The Jarrow Lass

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  She steeled herself. ‘You’re better off here than in the town - the doctor said. You’ll soon mend in this spring air.’

  ‘I would mend quicker seeing you and the bairns every day,’ William said, growing agitated, his breath more laboured.

  ‘You’re not supposed to gan near the bairns,’ Rose said in mounting distress, ‘not with consumption.’

  She saw the stricken look on his face and regretted her words at once. It was the first time they had mentioned the dreaded word and it hung between them like a spectre.

  Rose squeezed his hand. ‘You’ll get better quicker here,’ she insisted, trying to convince herself as much as him. ‘We’ll soon have you home.’ She stood to go, but he grasped her hand and would not let go. It was surprisingly strong, the cold bony fingers clinging on to her warm, roughened skin.

  ‘Stay a bit longer,’ he pleaded. ‘You haven’t told me about the baby.’

  Rose flushed with guilt. ‘She’s canny. Maggie helps me out now and then.’ She extracted her hand from his desperate grip. ‘I must gan. Can’t expect me sister to have the bairns all day long.’

  ‘Rose,’ William whispered.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I love you.’

  Her heart jolted. ‘William ...’

  ‘It’s true. I love you more than me own life.’

  ‘Don’t be daft . . .’ Rose exclaimed in discomfort.

  ‘Kiss me,’ he croaked.

  She hesitated for a half beat, then leant forward and kissed him on his dry bloodless lips. At that moment she wished she could have breathed new life and health into his emaciated body, given him some of her strength and vitality. How she yearned for the old William to hold her in strong arms or take her hand and chase the racing moon until she doubled up with breathlessness and laughter. But all she could give him was this brief kiss of her warm lips and a silent fervent prayer for his recovery.

  As she pulled back, she saw the tears welling in his vivid blue eyes, so full of love for her. She knew that no one else would ever look at her in such a way, with such uncon-ditional love. Rose felt bittersweet tears sting her own eyes.

  ‘You get yourself well, do you hear?’ she told him sharply, trying not to show her fear and longing. ‘There isn’t a better man in all the wide world than you, William Fawcett.’

  His smile was at once tender and sad. ‘Kiss the bairns for me,’ he whispered hoarsely.

  She nodded and turned from him quickly before her own tears betrayed her. She must remain strong for him, for the children, for herself. Rose strode away down the muddy path towards the gate and did not look back. Even so, she knew that he watched her for she could feel his gaze on her until she was through the gate and out of sight. She stumbled off down the path, blinded by hot tears that coursed down her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t let him die!’ she cried out. ‘Please don’t let him die!’

  The rooks in the sparse bare trees gave back a harsh desolate cry that turned her heart cold.

  That night she woke with a start, frightened out of sleep by a dream of the grisly gibbet at Jarrow Slake. Only the face had not been Jobling’s. The hanging corpse had not had a face at all. She sat up in a sweat, her heart hammering. Beside her Kate slept peacefully, her dark hair spread out on the pillow like skeins of black thread.

  Suddenly, the room was full of a warm presence and the fear inside her ebbed. Rose sat on, her breath easing, and was engulfed in a comforting calm. It reminded her of the times as a small child when her grandmother would bind her in loving arms after a bad dream had woken her.

  ‘William,’ she whispered in the dark, then wondered why she should speak his name. Perhaps he was lying awake at that very moment thinking of her. She lay back down, putting a protective arm around Kate, and fell asleep again.

  When she woke with the dawn, the room was cold and the feeling of wellbeing was gone. Rose got up and went downstairs to stoke up the fire. She moved around the kitchen, unable to rid herself of the dread she carried inside like a lead weight. It came as little surprise when Dr Forbes called round later that morning with news from the hospital.

  ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ Rose said in an empty voice. ‘My William’s gone.’

  Dr Forbes nodded sadly, wishing he did not have to bring such desolate news to this dignified woman and her pretty young daughters. ‘He died in the night.’

  Rose gathered the girls around her as if by keeping them close she could protect them from a fearful future. She hugged them and let them cry, but inside she walled up her own feelings, entombing her heart to cut off the pain that threatened to rip her in two. Never would she let herself love another man the way she had loved William! She could not bear to experience that depth of feeling again.

  Chapter 17

  Florrie and Albert brought old Mrs Fawcett over the river for her son’s funeral. Rose was determined that everything would be done properly and, with William’s burial insurance, she ordered a fine coffin and an open glass carriage pulled by black-plumed horses. With a collection taken among William’s union colleagues she bought yards of black bombazet, a dull mix of cotton and worsted material, unable to afford the silkier bombazine. Out of this she made dresses for herself and her two eldest daughters and added black crepe trimmings to the bodice and skirts of the younger two and to Mary’s bonnet.

  Lizzie came home and helped her cook meat pies for the wake.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked bluntly.

  Rose shook her head. ‘I can’t think beyond the day,’ she said shortly, keeping to herself how she lay awake worrying over how she would feed her family. In the dead hours of the night, the spectre of the workhouse would come to her vividly. Thoughts of being incarcerated behind its blackened redbrick facade and high imprisoning railings left her gasping for breath and heart pounding. It was the last refuge of impoverished widows, fallen women, the mad and destitute. Its corridors reeked of hopelessness and shame. She remembered a rumour from years ago that Jobling’s widow had ended up in there, her fate sealed by the untimely death of her luckless husband.

  ‘I won’t let it happen to me!’ Rose railed at the night, as if by saying it aloud she could keep its threat at bay. She refused to believe her life was haunted by the pitman’s ghost or that her fate would follow that of his widow. Their husbands had been staunch union men, but that was where the similarity ended. Disease had taken William from her, not desperate murder and vengeful employers.

  But she knew she could not stay on at Raglan Street much longer. The rent was too high and the tick men would soon be banging at her door.

  ‘Maybes you could take in lodgers,’ Lizzie suggested.

  ‘A widow in mourning?’ Rose sighed. ‘What would the neighbours think?’

  ‘They can think what they like,’ she declared. ‘They’ve all got noses too high up their faces round here.’

  Rose was touched by the number of people who came to pay their respects at William’s funeral. St Bede’s was full of friends from church and work, all with kind words about her husband. It helped her through the ordeal of the day and the spiteful comments from her mother-in-law.

  ‘You can’t have looked after him properly,’ she accused acidly, ‘dying of a poor man’s disease. You should’ve taken more care of him.’

  The words stabbed at Rose’s heart, but she put a hand on Lizzie’s arm to restrain her sister from answering back. Yet she felt a chill foreboding as she looked at the resentful woman. Mrs Fawcett offered no financial help and Rose knew she could expect none. She had battled for years to get William to stand up to his mother and had succeeded. In the end he had chosen her. But at what cost now? Rose never thought she would rue the day she won William away from his mother, until this one.

  The children seesawed between tears and boisterousness, confused by the attention th
at was being paid to them. It seemed like a feast day, yet their father was missing and their mother was desolate. Margaret took command of her sisters, ordering them to hand round food, then keep out of the way upstairs.

  ‘Where’s me da?’ Rose heard Kate ask her eldest sister.

  ‘You know where he is,’ she answered impatiently. ‘His soul’s with Jesus and his body’s gone in the box.’

  ‘For ever and ever?’ Kate gasped.

  ‘Aye. Now go upstairs with Sarah.’

  ‘Won’t it be dark in the box?’ Kate asked fearfully.

  ‘He can’t see anything now,’ Margaret replied, taking her by the hand. ‘Stop asking questions.’

  Two nights later, Kate woke screaming and Rose drew her into her arms before she disturbed the others.

  ‘Mammy, Mammy, he can’t see! Da-da can’t see,’ Kate sobbed. ‘They’ve put his body in the box without his head - now he can’t see!’

  Rose rocked her. ‘Hush now, what nonsense you talk. Of course he has his head.’

  ‘But Margaret said they just put his body in the box,’ Kate wailed in distress.

  ‘Eeh, hinny,’ Rose sighed, ‘you’ve too much imagination in that head of yours. All of Da went in the coffin, head an’ all. But he won’t need it now. All that matters is that his soul’s at rest in Heaven with Jesus and the Virgin Mary and all the saints.’

  She held on to her young daughter until she calmed down. Kate sniffed and asked, ‘Will he be with St Bede now?’

  Rose stroked her head. ‘Aye, he’ll have met St Bede by now, I wouldn’t wonder.’

  Kate looked up at her mother and suddenly smiled. ‘Da’ll be glad about that. St Bede was his favourite, wasn’t he? He can tell Da all about the monastery and being a monk and that.’

  Rose gave her daughter a grateful hug. ‘Aye, they’ll be having a canny chat about it all. Now hush and gan to sleep.’

  Within a month the piano, the doll’s house and the rest of Rose’s wedding presents had been pawned, apart from her mother’s bone-handled cutlery with which she could not bear to part. She began to take in washing and gave the second bedroom over to lodgers, all the girls sharing her bed with her. But one night the two seamen returned drunk and singing after the pubs had closed and the neighbours must have complained, for the next day the rent man came round.

  ‘The landlord says you can’t have vagrants living here,’ he told her brusquely.

  ‘They’re not vagrants,’ Rose replied, offended. ‘They’re working seamen.’

  ‘Makes no difference,’ the man shrugged. ‘He doesn’t want his street filling up with drunkards and riffraff. They have to go.’

  When Rose told her lodgers the news, one of them grew aggressive and refused to pay what was owing. So she let him go for fear he might harm one of the children. That night she discovered that her precious cutlery was missing. Her small collection of cash, hidden in the tea caddy, had gone too. She sat down and burst into tears at the cruel injustice dealt to her and the girls. How could those men have been so heartless? Now Rose despaired at how the rent would be paid at all. She was not making nearly enough from washing and mending. The walls were bare of pictures, half the furniture had been pawned and all of William’s clothes and boots.

  A week later the rent man came round threatening her with eviction. In desperation she got Margaret to help her write a letter to Mrs Fawcett, begging for help, not for herself but for William’s children. A terse note came in reply, telling her she would not get a penny.

  ‘God is punishing you for your sinful pride. You took my son away and turned him against me. You have too many girls for me to help, but they look strong enough to be sent out to work soon. I’ve put in a lace handkerchief for Margaret.’

  In disgust Rose threw the letter and handkerchief into the smouldering fire. She would never belittle herself again by asking the old witch for help, no matter how desperate! Instead she hurried to Maggie.

  ‘I’ve nowhere else to gan,’ she said in distress. ‘Would you take us in? I could get a job at the chemical works or some’at that would feed us all. The lasses wouldn’t be any bother. And they could help you with the diggin’ and plantin’ now that Da can’t manage any of it.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Danny,’ Maggie said cautiously. ‘But I’m sure I can make him agree. He’s quite taken to wee Mary. And I’ll not see me own sister out on the street, that’s for sure.’

  They waited for Danny to return from the steel mill. Rose knew that she had to convince him, for he had assumed the role of head of the household, since frail old McConnell’s memory was fading and he was often confused and incontinent. She could see her brother-in-law weighing up the situation in his mind. It would mean a lot of extra mouths to feed, but Rose was a strong, hardworking woman, still in her prime at not quite thirty. And the eldest girl, Margaret, was nearly ten and sensible beyond her years, she could soon be sent out to work. Besides, William had been a friend and he would not disgrace his memory by seeing his young family and handsome widow destitute.

  Danny saw the advantages and agreed. He helped Rose remove her few remaining possessions from Raglan Street on the back of McConnell’s two-wheeled cart and they trundled past the silent neighbours. Margaret and Elizabeth perched on top of the upturned bed clutching their last childhood possessions: the wooden lion in its cage with the lion tamer that William had made, and a photograph of them all at South Shields on a long-ago happy summer’s day.

  Rose and her daughters slept in the small bedroom that once she had shared with her sisters. She lay awake at night, bewildered at how quickly she had lost everything gained over so many years of striving. Only her daughters and the crumpled studio photograph whose frame had been sold were reminders of the life she had once led independently of this plain old cottage and its windswept smallholding from where she had originated.

  But the children accepted their new surroundings with a cheerful fatalism that put her bitterness to shame. All except the baby, who did not seem to know her and howled when she tried to pick her up, putting out her arms to Maggie as if she were her mother. It filled Rose with guilt for having so readily abandoned her the previous winter, but it did not make Mary any easier to love.

  Chapter 18

  For a few months, Rose helped out on the smallholding. Over the summer holidays Margaret helped her haul the cart of vegetables into the town to sell. Elizabeth was often left in charge of the younger girls while the burden of running the home and looking after McConnell fell to Maggie. But when school started again and wintry weather threw them all together in the cramped cottage, tempers shortened and lack of money fuelled resentment.

  ‘She’ll have to gan out and find work that’ll bring in more of a wage,’ Rose heard Danny arguing with Maggie in the next room. ‘I can’t be expected to keep them all.’

  ‘She did try, but there was nowt in the town - and she does her best with the fruit and veg,’ Maggie defended.

  ‘Aye, but you could be doing that,’ Danny snapped. ‘And them lasses - the older two should be out working, not ganin’ to school. It’s costing us precious money and what use is it? Lasses don’t need an education - what do they want with readin’ and writin’? She got ideas above herself, marrying Fawcett. Well, she’s no grand lady now.’

  Rose flushed with indignation, but she heard Maggie’s placating voice. ‘I’ll have a word with our Rose the morra.’

  Rose lay fuming. She was not going to send her girls out to work! Margaret was almost old enough to become a school monitress and her teacher had said she had the makings of a pupil teacher. She’d find the pennies to send them to school even if it meant working in the rope factory or the puddling mills, places that broke women’s health faster than childbirth. But her daughters would have their education, even if it sent her to an early grave. It’s what William had wanted for t
hem and by the saints, they would have it!

  The next day, after walking the girls to school, Maggie went searching for work again. She tried factories and workshops, shops and cafes, but they all turned her away. The factories had no vacancies; the shops wanted someone younger for long hours with no family to support. She was told she was too old, had no head for figures, lived too far away, looked too Irish or too obviously widowed. She heard countless different excuses that day and all the following week when she trailed as far as Tyne Dock for work.

  She returned sore-footed and increasingly dejected. The only work she was likely to get was cleaning or serving in a pub, neither of which would bring in enough to feed and clothe and school her daughters. Besides, the pubs in Jarrow were rough as could be and it frightened her to think of the drinking and brawling and having to make her way home late at night on her own.

  In desperation she turned to Danny. ‘Can you put a word in for me at the mills?’

  He looked taken aback. ‘They don’t take on lasses at the mill. It’s men’s work.’

  ‘They do at the puddling mills,’ Rose said.

  ‘Not there!’ Maggie cried. ‘It’s a killer of a job.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of grafting hard,’ Rose said stoutly. ‘I’m as strong as any of the lasses workin’ there.’

  Danny nodded. ‘I’ll put the word out.’

  But November came and went with nothing extra to spend on Elizabeth for her ninth birthday and no sign of a job. Then just before Sarah’s eighth birthday, Danny came home with news of work. He did not tell Rose that a woman had dropped down dead of a heart seizure, but that is what he had heard from a man in the pub who was delivering pig iron to the mill.

  ‘I put a word in for you,’ he said. ‘Gan down tomorra and see for yoursel’.’

  Just before Christmas and the start of 1889, Rose began her servitude at the giant puddling mill, exchanging her widow’s gown for old field clothes of Maggie’s. It was so unbearably hot in that place of roaring furnaces and pounding steam hammers, that they often stripped off to their undergarments of bodices and shifts. While outside the blackened buildings and lifeless trees were frozen in a hoarfrost, inside the workers roasted in the heat of hell. All day they humped huge ingots of scrap iron and shovelled them into the blazing furnaces, their faces scorched and bodies drenched in sweat. The molten metal was pounded by hammers and the air filled with fumes as the impurities were burnt off.