A Mother's Dilemma

by Emma Hornby

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Also by Emma Hornby

  Copyright

  A MOTHER’S

  DILEMMA

  Emma Hornby

  For my readers – thanks to you all. Without you, it’s simply words on a page. And my ABC, always x

  About the experienced masters in the craft, there is the quiet canniness of the devil.

  Benjamin Waugh, founder of the NSPCC, on baby farmers

  Author’s Note

  It was whilst researching for something else that I first stumbled upon the subject of baby farming. Both horrified and fascinated, I was driven to find out more and the idea for this book was born.

  Baby farming was a scourge of the Victorian era. The term referred to the act of accepting custody of an infant, usually illegitimate, in exchange for money. Social conditions of the time forced desperate mothers to use such services in their droves. However, though most baby farmers were paid with the understanding that care would be provided, not all were as trustworthy as they seemed. Once the fee had disappeared, the child quickly followed suit.

  The heinous practice was widespread and vast numbers of children were disposed of by so-called ‘angel makers’. Rising numbers of convictions for murder and neglect finally forced Parliament to confront the epidemic, and proper fostering and adoption regulations were introduced. The last baby farmer to be hanged was in 1907.

  Research for A Mother’s Dilemma made for grim reading, but immersing myself in a subject matter is vital to bring the reader an authentic portrayal. Bygone times were hard for the people that lived them and I always strive to weave the fact into my stories. I do hope you enjoy Jewel’s journey.

  Emma Hornby

  Chapter 1

  1856

  THE BABY’S GUSTY yell filled the kitchen again and Minnie Maddox chuckled. A healthy pair of lungs on the tiniest scraps of life always brought warm happiness to her. It was the quiet ones you had to keep an eye to, for Death’s cold claws never hovered too far away. Were it to catch you unawares, the shadowed fiend would spirit a body away in half a heartbeat. She should know. Hadn’t she borne witness to such, time and again?

  Abandoning her baking and wiping her floury hands on her apron, she then lifted the lid of a small saucepan. Before dipping a fingertip inside and wiggling it around to check the temperature, she glanced to the damp-stained wall to her left. Muffled shouts could be heard from next door and, though Minnie wasn’t one to eavesdrop on other folks’ business, how could you close your ears to such goings-on when the dividing bricks were as thin as theirs were and the voices so loud with the passion of their disagreement?

  ‘Please. Oh, won’t tha reconsider?’

  ‘I’ll not waste another breath on this, woman.’

  ‘But Fred, we could make it work, aye, if only you’d give it half a chance—’

  A thud, sounding like a fist meeting a tabletop in angry frustration, smothered the pleas. ‘Nay, I said! That’s an end to it.’

  Minnie lowered her stare with a small, sorry sigh. As she knew it would, seconds later, her good friend and neighbour Flora Nightingale’s harsh weeping pushed next through the crumbling plaster: ‘Husband, please, please …’

  ‘I’ll not – cannot – fetch up another fella’s babby.’ Fred’s words had lost a little of their hardness but still, his tone was firm. ‘It’s a child of our own or none at all.’

  ‘I’m fifty-one years of age, Fred. There’s been norra glimpse of a monthly bleed from me this past year or more – it’s over for me that way, can’t you see? Yet there’s babbies aplenty needing homes still and always shall be; we could give such a thing to one. A poor mite without a mam or father to call their own could be ours, if only you’d—’

  ‘It’s not to be for us and that’s that. The Lord has made His decision loud and clear and it’s not for us to question His design.’ He paused. Then he took a loud, shuddering breath that relayed locked up inside himself a mountain of disappointment and pain. ‘Now, we’ll speak on this no more. That’s an order, Flora.’

  Gulping sobs were the only sound as his wife struggled to stem her heartache in compliance, then silence fell. Minnie wiped away a tear for the couple next door and returned her attention to her task.

  When the child yelled out once more, this time, it brought no laughter to Minnie. Instead, she bit her lip, for if she heard as easily as she did business from the Nightingales’ dwelling, so they must hear well enough the noises in here, and how much worse must Flora’s emptiness stab to hear what she craved more than anything else in the world? Minnie was heartsore for her – for the pair of them.

  She craned her neck to glance to the staircase, calling, ‘Eliza, lass? Cradle the new mite, will thee, whilst I prepare its grub? Poor divil shall waken the rest, else, and that’s the last thing we need.’

  A girl around ten years of age, a floral-patterned scarf tied around her head, emerged at the top step. Her face, hands and apron were grubby with coal dirt and her equally dark brows drew together as she clattered down to the kitchen. ‘Thought tha told me to see to the fire up yonder?’ She flicked her eyes in the direction from which she’d just come. ‘I can’t be in two places at once, you know. If we’re to make the bedroom presentable for the next what calls with a full belly, you can’t keep yelling for me to aid you in this and t’ other—’

  ‘Shurrup blathering and see to him, will thee?’ Minnie cut in mildly. ‘He just wants a cuddle. Reassuring, like. He’s likely fretting for his mam.’

  With an exaggerated sigh and a roll of her eyes, the girl crossed to the sagging bed wedged into the alcove by the fire. Arranged in a neat line the length of it and wrapped in an assortment of clean but ragged coverings were half a dozen bundles – babies of varying ages. Eliza reached for the smallest one snuggled between two others and held him against her chest, making clucking sounds of comfort.

  The mixture in the pan Minnie was occupied with, which had been warming by the fire for most of the day, still held some heat; she nodded, satisfied. She poured the pap – a creamy concoction made up of water, flour and animal milk, sweetened sufficiently – into a glass nursing bottle. Checking that the fine twine that attached the sparkling white calf’s teat to the bottle’s neck was secure, she too now crossed to the bed. Before relieving Eliza of her burden, she drew a little of the food through to warm the teat, thus heightening the chance of the baby not rejecting it. Some children required gentle manipulation for them to believe it was what nature intended and not the artificial but adequate thing it was. She prayed this child would be easy to hoodwink.

  ‘There, now. That’s right. Ay, you’re not fussy, are thee? Good lad,’ Minnie cooed with approval as the scrawny fingers clamped around the feeding vessel, drawing it closer. Grasping the teat between his lips, he drank heartily, eyes too large for his monkey-like face at once growing drowsy with satisfaction.

  Her o
wn misted at the sight. Poor young devil – and oh, his poor young mother, too. Hadn’t she wept something awful this morning when she’d deposited him here? She’d loved him, that much was plain. But what was an unfortunate of this city, with nothing in life, to do? She couldn’t very well have kept him with her in the one room she shared with two other women of her trade, could she? Customers wouldn’t much like that, nay, and besides, it was no life for a child, his mother had insisted, and Minnie had agreed. Best he was given half a chance, eh, at this struggle most called life?

  As she had then, filled with pity watching the streetwalker count out the necessary coins, Minnie silently swore again she’d do her best for him. And she would. She did, for them all. Every child who entered her home would only leave it for one better than anything its mam could have dreamed to offer it. That was her mission. As far as she knew, she’d failed none yet.

  ‘Min?’ Eliza’s whisper sounded behind her, pulling her from her musings.

  ‘Aye, lass?’

  ‘This one’s dead.’

  She swallowed in cold dread. ‘What?’

  ‘This one’s dead,’ the girl repeated.

  Slowly, Minnie forced herself to turn. In the crook of Eliza’s arm, the grey-white face and colourless lips outlined with their ring of blue confirmed it. Minnie deposited the feeding child into the girl’s free arm and lifted the still-warm body of the other, larger child. But for his bloodless features, he appeared to be resting. Just sleeping the deep slumber of the innocent, not dead, gone … Her voice was hollow. ‘All right, poor angel. Aunt Min is here.’

  ‘Seems to have slipped away, quiet like, whilst you were about your baking. He’d not have suffered none, Min,’ the girl offered gently as reassurance.

  Though Minnie knew her words to be right, still the truth did little to dampen the hurt, the guilt. One baby departs this earth, another arrives to take its place in the world … She released a pain-filled sigh.

  ‘Don’t be for blaming yourself,’ continued Eliza, as though reading her thoughts. ‘He weren’t for settling from the off, was he?’

  She shook her head. ‘Mind, it’s not only that he were sickly in health and strength, nay. He’s pined away, that’s what. Watched him wither before my eyes, I have, these past weeks. What was there for me to do? Feed, bathe, clothe – love even, aye – I can do that. Mend a broken heart, I can’t. That’s what’s finished him off. Being parted from his mam proved too much for the poor soul, I reckon.’ She looked to Eliza for confirmation and, receiving it in way of a nod, breathed deeply again in an attempt to pull herself together. She couldn’t afford the luxury of a good weep; besides, what good would that do? She had the scant burial to plan, the others to care for, her home, her baking to see to. Babies came and babies went. One way or another.

  Throughout the following hours, necessary arrangements were conducted and life in general behind the door of number six Kirby Street continued, as it must. Now, the departed soul, washed and wrapped in a white blanket, lay in a tiny, rough wood coffin, which the undertaker’s boy had carried upstairs shortly before to the bedroom Minnie and Eliza shared. The remaining infants, as though sensing his departure and the heaviness in air wrought by the loss, had been quieter than usual – Minnie was thankful for it. She couldn’t wait to get into bed later and allow herself that cry. Aye, that’s what she needed: a cup of tea and a good bawl. The latter would have to wait a few more hours, but the former, she could do.

  Eliza, one eye on the bed and the sleeping babies within, the other on the ancient blanket she was darning, glanced up as Minnie passed her fireside chair en route to the teapot. ‘All right?’

  ‘Aye. I’ll grab some air forra minute, lass. Just yell should one of the babbies stir, I’ll hear thee.’

  The early June sun barely touched the dying afternoon. Sitting like a dull white disc in the smoke-choked sky, it acknowledged the inhabitants of this grey industrial city with little more than a passing glance. The daily struggle of its rays to pierce the sulphurous fog from an army of cotton-mill, factory and domestic chimneys, whose numbers had astronomically increased throughout the century, had left its mark – it had given up the fight long ago. Even in the height of summer, the haphazard maze of cobbled streets, lanes and narrow courts remained imprisoned in impenetrable gloom. Unsurprisingly, it mirrored the mood of an already suffering populace entirely.

  Glancing to her left, Minnie eyed the mass of sooty red bricks that was the Manchester Flint Glass Works. The main works building of the ever-expanding premises, nestled at the south side of Kirby Street and adjoining Canal Street, loomed like a guard overseeing its workforce. Indeed, a large fraction of those who laboured hard beyond its doors resided in the surrounding streets. Situated strategically along the bank of the head of the Islington Branch Canal, which fed into the main line of nearby Ashton Canal, it transported its raw materials and finished products through the short body of water continually. Canals fostered the growth of industry with their ability to carry bulky goods long distances cheaply and efficiently – like many other businesses, the glass works took full advantage of the fact.

  Aye well, thought Minnie with a bitter shake of her head. So long as the labour was completed in as short a space of time as possible and the profits were healthy, the masters were happy. Mind, much of their workforce were not afforded the luxury of those descriptions – healthy, happy – were they?

  Her long-departed husband had been employed there most of his life – today, along with hundreds more men, women and children, Fred Nightingale next door still was. He and her Walter had been firm friends since they were kiddies and, when Fred secured the neighbouring house shortly after his marriage, she and new bride Flora had instantly grown just as close. A grand couple, they were, and a great comfort to her when Walter succumbed to the harsh conditions of his trade.

  The life of a glass blower was not for the meek of heart. The majority died young. The long, irregular hours were hardship enough. Yet it was the great heat that proved the crux for many. Temperatures reached such hellish heights that it was not unheard of for the very boards on which the workers stood to catch fire beneath their feet.

  Besides the obvious susceptibility to burns, as well as violent bouts of nausea and rheumatic disorders, their sight and lungs were also affected – her beloved’s red eyes and rattling wheeze were what she remembered most about him now. The chest affliction that carried him off had taken a piece of her, too. But for the now-grown children born from her womb and those she cared for today with as much attentiveness and affection – none more than Eliza – she’d have followed him to the soil many a long year before this one, she was sure.

  And what had she to show for an early widowhood and the torment that came with it? Her gaze flicked behind her indoors, to linger on the sideboard against the back wall. Winking atop it in the fire’s glow stood an eight-inch-tall, thick glass candlestick of cut prisms, presented to her after Walter’s death as a token of acknowledgement for services rendered. Quite exquisite; a fine example of industrial art. However, a poor comparison to a blood-and-bone companion.

  Yet despite it all, he’d had work, and that wasn’t something to sniff at. Brass to pay the rent, keep the cold from their marrow and hunger from their bellies. The unemployed of this city would give their right arm and leg, as well as eventually their life, she’d bet, for the chance to earn an honest crust. It was how it was. Aye, she’d known loss, but who hadn’t?

  Again, Minnie’s eyes travelled inside, only this time towards the stairs and the chilled body of the poor dead babe now free of this life of want. Fresh tears stung. She hugged herself.

  ‘Hello, Minnie.’

  Lost in thought, she jumped at the quiet greeting and fingers squeezing her shoulder. ‘Flora, love. All right?’

  The slightly built woman rested her back against the bricks by her own front door. ‘Catching some air, Minnie.’

  ‘Aye, and me.’ She stole a sidelong look at her friend. ‘And
how’s Fred?’ she asked carefully, not wanting to give away that she’d heard their ruckus earlier and embarrass the woman.

  Her response was barely above a whisper. ‘Abed. He’s on night work the night.’

  Minnie turned now and eyed Flora properly. She looked terrible, all pale cheeks and purple-rimmed eyes. ‘You sure you’re well, wench?’

  ‘Nay, if I’m honest. That pain’s nagging me again. Feel queasy summat awful, an’ all.’

  Minnie frowned worriedly. For many months now, her friend had been blighted by internal complaints and sickness. She also seemed to have a permanent headache – stress, Flora reckoned, but coupled with her other symptoms, Minnie wasn’t so sure. She’d attempted several times to coax her into getting the doctor out, but Flora wouldn’t hear of it. His services cost money they could ill afford; she’d be right as rain soon, she’d insist, yet her ailments showed no signs of abating. She looked to be getting worse, if anything.

  ‘Fred said nay again.’ Flora shrugged miserably. ‘I don’t know why I keep going on about it. Does no good at all. He’ll not consider another fella’s offspring.’

  Minnie’s voice was soft. ‘Some men can be funny about things like that, that’s all. He’s not denying thee to hurt thee, wench.’

  ‘I know. He’s a good husband to me. I just can’t understand … It matters norra single bit to me. I just want … any would do, any.’

  ‘Eeh, love.’

  Tears had thickened Flora’s words, but she cleared her throat and a wistful smile appeared. ‘Remember when me and my Fred were wed, Minnie, and came to live here?’

  ‘I do. I were just thinking on that a minute since, as it happens.’

  ‘Ay, we had all our lives before us. So hopeful, we were, for the future. Never did we think that the Almighty would turn His back on us and deny us the one thing we both yearned for more than owt else.’

  Minnie had heard such lamentations hundreds of times over the years and now, as always, she simply listened. It was what Flora needed: a frequent, open ear to which she could unburden her heartache. Minnie, unable to imagine what a motherless existence must be like, offered it always, willingly.