Privilege Preserved (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 5)

by Andrew Wareham

  “I have sold out of Consols to the tune of one hundred thousand and have bought American paper instead, the bonds held by Goldsmids in New York. That is a course that is not without cost to me, but I consider a sensible precaution.”

  She was convinced.

  “Have you bin vaccinated, Mr White?”

  “I have, Joby, as have most of the adults of our community, I believe. For the children, I am not so sure. You will remember that many of the village took against the process some ten years ago when it was preached against by Mr Nugent as possibly contrary to the Will of the Lord.”

  Joby had still been at sea at the time, and had hardly been exposed to sermonising since, was not aware of the doubts amongst the more devotedly religious.

  “Why do you ask, Joby? Is the smallpox rife in the area?”

  “I’ve seen twelve children in the last three days, all of they got heavy colds and headaches and spewing up on occasion. It could be an influenza, which is dangerous enough and could kill one or two, but it strikes I to be like to the smallpox in ‘er first week. If that be so, then we could lose the half of them, easy!”

  “What is to be done, Joby?”

  “Send down to New York, urgent, for a vaccinator to come up to do all they what ain’t bin done yet. Red cloth as well, for the windows, and red paint for they walls. I got me own cures made up to settle they’s guts and headaches and sniffles and to bring they’s fevers down, so all I can do, I ‘ave, apart from red, that be.”

  It was known, firmly believed at least, that red light was beneficial to smallpox patients.

  The first sufferer, ten year old daughter of one of the Denhams, threw out spots four days later, forehead a sudden mass of eruptions, her whole body covered by the end of the next day. She died in less than a week. Seven days more and thirty of the farming families had lost at least one child; the Eakins helplessly watched all four of theirs to their graves. Each day saw the cart, the makeshift hearse, being walked slowly out of the half a dozen cabins of the village, returning in the afternoon, always with one or two small coffins, once with five, one adult of the bereaved family walking behind, the other remaining by the sickbeds.

  It was a severe attack, three out of four of those infected dying, the survivors deeply scarred, the pits on their faces so close together as to join at the edges.

  White had opened a graveyard and conducted the burial services, the first for their new community, was almost broken by the experience, his faith sorely tested, thankful only that he had married more recently than any other in the village and so was still childless.

  The disease ran its course, ended when there were no more of the unprotected left to be infected. A week after the last death and the settlers held a meeting.

  White opened proceedings with a brief prayer. He normally thanked the Lord for his mercy, found he could not do so on this occasion.

  “Brothers and sisters, what are we to do?”

  He always took the lead, but on this occasion had nothing to offer.

  Eakins rose slowly to his feet, hand on his wife’s shoulder, looked slowly round the one hundred or so crammed together under the roof of their rough-built chapel.

  “I did ‘ear some folks saying the place were unlucky, we ought to go. I ain’t going. We got too much ‘ere to leave be’ind. I can’t leave my little ‘uns to lie on their own wi’ none to put flowers to their graves each year. Spring be comin’, an’ I’ll be walkin’ after my plough next month. I just wanted to say my piece, and make my thanks to Joby for doin’ everything ‘e could to make ‘em a bit more comfortable as they went. It weren’t your fault you coulden save ‘em, boy, and don’t you go blamin’ yerself!”

  A few agreed, the bulk wondered if they would have done better with a real Christian rather than a Did as doctor.

  Some wanted to ‘go home’, but were soon brought to realise they had no home to go to – they had left Finedon because it was no longer theirs. They could abandon their land and homestead elsewhere in the vast, empty expanse of America, but they could see no gain in that. For lack of a better course all decided to stay. They made just one resolution at this town meeting, that henceforward every child was to be vaccinated despite all that any preacher might say. They agreed as well, informally, that when they had spare money they would build a sickhouse for the village, it would have been easier perhaps if all of the infected had been together.

  “Will you send a letter home to England for us, Mr White? Tell my lord and all they what ‘appened?”

  “Not yet, Mr Eakins. We do not know how the smallpox progresses from one victim to the next. I would not wish perhaps to deliver the active principle to our families in Finedon.”

  White had had quarantine notices posted on the track leading to the river and New York. The occasional pack peddler made the trip north and a few more settlers had joined the villagers over the year, families from other parts of England making their own way and claiming their own sections. No traffic could be permitted that might spread the disease though the whole state.

  None of the outsiders who had settled had taken the smallpox but all had come from towns and villages in England where vaccination had been firmly established.

  White’s faith in the chapel, already weakened, was further eroded by this confirmation that the children need not have died. He made a quiet decision to take a trip to New York later in the year and to make contact with some of the pastors there in the hope of discovering a denomination more acceptable to him and his villagers.

  Joseph had discovered, rather to his surprise, that he was quite well off in financial terms, that he had several thousands – he could not quite remember how many, the figure was not that important, after all – in his account with Mr Martin. His income was substantial as well. As far as he could make out he was paid a percentage of the profits his various inventions and innovations made for Roberts and was given the whole of the clear income being made from the new lathes at the Wigan workshop. Mary had been urgent with him to get a precise accounting of his wealth; he presumed that she saw that sort of housekeeping as part of the woman’s function.

  He asked her why it was so important, they were going to be comfortably off in their new house and the details surely did not matter too much.

  “The future, Joseph, may be very uncertain. Papa is worried by the machine-breakers, that I know. Add to that, there is the question of slavery. It cannot last for all eternity, you know, and where will cotton be then?”

  He had no idea.

  “Almost all of our cotton, virtually every bale that enters the whole of Lancashire, comes out of New Orleans or Savannah. Long staple comes from the Sugar Islands, admittedly, but there is not a great deal of that. If slavery goes then the cotton industry fails, it would seem, Joseph.”

  He had not realised that. She had a good point.

  “Then…” He fell silent a moment. She waited, patiently, knowing that his mind was no longer in the same room with her.

  “We should use some of our money to buy mining land, Mary. If cotton fails then iron must become even more important. Land in the hills is much cheaper than flat wheat fields and we could buy up thousands of acres in more distant parts where there are no canals and wait a few years for the steam trackways to spread across the land.”

  She made a note of the proposal.

  “I shall write a letter to Mr Frederick Mason, asking for the use of one of his geologist-surveyors to ride the moors of Lancashire and Yorkshire in the first instance, Joseph. He will think, probably, that you are concerned with future supplies of coal and high-grade iron ores for Roberts; there is no great need to tell him any different, I believe. The acres we buy can continue in sheep for a few years while we wait the coming of the steam engines on their tracks.”

  “What of overseas, Mary?”

  “The cost of shipping ores would be very high, would it not?”

  He agreed. Overseas would have to wait until they could build much larger steamers, whi
ch would demand more powerful steam engines, which meant high-pressure boilers – which, at the moment, they could not make, or not with an acceptable level of safety.

  “How big a risk is ‘acceptable’, Joseph?”

  He did not know, he had not attempted to quantify that datum.

  “It is, perhaps, somewhat cold-blooded, is it not, Mary? I am to assess just how many boilers may explode in a year, and how many steam engineers and stokers will be killed, very unpleasantly, as a result. Am I to say that a dozen or so is a small price to pay, a hundred, too many?”

  She was not so concerned, there were thousands of men clogging every street whenever she was taken into Manchester or Liverpool – a very few less would make little difference, surely.

  “Your father, Joseph, seems to feel that we should be wed in the Church of England rather than in the chapel where Papa worships. It is not a large building, one must admit, and it would seem that there will be many present. The parish church in Wigan might well be the best choice, do you not agree?”

  Joseph nodded, not in the slightest degree concerned by the location or ritual of his marriage.

  “Have you set a date yet, Mary?”

  “We feel that about ten weeks’ time would be satisfactory, Joseph, suiting the convenience of both of us. The house will be finished, all of the improvements complete. Papa and Mama have agreed. Have you given thought to a wedding journey yet? A honeymoon?”

  Joseph had had a number of thoughts about the honeymoon, but all of them at the most basic physical level. He had not considered a destination at all.

  “Perhaps a week or two in London, Mary? There would be a lot of shopping there and we could stay in Mount Street very conveniently. France is too distant for ease of travel – we would be at least four days on the road from Lancashire to Paris, six if it was wet. I have been looking at an atlas, discovering routes and measuring distances for steam trackways.”

  She had wanted to see the Highlands of Scotland, having been reading of them recently, but they were even further away than Paris in travelling time. London was the most practical venue.

  “Steam trackways, Joseph? I had thought that you were not intending to become directly involved with them.”

  “The first of them must almost certainly be built in Lancashire, or perhaps across the border in Yorkshire or on the coast a little further north, in the iron areas there. As soon as one is built successfully a hundred more will follow. Trevithick was closer to success than many realise and there is a colliery engineer, a Mr George Stephenson, who has many ideas – they will come, Mary, the steam engines will roll out. And then? How many miles of iron rails will be bought? How many wagons will need iron wheels? How many new warehouses with loading bays for the goods, and how many new-style coaching inns for steam passengers? Building locomotive steam engines can wait, but all of the rest are well suited to Roberts’ expertise.”

  It made sense, she felt, the risks of the new steam engines could be borne by others, the profits could be taken by the wide-awake followers.

  “Do you suggest that we should perhaps become the promoters of steam tracks, rather in the way that canals were built and financed in the boom years of the last century? As owners of the tracks we could perhaps make a profit from the fees paid by each steamer passing across them.”

  Joseph shook his head doubtfully, he would require advice on that proposition, he thought. He seemed to remember Mr Fraser, when he was still his tutor, saying that many a canal owner had ended up in debtor’s prison, the profits in the good years having been quite high, but the losses in the bad utterly disastrous. “The first costs are to be very high, I would expect, like the canals. There is land to be bought, or rights of way at least, and often a substantial premium above the agricultural value to persuade fox-hunting squires to allow anything new on their estates. Then, there is the track itself to be laid, strong enough to take the weight of engine and trucks, at least to turnpike standard, I should imagine. Bridges, causeways across wet valleys and, perhaps, over sandy soils which might shift underfoot. What of hills? Tunnels or deep cuttings might be necessary – I do not know.”

  Mary made a note of his words, convinced that his every thought should be preserved. She had begged lessons of her father and brothers in accounting matters, more than was deemed seemly for young ladies but they had accepted that her husband would need be protected from the financial wolves who abounded on the fringes of the new industry. She knew a little about borrowing and compound interest as a result and had heard of the notion of joint-stock enterprise and she knew how easy it was for the engineer to be drawn in over his head and lose his everything. She was instantly persuaded that other, more sanguine projectors should actually build and run the new steam trackways – they should take their profit from selling to them, preferably against cash.

  “I spoke with Robert at Papa’s wedding, you know, Mary, and we discussed this very question. I know that he has every intention of lending to the steam engineers, quite large sums, but all to be secured against their purchases of land as, what did he call them, that’s it, ‘preferential creditors’.”

  Mary had heard of such loans, knew them to be the safest way of lending, but to be undesirable to other businessmen who had sold to the failed concern and then discovered that the preferentials were to be paid in full before they saw a penny. She made another note, no credit to be extended to the steam trackways, every transaction to be cash within thirty days, the policy to be strictly adhered to, no leeway at all.

  “How are the trackways to be constructed, Joseph?”

  “Wooden sleepers, the rails to be clamped to them by some sort of locked bolt. They will have to be stronger than we currently need for the trackways in the works, for example, the rails themselves heavier in their substance. I wonder what shape the rails must be? Can they be cast or must they be wrought iron? How long should each rail be, and how are they to be joined together? What of curves?”

  She took a new folder out of the desk, wrote each of his questions out in careful copperplate, easy and clear to read, then took out the jar of red ink and labelled the folder itself ‘Steam Trackways, Clarifications and Queries’.

  She put the folder onto its shelf, next to a dozen others relating to different research projects that had occurred to Joseph at odd moments, some of which had been abandoned, thin and forlorn, the bulk bulging with drawings and sheets of calculations.

  “What of the new engine for Roberts Works, Joseph? Is that not close to completion?”

  “Oh, yes.” He was not very interested, the design work was done, the first testing of the principles had been satisfactory, all that was left was the journeyman work, the simple construction of the new machine.

  “Will you be present when it is first fired up?”

  He agreed that it was only right that he should be, just in case…

  “It is not that much of an innovation, Mary. Instead of bending the flue into a ‘U’ shape we now have a double flue passing through the middle of the boiler, the hot air and smoke used to its full and less heat wasted. It may save as much as seven percentum on coals, I calculate, which is well worthwhile.”

  “What of the safety valve? Have you improved that? You said you were thinking of a better one than Watt used.”

  “Didn’t work! Hard water resulted in a lime scale build up that clogged the moving parts. It would have led to a blown boiler for sure if it had not been under close observation because it was new. I have put a fusible plug into the new boiler – just a threaded hole in the bottom of the boiler with a bolt screwed into it, the bolt being made of a soft lead and zinc, a sort of pewter admixture that will run at a relatively low temperature. If the boiler falls low on water and the heat rises too high then the plug will melt and the remaining water will run out into the fire box. Even if it does not dowse the fire completely it will alert the stokers. It doesn’t answer the problem of too high a pressure of steam, of course, and that is the greatest worry. It really
needs a device to measure the exact pressure in the outlet pipe to the cylinder, with some sort of gauge which the engineer can read. But, making one that is small enough to fit in conveniently while being sufficiently accurate to be worth the bother is not an easy task.”

  Mary agreed, said she had been thinking about the problem herself.

  “A gauge on a spring, pushing a pointer along a scale, the spring compressed by the pressure of the steam behind it. The pointer to be in a thick glass case. All attached to the steam outlet pipe.”

  He quickly made a sketch of her idea, shook his head.

  “It won’t work like that, takes up too much space, it would have to be round like a watch face, the pointer circling like the hour hand… It would still get clogged by lime scale, so it would have to be accessible to be cleaned every day or two. So, screw it in on a coarse thread and it could be removed whenever the boiler was down. Cast it in bronze or gun metal, more accurate than iron for the threading… What do we know about glass? How strong is it? Does it expand under heat? How thick would it have to be?”

  She made the notes as he talked, more to himself than to her.

  “What of the spring, Mary? Gunsmiths use springs, so do clockmakers. Do they make them in house or do they buy them in? Who can we ask? Is there such a thing as a spring-making firm?”

  She would have an answer for him within a few days, she expected.

  “Thinking about cotton, Mary, if it does depend on slavery and that must end, some day, then it might be a good idea to move away from the dependency on spinning and weaving. What else could be worked in the mills?”

  “Nothing, Papa says, Joseph.”

  That was a problem, and one that Joseph instantly accepted as insuperable. If Lord Star said that, then he was certainly right, he knew more about cotton than any other authority Joseph had ever heard of.

  “Is there some other source of raw cotton, Mary?”

  “India, all taken by the Honourable East India Company, none available to us. Egypt, tiny amounts and poor quality, so Papa says. Other sources in the Ottoman Empire, none we could get hold of reliably. The sole supplier as far as England is concerned is the Southern States of America.”