The Old Order (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 7)

by Andrew Wareham

  A bell rang and they stood silently, waited to be dismissed to their next class. They filed out of the door, formed pairs and walked quietly round to the engine shed at the rear.

  Jacky and William were set to be stokers for an hour, watched by the steam engineer’s mate. Stoking was the simplest and most dangerous work of all around an engine; an engineer would never be called upon to do the job, but he must be able to watch over his stokehold, must know how everything was to be done properly.

  The boys picked up their broad, flat-bladed shovels, positioned themselves as they had been taught, number one to the left, number two on the right; then they took it in turns, a simple repetition of the same set movements. Tap on the locking bar to the furnace door to open it; load the shovel from the heap behind them; one pace, swinging the shovel and twisting as it entered the door, the coals spread evenly across the flames, the heat blasting their face; pull the shovel back and push the door closed in the same movement; step back for number two.

  Provided the coals were spread evenly and, at sea, the ship was rolling only a little, that was the whole of the job. If the fire became higher on one side than the other then they had to take the ash bar, a long metal rake in effect, and level it, quickly, before it burned low.

  A stumble into the front of the furnace meant burns; if the door was open it was almost certain death. Dehydration lay always in wait, its first signs dizziness…

  They had been taught that they must drink not less than a quart of water in an hour of stoking, and they must mix a generous pinch of salt in one of the mugs supplied.

  The engineer’s mate had a bubbled, scarlet welt across his face, just missing his eye – he said he had been careless, once.

  The boy stokers were always released after an hour, sent to scrub themselves before the evening meal. The pair walked slowly, sweat-covered, past the kitchens towards the ablution block; there was an open window, a bread board with two dozen or so thick slices on it. William glanced swiftly about, jumped up to the window sill, swore as Jacky tackled him and hauled him down again.

  “What did y’ do that for? There ain’t nobody about!”

  “We ain’t ‘ungry. We don’t need it!”

  “It’s food!”

  “We got enough – we wants more bread we can always ‘ave another slice. We don’t bloody need it!”

  “It’s food, ain’t it!”

  “We got enough food and we can’t bloody keep it in case we go short next week, you stupid bugger!”

  “Don’t you bloody call me stupid!”

  “It’s too late now, anyway, there’s some bugger comin’.”

  They trotted off, moaning and giving each other the occasional shove, accidental-like on purpose.

  “Do you know those boys, Mr Mostyn? Is that one a habitual thief?”

  Tom and Mostyn had been out of sight but in easy hearing range, completing their tour of inspection.

  “I doubt he is a thief at all, my lord, not as such. He is twelve years old and has been hungry for all of those years, apart from the last two months. The bread he stole in the past may have often made the difference between living and dying, my lord. You could count the ribs on the pair of them when they came in from their orphanage, so-called! He will learn, given time, quite possibly a lot of time, my lord. The boy Jacky, who counselled him not to steal, is an unusual lad, one who has kept his intelligence – for too many the inquisitive streak of the able brain has been starved out of them – but he can think for himself, and for others. It is early days yet, my lord, but one might wish to suggest a different path for him – learn his engineering and then perhaps be sent to the shipyard to learn still more and become valuable to the business. We have all heard of the unlikeliest men achieving great success, after all.”

  “We have indeed, Mr Mostyn! Myself for one, of course. Sir William Rumpage is another who will be known to you – indeed I hear that the ‘Navvy Knight’ is not unknown in the whole land, rather to my pride.”

  There had been a reference in a newssheet a few weeks before, deploring the tendency towards violence and trades unionism, the two apparently hand-in-hand according to the writer, and lauding the example of the hard-working men who had made themselves great. Sir William, though not referred to by name, had been much in the writer’s mind, the ‘Herculean pioneer of steamship building' easy to identify.

  “I will speak to Mr Robert and see if he wishes to make an arrangement for especially deserving boys. I will not do it myself because I am taking a lesser part in the business from the very near future. I suspect that this Institute will be one of my last creations, Mr Mostyn, as I intend, for perhaps the first time in my life, to, as they say, ‘take things easy’.”

  Mostyn made the appropriate comments, anodyne and ignored.

  “What do you do next, my lord? Will you stay in your house in Liverpool for the while?”

  “I must speak with Mr Joseph Andrews, I believe, Mr Mostyn, and try to settle with him exactly what his future must hold. In fact, I shall be speaking to his wife at second hand, or so I am informed; rumour insists that Joseph’s future lies in her very capable hands.”

  Mostyn felt himself unable to comment.

  “Joseph, you look very well, my son! Sun-bronzed, indeed!”

  “I have spent the last week in Mr Stephenson’s company, sir, most of it walking his new trackway. More than twenty miles, sir, and some of it to be under steam locomotion! The hills to be served by stationary engines working rope lifts, and the carriages to be horse-drawn in some parts where the land-owners insisted, but a good half to be modern!”

  “A testing ground, in some ways, by the sound of it.”

  “Essentially, yes, sir – but long enough to be useful, and sufficient to gain attention and, one trusts, acceptance by the people. There will be passenger coaches, sir, as well as the coal which will pay its way.”

  “Profitable? For us, that is.”

  “I have already discussed the nature of the tracks themselves, and Roberts will be invited to supply rails for any projects in this area. I believe that Mr Stephenson has been approached by a consortium of businessmen in Manchester to consider the laying of a trackway to Liverpool. The canals are congested beyond belief it would seem and it can take eight or nine days to shift a barge-load between the two cities. There is theft on a grand scale as well, so many barges being left unattended in the basins for days at a time.”

  It was inevitable – where there was an opportunity thieves would develop to take it.

  “Do you intend to become a trackway builder, Joseph, or will you create new steam engines?”

  “Neither, sir. My opinions have not changed on this, and nor have Mary’s. There is little money to be made from being a pioneer, at the forefront of progress. Glory, certainly, and for a few, riches, perhaps - but only for the minority. Where we can profit is at the side, as it were, acting to facilitate progress. Drilling machines, sir; lathes; cranes and lifts; hydraulic presses; mechanical hammers – all of the machine tools of which there are far too few at present. I propose to expand the workshop in Wigan and to build another on the spare acres behind the Roberts Shipyard in Liverpool – the gains to be made there are obvious, sir.”

  Good, solid innovation – the practical ideas that would make thousands a year, every year for the next generation and more. Tom was impressed, the boy had finally grown up.

  “What of your land holdings, my boy? I am told that you have bought acres in out of the way places.”

  Joseph explained that his concepts were outdated – steam trackways would mean that within twenty, or perhaps thirty, years there would be no such thing. Everywhere in England would be somewhere when there was a steam locomotive no more than an hour’s ride away.

  “My distant moors and narrow valleys and far-off pasture lands all have coal, Papa. If I do not see the collieries, then my children will, sir, and, I trust, thank me for them.”

  Tom took the cue so obviously offered.


  “I see that Mary is not here today, James?”

  “Resting at home, sir, under orders from her doctor. She must bustle less, he says, and she is already past three months and may therefore be more sanguine about her prospects, to her pleasure and mine.”

  “Good, send her the correct messages from Lady Andrews and myself. I had hoped that was why I had not seen her. Will you be able to attend at James’ wedding?”

  “She will not, but she has already informed me that I must go, sir. I will be pleased to; I have not seen him in a twelvemonth. He is doing well, I presume?”

  “Better than ever I could have hoped, Joseph, far better!”

  “Lucky man!”

  Tom had been about to bring the meeting to an end, to usher Joseph out and send him back home; the tone of his voice warned him not to.

  “Luckier than you, Joseph?”

  “In some ways, I suppose, sir. It is money-making, sir, all of my days now. I need money, do not we all? But is that all of it?”

  “What had you rather be doing, my son?”

  Developing; inventing; chasing modernity; creating the New Age that must come – taking part in the future rather than wallowing in the filthy lucre of the present.

  “Easy to despise money when you have it, Joseph! But, you are right, money cannot be all of one’s life, although it must be a significant part. You have never known poverty, my boy; nor for that matter have I, my father could always put food on the table and clothes on my back. I have seen it close to, have on occasion feared it – a week on the boat when the fish were not running and one could sleep badly! You must always make enough money to live on and have savings as well, but you do not have to spend the whole of your life money-grubbing. You are busy with the new projects at the moment, but you can perhaps put aside one day a week to be yours, the day when you invent and experiment.”

  Tom was proud of himself, he had not used the words ‘tinker’ or ‘potter’ once.

  “There is much to be done with steam, sir. Particularly in the way of locomotive works' engines, small, slow, but powerful enough to shift twenty or thirty tons from one shop to another, or from quayside to warehouse. Mr Stephenson is concerned to pull a train of carriages at high speed from one town to the next, and he is well on his way to producing an engine capable of maintaining thirty miles an hour with a substantial load; that great engine is not what we need to work about a pithead or in the docks or from quarry to furnace at Roberts.”

  “I am convinced, Joseph – your argument is good. How long before you have your first engine on the track?”

  “Three months, sir, if I can have use of a workshop at Roberts.”

  “Do it, Joseph.”

  Tom was not at all convinced either that it could be done or was a necessary item in itself, but the young man had to be indulged if he was not to become soured with his life. The boy had married too young, was not ready for the responsibilities he had demanded of himself; he had to live with it, but there could be some relief, must be in fact. Perhaps he could have a word with Charlie, suggest that she might tactfully approach Joseph’s equally young wife, persuade her to push the boy a little less.

  Tom thought long about what he must say to Charlotte; by the morning he had decided that the proposal foundered when it came to making a gentle suggestion, a sisterly hint – his daughter had many and great virtues but tact was not high amongst them. He took the question to Frances.

  “Not me, Thomas! Such a busy little baggage! I am glad she is to have a child, but am inclined to be sorry for the poor mite – as well have a sergeant-major of the Guards as her for a mother! No, I do not think I am the proper person to offer her dulcet words of advice. What does Lord Star say?”

  Lord Star said - in a roundabout, noncommittal fashion – that he had never been able to change his daughter’s mind on anything of importance and that he was very glad it was now her husband’s privilege to attempt to do so, and good luck to him!

  Lady Star, far less decorously, agreed wholly.

  “If it is to be done, then I must be the one to do it,” Tom mused. “Bugger that! You’re on your own, my son – you married her, now make a life with her as well!”

  “Have you ever observed the scenery of the East Coast, Frances? Particularly the northern parts towards Darlington?”

  She waited, patiently.

  “We do not have to be in Town for at least three more weeks, and there is little to keep us here, I believe.”

  “We have no engagements except for dinner with Matthew and Charlotte tomorrow. We are committed to the Stars in Mount Street for three weeks hence, as you say, so we could certainly find a sennight or so for sight-seeing. I seem to have come across the name of Darlington already this week, Thomas.”

  He capitulated.

  “I would rather like to see this new trackway that Mr Stephenson is building. Joseph says it will change the world as we know it.”

  “He is more likely than not to be right. I would rather like to see it too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Brown was instructed to send a messenger to engage hotel rooms at appropriate locations; he gravely acknowledged the order, he had had many more complex tasks to fulfil in the past. He wrote a brief note on the Roberts headed paper, demanding the best suite for an unspecified time, and sent a groom to find the most comfortable hotel, or if the town was wholly barbarous, the premier posting inn, and not to take any refusal.

  “You have performed thith task before, Nathaniel.”

  “I have at that, Mr Brown. They’ll do as I tells ‘em, Mr Brown, or be lookin’ for another place. The master will know just who my lord is, and it’s ‘is door I shall be knockin’ on if they gives I trouble.”

  Tom would never have countenanced dismissing a man for not going out of his way to ensure his comfort; his servants would have no hesitation in destroying a score of livelihoods to carry out his instructions.

  It was a necessary courtesy to call on Stephenson if Tom was to view his works. He could have ridden the highway and stopped at any of a dozen points to see all that was being done, and many sight-seers did just that, but as a manufacturer in steam he had a further obligation – he could not skulk in the bushes like some foreign spy.

  They had met briefly in the previous year when Stephenson had ventured to London and had found themselves to be very much alike – big, self-confident, self-made men with strong opinions. Stephenson had made no attempt to climb socially, was content to lead in his own world, and his Northumberland accent was still almost impenetrable to the South-Country ear; he was aware of the problem, might have been proud of it, and was always accompanied by an interpreter, often his son.

  “You are welcome, Lord Andrews. Mr Stephenson has a very high regard for your son, Joseph, much admires his sparkling intellect. He wonders whether you intend to enter the world of trackways in Lancashire.”

  In other words, would he compete for the Manchester-Liverpool contract if it came to pass.

  “No. Mr Joseph Andrews is concerned to develop small and powerful works' engines, suitable to shift very heavy loads about an iron foundry or possibly from ship’s hold to warehouse on a docks. Such an engine would be slow and quite unsuited to the general run of trackways. We shall, I understand, be seeking contracts for the provision of rails and other ironwork for any local – or national – enterprise, but we do not desire to compete directly in this endeavour.”

  Stephenson commented to the effect that there were many who would do so, but very few would cause him to lose any sleep, and none he suspected of the ability of Lord Andrews’ son.

  “My father assumes you will soon be expanding into ocean-going steamships, my lord.”

  Tom explained the firm’s deep fears for the integrity of the hulls of large steamships, wooden frames and wrought-iron plates simply not robust enough for the Western Ocean in storm.

  “Could we but develop a way of making steel plates and ribs, Mr Stephenson, then we would build great
ships to make the world a smaller place. Mr Joseph Andrews assures me that he could build engines that would power a ten thousand tonner, and cheaper than sail for needing a far smaller crew, but the hull cannot be built to my satisfaction. My manager, and husband of my daughter, was a naval captain, and he will have no part of ships that might drown their crews.”

  Stephenson agreed – they must not abuse the poor and needy. Seamen would always sail on any ship that would pay them a wage, irrespective of danger; they must be protected by their betters.

  “I agree, sir. We must accept responsibility for our people, or we cannot call them that. On that topic, I presume that you are hiring navigators from the canals and turnpikes to build your tracks.”

  “Exclusively, my lord. A problem, because we fear we might require one half of the navvies in England for a large contract. Not just a problem of pushing up the wages, but actually finding the necessary bodies.”

  “Irish?”

  “Not directly, my lord. Years of famine, and poor foodstuffs even when they have enough in quantity, have debilitated the great mass of the men. Take a man straight out of the bogs and give him a shovel and he will keel over exhausted within the half-day. A year of eating sufficiently is needed before they can do a navvy’s work. We have to take men off the land, we find, and they are mostly from the South where enclosure and sheep are still pushing villagers into town.”

  And it would be difficult to persuade those men to travel as much as two hundred miles to find work; as well, they would be walking, having no money for stage or canal boat.

  “There was used to be a supply of men from the navy and army turned off as they laid up the ships and disbanded battalions, but now the navy is growing again, needing to protect trade in Eastern waters and bring peace to the Mediterranean.”