Salem Street

by Anna Jacobs

  By now, Jeremy was starting to make a name for himself in Bilsden, among both rich and poor, as a fine and dedicated doctor. Annabelle, though she continued to complain about the town, enjoyed basking in the reflected glory. During the next few months, Jeremy set a broken arm for the Purbrights’ youngest boy and it healed as good as new; he attended the confinement of another mill-owner’s wife, a difficult breech birth, and saved both mother and child; and when he was summoned to Hallam’s mill after an accident, he earned even Frederick’s reluctant admiration by the rapidity with which he sewed up gashes and set broken limbs, helped by that quiet-speaking man of his.

  There were a lot of poor people who also had cause to be grateful to Dr Lewis. It might be a matter of indifference to his wife, but it was soon known all over the Rows that you could trust Dr Lewis to look after you, whether you could pay him or not. He wasn’t frightened of the bullies in Florida Terrace or Claters End, either, and would scold them vigorously as he bandaged them up after their fights. They chose to be amused by this and spread the word to leave the new doctor alone, so that he was safe wherever he went, whatever the hour of day or night.

  Sam Peters, seeing that John Gibson was just drifting along since his wife’s death, introduced him to a few fellow-Methodists, who met every Sunday and sometimes midweek as well, to pray and to read the Bible. John couldn’t read, but he listened avidly and was soon a fervent convert, eventually being saved and reborn in the Lord. He found some comfort for the still-aching gap Lucy’s death had left in his life in the idea that he would be reunited with her in heaven, if he set to and earned his way into the Kingdom of God. He never had the slightest doubt that she would be waiting for him there. Pure gold she had been, his Lucy, pure gold.

  The little group of Methodists was labouring hard to raise funds to build a chapel. About a year after John joined them, they were left a few acres of land by an old spinster, whom Sam had met through his job with the doctor. With no thought of gain, he had gone regularly to see the lonely old woman and had talked to her, without realising what he was doing, of his hopes and plans. As well as the land, she left fifty pounds towards the building of the chapel, not enough, but a wonderful start.

  Jeremy, who had been made responsible for dispensing this money, recounted this tale to Frederick Hallam and some other men one night after dinner and, to his surprise, Frederick grew thoughtful. “It might be worth lending them a hand,” he said, rubbing his nose.

  The other three men at the table shouted with laughter.

  “You, helping the bloody Methodists, Hallam! That’s rich!” spluttered one of them, choking on a mouthful of port.

  “You’ll have to give this up,” said another, brandishing the decanter and slopping the rich ruby liquid on to Annabelle’s best damask tablecloth. “It’s affecting your brain!” More paroxysms of mirth.

  Frederick banged on the table to get their attention. “You lot can’t see further than the ends of your own noses. You all know the problem we have with the operatives and their drinking. I get some damned careless work on Mondays. And they throw stones and break the windows of the mill at nights when they’re drunk. I have to employ a watchman, and a fat lot of good he is! It’d take an army to police my properties properly.”

  “And you think the bloody Methodists can stop the damage? You’ve had a bit too much port, old chap!”

  “Not stop it,” said Hallam, smiling to himself, “but I was talking to an owner from over Oldham way last week and he reckons it cuts down the drunkenness and …” he paused and waved a cigar at them, “the Methodists also teach the children to read and write, and the women to look after their families better.”

  Jeremy’s interest was fairly caught. “Go on, Frederick!” He sipped a little port and nodded encouragingly. He was not a drinker himself, but acting as host at her parties was one of the few things he was prepared to do to keep Annabelle happy. He’d learned to make one glass of wine spin out for a long time and occasionally enjoyed the conversation.

  “If you teach ’em to read, you’re asking for trouble,” the man with the decanter declared, banging it down on the table. “I prefer ’em ignorant, myself.”

  “You’re short-sighted, Jonas Dawton,” said Hallam, “and you always have been! Look, man, the machinery’s getting more and more complicated. We’re going to need operatives with a bit of sense in their heads to work it and service it, men who can read and write, and who can follow instructions and diagrams. Peter Dodson, over in Oldham, reckons he gets his best overseers and chargehands from the Methodists. Not counting his first steam engine, he says giving them a bit of land for their chapel was the best investment he ever made.”

  He sat there for a moment, then slammed his hand down on the table. “I’ll do it! I’ll put up some money towards their chapel! It’ll be fifty pounds well spent, I reckon. They can have that pile of lumber behind my mill, as well. It wasn’t strong enough for my flooring, but it’ll do well enough for roofing their chapel. And if you have any sense, you’ll all do the same. These Nonconformists not only educate themselves, they also look after those who’re in trouble. And that keeps those damned poor rates down.”

  There was a chorus of amazement, for Frederick Hallam was not noted for his philanthropy or for his generosity, and few of them believed his explanation for his gesture. Educating the lower classes only led to trouble.

  “Your man’s a Methodist, isn’t he?” Frederick asked Jeremy.

  “Yes. He’s very committed. One of the leaders, you might call him, though he’d deny that.”

  “Send him over to the mill to see me when you can spare him for an hour. And now, that’s enough about chapels, gentlemen. Let’s return to the lovely ladies!”

  The scheme, born in a moment of drunken conviviality, gained enough support in the town to furnish funds for a small, very plain red-brick chapel. Under the wing of the circuit committee in Manchester and a local steering committee, chaired by a farmer from Clough Knowle, with the thirty-two-year-old unmarried daughter of the town’s leading grocer as secretary and Sam in charge of the practical details of the building, the chapel was funded, designed and built in record time.

  It was finished just before Annie’s twelfth birthday. From then onwards, Annie, Tom, Lizzie and the Peters children found their Sunday activities seriously curtailed, for there was chapel in the morning and Sunday School in the afternoon. Annie was not overly taken with chapel, for she was tone deaf, and had to mime the words to the hymns or else people stared at her. And the sermons were far too long, in her opinion. Her dad got angry if she let Lizzie fidget, but it was hard to keep a small girl still for so long.

  Tom hated going to chapel from the start, for he always loathed being penned up indoors, but he didn’t dare say so to his father, who had found a new meaning to life in Methodism. The Peters children accepted it more philosophically, for they were used to a lot of praying at home, as well as Sunday readings of the Bible. Matt Peters actually enjoyed the sermons and would discuss them at length with his father on the way home.

  Annie’s devotion to Matt had increased rather than decreased over the two years she had known him. She didn’t realise that the whole street knew her ‘secret’, for she had confided only in her friend Ellie. Annie longed to grow up, to keep up with Matt, who was now so large and manly. She was terrified that he would meet another girl and start walking out with her.

  Matt himself was aware of Annie’s devotion, though not of the depths of it, and always tried to be kind to her, assuming that it was merely a childish infatuation. In the meantime, she was Ellie’s friend, she was a nice lass and he didn’t mind her tagging along.

  There were few changes in the street in those two years. The Butterworths moved out and a young couple moved into Number One. Fred and Carol Peck had one child and another on the way. Carol’s aunt came to live with them shortly afterwards and they got on very well with everyone in the street, except George and Polly Dykes in Number Two. Polly drank a
s much as George now, and had done ever since her little son had died of the measles the previous year. Even the new baby, another boy, didn’t seem to ease her loss. Well, women always did take the first loss of a child hard, Bridie O’Connor said, and tried to be kind to poor Polly.

  She knew about that sort of thing, Bridie thought bitterly. She’d lost a few children herself, in more ways than one. Her two eldest sons had recently moved out. Peter had got married to a feckless girl from down Claters End and Danny, the eldest, had got fed up of working in the mill and had just gone off on the tramp one day. The last they’d heard of him, he’d gone for a navvy and was helping to build a pit railway near Sheffield. He was earning good money, Bridie told everyone proudly, and had written to the good father about it, but she could not help fretting for him. He’d always been her favourite, in spite of his wilfulness. There was no one who could make you laugh like her Danny could. No, nor a finer looking young man anywhere.

  The first minister to be appointed to the brand new Todmorden Road Methodist Chapel was Saul Hinchcliffe. This was his first full-time appointment and he was burning to spread the Lord’s word. He was the only son of a well-to-do farmer from Knutsford, in Cheshire, and had been called to salvation at a prayer meeting when he was only fifteen.

  One of the causes dearest to Saul’s heart was the education of the young. Bilsden, the mushroom growth of the industrial age, had no grammar school and its little day school was a disgrace. Sergeant Brown had gone suddenly to join his Maker at the beginning of 1832, and the man who had taken over his school was an ill-educated bully. Saul knew that it would take years to find a proper solution to this problem of educating the young of the poorer citizens, but in the meantime, he made it his business to set up a proper Sunday School, where the children could at least be taught their letters. He even wheedled slates and primers out of Frederick Hallam, having quickly realised that that gentleman’s interest lay not in Methodism, but in ways of obtaining sober, better-educated workers.

  Matt, Annie, Ellie and any other children old enough to attend were drilled in their reading by using the Bible and various religious tracts, written especially for children and provided free by a group of charitable ladies in Manchester. These ladies visited the chapel once a year and listened to the best scholars read, but the children of the Rows mostly found their little lectures incomprehensible.

  Saul himself taught the top class, which contained the older or the more promising students, among them Annie. He was a firm believer in the education of women and entirely applauded the saying that ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’. He left the younger children, who were just beginning their letters and with whom he had not much patience, to his helpers. He also ran a men’s Bible Group on Thursday nights, ostensibly to study the word of the Lord, but in fact to teach the grown men to read. John attended this for a while and learned to write and to read simple texts, but he soon found other things to occupy himself with.

  The main outcome for the Gibsons of John’s involvement with Methodism was his growing friendship with one Emily Taylor, a widow with one child. She made a meagre living by taking in lodgers and washing, and it was one of these who brought her to the chapel one Sunday. Her husband had died two years previously, leaving her with a young daughter and another baby on the way. Fortunately for her practical needs, she’d miscarried. Once she’d recovered from that, she found herself some lodgers, took in washing and managed to scrape a living. She was a thin woman, with a bumpy nose and mouse-coloured hair, screwed back into a tight bun, as different from Lucy as chalk from cheese.

  John gradually grew used to Emily. He didn’t fall in love with her, as he had once fallen in love with Lucy, but he asked her advice sometimes about his children and found her to be a sensible woman, not realising that she was just echoing his own thoughts. He drifted into a courtship, as much for practical reasons as anything. He wasn’t the sort of man to live for ever without a woman.

  Annie had met Emily Taylor at chapel, of course, for in a small congregation everyone knew everyone else. It was a while before she realised what was happening and when she did, being Annie, she confronted her father immediately. “Dad – if you don’t watch out, people will think you’re courting Emily Taylor.”

  He flushed and concentrated on his pipe.

  “Dad – you’re not!”

  “Well, a man needs a woman t’look after him.”

  “But I do the house! We don’t need anyone else!”

  “Aye, an’ you do it very well, lass. But it’s a heavy burden on one so young. Em’ly says …”

  “I don’t care what Emily says. I hate her! She’s stupid!” Tears were streaming down Annie’s thin face. “Dad, you can’t! Not after Mam!”

  John grew angry. “You mind your manners when you’re talkin’ about your elders!” he shouted. “I’m not askin’ you, I’m tellin’ you! Me an’ Em’ly’s goin’ to be wed, an’ that’s all there is to it.”

  Annie’s sobs redoubled.

  “An’ what’s more, she’s comin’ round to dinner after morning service on Sunday, so I want everythin’ nice here. You mind what I say, our Annie!”

  Everything was immaculate in the little house on the Sunday. Annie had debated leaving things in a mess, to put Emily Taylor off them, but had then come round to Ellie’s view that she owed it to herself and her dead mother to show what she could do.

  The visit was not a success. Emily already counted Annie as a cross she would have to bear in her second marriage. Tom was a normal enough boy, if a bit rough, and Lizzie was still young enough to be moulded in Emily’s ways, but that Annie was a cheeky young madam. Emily also resented Annie’s efficiency as a housekeeper, for she knew she could not match it.

  In October 1832, John Gibson and Emily Taylor were married. First they fulfilled their legal obligations by a brief ceremony in the parish church of St Mark, conducted in a cursory manner by a bored curate. Parson Kenderby acknowledged that it was his legal duty to marry even those who were not members of the congregation, but he did not trouble to hide his disapproval of those damned impertinent Dissenters and Nonconformists, and he mainly left them to the curate. John and Emily, supported by their children and witnesses, all of whom felt as uncomfortable as they did amid the gaudy trappings of the Established Church, breathed a sigh of relief when it was over and they were free to walk down to their own bare chapel. There, they went through what they felt to be the real wedding ceremony.

  Afterwards the family went back to Salem Street and Emily took possession of Number Three. She immediately reorganised the furniture, putting her own pieces into prominence and putting Annie’s back up in a dozen different ways. John and his new wife had the front bedroom and Tom, who had been sleeping with his father, was relegated to a mattress in a corner of the front room downstairs, because Emily said he was too old to sleep with his sisters now and anyway, May wasn’t his sister. Annie found six-year-old May’s presence in the bedroom irritating, not only because she told her mother everything that Annie said or did, but because Lizzie struck up a friendship with May that left the older girl out.

  After a few weeks, Emily broached the idea of finding Annie a job.

  John was startled. “Nay, there’s no rush!” he said. “Is she – is she givin’ you any trouble? I won’t have her upsettin’ you.”

  “No, no! It’s not that,” replied Emily, who knew better than to admit that she just couldn’t stand the girl to a father as fond of his children as John. “It were all right when she stayed home to look after you, but,” she added coyly, “you’ve got me to do that now.”

  “You’re a good woman, Em’ly.” He refused to let himself think of Lucy as he said this. There had only been one Lucy.

  “Well, love, your Annie’s turned twelve. We have to think of her future, you know. Most girls of her age are out at work, bringin’ a bit in and savin’ up to get wed.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That Ellie Peters is goin�
� into t’mill.”

  “Is she? I didn’t think Sam wanted her to. I wouldn’t let my Annie go there. It’s all right for boys like Tom, but I don’t want it for my girls. Their mother was dead set against it.”

  “Well, there’s not much else girls can do round here if they don’t go in t’mill. But,” Emily brought the conversation firmly back to the point, “I wouldn’t want your Annie to feel she’d been done badly to. When I made my promises to you before the Lord, I promised meself that I’d be a second mother to your children.”

  “Aye. I knew I could rely on you, Em’ly.”

  “But the thing is, John, a girl of her age needs to be kept busy. The devil finds mischief for idle hands, you know.”

  “I suppose so.” John felt out of his depth. What did he know about the needs of twelve-year-old girls? “What did you have in mind, then?”

  “Well, she’s a clever lass, Annie is. She could do better for ’erself than t’mill.”

  John squeezed her hand, grateful for this thoughtfulness.

  “So I thought about puttin’ her into service.” She didn’t tell him that the most appealing thing about putting Annie into service was the fact that she would have to live at her employer’s house and would thus be out of Emily’s way. “It’s a respectable life for a girl, an’ there’s prospects. An’ your Annie’s that clever, she’d be bound to do well. I – er – I’ve already asked Mr Hinchcliffe if he knows anyone as is lookin’ for some help an’ he thinks he’ll be able to find Annie a place. He says folk in the country are allus lookin’ for help, so he’s goin’ to write to his family.”