The Daughters of Jim Farrell

by Sylvia Bambola

  Jasper Wright jutted his chin as he secured one of the small pearl buttons of his gray waistcoat. “Sometimes bad conditions produce bad men, sometimes . . . .”

  “Whatever the cause, it’s sure to be serious.” Mother said, ending the conversation. “Kate, get my ointments and some clean rags. We need to go.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Virginia said.

  “No, just Kate. Her stomach isn’t as queasy as yours. No telling what we’ll see. You stay and finish scrubbing the knives with brick dust, then make that sassafras solution for Charlotte.” She lowered her voice. “And see that Charlotte washes down all of Mrs. Clayton’s furniture.”

  Kate followed Virginia back to the kitchen, relieved that Mother had not asked her to oversee Charlotte, who, as the youngest, often needed monitoring whenever she was asked to do a chore she despised, which encompassed housework in general, and eradicating vermin in particular. But Kate didn’t want to go to the colliery either. What would she see? Certainly an army of tearful wives and mothers, and an angry mine boss cursing the injured. That always got her, seeing a mine boss yelling and swearing at the wounded, bleeding men, blaming them for the accident. But there was no getting out of it. She couldn’t let her mother go alone.

  She rummaged through the pantry until she found the large leather pouch containing medicinal herbs for teas and poultices, as well as a generous supply of glycerin and arnica for wounds, and pulled it from the shelf. Then grabbing a handful of clean rags, she stuffed them into the bag. For as long as she could remember, Mother had been going to the mines after an accident. There were no hospitals in the lower anthracite region, and the collieries assumed neither care nor responsibility for their injured or dead. Wounded men, even those losing limbs, were simply put on a plank and carried home. When Kate was younger she never understood why Mother went. Father was a railroad man. But gradually she came to realize Mother’s ties to coal country ran deep. She had grown up here, and many friends and relatives had lost their lives in these mines.

  “Hurry, Kate!” her mother shouted.

  Kate placed the pouch on the table, then removed her apron. Her cotton day dress was frayed around the high square neckline and as faded as a rag. It hung awkwardly, too, since she refused to wear a crinolette while doing housework, pinning back, instead, the outer skirt to form a rather limp imitation of a bustle.

  Even so, it was fine for going to the mine. The never ending plumes from the breaker would coat her with coal dust in no time. Miner’s wives regularly complained how their laundry, if left too long on the line, would turn black. Coal dust covered everything in the patches. It was one reason Father, along with many affluent people in these parts, chose Sweet Air to build their houses, a place where the prevailing southwesterly winds tended to blow the dust away. So, no, she needn’t change her clothes, not for the mine.

  But it was the telegraph office that worried her. Would she cause a scandal? She needed to send her telegram to the Pinkerton office in Philadelphia. All together, she and her sisters had thirty dollars. Kate’s quilt should bring in another five. Enough for a Pinkerton’s train fare from Philadelphia to Pottsville, then a week to investigate. She expected there’d be few expenses with free room and board at their house. But a week? Would it be enough? Could the Pinkerton clear her father in a week? If not, what then? Well . . . there was always the jewelry Father had bought her. Good jewelry that would fetch a good price. She wouldn’t mind parting with it for his sake.

  Kate draped the strap of the pouch over her shoulder. “Do I look all right?”

  “You’re worried about how you look? You’re not usually vain, Kate, especially in the midst of tragedy.”

  “I’m sending the telegram today.”

  “Oh . . . I see.” Virginia’s eyebrows arched.

  “If we’re lucky, Mr. Pinkerton will have one of his men here by week’s end.”

  “Have you told Mother?”

  “I’ll tell her before we get to the telegraph office.”

  Virginia puckered her lips, “I wouldn’t want to be you.”

  “And I wouldn’t want to be you. You have to get Charlotte to scrub down Mrs. Clayton’s room.” With that, Kate scurried out the kitchen, past the milling boarders and toward the front door where her mother stood waiting.

  Charlotte hovered by the stove watching Virginia drop a handful of sassafras bark into a pot of water. “I don’t know why I have to be the one to wash down all of Mrs. Clayton’s furniture just because she saw one little bug. How do we know she wasn’t just seeing things? After all, she’s getting on in years and her eyes can’t be that good.”

  “Her eyes are just fine. And you know how fast bedbugs can spread. No decent boardinghouse would remain operational for long if they allowed their rooms to become infested.”

  Charlotte watched the water turn brown. “Well, I hate bugs! I hate anything that creeps or crawls. Everyone knows that, and still I always get this job. And the smell of that brew! It makes me ill.”

  “Stop being childish. It has a delightful aroma, and you know it. Almost like licorice. And it will be most effective on Widow Clayton’s bugs.”

  “If she has any.” Charlotte folded her arms across her chest. “When I marry I shall never wash another piece of furniture. It will be a most pleasant life, being married to Benjamin and having servants enough to do all these tedious chores.”

  “I wish Mother didn’t go every time there was a mishap,” Virginia said, stirring the bark with a wooden spoon. “She always looks so tired when she gets home.”

  “When I become Mrs. Benjamin Gaylord, I shall see to it that Mother is well cared for. I will insist she come regularly to our house and sit in our garden while I take my oils and fill canvas after canvas with lovely flowers, especially tulips, for they are my favorite. And then at Christmas I will make presents of all my paintings.”

  “That plume of smoke is so large.” Virginia removed the pan from the heat. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one as big. If only women could vote, things would change around here. When I have my newspaper, I’ll make women’s suffrage a household word.”

  Charlotte retrieved the bucket from the corner, all the while hoping Virginia would change her mind and wash down Widow Clayton’s room herself and give Charlotte a less odious chore, as Virginia sometimes did. But by the time she brought the bucket to the stove and Virginia filled it with the steaming sassafras solution, Charlotte knew there would be no getting out of her chore today.

  “The water is so hot. I suppose no one would care if I scalded myself as long as I made Widow Clayton happy.”

  “By the time you gather your supplies and prepare the room with drop-cloths, it should be cool enough.”

  Without a word, Charlotte picked up the bucket and left, all the while feeling a bit put out that while Mother and Kate were traipsing off to the mine, she was left to chase Widow Clayton’s phantom bugs. Well, she and Benjamin were to be married in eight months. Just eight more months and this drudgery would end. These days, this thought was the only thing that made life bearable.

  Just tell her and get it over with.

  Kate followed her mother along the dirt path. Tell her, tell her, Kate’s mind nagged as she tried not to breathe in grit and smoke.

  People rushed past, kicking up more grit as they headed for the Mattson. The sound of an odd-hour breaker whistle always brought out anxious friends and relatives. Most of those clogging the path were women with small children, but there were a few men, too.

  Someone had finally silenced the whistle, but even from this distance, Kate could hear men’s panicked voices and coal cars clacking on steel tracks.

  When they reached Higgins Patch, Kate saw women holding babies and standing around in worried little circles. If she waited much longer her mother would be pulled in by all this, and she’d lose her chance.

  “Mother, we . . .
that is, Virginia, Charlotte and I, have decided to hire a Pinkerton to help clear Father’s name.”

  “I know,” came the unexpected response. “And before returning home you want to go to Pottsville to send the telegram.”

  “How . . . did you know?”

  “Because I know you, Kate.” Mrs. Farrell trudged ahead, not breaking her stride. “And I knew you wouldn’t let this go.”

  “I have to clear Father’s name or at least try. You understand, don’t you? Please don’t be angry.”

  “If it’s my blessing you’re after, I can’t give it. Look around, Kate. Look at these women with their gaunt faces, wondering if their husbands will be coming home tonight. Wondering if the babies they cradle will have a father to see them grow up. And amid theses worries they try hard to make a decent life for their kin, stretching both their pennies and their faith. Can’t you see there are better uses of your time and money? God will vindicate us when He wills. So no, I can’t give you my blessing. But I’m not angry. I’m not angry because I understand your pain, too.”

  It was worse than Kate expected. Seven men, all arranged in a line, lay dead beneath dirty tan-colored canvasses. A smoky haze permeated the air, making the scene appear dreamlike. Only the weeping and wailing around her told her it was real. She watched, through burning eyes, as men ran in all directions while the mine boss barked orders. From the chatter around her she was able to piece together what had happened. Someone had used blasting power on both the mound of shoring timber and on the culm bank—the mine’s waste dump—causing a fire. While a dozen men fought the flames that raged in the timber mound, seven others concentrated on the nearby bank. Burning fragments of timber had landed on the bank, and as the men tried to remove them, the slag shifted beneath their feet and buried them alive. The Molly Maguires were sure to be blamed. They always were in matters of mine sabotage, just as the laborers or miners were blamed for all mine mishaps.

  Her mother was already comforting one of the weeping women. Other women soon gathered.

  “Mrs. Farrell, thank you for comin’,” said Mary O’Brien, the known leader of the group. And then they all began talking at once.

  “Mrs. Farrell, kind of you to bring your bag but it won’t do no good.”

  “Oh what a black day for Higgins Patch!”

  “Mrs. Farrell, it was Margaret Duffy who lost her James, God rest his soul.”

  “And aren’t the Carroll brothers lyin’ right next to him?”

  “Not to mention Jack Kelly and one of the Dooley boys.”

  “And James O’Shea, and just when poor Colleen was gettin’ over losing her son, Thomas.”

  “But ‘tis none sadder than Patrick Doyle—him leavin’ four wee ones and a sick pregnant wife. ‘Tis sure as sunrise the company’s gonna turn them out of their house, forcin’ them onto the street by week’s end. And what will poor Irene do then?”

  Kate watched her mother dispense hugs, and kiss tear streaked cheeks. Mother was well loved in Higgins Patch for the many kindnesses she had shown to its inhabitants over the years. If only Kate could be more like her. Maybe then she could trust God for justice instead of trying to bring it about on her own. A vigilante, that’s what Charlotte had called her. Vigilante. Such a harsh name, when all Kate wanted was to protect them, protect their futures.

  As Mother spoke in soft tones to the newly widowed Margaret Duffy, and as the other women slowly drifted away, Kate’s attention was drawn to a group of breaker boys who had gathered nearby to watch the dozen men now trying to put out a fire almost impossible to extinguish. The timber mound was nearly under control, but it was the culm bank that posed the problem. A culm bank could burn for years, polluting not only the air with sulfurous smoke but the ground beneath it for miles around. With Pottsville so near, the Mattson Colliery—now owned by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company—would be pressured into smothering the tip with an eight to ten-foot earthen cap. An added expense no colliery wanted. If such a large sum had to be laid out, an investigation into the Molly Maguires was sure to follow, and that usually stirred up anger in the patches.

  From where Kate stood, the breaker boys were barely visible through the smoke. There were four in all, and so young—the littlest looking no more than six. She moved closer. It vexed her that children this young worked at the breaker. It was a dangerous place where boys sat on backless wooden benches, straddling long moving iron chutes while picking slate and rock from the coal passing between their legs. And this for up to twelve hours a day while dust and smoke and steam clogged their lungs, and coal crushing machinery severed limbs. No laws protected these children. The one law regarding age required boys to be twelve before working, but that was inside the mine. Outside, it wasn’t unusual to see boys as young as five carrying tin lunch pails.

  When Kate got closer she saw that the littlest one, who wore a dirty overcoat, a cloth cap drawn low over his forehead, and laced hobnail boots, had bleeding fingers. And though he seemed as interested in the burning culm bank as the others, from time to time he’d get distracted and rub his hands together as though trying to gain relief. Kate had seen “red tips” before. Obviously he was new on the job and not used to the “muck,” the irritating sulfur on the coal that caused fingers to swell, crack, and bleed. And since he wasn’t allowed to wear gloves, he would have to wait for his fingers to harden, as all fingers did after awhile. But now they were surely painful.

  Without a word, she walked up to the boy, bent down, and opening her leather pouch pulled out a rag and the arnica salve. Working quickly, she began cleaning his blackened and bleeding finger tips. But instead of pulling away, as she expected, he just smiled, revealing small uneven teeth. Then she applied the salve and bandaged his fingers.

  “How do you expect him to pick out the culm from the chute, now?” growled a large, coal-dust covered man standing over her.

  At the sound of his voice the boys bolted and headed toward the dark, hulking breaker with its grinding machines, deafening noise and billowing black soot. Kate rose to face the angry breaker boss who carried a big stick and smelled of whiskey.

  “He’s so little,” Kate said, hoping to assuage his anger so he wouldn’t abuse the boy when he got back to the breaker. Breaker bosses were notorious for their cruelty, and this boss seemed in a foul enough mood to lay his stick across that small boy’s back. “He’s so little,” she repeated.

  “No littler than some.”

  “He’ll work better now, because his fingers won’t hurt so much.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Kate touched the dirty sleeve of the boss’s overcoat. “Please don’t punish him for what I did.”

  The man jerked his arm away. “Did you make him come out here to gawk at the fire? Did you make him leave his chute? Do you think he should get paid for slacking, while others are in there doing their job?”

  “It costs you nothing to be kind. He’s just a little boy.”

  The man pushed his soot-covered face closer to Kate’s. “Look, Miss High and Mighty, I saw your father hanging at the end of that rope. I saw how he squirmed and kicked like a girl, so don’t be putting on any airs here. I don’t need no killer’s daughter tellin’ me how to do my job.”

  As the man walked away, Kate swore to herself that the tears in her eyes were from the smoke and nothing more. But the only thing she wanted now was to go to Pottsville and send her telegram.

  After spending two days scrubbing down every piece of Widow Clayton’s furniture as well as washing her bedding, walls and floor, Charlotte was glad for the chance to escape the boardinghouse and spend a few hours in the lovely Gaylord mansion. And she didn’t feel guilty, either. It was, after all, for charity. And hadn’t Mrs. Gaylord made it clear, long ago, that Charlotte was expected to attend every time the society ladies, or at least the most important ones, met on behalf of the Women’s Benevolent Society of Greater
Pottsville? With Mrs. Gaylord at the helm, they spent the time sewing nightgowns, and knitting blankets and scarves and sweaters for the ladies in the Home for Indigent and Infirm Females, called the “Women’s Home” for short.

  And wasn’t it Mrs. Gaylord, herself, who, soon after Charlotte’s engagement to Benjamin, explained that the purpose of having her join the group was so she could “understand her responsibilities as a future Gaylord”? According to Mrs. Gaylord, it was the obligation of those more fortunate to look out for the welfare of those less so.

  Though Charlotte disliked knitting and sewing, she enjoyed being in this exalted company. And she had learned much: how to participate in the casual banter of the privileged, how to speak to a servant, what the well-dressed woman wore in the morning, the afternoon and evening, and how women of privilege helped their husbands through social contacts, teas and dinner parties, and of course their philanthropy.

  Now, sitting in Mrs. Gaylord’s best parlor, surrounded by the type of ambiance only the rich could afford, she didn’t even care that she kept poking herself with her knitting needles. More than a dozen prominent women filled the room, but the quartet, the same four women dominated the conversation as usual: Mrs. Gaylord; Elmira Crump, whose husband owned the large furniture store in Pottsville and another in Philadelphia; Lucinda Wells, a widow and beneficiary of her husband’s vast holdings, which, among other things, included two of the largest collieries in the Pottsville area. And finally, Hester Roach, whose husband owned Martin’s Dry Goods Store in Sweet Air, and who wasn’t quite in the same league as the others, but always managed to insert herself into the conversation, nevertheless.

  “I understand the Women’s Home had to squeeze in another five ladies last week,” Lucinda Wells said, her knitting needles clicking feverishly as she knitted-and-pearled multiple rows on her afghan.