“Just gi’ us the word, Mr Sam. We shall be there for thee.”
Sam realised he had a loyal workforce, men who wanted to work for him, perhaps because they thought of themselves as Banford’s people. It would be sensible to use that feeling, if he could.
“I shall want you all, or as many as will come. For the while, If I was you, I would go home and pick up a wheelbarrow and load her up with firing. A few loads tucked away in your back sheds might make winter a damned sight easier for your wives and children.”
“’Ow much can us take, Mr Sam?”
“Enough for the winter, this year. But don’t go off selling it in town!”
They laughed and promised to be good. Most would be, Sam thought. He walked off to set the process in motion, to start to spend his, and Abe’s, money on building another part of his fortune.
There followed a month of unrelenting work, which Sam did not especially enjoy – it took far more effort to make money legitimately. Distilling gin and persuading beerhouses to sell his brew and none others was easy enough once the first work was done; digging and selling coal required more effort every day, or so it seemed. Just finding customers to buy fuel in bulk demanded that he personally visit almost every pottery in Stoke, talking with their owners and chaffering and bargaining down to the last farthing on a hundredweight. Finding carriers to move the coal using their own carts took the remainder of his weeks. The alternative of buying his own wagons and employing drivers and their mates was likely to be more demanding, he suspected, but he would probably have to take that course before too long.
Managing the new pit was too much of a burden – the boss had to be present, on site, all day, every day, could not be out in town. It was not possible to both run the pit and sell the coal, and that demanded finding a practical man who could get his hands dirty to open up the pit.
His first thought had been to bring Richard Rowlands in to be his manager, but the young man had no knowledge of manual labour – he had never worked with his hands in his life. Besides that, he was showing ineffectual in finding new seams of coal – he was riding busily about the countryside but seemed to have no great scheme of action – he was doing rather than thinking. A month or two and it would be necessary to have a word with Mr Rowlands, senior, suggesting that he might endeavour to stimulate his son to more useful effort.
Sam scratched his head and looked up to the sky for inspiration, his gaze falling upon the original little workings, so successful under the hands of Bragg and his family…
‘Bloody stupid, that’s what you are, Sam Heythornethwaite!’
He walked across to his cob and climbed into the saddle.
“Giddup, Neddy!”
He would have to get another, more respectable horse – Neddy was no more than a working hack. A man of Sam’s respectability must be seen on a nag that was far more showy. Neddy still had the better part of ten years of work in him, but he was a shaggy, ambling sort of beast, more fitted to pull a gypsy caravan than carry a leading figure of commerce and industry such as Sam had become. Neddy could be put into the stables at the distillery, to be used by the clerks there when they needed to go into town to visit their customers.
He pointed Neddy down the dale and onto the track leading up to the cut on the moorland where he had first worked with coal. He rode beside his trackway, pulling Neddy off to the side as a truck rumbled laden downhill, a boy at the back stood on the brake to slow its progress to a safe speed. He suspected that the boy worked a bare half of the day – the little working did not produce enough to justify the trackway’s existence, but it was a useful working model and would allow him to build a better line next time, which would be soon coming.
“Morning, Master Sam!”
“Good day to you, Bragg. Is all well here?”
“None so bad, Master Sam.”
“Good. Can you leave this pit in the hands of your family, Bragg? You see across the dale where the coal has been uncovered? There is to be a new working there, and a trackway running as far down towards Stoke as can be built. I need a sensible, hard-working and clever man to manage the whole business for me.”
“Me, Master Sam?”
“You fit the bill, Bragg.”
“Canst send one of they letters down South for me, Master Sam? I can write it, but I don’t know nothing about sending such a thing. My brother George, younger nor me, has a pair of boys what will be ten and twelve years by now. If I am to work down the hill, then I need hands to replace all I do up here. Might be we could knock out another load or two in a day. Might be as well what ‘e might be wishful to come up thisaway and work for a wage, Master Sam, bringin’ the family with ‘im…”
“Write it and give me a direction for it, Bragg. If your brother George wishes to come up then I shall find a place for him, though probably no more than as a collier in the new pit, or, better still, replacing you up here. If he is as good a man as you, then he will soon enough do well for himself, I do not doubt.”
“Down in Dorset us comes from, Mr Sam. Portland way. No work down there except in the quarries, and they pays awful bad, so they do. Good for learning how to cut stone – and coal, for that be much the same in many ways. What do you reckon for pay, Mr Sam?”
“If your brother comes up then he will live up here in your bothy. You to bring your family down to a cottage, to be built new, and big enough for you. Your boys can work in the new pit, if so they wish, or on the trackway – there will be something for them. The girls can work a garden for you or cut coal, whichever they wish. You will have an acre or two to go with the house. For pay? Start at three pounds a week. Make a job of the pit and you will take one pound in ten of the profits on top.”
“That might be good money in three or four years, Master Sam.”
“I hope so – for every pound in your pocket, nine will go to mine. The richer you get, the happier I shall be.”
“I’ll be writing that letter tonight, Mr Sam. I’ll needs go down to the White Horse and beg the loan of a sheet of paper and a pen there, sir, for I ‘ave none such up on the moor, Master Sam.”
“Give it to me at soonest, Bragg, and it will go south that day.”
Chapter Nine
A Killing Too Far
Josie bore a second son barely two years later, and a daughter three years after that, to the pleasure of herself and her husband. She was happy in her existence, particularly as the coal-mining became more important and appeared to drive the rather vulgar distillation of gin into the background of her husband’s business life.
There was a feeling generally in the country, among those who had feelings that could and should be noticed, that the excesses of alcoholic abuse on the streets of their towns were undesirable and that ‘something’ should be done. What that something might be and who should do it was unspecified in the newssheets and the increasing number of pamphlets that were published, but public opinion was clear – the respectable united in deploring the debauchery of the population by gin, normally referring to it as the Demon Rum, for some strange reason that none could explain.
“Could we not sell out of gin, Sam?”
“We could, easily. I do not doubt I could find a buyer inside a month. But the distilleries are profitable, and they provide work for people. While I keep the distilleries, a good fifty men work directly for me, and every inn, pub and shebeen in Leek and Stoke looks to me, personally, for their supplies. At second hand, as you might say, they also know that Uncle Abe is their benefactor and master in the trade. That is useful indeed to us. More than one pottery maker buys his coal from me for knowing that they keep in with the upright man, even if they do not say so in as many words.”
She had never wished to come to terms with Sam’s position in the area as the right-hand man to his Uncle Abe. She rather preferred not to be aware of their more overtly criminal activities, having become increasingly respectable as a young matron.
“The, ah… upright man, as you call him, Sam… Is he
entirely, as one might say, above board in his dealings, Sam?”
Sam grinned, sat back in his great, cushioned, leather upholstered armchair, recently purchased and adding, he thought, much to his dignity in the household.
“No. He cannot be, my love. It is the function of the upright man to bring order to the less reputable areas of our towns. As such, he must be respected there, which predicates that he must himself be less than wholly reputable in the terms of those who decide what is or is not desirable conduct.”
He was rather proud of that sentence. He had been reading of recent years and had made a very deliberate attempt to further mend his ways of speech according to the new models.
“What does that mean, Sam?”
“There is no law in our towns, Josie. The courts have no authority, except over the very few who are brought before them. The constables have no power, and the Sheriff of the County can do nothing for lack of men and money. The rich and the ordinarily well-off can pay for their own watchmen; only they live in peace. Where there is order, where the poor and weak live in any degree of safety, it is because the local gangs are held under the control of a local figure of authority – the upright man, or whatever he may be called elsewhere in the country – I am told they have another name in London, and possibly in other big towns. This, my dear, does not come gratis, for free. Uncle Abe receives some not insignificant presents each year from the more important figures of the town. The majority of the more enterprising storekeepers pay him a shilling or two, or more, every week, from friendliness; the houses of ill-repute, of which there are more than a few, pay more.”
“What are they, Sam?”
It had not occurred to him that she might not be familiar with the phenomenon. He was taken aback.
“Ah… they are places which harbour young females, mostly, that is, who make their services available to any man who will pay them for their favours. Some, the poorest, will demand sixpence or even less; the most expensive houses will let no man inside their door who cannot show half a guinea.”
“By services, Sam, do you mean in a bed?”
“Exactly so, my dear.”
“Any man who will pay their price?”
“The more expensive may be somewhat more discriminating. Most simply take any and every customer who comes near them, if you will excuse that way of expressing myself.”
“But, for sixpence, or less, you say?”
“Just so, my love. Busy girls if they are to make a pound a night.”
“What? Surely…”
“A joke, my dear. Not the funniest, perhaps.”
“I did not know. I pity those poor females who cannot charge even sixpence. Why not, Sam?”
“Age, probably. Disease, not impossibly. I do not know. I have, I would assure you, no personal knowledge to draw upon. I would say that the very cheapest drabs do not even work inside such houses – they ply the streets, often using back-alleys to service their customers.”
“What sort of man will buy their services?”
She was appalled, unable to come to terms with her new knowledge.
“A very poor sort of individual, I fear, Josie. Poor, for lacking money; poor, for the absence of manliness, in my opinion.”
“So say I, sir!”
She was not pleased on reflection to have discovered that such houses paid their dues to Uncle Abe.
“They need protection. The men who are their customers are often violent brutes. There are those who have their way with the girls and then refuse to pay. Should they report such to Uncle Abe then he will come to their aid. There are a few even of the more prominent of the merchants and storekeepers of Stoke who have been visited by Uncle Abe’s employees and who have been persuaded to mend their ways. On occasion, a very large stick has been used to reform them. There are men, or so they style themselves, who take their pleasure as much from beating the girls as from using them in the normal way. There are few of them remaining in Stoke – it is the habit of Uncle Abe’s people to attempt to modify their behaviour but once.”
She understood all that was unsaid, was inclined to approve. She could accept as well that such services needed be paid for.
“Where there are no constables, or where the constables are no more than dotards, doddering old incompetents hardly able to walk down the street, then other means must be employed to maintain order, Sam. I can agree with that. Does Uncle Abe make a great profit from pacifying the town?”
“He must pay his people, my dear. He must as well make his own fortune, much of which may well come down to us. He has no natural heir of his own, now. The young lady he keeps in a cottage in Leek has produced no offspring on the wrong side of the blanket and so he has none to bequeath his wealth to.”
“I was not aware…”
“His lady wife prefers to sleep undisturbed of a night nowadays, and Uncle Abe is not yet in his dotage, my love.”
“Shocking, sir! Poor old fellow, that he should be reduced to such an expedient!”
“Not entirely, my dear. She is a very handsome young lady, possessed, shall we say, of certain assets that must make her very attractive in the bedroom.”
Josie preferred not to know what Sam was talking about; she fought not to laugh.
“Sam! You said, as I recall, that the houses mostly keep young females in them. Who else might be there?”
Sam cursed his careless mouth; he had no wish at all to answer that particular question yet could not avoid it.
“Some men, I am told – and I have no personal knowledge of this at all – prefer the company of other men, or boys, in their beds. The details of what they do, and how, I have never discovered, for being none of my business. How do our boys progress in their lessons, ma’am?”
She accepted that the conversation had been turned and was pleased to describe their eldest’s progress in learning his letters at a precocious age.
“Barely five years of age, Sam, and he can pick out his alphabet, and knows his first numbers.”
“Good. A year or two and we can find a teacher for him, one who can come to the house and set him on the path of reading and writing with some fluency. He will be a wealthy man, I much hope, and will be able to rub shoulders with the nobs of the County, but only if he can talk with them, knowing the same books as them.”
She was sure he was right.
“Have you heard from your father lately, Sam? Might he not wish to see his grandchildren?”
His father could hardly write, was not in the way of sending letters. The occasional traveller passing through the village and coming to Stoke might bring a verbal message, but it was rare that Sam heard from his father once in a year. The distance of ten miles between them was not easily crossed in the absence of any direct road.
“You are right, of course, and he is not getting any younger – he must be looking at sixty, or in that region… I should find a day to ride out to see him, should I not?”
“You ought to do so, Sam. Perhaps when you have bought your new riding horse, as you have so often said you must.”
Sam accepted the gentle reminder that his cob was not the sort of beast that a respectable man of affairs might be expected to be seen upon.
“A strong, broken saddle horse, Josie, of good blood, will cost as much as eighty guineas. There is small point to buying anything less, if the purpose is to show off my prosperity.”
She accepted that to be rather a lot but thought he must make a public show of being at least as well off as the gentry.
“My father thinks it important, Sam. He believes that you will be master of this house before too many months have passed, or so I read his hints to me.”
“Is Josh unwell, Josie? I had not noticed him to be under the weather.”
“He is wheezing, his chest not so strong as it was. Add to that, he is less willing to get out of the house as he used to. A few years ago, he would walk his fields and talk to the people in the valley almost every day. Now, if he goes out, it is more o
ften in pony and trap and rarely that he actually is seen on the valley sides. He was surprised to hear that you had put nearly forty acres to sloes, Sam, and that has been easily seen these last three years.”
“And a very wise move too, my dear! The sloe gin sells remarkably well and we are now even putting crates onto the carts going up to Liverpool. Mr Hayes is placing a good few dozens of bottles into stores in the better part of the town every week. Good alcohol is not easily come by and there are many who enjoy their little tipple of our best, Josie. I have it in mind to buy in sloes from others in the area, to increase our output of the virtuous spirit. I suspect there are little people on the moors who would be very pleased to earn a few shillings a year from sending their girls out to pick sloes for me.”
She could see that would be so, and it would do his name much good in the surrounding areas.
“The word would spread that folk out in the small places across the moorland were obliged to you, and that would soon become known in the County. A good thing for our children, ten years from now.”
“Exactly, my dear. Profitable now, to an extent, but most valuable in a decade.”
They returned to the discussion of her father’s health and wondered if he might not be persuaded to call the doctor to him.
“He does not believe in doctors, Sam. Since my brother died, especially, he has been of the opinion that they take swingeing great fees in exchange for remarkably little by way of cures. I must say that I am inclined to agree with him. He might listen to the advice of a cunning man such as often treats the animals, but I do not think he will pay out for a true medical practitioner. He has better things to do with his half-crowns, I think.”
Sam did not know whether a doctor might be of value, but he was convinced that a cunning man was a low sort of person, not the type who should be permitted entry through their respectable doors.
“Perhaps so, Sam. I doubt the question arises, though. Father does not seem to believe himself ill just now.”
A Killing Too Far Page 18
