From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  ‘And what sort of establishment is it?’ Aunt Minerva asked then as Mrs Lightfoot imperiously gestured for us to sit down again and busied herself with the tray of tea things, carefully lining the flower patterned yellow china cups and saucers up in front of her then pouring tea into each one.

  There was a slight pause, broken only by the chink of the cups against each other and the ticking of the fine wooden clock that stood in pride of place on the carved mantelpiece. ‘Initially this was to be a refuge for the married women of the district,’ Miss Lawler said at last just as as Mrs Lightfoot was opening her mouth to reply. She had thrown herself down next to me on the sofa but now she leaned forward earnestly as she spoke. ‘However we now open our doors to any woman who needs our assistance, whatever her circumstances.’ This last was said with a challenging look at Mrs Lightfoot, who tightened her lips together but said nothing. Miss Lawler smiled then as if she had scored a point and took a biscuit from a plate on the tray. ‘My colleague doesn’t altogether approve of some of the cases I have agreed to take on,’ she said as an aside to me.

  ‘You mean prostitutes, I suppose,’ I said, liking Miss Lawler already.

  ‘Really, Alice…’ Aunt Minerva protested faintly. ‘At least try to maintain an illusion of maidenly ignorance.’

  ‘It was you who brought me here, aunt,’ I reminded her with a wink as Mrs Lightfoot, quivering with disapproval handed me a cup of tea.

  ‘It isn’t that I disapprove of the prostitutes,’ she said, pulling forward another chair and sitting beside Aunt Minerva. Her posture was marvellous, very straight and erect and I instinctively found myself sitting more upright in response, whereas Miss Lawler just seemed to burrow herself even deeper into the sofa beside me. ‘It is just that I would prefer to concentrate on preventative measures to ensure that women don’t feel compelled to fall into a life of wickedness to support themselves.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Miss Lawler said briskly, taking another biscuit and then as an afterthought offering the plate to me. ‘You can’t cherry pick in an area like this - either you help everyone or you help no one. Personally, I would rather throw the doors wide open and assist each and every woman who comes to us.’

  Mrs Lightfoot threw up her hands. ‘We would be overwhelmed if you did such a thing,’ she said, sounding actually worried that Miss Lawler, whom I was beginning to see was something of a loose cannon, might actually do just that.

  Miss Lawler shrugged and carelessly brushed the crumbs off her dark brown cotton skirts on to the rug. ‘Not necessarily,’ she said gruffly. ‘Most of the women here would rather throw themselves in the Thames than accept our help, which is why it is so crucial that we offer assistance to anyone who will take it.’

  Mrs Lightfoot pursed her lips a little at that. ‘You are wrong, Catherine,’ she said curtly before turning to me with a very false smile pinned to her lips. ‘Besides, I am sure that Miss Redmayne has no great wish to hear any of this.’

  ‘I am sure that Miss Redmayne doesn’t mind in the slightest,’ I said, placidly sipping my tea as the smile on Mrs Lightfoot’s face wavered then vanished altogether. ‘If I am going to be helping here then I am, of course, very keen to know all about the place and how it is run.’

  Miss Lawler grinned at me then shot a triumphant look at her colleague who had gone a little pink and was making a great show of finishing her tea as Aunt Minerva looked on with amusement. ‘Well, seeing as that’s settled,’ she said, clapping her hands to her knees and getting up from the sofa. ‘I think it’s time for a bit of a tour.’

  Chapter Seven

  Miss Lawler led us back out into the hall and then down some rickety wooden stairs to the whitewashed kitchens below, where several young women dressed in aprons were gathered around the long scrubbed wood table earnestly listening and watching as a much older woman with grizzled red hair gave them a lesson in kneading bread. ‘This is Mrs Russell,’ she whispered to me. ‘She is actually Lady Earp’s cook but her ladyship kindly loans her to us twice a week to give cookery lessons to some of our girls.’

  ‘How wonderful,’ I replied, admiring the dexterity with which Mrs Russell was resolutely pounding the bread dough against the counter. ‘Although that must play havoc with her dinner party schedule.’

  Miss Lawler sniggered. ‘She assures me not,’ she said before addressing one of the women around the table, a short slight girl with huge blue eyes and hair so fair that it was almost white. ‘How are you finding it, Meg?’ she asked kindly.

  Meg went a little pink. ‘Oh, I’m enjoying it so much, Miss,’ she said in a rush, hardly leaving a gap between each word so that it came out all garbled together. ‘Mrs Russell makes it look so easy though and I am sure my bread won’t turn out half so nice.’

  ‘I am sure that it will,’ Miss Lawler reassured her before turning to me. ‘Like all the young women here, Meg is training to take up work as a kitchen maid. Mrs Russell teaches them the basics but the rest they will learn on the job.’

  ‘As I did myself when I was a girl,’ Mrs Russell said, pausing her kneading and grinning at me. ‘It’s hard work but satisfying.’

  ‘Like anything worth doing,’ Aunt Minerva agreed, looking about her with approval. ‘You have everything set up most excellently,’ she said to Mrs Lightfoot, who was examining the delicious smelling contents of a huge pot that bubbled on the black kitchen range.

  Mrs Lightfoot gave what I thought must be the first genuine smile that I had yet seen on her face. ‘We are very proud of our efforts here,’ she said, replacing the lid on the pot. ‘Our girls have been placed in some of the very best households across the city with excellent results.’

  ‘Of course not all are able to be trained for employment,’ Miss Lawler said sadly as we left the kitchen and went back up the stairs to the hall. ‘Many of the women who come to us are already married or too mature to be trained for domestic service. Instead we work with them as best we can to build their confidence and set them on a proper path.’

  ‘It doesn’t always work of course,’ Mrs Lightfoot interposed with a sniff as she led us up the stairs to the next floor. ‘Some of the women who come here don’t actually want to be helped at all.’

  Miss Lawler smiled and shrugged. ‘We always do our best,’ she said, ‘but to some working on the streets and the camaraderie that brings with others like them is preferable to travelling away and beginning afresh.’ She pushed open a door on the landing and gestured that I should step inside. ‘Was it Shakespeare who said that misery loves company?’

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘It was Christopher Marlowe,’ I said. ‘In Doctor Faustus.’

  Miss Lawler laughed as she followed me through the doorway. ‘I always get them confused. I’m afraid that I am not very well read.’ I knew she was lying though, there was no mistaking the bright intelligence and curiosity in her dark eyes and I also suspected that the vast majority of the books that littered the parlour downstairs belonged to her as well.

  We were standing in a large bright room with tall curtainless windows that looked down over Lamb Street. Several desks had been arranged in rows down the centre of the room and at each one was sitting a young woman with a book open in front of her, diligently copying letters and words into a chapbook. ‘This used to be the drawing room when this was a private house,’ Mrs Lightfoot said. ‘It is now our school room, for want of a better name. Here we encourage our girls to learn their letters and to read.’ As she spoke, a pink cheeked young woman in a blue cotton dress stood up from behind a desk at the top of the room. ‘That is Mrs Jacks, she is in charge of the lessons here and does a most excellent job.’

  I smiled at Mrs Jacks and paused for a moment to look over the hunched shoulder of the woman nearest to me, who was diligently copying out a poem by Keats in a very fair hand. ‘Are you enjoying your lessons?’ I asked her when she looked up.

  She shrugged and smiled. ‘This poetry ain’t exactly to my taste being all flowery and such but it’ll all be w
orth it in the end, I’m sure.’

  ‘Rosie here has already been offered a position as a clerk in a shipping yard office,’ Miss Lawler said proudly. ‘Mainly thanks to one of our benefactors who owns the business. He has been very generous when it comes to offering our women work.’

  ‘Well done, Rosie,’ I said as she blushed and dipped her head back down to her book.

  Mrs Lightfoot ushered us from the room, closing the door softly behind her. ‘We are very fortunate to have several extremely generous patrons who assist us with the running of this venture,’ she said, leading us across the landing to the next room. ‘Of course, Miss Lawler and I have also had a hand in funding it.’

  Miss Lawler grinned. ‘I inherited a very handsome fortune from my grandfather when he passed away,’ she said, entirely unabashed. ‘I could have squandered it all trying to catch myself a nice equally rich husband but decided instead to put it to some good use.’ She opened the door and stood aside so that I could enter. ‘Funnily enough, after a few years working here and hearing the stories some of the women tell about their husbands, I no longer have any taste for marriage.’

  I stepped into a smaller chamber, painted a soft pale blue and with pretty flowered chintz blinds at the windows. Inside there was just a rather ropey looking blue velvet sofa and a desk with two chairs placed either side, in one of which sat a thin middle aged woman with neatly arranged dark hair and a green wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders, while the other was occupied by a handsome young man with slightly too long dark hair and eyes the colour of a stormy sky who was showing her something in a book.

  Mrs Lightfoot gave a discreet cough and they both looked up then and smiled, a little wanly in the case of the woman but enough to show me that she had once been very pretty before life had taken a downward plunge and added a hard edge to her gaze and sharpness to her features. ‘This is Mr Mercier,’ Mrs Lightfoot said and I discerned a new almost flirtatious note entering her voice. ‘He is training to be a lawyer and comes in every other day to assist the women with their legal issues.’

  I must have looked confused because Miss Lawler jumped in then to explain further. ‘Many of the women and girls who enter our care do so because of family break up or circumstances that leave them unable to provide for themselves. It is surely no surprise to you, Miss Redmayne, to learn that the law is no friend to our sex and in fact is often our avowed enemy?’

  I shook my head. ‘I am afraid that I am ignorant of such things.’ I caught Mr Mercier’s eye and he gave a sort of smirk and looked away. ‘I do not doubt that it is so, however,’ I added silkily, glaring at him. ‘How fortunate you are to have Mr Mercier on hand to assist you.’

  Miss Lawler smiled then. ‘We are very fortunate indeed. He has been a most invaluable help to our ladies and has helped several of them gain proper independence from husbands and other menfolk that have mistreated them. We would be very sorry to lose him.’ She put her hand on the shoulder of the seated woman and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  Mr Mercier smiled at her. ‘You know that you have my services for as long as they are required,’ he said before turning his gaze on to me. ‘I grew up in Spitalfields and my family have lived here for several generations, Miss Redmayne and although I am not blind to the areas faults and distinct disadvantages, I love it still and would give my life to be of service to the people here.’

  ‘What a very noble sentiment, Mr Mercier,’ I said woodenly before turning my attention to the woman sitting in front of him. ‘And what help are you giving here?’

  He gave a small smile. ‘I am helping Annie here make a case for seeing her children again,’ he said in a soft voice, surely knowing that each word filled me with a terrible shame and made me regret my arch high handedness. ‘Her husband turned her out of doors six months ago and kept the children from her. He won’t let her see them, claiming that Annie is a drunk and no fit mother. I am going to change that.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, feeling very small indeed and smiling again at Annie as she lowered her eyes in mute misery to her lap. ‘Then I wish you luck and earnestly hope for a happy outcome.’

  ‘Mr Mercier is a very fine young man,’ Aunt Minerva said as we climbed the stairs to the next level of the house, having poked around a few more rooms where women were having lessons in various aspects of housekeeping or sitting reading quietly to their children. ‘You are fortunate indeed to have his services.’

  Miss Lawler nodded in agreement. ‘Oh yes, very fortunate indeed. His father is a lawyer as well and was of immense help to us when we were setting up this venture. We couldn’t have done it without him.’ She smiled at me. ‘In fact, this house used to belong to him but he agreed to sell it to me at a very low price so that I could use it for a refuge.’

  ‘I expect that it would have been turned into yet another doss house if you had not bought it,’ Aunt Minerva observed, ducking her head as we entered a long and very bright white painted room lit from above by several windows set into the ceiling. Here there were several beds lined along the wall, some of them with cribs next to them. There were women sitting on most of the beds, many of them nursing infants at their breasts while they kept an eye on the small children who played and ran in the centre of the room.

  Miss Lawler grinned as a small girl in a pink cotton dress ran up and embraced her around the knees. ‘This was once used as a workroom by the weavers who originally built this house.’ She lifted the girl up into her arms then pointed up at the windows above. ‘The windows were put there to create enough light to work at their looms by.’ She kissed the child’s cheek and put her back on her feet. ‘Nowadays we use it as a dormitory for the women with children who come to us in need of refuge. There are other, smaller, bedrooms for single women but we find that the ones with children prefer to be together where they can support each other.’

  I went to a window and looked down at the garden that lay at the back of the house, it was well tended and filled with flowers, probably looked after by the women, a few of whom I could see sitting on a blanket spread on the grass, enjoying the sunshine with their children.

  ‘The garden is my own particular project,’ Mrs Lightfoot said, coming to stand beside me. ‘I’ve always found gardening so soothing and rather hoped that some of the ladies here would share my enthusiasm.’

  ‘And do they?’ I asked.

  She smiled a little ruefully. ‘Not all of them, no, but I like to think that it has had a beneficial effect on some. There’s nothing quite like connecting with God’s earth to make one feel at peace with the world, don’t you agree, Miss Redmayne?’

  Aunt Minerva laughed. ‘I don’t think my dear niece has ever taken the slightest interest in gardening,’ she said with a fond look at me.

  I felt my cheeks go warm under Mrs Lightfoot’s disappointed gaze. ‘It’s true, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘We’ve always had a gardener and I was never encouraged to take much interest in the gardens beyond occasionally picking flowers for the drawing room and,’ my voice faltered, ‘my mother’s bedroom.’

  Mrs Lightfoot put her hand on mine for just a moment. ‘I too lost my mother when I was very young,’ she said, her great blue eyes sympathetic. ‘It is a blow that one never quite recovers from.’

  The awkward silence that followed was eventually broken by Miss Lawler suggesting in an undertone that perhaps we should go downstairs and leave the women in peace. I dutifully followed them all down the staircase to the hall, the wooden steps creaking beneath my feet and my head spinning with all that I had seen and heard. Of one thing I was certain though - I was more resolute than ever that I should find Beatrice and I believed that the Whitechapel Women’s Mission was the best place to do so. Surely someone here would know her whereabouts?

  ‘Well this is all more than satisfactory,’ Aunt Minerva said when we reached the hall again. There was now a distinct aroma of boiled cabbage and meat pudding in the air and to my shame my stomach gave a small growl of hunger. ‘I am sure that my n
iece will be in good hands with you.’

  ‘We would be delighted to have her here,’ Mrs Lightfoot said, flashing us that big fake toothy smile. ‘I think that she will be of great assistance to us all.’

  There was the sound of soft footsteps coming down the stairs behind us and I turned to see Mr Mercier standing on the bottom step, regarding us all with a rather amused expression on his handsome face. ‘Is Miss Redmayne to be a permanent fixture then?’ he asked with every appearance of delight even though his eyes as they looked me over were cold.

  I raised my chin, determined not to be cowed by his obvious disapproval of me. ‘I certainly am,’ I said with a smile. I’d show him not to dismiss me as just another rich girl slumming in Whitechapel for fun and some vague sense of validation. No, even though I had my own personal reasons for being there, I was still determined to make myself useful and do my best to assist the people of the area, starting with those unfortunate children who lurked outside. ‘I shall be back tomorrow.’

  Miss Lawler laughed. ‘I’m glad that you are so keen,’ she said with a smile. ‘However, you may want to wear something a little less elegant when you return. This can be dirty work and I’d hate for your pretty dresses to be spoiled.’

  There was no trace of malice in her voice but even so I felt my cheeks go red with embarrassment as I looked down at the new dark blue flower patterned dress trimmed with soft brown velvet bows that, after much deliberation with Minnie, I had decided upon that morning. ‘I’m sure that I can find something suitable,’ I said, hardly daring to meet Mr Mercier’s eyes which I knew rested on me with a not altogether friendly amusement. As was traditional, I regularly made presents of my old clothes to Minnie so that she could either keep them for herself or sell them on and make herself a bit of extra money. However, I kept a few old day gowns back to wear when I was helping Papa in his studio and they would have to do. I didn’t suppose anyone at the Mission would mind a few paint and charcoal smudges.