unpleasant work, usually performed by young girls and older women in small barns or outhouses, which were freezing in the winter months. Mary learned to pull the skins of rabbits by removing the loose down off them with a blunt knife. The reward for this was around a shilling for the down from five dozen skins. The down was returned to the furrier, who supplied the rabbits, for stuffing mattresses, sofas and pillows. During the Crimean War output considerably increased and many more employees were needed as soldiers’ jackets were lined with down to keep them warm in the bitter cold; it was also popular as a lining for women’s and children’s cloaks.
Mary sat on a low stool with a trough at her feet into which she deposited the fluff as she pulled it. Now and again, she paused to rub the knife with whiting to remove the grease. She coughed continually as she breathed in fine, floating fibres through her nose or open mouth. There was very little communication between the workers, for lungs soon became affected and breathlessness was the result. Her red hair looked as if it was powdered with white snow, and the awful smell clung to her clothes and person.
Sometimes she would have to assist with cutting open the rabbits’ tails to extract the bones, which were sold for manure. The fur obtained in this way was used in the manufacture of cheap blankets and hats. Mary could make 8d. per pound for this work.
The highlight of Mary’s long day was the arrival of the carter to take away the results of all that hard graft. She helped him carry bags out to the cart and count them. Alexander, who was the son of a Jewish docker, became a friend. He liked to tease her, calling her Irish Mary, and boldly told her, ‘If you was to wash off all that dust, you’d be the prettiest gal in the whole wide world.’
‘You want to watch out, I ain’t got red hair for nothing!’ she replied.
‘Fancy comin’ round to my place for a plate of rabbit stew?’
‘What d’you think! Poor creatures, I could never put one in a pot.’
She went back to Tyne Street, cleaned herself up, and made a meal for herself and her dada. She was too tired to cook anything, but smiled to herself as she served the usual bread and cheese, thinking, Rabbit stew indeed! I have seen enough of ’em to last me a lifetime . . .
‘You’ll make someone a good wife,’ her father said unexpectedly as she passed him a cup of cocoa made with the milk Sister Ursula had brought them that day.
‘Who would ever want to marry me, smelling like I do?’ she lamented.
*
When Mary was sixteen, in 1862, she and Alexander were married and she gave up the fur-pulling to ride on the cart with him, and before long, they had a little daughter Margaret. Alexander loved his wife dearly, despite her quick temper, and he bought her fancy clothes to wear. She looked quite the lady sitting up top on the cart, wearing a fur-lined cloak. But the years of fur-pulling damaged her health and Mary died before she was thirty. TF and Robbie were affected all their lives by what happened to their sister, the feisty little girl with the mop of glorious red hair and blue eyes that matched the brooch left to her by Aunt Nesbit. TF hoped her daughter would have a better life, and that she would wear the lapis lazuli brooch.
As for Irish Tom, he was lonely and depressed when Mary left home to marry Alexander. She stopped calling on her father when it became inevitable that he would end up in the workhouse, drunk and in debt. He must have been there a while unknown to his sons, both away at sea, before he passed away in the infirmary, some time before his daughter.
NINE
Emma
Wymondham, 1858
In July 1858, Tobias Wright suffered a disabling stroke and was admitted to the infirmary some distance from Wymondham. It was a bitter blow that he was no longer able to communicate with his family and they came to realise that he was very unlikely to return home.
Sarah said quietly, ‘He be all wore out, poor old Father, bringing up two families, and losing two good wives.’
‘How long will us be able to carry on?’ William wondered. Sarah was unable to be involved with the family at the farm as before because she had just given birth to their fourth son, Jeremiah, and with the help of their only daughter Jane, now almost ten years old, Sarah was also caring for four-year-old John, born a year after Sophia died. John was gravely ill following complications with measles, which he had contracted from his older brothers after there had been an epidemic at the school. The family were still in the farm cottage from which they had hoped to move on long ago, for as Sarah sighed, ‘Us be a real houseful now.’
William’s firm reply to this was, ‘Us must see things through to the finish.’
Sarah knew he was talking about the farm, and the responsibility he felt for the youngsters there. Neither of them wanted to believe they might lose their son.
‘Are things really bad?’ Emma asked when William came in for his morning break.
‘Father hadn’t paid the rent for the past six months. Sophia used to deal with that. He should hev told me—’
‘He thought you had enough to worry about,’ Emma told him. ‘But I can help! I like being outside, especially now it’s summer. We can work well together; just tell me what is needed. The children are growing up. Ru will continue as she is, and the other girls will help.’
‘Us can try – but I can’t promise ’twill all turn out as us would hope. Us hev other bills too.’
The following morning Emma joined William in the milking parlour. She’d spent the previous evening shortening the legs of Tobias’s ancient corduroy breeks, and making another notch in his leather belt to hold them up round her narrow waist. She wrinkled her nose a bit at his jacket, which had never seen a washing tub, but she needed it first thing before sun-up. Her long hair was bundled up under his hat, a shapeless affair like an up-ended bucket with a feather stuck in the brim. She drew the line at Tobias’s boots, which were in their usual place beside his chair. William had cleaned the mud from them and polished them up, even though he knew they wouldn’t be worn again. William greeted her with a smile. He wouldn’t mention that he had sat up most of the night with his sick child.
In September came the news that he and Sarah were e
xpecting again and Tobias died of ‘Natural Decay’. He was sixty-six years old. He was brought home to Wymondham and buried in the Abbey graveyard. The farming community turned out in full force to mourn a good man.
‘He be at peace now,’ William told the young ones as he tried to comfort them.
‘Will we be able to stay on here?’ Emma asked him fearfully, after the funeral when the rest of the family were not in earshot.
‘Father wanted me to carry on, I know that, but us hev no money behind us, Emma. The farm is not what ’twas. The landlord will, I believe, say he must find a new tenant at Michaelmas. The stock and the contents of the house will hev to be sold to settle our debts. I hope to be allowed to take the pine table and chairs that Father promised me, so the family can sit around that table when us can all be together. The rector hev said the church will support us while us are in need. I won’t be able to take on the children, as I would wish to do, and the law say you are too young to be their guardian, even though you hev been that for so long.’
‘What will happen to us all?’ Emma exclaimed. Then, seeing his face: ‘Oh no – not the workhouse!’
‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. But the spectre of that loomed large.
*
Emma clung to her brother’s arm as they walked resolutely away from the farmhouse, not looking back. All was silent now, after the noise of the auction, which she and William had attended. Before the sale William was allowed to take the table and chairs as he requested, and at the end the landlord waived his right to some of the chattels that were left and he was told quietly, to ‘help yourself’. He chose the old washstand and the cornflower-patterned bowl and jug which still stood on it, his father’s boots, Sophia’s precious forget-me-not cup and saucer, which he would give to Emma later, and his own mother’s chest, filled with good linen for Sarah.
‘Here you are at last,’ Sarah cried thankfully as she opened the door of the cottage.
William enveloped her in a fierce hug, whispered: ‘Is he . . .?
‘He is waiting for you,’ she sobbed. ‘Goo straight up.’
At dawn, their long vigil was ended. In Jane’s adjacent small room, the baby woke and began to cry. They heard creaking, as Jane rocked the cradle. William gently helped Sarah to her feet; they had both been on their knees by John’s bed, which had been drawn up close beside their own.
‘The little ’un do need you now, Sarah. I will do what must be done. All is well.’ But, of course, they knew it was not.
*
Wicklewood Workhouse had been built in 1777 as ‘a House of Correction’. It was all arranged: Keturah, Rebecca, Jonathan and little Joe would be taken there by the rector. The only consolation for Emma was that the children would be able to continue with their schooling and this would stand them in good stead when they were able to leave the workhouse and go to work.
There was no alternative – they were destitute.
The ladies of the church rallied round as always, and Emma and Jerusha were soon in employment, due to the efforts of their friends from the church. The rector’s wife said stoutly, ‘You will not be skivvies.’ Emma, now eighteen, became an assistant cook to the squire and his lady in the ‘big house’. Fifteen-year-old Jerusha was now a nursery maid in another village; Martha was settled, and engaged to Elijah, the groom. As for William, he had yet to find employment on another farm as an agricultural labourer, not a farmer, as he had been at Browick Bottom.
Emma, in the big house at Wymondham was highly regarded by Milady, as she was known.
She was still hungry for knowledge and she was allowed to take away and read avidly all her employer’s magazines, which Milady had only given a cursory glance through. These were not as earnest as the religious papers she had read in the past, apart from The Christian Lady’s Magazine, but she particularly enjoyed Mrs Isabella Beeton’s The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, which had just started in 1856, and was written in a lively fashion. She was permitted to try some of the recipes on the family, and so widened her expertise. However, she was still an assistant cook, as the old cook often tartly reminded her. Cook did not approve of favouritism. ‘I hev been here thirty year, do they think o’ that? Emma hev big ideas, but she is wet behind the ears,’ she muttered to the butler, who feigned deafness.
Emma wrote to Jerusha, The family like my cooking, but Cook says it is too fancy!
Jerusha was in her element looking after the small children of a master builder and his wife near Norwich. However, a great deal was expected of her and she was told ‘not to make a fuss’ when she suffered an attack of asthma, as servants were not expected to take time off for illness. The children had their meals in the nursery with Jerusha, as their mother was often entertaining guests at dinner in the evenings, and out and about social calling during the day, unencumbered by her progeny. This gave Jerusha a free rein to deal with the children in the only way she knew: following the example of her mother, Sophia.
Jerusha wrote to Emma, I am fortunate to live in this lovely house, and am mistress in the schoolroom!
*
At the workhouse, Keturah, aged twelve, and Rebecca, eleven, clutching the bundles which contained their few possessions, were taken to the superintendent’s office and told to wait for his wife to come to interview them. They had already been parted from their small brothers, who were escorted to another room to await their turn. Men and women were segregated, which was very hard on married couples, likewise the older children, although the latter met up at mealtimes. Mothers with babies cared for them in a communal nursery but all inmates who were fit enough were expected to work for their keep. Single women scrubbed floors and did other chores, mothers with older children were often involved with cooking and serving the meals and did the piles of washing up with those not at school. The laundry was another busy place. Older women and girls would sew and mend, or knit baby clothes. ‘Idle hands’ were not permitted.
The able-bodied men tackled the gardening, cleaned and mended boots and shoes and cut wood for the fires and stoves. There was a sick room, presided over by Matron, with an elderly nurse, but very old patients were transferred to the infirmary and rarely returned.
‘The old people all look very sad,’ Rebecca observed.
‘That’s because they have been parted from their husbands and wives,’ Keturah said.
Matron was a tall, angular woman dressed in black, with an assortment of keys fastened to her chatelaine belt. She was not intimidating but she didn’t smile much as she went through the rules of the establishment. The girls were not expected to speak until she had finished. Keturah was told, ‘You will be known by your second name here, Hannah, we prefer good plain names. Rebecca is acceptable.’ Matron indicated the bundles. ‘In the girls’ room you will find a cupboard. Your personal effects will be kept there. You will be given a name tag to mark them. When you leave here, these will be returned to you.’ She looked them up and down. ‘You will wear the good clothes we provide here, we find it best for the girls to be dressed alike. Have you any questions?’
Rebecca, the bolder of the two girls, spoke up. ‘When will we see our brothers again?’
‘At dinner time. However, the boys sit on the benches on one side of the table and the girls on the other. Now, have you had a bath as we requested?’
‘Yes, Matron,’ they said in unison. They had enjoyed their session in the bathroom at the rectory in a proper bath with plenty of hot water and scented soap. Emma had helped to wash their hair and rubbed it dry with the fluffiest of towels afterwards.
‘Your hair – did your sister go through it strand by strand?’
‘What for?’ Rebecca asked, rather too innocently. They had never suffered from head lice, due to Sophia and later, Emma’s diligence.
‘You know very well what for. But we are aware that you come from a good home. No curls, please; braids are much more practical. We do not have a fixed bath here. We find portable baths quite sufficient, but you will be expected
to immerse yourself fully each month.’
As they followed an older girl up the stairs to see the sleeping quarters, Rebecca whispered to Keturah, ‘I thought you were only immersed fully if you were baptised in the River Jordan.’
‘Shush!’ Keturah cautioned her nervously.
They entered a long room with a row of narrow beds a few inches apart. The girl showing them around said brusquely, ‘That one’s yours, and that one’s yours,’ She went to the cupboard opposite. ‘Bring your bundles. Your new clothes are here. Get changed and put your old clothes in the same place.’
‘They’re not old,’ Rebecca muttered, but they complied with instructions.
‘When you are ready, come down to the dining hall. It’s the door to the left of the stairs. I have to go to help get the table laid.’ And she was gone.
Keturah sank down on her bed. ‘Ouch! It’s a straw mattress!’ she exclaimed in dismay.
Rebecca thumped the one pillow. ‘This is filled with straw, too! But, see, there’s a chamber pot under each bed!’
‘I can guess who has to empty those, Becca. Look at this dress. Thick, horrible material; I expect it’s scratchy to wear! Starched petticoats and pinafores—’
‘These stockings aren’t new, Ket, they’re darned at the heels – I shall still call you that, because I always have!’
‘The drawers are stiff and starchy too,’ Keturah said dolefully. ‘Sit down carefully in them.’
‘At least we can wear our own boots. Only one washstand for all – d’you think we’ll have to use the same water?’
The Forget-Me-Not Girl Page 8