by Irene Carr
It was two weeks later when his mother came to tell her that Bob had been lost at sea. They learnt later that he had been employed on boat-work in bad weather, had dived in to rescue a mate in difficulties and both had drowned. Josie recalled the boy who was Bob saying proudly when he was ten years old, ‘’Course I can swim! I’m going to be a sailor!’ Now she took Dorothy Miller to her room and they wept together. And Josie told her, ‘I’m expecting.’
Bob’s mother held Josie in her arms and said, ‘You call yourself Mrs Miller now. That’s what he wanted. You’ve got your mother’s ring what she left you. Put that on. And you come and live wi’ me. We’ll manage, the pair of us.’ And then hopefully, ‘And maybe later on you’ll be able to get some work to help out.’ Because her small pension would not keep both of them, let alone a baby, and their savings would not last long.
Josie would have to leave the Urquharts’ service but she had known that when she accepted Bob’s proposal. She had intended to leave on her marriage, not this way, but the result was the same. The Urquharts were sympathetic but there was no question of an unmarried, pregnant girl caring for their children. However, they gave her a good reference: ‘Mrs Josie Miller has given excellent service as kitchen- and housemaid, children’s nurse and governess and assisting the housekeeper.’
So Josie went to live in the little house in Lambeth, with its kitchen and scullery on the ground floor and two small bedrooms above, reached by a steep, narrow staircase. It was damp and cold because they had to be sparing with the coal they put on the fire, but Josie began to look forward and to sing again as she went about the house, awkwardly now with the child she was carrying. She knew the grim future that lay ahead of her as an unmarried mother but she faced it with courage. Then one day the singing was cut short.
Dorothy Miller heard the scream and then the bumping fall as Josie toppled down the narrow stairs. She called on the neighbours to help her and got Josie into bed, cared for her and cried with her when she told her, ‘You’ve lost the baby, love.’ She comforted her through those dark days: ‘Never mind, you’re young. It’ll soon be Christmas and a New Year, a new start.’
Josie managed to smile.
There was no bright beginning to 1908. Josie had recovered but early in January she found Dorothy Miller lying face down across her bed and unconscious. Josie ran for a doctor and he came in his puttering little motor car and told her, ‘Your mother-in-law has had a stroke.’ Dorothy was unable to walk, would be bedridden for the rest of her life. He wound up the polished brass starting handle of his car then drove away, and Josie was left to face up to her future. It was bleak. Dorothy would need a lot of attention and there was not much money, scarcely enough to feed the pair of them. But Dorothy had cared for Josie, now it was Josie’s turn.
She heard the old woman calling for her, her voice quavering now, and answered, ‘Coming, Mother!’
8
February 1908
‘Now then, gal! What can I get yer?’ Jerry Phelan eyed Josie where she stood on the other side of the counter. This was in the snug, a little room in his pub, the Red Lion, where his elderly women customers could sip their glasses of port, though younger women were not unknown there. If any girl entered the Red Lion alone he automatically suspected she might be a prostitute trying to ply her trade and would turn her away. But he thought this one was too quietly dressed for that, and she didn’t look the sort, so he suspended judgment for the moment and wiped his hands on his long, white apron.
‘Are you the manager, please, sir?’ Josie asked. She was breathless and flushed.
‘I’m the licensed vittler what owns the place. This is a free house, but you won’t get nothin’ for nothin’ here.’ Jerry cracked the hoary old joke. He thought that the girl had spoken well and began to wonder what she was doing in his pub.
Josie said, ‘I heard you wanted a barmaid to work evenings.’ She had heard this from a neighbour and had run the quarter-mile to the Red Lion.
Jerry nodded. ‘Yus.’ He eyed her still, but doubtfully now. ‘Have you ever done this sort o’ work before?’
‘No. I was a maid. And a nursemaid. I have a reference—’ Josie fumbled it out of her bag.
But Jerry waved it aside. ‘That don’t count for nothing. Can you pull a pint? Keep a barful o’ thirsty men supplied and be cheerful while you’re at it?’ He started to turn away as someone in the bar shouted, ‘Hey, Jerry!’
Josie said, ‘I can learn. And I’m used to working hard.’ She called after him desperately, ‘And I’m prepared to give you a try; why can’t you let me have a chance? I need the job and it sounds as though you need somebody!’
That stopped Jerry. And then the voice shouted again, ‘Let’s have a pint here, Jerry, for the love o’ God!’
He hesitated still for a second or two, then nodded. ‘Right you are. I’ll see what you’re made of. But I warn yer, I only lost me last girl yesterday when she walked out without notice ’cos she’d got another job up West. I haven’t even advertised for anybody yet and when word gets round there’ll be a dozen or more gals asking. So you cope or you’re out.’
‘I’ll cope.’ This was said with a determination that made Jerry blink. He was not to know how badly this slim young woman needed the few shillings he would pay her.
He asked, ‘When can you start?’
‘Now?’ Josie offered. So Jerry lifted the flap of the counter and let her in.
Josie had left Dorothy Miller in the care of a neighbour for a few hours. The old woman had been fed her supper and settled down by Josie and the neighbour only had to look in on her occasionally. That was the only way Josie could get out to earn and earning was vital. Dorothy’s small pension could not keep the two of them and their little savings were being eroded daily. And now the landlord had put up the rent. Dorothy knew nothing of these problems.
‘That’s right, love, you get a breath o’ fresh air,’ she would murmur vaguely when Josie told her she had to go out for a while. ‘A young gal like you shouldn’t have to be cooped up wi’ an old woman like me all day long.’ Then Josie would go to collect or deliver the washing she did to help make ends meet, or hurry down to the Red Lion to work through till eleven at night, finishing by scrubbing out the bar. She could not take a full-time job or one that was any distance away from the little house because Dorothy had to be cared for.
Then when Josie returned home and settled the old woman down to sleep, Dorothy would ask, ‘Did you enjoy yourself, love?’
And Josie would reply, ‘I had a lovely time.’
Sleepily: ‘That’s good. You’re like a daughter to me.’
Josie kept the job. She learned to run a bar, spot the troublemakers and deal with drunks. She learned so well that Jerry asked her to work full time, but she had to tell him that was out of the question, and why: ‘I have to look after my mother-in-law.’
He rumbled, ‘You’re a good gal.’ And from then on there was an extra shilling in her pay.
Josie worked unceasingly all through that spring and into the summer. It was in June that she went into Dorothy Miller’s room in the morning to find her still and cold. She had died peacefully and quietly in the night.
The funeral swallowed the small insurance money that was paid out – Josie found the insurance book in a box of papers and old photographs. There was one photograph of Bob but she put it in the hands of the old woman where she lay in her coffin. That was a part of her life that was behind her now.
Josie was determined to quit the house as soon as she could because it held no happy memories for her. She wanted to go back into service, where she would live in, and it was a life she had been raised in, that she knew. She spent some of her small savings on two new dresses. She would need new shoes soon, too, but she decided they would have to wait.
‘I’m sorry. We don’t require anyone at this time.’ The Urquharts were travelling on the Continent and their new butler – Merridew had retired – did not know Josie. But Mrs Stritch did
and she was still housekeeper, sitting at his side as he interviewed her. He sent her away with the suggestion, ‘You might try the Coveneys.’ But the Coveneys did not need staff either.
Josie remembered Albert Harvey and went to one of his hotels to try to get in touch with him, only to be told that he was in America on business and would not be returning for some months. She went on searching for a ‘place’, walking from one large town house to another, while her little savings shrank. They had almost disappeared when the Smurthwaites took her on.
Mrs Smurthwaite, overweight and overbearing, warned Josie, ‘You won’t be able to laze about here like in those big houses, Mrs Miller.’ Josie was using the name she had taken at Dorothy Miller’s behest. It was the name the Urquharts used on the reference they gave her which she had produced for Mrs Smurthwaite. That lady now went on, ‘You’ll have to pull your weight here. My late husband always insisted on that: “Servants have to pull their weight,” he said.’ Josie learned that Mrs Smurthwaite often quoted her husband, deceased for almost twenty years.
It was a much smaller household than that of the Urquharts. There was just one maid besides Josie. Daisy was a woman in her fifties who looked still older, worn out by years of service. Josie soon found that Daisy was lethargic so most of the work was left to her. Pilling, the butler, did little except care for the wine and was generally only half sober. He told Josie, ‘That husband of hers was nothing. He inherited all his money from an uncle up North. There’s a son, Hubert, but he’s out in Monte Carlo at the moment and I’ve never seen him. Daisy’s been here donkey’s years and she knows him. She says he spends most of his time in France and talks the lingo like a native. A French chef told her that. He came here one night to cook for a special do and him and this Hubert rattled away at each other.’ He squinted blearily at Josie. ‘And Daisy says they can’t keep a young girl here long on account of Hubert, so you be warned. He won’t worry me. I’ve only had this job a month and I’m on the lookout for another.’ But he couldn’t look Josie in the eye when he said this and she suspected he knew he would have trouble finding another post.
But Josie told herself she had a roof over her head, the food was reasonably good and she was being paid £24 a year. It was better than walking the streets looking for work. She tried to settle in but after a month there came news that made her uneasy. Pilling said, ‘We’re moving up north for a few months. She wants to live in the country place the old feller left. All the toffs go off to the country in August but they go to shoot or hunt. She’s going just to imitate them. But if she’s hoping to go to the hunt ball she’ll be disappointed.’ He laughed raucously.
Josie did not want to go. When she learned that the house was only a mile or two outside Sunderland she almost gave in her notice. But then she told herself to be sensible. She need not go to the town. On the rare occasions she could be spared from her duties she could probably visit Newcastle or Durham. And she did not want to look for a job again so soon. She had saved little and needed a deal more behind her before she left Mrs Smurthwaite. So in August she travelled north.
She was not alone. Hubert Smurthwaite was returning from Monte Carlo after squandering the money his mother had given him. And Reuben Garbutt was about to exact his revenge on the Langleys.
9
August 1908
Reuben Garbutt sat in a pub in Whitechapel and told the villainous man beside him, ‘Get rid of them.’ Then he handed over a fistful of sovereigns and walked out. He had paid for murder. Garbutt was thirty-six years old now, tall, thick-set and powerful, with a square, thin-lipped face and a wide moustache. His dark eyes stared magnetically and he was attractive to women. He knew this and used them.
He was now an apparently legitimate businessman with interests in jewellery shops, property and a transport company, one of the first to use a large number of the new motor lorries. He had an office in the City and a London home in St John’s Wood. He looked the part in a check morning-coat suit that fitted him perfectly, over a single-breasted waistcoat, a shirt with a high collar and a silk tie. His bowler hat had a curly brim, his gloves were a soft kid and his valet had polished his shoes until they glittered.
In truth he could have succeeded honestly because he had a flair for spotting a business opportunity. But crime was in his nature so he prospered from his activities in theft, receiving, extortion, blackmail and fraud. He had murdered in his time but now he used paid assassins.
He took a cab to King’s Cross station and then boarded a train to Sunderland. There he hired another cab to take him to Owen Packer’s office. There were a number of brass plates outside the door because Packer dabbled in various agencies, one being insurance and another, shipping coal. The plate for the latter read: ‘Coal Carriers Ltd.’ But the one above stated: ‘Owen Packer. Solicitor.’ That was his profession. He was skinny and cadaverous with a drooping moustache and yellow teeth shown in a perpetual smirk. Some years before he had successfully defended a criminal working for Garbutt. The villain, charged with robbery with violence, got off when Packer bribed a prosecution witness to change his testimony. Garbutt had then recruited Packer as his agent in the North-East – and particularly to report on the Langley family.
Garbutt sat in Packer’s office and demanded, ‘What’s the position with the Langley yard now?’
Five years before, Packer had told him that orders for ships were few because of the depression, and added: ‘The old man is trying to keep his men on when there’s nothing for them to do. He needs money.’
Garbutt had responded, ‘We’ll lend him the money at a cheaper rate than the banks will.’ Old William Langley had jumped at the chance. The loan came from a finance company, ‘Shipbuilders Finance Ltd’, and the only unusual condition was that James, William’s son, should be manager of the yard. As this was already the case there seemed no problem. William did not know that the finance company was owned by Reuben Garbutt.
There had been other loans and Garbutt had come to Sunderland now to arrange one more. He sat in Packer’s office, examined the document the solicitor had prepared, nodded his satisfaction and tossed it on to the desk. ‘Good.’ He was close to springing the trap now. He said, ‘I need more information from inside the house. What staff is there?’
Packer shifted his long, skinny body in his chair, always uneasy under the piercing stare from Garbutt’s cold eyes. ‘Very few. There’s a cook goes in daily and a girl to help her. Only the one maid lives in.’
‘What about her? Who is she? What’s she like? Any young feller seeing her?’ Garbutt fired the questions at the solicitor.
Packer pulled at his drooping moustache, remembering. ‘Rhoda Wilks is her name. Not much on looks. Getting on, over thirty. No young chap so far as I know – shouldn’t think it likely now, at her age. She’s quiet. I’ve never seen her smile. That’s about all.’
Garbutt thought it might be enough, and early the next morning he went to look over the Langley house. It was built of red brick and formed the back wall of a square, the front of which was a main road leading down to the shipyards. The two sides of the square were terraces of houses that were once occupied by the professional classes, but they had moved out long ago and now the houses were tenements, with four or more families living in each of them.
Garbutt walked in a semicircle through side streets to arrive behind the house and began to watch the back of it. He was dressed now like a well-paid clerk in a plain, but good, dark blue suit. He soon knew the routine of the place. First the old cook and her assistant, a girl barely fourteen years old, arrived. Not long afterwards he saw the maid, in her black dress and white apron, empty ashes into a bin outside the back door after cleaning out the fires. She was dark and sallow, plain as Packer had said, and unsmiling.
All this he saw through the back gate of the house, always left open during the day. When he returned to the front of the house he watched it from the window of a public house, the Collier Lad, as he sipped rum and coffee and men hurried
in and out on their way to work. Twice he witnessed James Langley leaving for work with his dark-haired wife and daughter, walking down the road towards the Langley shipyard. He also saw a lorry loaded with sacks of coal pull up outside the pub. Its driver and his mate tramped into the bar to be welcomed by the publican. They bought pints of beer and ate breakfast, the sandwiches they had brought with them. This, too, was obviously a routine.
Garbutt’s next step was not so easy. He could not stay in the pub indefinitely because that would arouse curiosity. Instead, after a half-hour, he left the Collier Lad and walked through the streets surrounding the house, not strolling but striding as if on some business. He still contrived to pass the front and the back of the house every five minutes or so. He did this daily, morning till night, until on the fourth day he saw Rhoda Wilks leave the back door of the Langley house at mid-morning, a coat over her black dress and the white cap discarded for a hat. She carried a basket and was plainly on some errand. Five minutes later, her shopping done and on her way back to the house, she collided with a young man and knocked from his hands the papers he was carrying.
‘Oh! I’m sorry!’ she apologised, sure it was her fault, and crouched to pick them up.
Garbutt, who had engineered the mishap, went down on one knee beside her. ‘No harm done.’ He smiled at her, took the papers from her and helped her to her feet with a hand under her arm. ‘But I’m looking for Thompson’s yard – I’ve got some business there – can you tell me the way?’
‘Oh! Aye, it’s down here.’ The road to Thompson’s ran past the Langley house, as Garbutt knew. A minute later they were walking side by side and he was carrying her basket and chatting cheerfully, telling her all about himself. ‘I’m Reuben Graham and I’ve been sent up here to work. I’m living in lodgings where they’re all old people. It’s nice to meet somebody young like yourself I can talk to.’
