The Pain Of Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 4)

by Andrew Wareham

  White wrote a letter that evening, handed it across to young Mr Quillerson to send back to England, he happy to do so, glad that the people back in Finedon would learn that all was well with their folks at far away.

  “The manufactury, my lord, for boots.”

  “Yes, Quillerson.”

  “Army boots, my lord.”

  “Yes? Oh! Oh, bugger! How many men and women work there, Quillerson?”

  “Forty men, seventy women and girls, eighteen lads of twelve or under. Sixty-three families, my lord are wholly or to a great extent dependent on the wages they bring home from the boots, and four local tanneries supply a substantial part of their production to the enterprise. Add to that the number of hides sent from the local slaughterhouses to the tanneries in addition to those brought part-cured from overseas and we have a very large potential loss to the parishes, my lord.”

  “Too many – we cannot possibly risk the extra disorder that would arise from allowing the manufactury to close its doors. Besides which, I have no great desire to see our people starving and the Poor Law rising to even greater heights and the tenantry complaining that they can no longer make a living from their fields. Can we not arrange to sell more boots in the industrial towns? I know that at least a quarter of the production goes north on the canals as it is.”

  “How, my lord? The boots that are sold go to the tommy-shops at our mines and foundries, and to Lord Star’s, and a very few to other mills around Manchester. To sell the boots there would have to be shops for the purpose, and there are none in the new towns, and those already established in the old cities are made-to-measure cobblers who would not touch our product.”

  “Who would sell them? Most mills and all of the big pits and foundries have tommy-shops, but I doubt they would want to carry our product. Roberts is a competitor and they would not wish to put money in our pockets.”

  “I have never seen a tommy-shop, my lord. Do they normally sell workmen’s clothes as well as boots and food?”

  Tom shook his head – the mill stores were a part of his existence which he preferred to ignore when possible – inevitably, it seemed, they extended credit to some of the hands and that credit never seemed to be paid off so that the men were always a little in debt to the store and could never leave their employment with Roberts, almost a form of slavery. Not all of the men and very few of the women ran up a slate at the store, and most of those who did were drinkers, so it was their own fault that they were in thrall to him, and his stores sold the best possible foodstuffs at the lowest price, no ‘tommy-rot’ at Roberts. His beef came from cattle; his milk was white in colour, not an adulterated blue; a sack of Roberts’ potatoes contained no stones and very little dirt; his bread was made from wheat and contained no chopped straw or alum or ground bones or chalk – but, even so, there was a nasty taste in his mouth when he thought of the shops.

  “Almost all sell gin, bread, potatoes and scrag-end of mutton at starvation prices and nothing else at all, very often against company tokens which can only be used in the one place. Roberts’ stores sell no alcohol, and, in passing, I would add that we do not permit wages to be paid in drinking houses or other than in coin of the realm, and nor do we permit pubs or shebeens to set up close to our works, unlike many firms who pay the men in the bar of their own pub at ten o’clock and have the money back by midnight and to hell with the wives and children! But, no – clothing is not normally to be found in the tommy-shops. Reach-me-downs are sold in small stores in every town, much the same as in the countryside. There are two places in Kettering selling labourers’ trousers and shirts and jerkins for those who cannot spin and weave their own – cheap and nasty, but good enough, I suppose – and yes, that of course is the answer, Quillerson, well thought, sir! A traveller or two to go north and place boots in those shops and we should be able to replace the army contracts. Who is managing the manufactury now? It has been, working so well, so quietly efficiently, that I have paid it very little attention, except to note the few hundreds in profits it has put my way every year.”

  “My wife’s cousin Nobbs, my lord, has been manager this ten years. Finedon is small enough that it was almost bound to be a relative or acquaintance of mine, and I did not think you would take exception, regard it as corrupt practice.”

  Tom nodded, vaguely remembering that he had been told of the fact that Quillerson had placed a relative in the manufactury and had been able to dismiss all fears of malpractice – his land agent had had far better opportunities to enrich himself over the years and had showed himself scrupulously honest.

  “Yes, I recall that now – tell him of our thoughts and assist him if he needs help in finding good men to travel for him.”

  “Mudge has been enquiring whether he might talk to you about his small tenants, my lord – he has one or two ideas about making them a little more prosperous, I believe, but they will require some of our money to get them started. Would you pay him a visit, my lord? I believe he would appreciate evidence of your interest in his labours.”

  “Hold his hand and tell him he is a good boy, in effect?”

  “He is one of those who likes to be praised, I believe, my lord.” Quillerson chuckled, almost unbelievingly, shaking his head. “An able man, my lord, but he does like to be told what a fine fellow he is.”

  “Send him a message that I will be visiting the estate next week. I will bring Miss Andrews with me, so that I am not alone in the House with Miss Fielder, one must observe the proprieties! When? Wednesday and Thursday, do you think?”

  “Friday as well, my lord, so that you can have a full day in his company, an hour or so for each of the little places on the Thursday and see the two bigger men on Friday morning on your way back.”

  “Do you know what he has in mind?”

  “Not for sure, my lord, but I believe him to be unhappy about the selling of vegetables and cheese in the market in Leicester. Price and takers are both unpredictable and the income is very irregular as a result.”

  “Lutterworth is no more than a village, and there are no quarries or pits close to hand, I believe, so it can hardly be a manufactury, and he is not to be setting up in competition with us in the way of boots. He is close to the canals, of course, so he might, perhaps, think of sending his goods to market in London or Birmingham, though I can see little of profit in putting sacks of flour or grain to those costs.”

  Quillerson had not given the matter any great thought, had nothing to offer.

  “Hogs, my lord – we need something more profitable than spuds and turnips and cabbages, and not just butcher’s meat, especially as we know pork don’t keep too well in warm weather – everyone here remembers what happened to the late lord!”

  “So what do you propose, Mudge?”

  “Bacon, hams, brawn, trotters, sausages and pies, my lord! Slaughter at our own place and cure or smoke or boil every last bit of the hog, and send the hides to be worked into the best of valises and shoes, nothing to be wasted. The last bits of the guts can go onto the fields over winter to rot down before spring sowing and the bristles can make shaving brushes and the bones can grind down and go back to the fields as well. For feeding them, skim milk and the spuds and cabbages that would go to Leicester otherwise, bought in at a guaranteed price, regular, week in, week out. There would have to be a big dairy as well, my lord, for cheese and butter, so as to have a supply of skim. Put the produce on the canals and send to London, I would say, my lord – there’s never enough good food in the shops there, always a high price, summer and winter, especially for meats.”

  It would be an expense that he could do without – the shipyard was likely to take a substantial amount of his spare cash over the next few years, but he had to find the money. Men and women in work were not going out onto the streets to riot, it was as simple, and as exigent, as that.

  The soldiers were coming home in greater numbers every month, and those damned fools in Downing Street seemed to have forgotten, if they had ever actually b
een aware, that soldiers were men trained in the use of firearms and habituated to discipline. There had to be a thousand of scatter guns in the area, and any smoothbore could fire ball just as well as shot, so arming a revolution would be easy enough. He had heard the idiots prating – the Latimers and their ilk – that the ‘mob’ could never be dangerous in the absence of officers – only gentlemen could hold the King’s Commission and they would never rise in insurrection! Bloody nonsense! Ask any soldier who was more necessary on a field of battle – a lieutenant or a sergeant? The answer was always the same – the officers looked pretty and set an example, the sergeants did the actual work. Once battle was joined a sergeant could do all that was required. It was the same at sea – the officers navigated and took the decisions in the days and hours leading up to a fight, but once they were at close quarters the seamen followed any fighting man who took the lead, whether he was prince or peasant mattered nothing at all when the blood was flowing.

  The answer to revolution could not be to defeat it, the only solution was prevention, and the sole way to do that was to offer greater profit from peace, and that meant money in the pocket, work for every man and woman who wanted it.

  “Give me a budget, Mudge – proper costs, times, dates, details. I will find the money you need.”

  Mudge had been anticipating an argument, was fully ready to defend his position, was taken aback by immediate capitulation. He had four separate proposals to hand ranging from half a dozen men in a back shed to a hundred in a new, brick-built dairy and slaughter-house, had been intending to modify his demands according to the level of opposition my lord offered, and he was not at all sure which would be the wisest to present.

  “There are a number of possibilities, my lord …”

  “There always are, Mudge. I am returning to the Hall on Friday. I would wish to carry your proposition with me.”

  Quillerson, silent at his shoulder, caught Mudge’s eye, shook his head warningly. Mudge changed his mind, decided to say nothing until he had talked to the older man.

  “Yes, my lord. All will be ready for you.”

  Tom looked up from the sheets Mudge had prepared in three proposals – Quillerson had dumped the smallest as being unworthy of the estate – turned to the notes he had made.

  “Forty, seventy or one hundred and twenty hands, one half, roughly, to be men, the rest women and youngsters. Can he take on sixty men without robbing farmers in the area of their hands? There will always be women and boys and girls wanting work, they will be no problem, but I have no wish to be accused of forcing up wages and driving other men’s tenants to the wall.”

  “Mudge says that there are at least forty men of an age who are without occupation of any sort and another fifty working part-time and casually, some of them mending the roads for the vestry as an alternative to outright Poor Law.”

  “If we start on a small-scale then we offer work to a quarter of them, and disappoint the rest, having to choose who gets a living and who is thrown to the rubbish-heap, as it were. Take on sixty and we can guarantee that every man in the area has some work, even if it is still part-time for thirty of them. With the costs of building and equipping the dairy and the butchery then we will be looking at the better part of six thousand pounds laid out this year, for we could not realistically expect to break even before the second full year of output, going into profit, hopefully, in the third. On the one hand, it is a deal of money, on the other, we have a peaceful and prosperous – the two being the same thing – locality. Tell Mudge to put the word round the local farmers that he will be looking to buy spuds and barley and oats to feed a substantial herd of pigs from next harvest on. Suggest that he might wish to tie men into contracts in advance – they might like to have a price guaranteed them, a certain profit in hand rather than relying on the markets which fluctuate every year, and it will stop the buggers from getting together and putting the bite on him!”

  “So, my lord, the largest of the proposals it is?”

  “Yes, no sense in doing things by halves, and I can find the money. Whilst we are dealing with Lutterworth, a puppy for Miss Fielder will be a welcome gift, she mentioned several times in our conversations at the dinner table that she was considering the purchase of a companion. One of the males, I think, if you would arrange to have it taken across. All appropriate messages, of course, how pleased I am with all she is doing there.”

  Quillerson looked puzzled.

  “I had not noticed, my lord – what, exactly, is she doing at Lutterworth?”

  “Very little, but she keeps the staff on their toes, I expect, and makes sure that the old place is kept clean and tidy at least – it is never good for a house to be empty and uncared for.”

  Mark Star stood in court, wigged and gowned, an imposing, tall figure, wearing a pair of half-moon glasses for effect rather than use – they helped a little when reading, were not really a necessity, but the illiterate especially regarded them as a sign of great learning – ‘worn his eyes out with all that study, poor man’. He glanced disdainfully at the six scarecrow figures in the dock, ragged and unwashed, humiliated by their appearance after three weeks in the common gaol. All had been respectable working men, tradesmen: two skilled carpenters and bricklayers, a tailor, a cobbler and two hand-loom weavers. Now they were simply dirty and lousy prisoners on remand, about to be tried and found to be felons, probably to be sentenced to the gallows, almost certainly then to be transported rather than hanged but their lives finished in any case.

  “M’lud, the prisoners arraigned in the dock were all taken in riot in the recent disturbances in Manchester, all at the front of the mob and encouraging violence and destruction of property…”

  He built a tidy, precise case against each of the six, stating the evidence that would be given.

  The lone attorney acting in their defence stood after his opening and begged permission to speak for them – they had been unable to brief a barrister, he regretted. The judge dismissed him, warned him that he was fortunate not to have been held in contempt, only a barrister might plead in the High Court of Justice; the court would act as prisoners’ friend, he said.

  The first witnesses were called and established that a crime had been committed. There had been an unruly assembly, the crowd had been ordered to disperse by a magistrate, had refused, the Riot Act had been read, the watchmen instructed to break up the mob – six elderly Charlies had, not surprisingly, failed in the task and a squadron of Yeomanry Cavalry had been called to action. Stones had been thrown, a trooper hurt, the horse had charged and the cowardly mob had run, leaving behind a few injured and the six ringleaders who had been arrested.

  Clean and neat and tidy – all that a case should be. Mark was pleased with himself thus far – he rarely acted in criminal matters, had only been a prosecutor twice before and this would be very useful in bringing his name before the Lord Chancellor with a view to preferment in the profession.

  The captain in command of the Yeomanry on the day was sworn and Mark led him through his evidence, noting as he responded that he had been drinking, was not fully sober at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  “You were instructed to ‘clear the square’, Captain Bentley. Would you tell the court exactly what you did then, sir.”

  “I did my duty, sir! I ordered the men into two lines, drew swords and charged, sir!”

  “Could you give more detail, please, Captain Bentley. What did you do immediately on receipt of your order from the magistrate, sir?”

  “There was no ‘order’, sir! Civilians do not give me ‘orders’! He asked me to clear the villains out of the way and I did just that.”

  The judge intervened, concerned to establish that he had walked his horse forward at first and had drawn sabres and charged only as a last resort.

  “Why would I do that, my lord? The scum had been told, they had had their warning, and a waste of time that had been. I ran them back to their kennels, as was only right and proper.”

 
; Further questioning of an increasingly truculent witness also brought before the court the fact that the six arrested had been taken whilst trying to give aid to an injured man lying in the square, had ‘shouted their mouths off’ when ordered away.

  By the end of proceedings Mark was convinced that the six had been present in the crowd and no more – their only actions otherwise had been to offer aid to the unfortunate. The judge clearly felt the same, but he had his orders from the government – there had to be convictions, the mob must be taught a lesson - and so his summing-up to the jury made it very clear that there was no defence in law for the accused men’s actions. He demanded a guilty verdict, and received it in quick time.

  All six were sentenced to death, received notice of commutation immediately the courtroom had emptied, were returned to the gaol to await the authorities’ pleasure.

  “Mr Star?”

  “M’lud?”

  “You are a barrister on the Northern Circuit, are you not?”

  “I am, m’lud.”

  “The Colonel of the Yeomanry is unknown to me, of course. Have you made his acquaintance, sir?”

  “He is known to my father, m’lud.”