by Mary Hooper
‘We must go towards Bloomsbury,’ she said.
Once safely across the road, past the big hotels and shops and heading towards Russell Square, Violet took her arm.
‘I’m sorry if I seem strange and mysterious, but this is the last thing I shall ever do for my mother and I want to get it right. Mother said I should take you, and explain carefully, and then everything would be up to you.’
Grace did not reply to this, for her mind was a mass of questions.
‘After my father died, my mother became a midwife in order to survive,’ Violet explained as they passed by two ragged children squabbling over a cigar end. ‘She was one of the first women to train properly. She attended women at home, mostly, and also worked at Berkeley House two days a week in order to help those less fortunate. She told me once that she thought she must have delivered a thousand babies.’
Grace nodded, trying to keep calm in order to understand what was being said and not to jump ahead of herself.
‘Of course, not every baby survived, and some mothers died, too – childbirth is such a perilous business. Some women lost many infants before they had a live birth. One woman in particular lost five babies one after the other, and at the final death was so devastated that her husband thought she would lose her mind.’
‘Poor woman . . .’ Grace said softly.
Violet went on, ‘The very next day, a young unmarried girl came to Berkeley House. She was friendless and alone, with no protector nor family, and she lived in a slum. She had nothing prepared for the birth and no money put aside for the child’s requirements.’
She looked at Grace searchingly. Grace, mouth dry, nodded at her to go on.
‘My mother feared that this girl’s baby wouldn’t survive for – although born healthy – its birth weight was low and it had various other small problems that the girl would not have been able to afford to have treated. She felt that if she let the girl take the baby home, she was almost pronouncing a death sentence upon it. So . . . so she did something she should not have done.’
Grace, fearing and longing for what might come next, gave a little cry, stopped walking and turned to face her.
‘She took the baby and gave it to the poor woman who had lost five of them,’ said Violet.
‘No!’ Grace cried hoarsely. ‘She should not have done that!’
‘She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she was doing wrong,’ Violet said pleadingly, ‘but she said that at the time, it seemed the right and proper thing to do.’ She looked at Grace. ‘That baby would not otherwise have survived its first few months.’
Grace thought about trudging around the cold streets with a baby, about having nowhere to bed it down at nights, about having no food all day bar a crust of bread. ‘But what about the poor girl?’ she asked with a sob.
‘Yes, what about the poor girl?’ Violet sighed. ‘My mother couldn’t forget her and it played upon her mind. Once she knew that she was going to die – for she had been diagnosed with a cancer some months previously – she began looking for her.’ She turned her gaze to Grace. ‘Looking for you, and when she didn’t find you, she made me promise that I would take over the search.’
‘She should never have done it,’ Grace repeated in a whisper.
‘No, she should not,’ Violet agreed.
Walking on, they reached the edge of Russell Square and entered a street with attractive, white-painted villas, vines and greenery climbing about their fronts. Violet beckoned Grace to follow her down a small alleyway. ‘She knew it was wrong. But she told me to find you and tell you, and let you make up your own mind about what to do. She left me a confession which is signed and witnessed and would stand up in court. It would be possible for you to claim your child back, and I promised her that if that’s what you wanted, I would aid you.’
So saying, she stopped by the iron railings which enclosed someone’s back garden and gave a view into a nursery: a splendid room with painted ships on the walls, a rocking horse and building bricks scattered about. In this room a woman – Mrs Robinson – could be seen, carrying a child about seven months old on her hip. The child – a boy – was bonny, sturdy of limb and robust with health. Grace uttered a little cry, and then gazed at him with such love that it seemed she might draw him to her side by the sheer force of her affection.
‘I hoped we might see him,’ Violet said. ‘My mother used to come this way in the mornings sometimes just to look at him, to prove to herself that she’d done the right thing. He’s a child who is very much loved and wanted by his family.’
Grace gave a sudden cry. ‘Then . . . who was it I took to Brookwood Cemetery?’ she asked in distress. ‘Was it someone else’s dead child?’
The corners of Violet’s mouth lifted a little. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it was a penny loaf.’
‘A penny loaf?’
Violet nodded. ‘Mother said it was about the right weight and shape.’ She could not prevent a smile then. ‘So whoever’s coffin you chose has a loaf of bread to see them through to paradise.’
Grace turned towards the nursery window and continued staring at the child, now seated on the floor with his mother, playing with the bricks. She could indeed see that he was greatly loved, and loved back in return.
She sighed deeply. There would be much to think about in the coming months and many decisions to be made; about finding somewhere to live, about doing the best she could for Lily, about choosing what she was going to do with her life, and about what might happen between her and James. This was one decision, however, that she didn’t have to think about.
‘I would not take him away,’ she said to Violet, her eyes still on the baby. ‘I couldn’t do such a thing.’
Violet turned to her. ‘That’s what I so hoped you’d say. But are you quite sure? You don’t have to make the decision now.’
‘I am sure.’ Grace nodded. ‘I don’t need any more time. It would be cruel to take him away, and break at least three hearts.’
Violet, who had tears in her eyes, took Grace’s hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m sure you have made a good decision, and the right one.’
‘I don’t want my child to learn about heartbreak so early in his life,’ continued Grace.
‘I don’t think you’ll ever regret it,’ said Violet, keeping hold of Grace’s hand.
‘But sometimes, perhaps, you and I can come for a walk down here and . . .’
‘Admire the gardens!’
‘Yes, admire the gardens,’ Grace echoed.
The two girls looked at each other, and then Violet offered her arm and they walked on.
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Some Historical Notes from the Author
The Brookwood Necropolis Railway
The cholera epidemic in London in the late 1840s resulted in nearly 15,000 deaths and greatly increased the problem of burial in the capital. The disposal of London’s dead had been a problem for some time with church graveyards becoming so overcrowded that plots had to be dug up and reused over and over again. Cremation not being an option in those days, the idea was mooted for a vast cemetery outside London which would provide a burial ground for Londoners for many years to come.
The site chosen in Surrey (far enough from London not to endanger the health of those in the capital) could be reached cheaply and conveniently only by railway. There were objections to it at first. The Bishop of London, for example, considered ‘the hustle and bustle’ connected with railways inconsistent with the solemnity of a funeral. There was opposition, too, from the wealthy, some of whom found the idea of their relatives being conveyed for burial with the lower classes offensive – for it was intended that even the poorest would be able to afford both the fare and the reasonable cost of interment at Brookwood, and thus be saved the shame of having their dead buried in a paupers’ burial ground. The bishop and other objectors having been given assurances that the first-, second- and third-classes of mourners and their respective coffins would be kept apart from each other, and that there would be segregat
ion as regards to religion, the Brookwood Necropolis Railway was finally established in 1854.
At this time, travel by train was still a novelty – the first regular passenger service was only introduced in 1830 – but it was to become immensely popular. During the 1840s, the Industrial Revolution was well under way and by 1851 some 6,800 miles of track had been laid. In 1863, after much clearance of poor housing to make way for it, London’s first underground railway opened.
I have used the invaluable The Brookwood Necropolis Railway by John M. Clarke for all sorts of basic information about the line, such as the price of a mourner’s ticket and the segregation of the classes, but for the purposes of the plot have used dramatic licence when describing the layout of the trains (which would not, for instance, have had corridors). The Necropolis Train ran from Waterloo in London to Brookwood in Surrey until about 1941, although burials still continue in the cemetery today and there are regular guided walks – some of which are specifically centred on the Necropolis Railway – around its beautiful grounds.
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Death and Mourning – the Victorian Way
Some churchyards in London had been full since 1665 (the year of the Great Plague) and by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne many had been locked up. Purpose-built cemeteries were proposed, the first of these being Kensal Green Cemetery, near Paddington. When the Duke of Sussex, Queen Victoria’s uncle, died in 1843, he said in his will that he wanted to be buried at Kensal Green amongst ordinary Londoners, and this boosted the popularity of the new cemetery enormously. This spacious, park-like burial ground was swiftly followed by six others on the fringes of London, including Highgate Cemetery, which became quite the most fashionable place in London to be interred. Highgate not only had catacombs (underground passageways containing shelved compartments on which coffins could be stored), but an Egyptian avenue leading to the marvellous Circle of Lebanon, where 20 large family vaults lined a path which ringed a magnificent ancient cedar tree. On Sundays, well-to-do Victorian families would promenade along the glades and avenues, visiting their departed loved ones.
It was Queen Victoria who, after Prince Albert’s death, fanned the cult of mourning. Initiated by the queen and then the aristocracy, it was imitated by the newly rich industrial and trade classes and spread downwards to the poor. Once the poor were wearing mourning, it meant the upper classes had to redouble their own efforts to demonstrate their social superiority, so that during the second half of the nineteenth century, the wearing of black became such a cult that no one dared defy it. Upper-class women travelling away from home would always take care to pack the correct mourning wear in case they suddenly found themselves in the company of a newly bereaved member of the royal family.
In his book Mourning Dress, Lou Taylor attributes the spread of mourning clothes partly to the proliferation of the newly published fashion magazines, which gave details of the latest fabrics and accessories and advised on mourning etiquette. On Prince Albert’s death, upper-class families slavishly followed the queen by going into full-mourning, then half-mourning and quarter-mourning, perhaps hoping that others would think they were affiliated to the royal family. For such an important death as this, a society lady would alter her whole wardrobe for a year. To encourage sales, crêpe manufacturers and mourning businesses (there were at least two vast warehouses in Regent Street selling nothing but) put it about that it was unlucky to keep mourning wear in the house between deaths. The rules grew even more complicated and far-reaching. For example, in 1881, a magazine advised that a second wife, on the death of her husband’s first wife’s parents, was obliged to wear black silk for three months.
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Victoria and Albert
Queen Victoria came to the throne aged 18 in 1837, following the notorious Regency period, during which the royal family had become unpopular. She married her cousin, Albert, in 1840, and though the marriage was stormy, it was genuinely loving and they went on to have nine children. Their union was held in high esteem and the ordinary people of the empire were encouraged to aspire to it.
Some British subjects, however, weren’t keen on Albert, firstly because he was foreign, and secondly because of the influence he and his family had over the queen. Albert was initially constrained by his position as consort (which didn’t involve any official duties), but he soon took responsibility for running the royal household and involved himself in several public causes, including trying to improve the status of the poor. He was also instrumental in organising the Great Exhibition of 1851. The British remained slightly suspicious of Albert, but sincerely mourned him when he died of typhoid, aged 42, in December 1861.
Following his death and Queen Victoria’s edict that the nation make a respectable mourning, London became engulfed in black as, out of respect for the prince, the ordinary man in the street struggled to obey his queen’s wishes and clothe himself and his family for several months at least in the most decent black outfits he could afford. It is said that even London’s railings, painted green before 1861, were painted black after Albert’s death. It is generally agreed that Queen Victoria took her mourning too far by staying away from London and wearing widow’s weeds for the rest of her life. Overwhelmed by Albert’s premature death, she more or less retired from public life and thus become unpopular with her subjects, who felt neglected.
Victoria reigned for 63 years – longer than any British monarch so far – until her death in 1901. During her reign she restored the nation’s respect for the monarchy, became a symbol of the spirit and identity of the nation, and also strived to improve the conditions of the poor by such measures as introducing basic education for all and limiting the working day to ten hours.
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The Victorian Poor
Henry Mayhew, a journalist, interviewed hundreds of ordinary Londoners and published the first volume of London Labour and the London Poor in 1851. This provided first-hand details of what life on the streets was like for those at the very bottom of society.
There were countless ways in which the poor earned money to keep themselves alive, including bird- and dog-duffing (changing the colour of birds and animals by painting them), and placing heavily sedated small animals together in a box as ‘Happy Families’. Children would collect and sell birds’ nests, hunt in sewers for lost objects, collect ‘pure’ (dog dung) for the tanning trade, catch rats for dog-versus-rat fights and sift through muck in rubbish yards – anything to earn a penny or two. There were armies of small boys and girls aged six and upwards selling any small and cheap commodity: watercress, oranges, lemons, sponges, combs, pencils, sealing wax, paper, penknives or matches. Some of these children were sent out by their parents as a way of supplementing their own earnings, but there were also a great many orphans and unwanted children living completely independently of any adult care and struggling mightily to survive.
Some of the details that Mayhew gives are heartbreaking. For example, he tells of the small children whose mother died of starvation and whose eight-year-old sister had to care for them; of a woman who lived on tea and bread, using the same tea leaves over and over again; of a boy who had no shoes or clothes of his own and so could only go outside when his older brother was indoors.
For many, living conditions were pitiful, overcrowding was rife and starvation was just around the corner. A room in a tenement building could cost two shillings a week and this might be occupied by two or more families; those that couldn’t get into a bed at night having to find space on the floor. There was no sanitation or running water, the rooms stank and the mattresses were usually running with bedbugs, fleas and lice. If someone in the family died (an all too frequent occurrence), their body might be left lying in the same room with the living for several days until enough money had been collected to bury them.
The authorities strongly disapproved of the overcrowded houses and rookeries (mean tenements where the very poorest lived cheek by jowl with each other, as rooks nest together in tall trees), so the decrepit b
oarding houses in the worst slums were gradually demolished and new roads and railway lines cut through. This did not help the situation as far as the lodgers were concerned, however, since those displaced had no choice but to move along to the next road and lodge there, thus causing new overcrowding.
Workhouses were universally feared and hated, but were an effort to solve the problem of extreme poverty in London. Hundreds of charities were set up during the Victorian era with such names as The Association for Befriending Young Servants, The Industrial School and Home for Working Boys, The Home for Deserted Destitute Children and The House of Charity for Distressed Persons. More than two million pounds was spent annually by these organisations in trying to relieve poverty, though sadly they were merely scratching the surface, and very little difference was made to the lives of the truly poor.
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Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was the most popular novelist of the Victorian period and is still so popular that his works have never gone out of print. The theme of social reform runs through his work and the publication of many of his books in magazines in serial form meant that he could adapt the story as he went along to suit the whims of the public. His characters are extremely memorable, so much so that they often take on a life of their own outside the books.
It is known that Dickens held a dim view of undertakers and the funeral trade, and it was he who coined the term ‘Dealers in Death’. He was not a supporter, either, of Prince Albert, and Peter Ackroyd says Dickens was not at all pleased when Albert’s sudden death meant that he had to postpone the six readings he was to give in Liverpool and return to London.
Dickens’s popular novel Great Expectations, with the thwarted and spiteful bride, Miss Havisham, was first published in serial form in the magazine All The Year Round up until August 1861, so I have drawn its publication out a little longer to fit my own story.
