Daughter of the Dales

by Diane Allen

  ‘She’s like her grandmother, that ’un. She will never be satisfied – a bit like yourself at the same age. But she’ll enjoy being with her father. And besides, I’ve learned her all I can, so let her be with him.’ Bert leaned over and winked. ‘She’ll keep an eye on him and all.’

  ‘Thank you, Bert, I hear what you are saying.’ Isabelle looked haughty as she walked out of the warehouse. Sometimes Bert did not know his place. Unfortunately, he was nearly always right in what he said.

  ‘Six reels of this cotton, please, and book it to Atkinson’s.’ Jane handed the cotton bobbin over to the young lad in the warehouse of Dewhurst’s and waited. The large, five-storeyed mill was made out of local stone and stood down Broughton Road, on the edge of the Leeds-to-Liverpool canal. The towering red-brick chimney dominated the Skipton skyline. The mill kept more than two hundred people in work, and prior to that had been the place of employment of more than four hundred people – all of them families that relied on King Cotton and the cotton-weaving Belle Vue Mill. But now, along with its original name being almost forgotten, and Dewhurst’s making it into a mill spinning cotton silk known as Sylko, its weaving rooms were not as busy. But still the clatter of the spinning machines filled the air, along with the dust from the fibres.

  ‘Jane! Jane, I thought it was you. I was just making my way up to the top office.’ Nellie Taylor grinned at her comrade-in-arms, who also defied the non-believers in the Suffragette movement.

  ‘Hello, Nellie. I’m just collecting some Sylko for my mother. I wondered if you’d be about.’ Jane looked at her working-class friend. They made an odd partnership, and sometimes Jane was ashamed of the way Nellie dressed, in her work clogs, grey stockings and drab dresses. But when she listened to Nellie talking, she realized there was more to her than just an ordinary mill lass. Nellie was a firebrand for the Suffragette movement.

  ‘I can’t talk long, for old Dewhurst is on my back. He says he’s fed up of me whipping up the work lasses with my dangerous talk. It’s only dangerous if you are an ignorant man. But then again, he is.’ Nellie grinned, her face lit up with wickedness as she beamed from under her mob cap.

  ‘Yes, and my mother’s timing me, so I can’t be long, either.’ Jane shook her head.

  ‘The more money they have, the tighter the bastards get! No disrespect to your mother, Jane. But you know what I mean. Here, are you joining us on our march next Saturday? We aim to walk through Skipton, demanding our rights from the government. I think there’s about ten of us so far.’ Nellie looked at her posh friend and waited for an answer.

  ‘I don’t know. My mother wouldn’t want me to be involved. I don’t know if I could get away.’ Jane saw the warehouse boy coming back with her reels of cotton and was thankful for an excuse to leave. She supported the movement, but it would only give her mother more worry if she joined the protest.

  ‘Go on, lass, we won’t get into any trouble. The local bobbies know us all too well – you know what it’s like around here. You can’t fart unless somebody hears you.’ Nellie laughed out loud.

  ‘I’ll see. I can’t promise.’ Jane took the bobbins from the warehouse boy and started to walk away from her friend.

  ‘Twelve-thirty, top of the High Street next to the churchyard. Wear your sash, you can help me carry the banner,’ shouted Nellie after her, before walking in the opposite direction. ‘I’ll see you there. We need you to help organize.’

  Jane walked down the cobbled mill yard and made her way over Belmont Bridge, stopping on the top to look at the barges on the canal make their way underneath and unload their cargo along the quayside. She watched as an elderly man kept lowering a bucket full of holes down into the dirty waters of the canal. His body was nearly bent double with age, and she watched as he dragged the bucket along the bottom of the canal until the weight told him it was full of what he was dredging for: black gold, coal from the barges that had supplied Dewhurst’s powerful engines and had fallen into the canal. She saw him sort the rubbish from the coal, throwing it back into the canal. He put the lumps of coal into the old wooden cart that she’d seen him trundling around Skipton with, to hawk his stolen gains to those who’d buy it.

  What a way to make a living, she thought, as she started her walk back home. But then again, there were many who earned a living from nothing – she knew that. Then there were the likes of her mother’s customers, some of whom had more money than sense. Jane realized that she was privileged, but she also knew it was as a result of her grandmother’s hard work. How she missed her grandmama, who’d always been there for her; she’d have sorted out the mess at home and would have been there for Jane to talk to. Instead, she had been shoved down into the warehouse and told to collect the bobbins that she now held in her hand, like a common errand girl. Her mother thought nothing of her; all she thought of was her precious business. That’s why her father’s head had been turned – Isabelle had no time for him, just as she hadn’t for her.

  Damn it, she would go on Saturday’s march just to defy her mother, if nothing else.

  19

  ‘Hey up! I didn’t think you were going to show.’ Nellie Taylor stood with her folded banner at the top of Skipton High Street, grinning, as Jane joined the small group. ‘We’ve not got a very good show today. There’s only five of us. Nevertheless, we might be small in number, but we are determined in our beliefs. Let’s show Skipton that we mean business, that women can no longer be treated like second-class human beings.’ She lifted her banner and looked at all her comrades-in-arms, waiting hopefully for any more followers of the cause. ‘What’s up with you, Lady Jane? You look as if you are in a mood. All not well in your world?’ Nellie didn’t believe anything could be wrong in a world filled with the amount of money the Atkinsons and Foxes had.

  ‘It’s Mama. She tried to stop me joining you, she just doesn’t understand. I hate her at the moment. All she thinks about is the business, nothing else.’ Jane scowled and pulled her sash of green, cream and violet straight, as she made ready for the march down the High Street.

  ‘It’s people like your mother who are keeping the women of this town chained to their homes and husbands. She pampers to their needs as ignorant kept women – prizes for their men, dressed in their hobble skirts and smelling of perfume. They don’t have time to think for themselves. That’s why she’s so against you being with us.’ Nellie was in full voice. ‘I’ve been thinking; we should do what Kitty Marion’s done: break a few windows, make folk sit up and take note. Her and Clara Giveen even set fire to the grandstand at Hurst Park to show how strongly they feel. It’s no good us feebly walking down the High Street and doing nothing. Nobody’s going to give us a second glance,’ Nellie yelled.

  ‘I don’t know, Nellie. Sergeant Monks is watching us, I saw him when I walked out of the store. He’s got his eye on us.’ Jane looked worried.

  ‘Nah, he’ll be more bothered about his pork pie from the butcher’s; he just thinks we are a lot of silly girls and women. Right, come on, ladies: best foot forward. Let’s show the good people of Skipton what we want.’ Nellie thrust the banner to two girls behind her and linked arms with Jane, stepping out in her black lace-up boots and long full skirt, ready to take on the world.

  ‘Votes for women. Votes for women!’

  Nellie yelled as she pushed her way down the bustling High Street, ignoring the jeers from men and the disgusted looks from women of higher society. Jane was pulled along beside her.

  ‘What do we want? We want justice, we want equality,’ she yelled, and her followers took up the chant.

  The small group made itself known, but it wasn’t enough in Nellie’s eyes. She wanted everybody’s head to be turned and to acknowledge that the Suffragette movement was now amongst them. As they passed Atkinson’s beautiful display windows, Nellie stopped. She noticed a loose stone among the market setts and bent down to pick it up.

  ‘This’ll make your mother take note. She’ll know just how serious you are with this.’ Ne
llie stopped and looked at Jane as she held back her arm, stone in hand ready to be flung.

  ‘What are you doing? Stop it, you’ll get us arrested,’ Jane yelled, as Nellie lobbed the stone straight through the largest window of Atkinson’s. The crash of glass made everyone stop in their tracks. They all stared at a mannequin as its head came off and rolled down the street. The glass shattered everywhere, and women screamed. Such a disturbance had never been seen before on Skipton High Street.

  Sergeant Monks blew his whistle loud and clear, calling for backup from the station on Swadford Street. He made a beeline for Nellie and Jane.

  ‘That bloody showed them, they’ll know we mean business now, girl! Now, let’s bugger off. How fast can you run?’ Nellie grinned at the group behind her and took to her heels, leaving Jane wondering why she had become involved in such a fracas and having to turn and run herself, along with the other demonstrating women.

  ‘Votes for women,’ Nellie shouted once more, as she ran down to the turn-off for Broughton Road.

  ‘Votes for women, my arse!’ a constable shouted after her, knowing Nellie and where she lived. He’d soon catch up with her.

  Jane was frantic. She bobbed and tried to hide in the crowd that had now gathered around the scene of Nellie’s crime. She daren’t go into her mother’s firm, but instead watched as her mother came out of the doorway to look at the damage done. Jane quickly took off her sash, which she been wearing had so proudly, and thrust it into her pocket, out of the sight of the gossiping crowds.

  ‘Now, Miss Fox, I think you may have been party to the crime just committed. You should be more careful who your friends are, or at least hide that auburn hair of yours, if you don’t want to be caught.’ Sergeant Monks put a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Now let’s do this quietly, without making a further scene. I’m sure both you and your mother would appreciate it that way. You just go to the station with Constable Stavely here, and I’ll go and talk to your mother.’ Sergeant Monks looked at the young lass he’d know all her life and shook his head. ‘Take her away, Mike. I’ll follow up shortly with her mother. She’ll not give you any bother, will you, Miss Fox?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know Nellie was going to do that. I couldn’t stop her. Mother will kill me for being involved.’ Jane hung her head as the constable took her arm and walked her through the crowd. She watched as they muttered her name and shook their heads. ‘It’s the Fox lass. Her mother will have something to say about this,’ she heard one of her mother’s customers exclaim.

  ‘All I did was walk with Nellie, I didn’t do anything,’ Jane protested. ‘You don’t have to take me to the station. I’ll not do it again.’ She pulled on the constable’s arm.

  ‘Now, Miss, Sergeant Monks says I’ve to take you there, so just you be quiet and give me no bother.’ Constable Stavely held her arm in a vicelike grip and walked Jane up Swadford Street and into the station.

  ‘Got one of these mad women, Bill. Or should I say “girl”. A bloody suffragette – she’s just broken Atkinson’s window, along with her mate. She’ll soon be joining us as well.’ Constable Stavely leaned over the station’s desk and laughed with his fellow officer as they looked Jane up and down. ‘Sarge says she’ll give us no bother, for he knows the family.’

  Jane was near tears. She’d never been in trouble before. She was secretly in fear of the police and, together with the thought of her mother’s anger once she came to save her, felt scared stiff.

  ‘Put her in one of the cells – that’ll calm her down. Bloody stupid women!’ Constable Stavely’s colleague passed him the keys to one of the two cells in the station and looked Jane up and down again. ‘I’ll wait to see what Sarge says, before I take her details and book her.’

  ‘Come on then, you.’ Constable Stavely pulled on Jane’s arm and led her to the cells at the back of the station, showing her into a small, stark room, with just a wooden bench with a cover on it acting as a bed, and a bucket for a toilet. He then left, closing the door behind him and turning the key in the lock.

  Jane looked around her. She’d never been in such a place, and she couldn’t even see out of the small window, it was so high above her. The key turning in the lock might have incarcerated her in her cell, but it also unlocked the flood of tears that had been welling up inside her since her capture. She sat on the edge of the hard bed and sobbed. Oh God, what would her mother say? She loved her Atkinson’s store. Indeed, Jane did, just as much. She’d known how hard her grandmother had worked for the string of shops to become a success. It was her inheritance and it meant everything to her. How could Nellie Taylor have been so stupid, and how could she herself have let her be?

  ‘You are telling me that my Jane was responsible for this!’ Isabelle looked at Sergeant Monks in disbelief. ‘She told me she was going to the library, and that she would have no part in the stupid protest we had argued over this morning. The stupid girl!’ Isabelle watched as Bert Bannister swept the broken glass up from the High Street and made safe the window.

  ‘Aye, well, she wasn’t the ringleader and it wasn’t her that threw the stone, you’ll be glad to hear. But she did cause an affray, so one of my constables has taken her to the station. That will cool her down, along with the knowledge that you’ll have plenty to say, no doubt.’ Sergeant Monks looked at Isabelle. She didn’t deserve any further scandal in her life. That was why he’d tried to whisk Jane away as quietly as he could.

  ‘Oh, yes, Officer, I’ll have plenty to say alright. I bet it was that terrible little Nellie Taylor who was the ringleader. She drip-feeds her suffragette propaganda into our Jane’s ear whenever she can. And I was stupid enough to send Jane to Dewhurst’s for some cotton last week.’ Isabelle could have cursed. ‘Will you be pressing charges? I suppose you’ll have to.’

  ‘Aye, you are right – it was Nellie who threw the stone. As for Jane, I’ll see how she’s behaved, once we get back to the station. She’s not as headstrong as her partner-in-crime, so I’m hoping that a few hours in the cells will give her something to think about. I could do without the paperwork, and the last thing I want is a lot of screaming women in my station. Once I’ve brought Nellie Taylor in, I’ll more than likely have that.’ Sergeant Monks looked at Isabelle. ‘A strict talking-to from both of us should be sufficient. Let Jane stew until you’ve closed up the shop; it’ll not do her any harm.’

  ‘Thank you, Officer, I’d be grateful if that is what we could do between us.’ Isabelle hesitated. ‘It isn’t that I don’t believe in the suffragette cause. After all, my mother was a firebrand in her own right, and I believe any woman is equal to any man and should therefore have the same rights. But causing chaos and violence is not the right way to go about it. I will emphasize that most carefully to Jane when I pick her up this evening. I also think that matters at home have perhaps not encouraged her to see things in a better light. I will make it my responsibility that she doesn’t give you any more trouble, Sergeant Monks.’

  ‘Aye, things have not been good for you. Perhaps it is Jane’s way of letting of a little steam, while protesting for her ideals. Don’t worry, Mrs Fox, I do understand. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll go and arrest the true culprit. Will you be wanting your day in court with her, ma’am?’ Sergeant Monks waited as Isabelle turned to look at him in the doorway.

  ‘I think not, Sergeant Monks. It would play right into Nellie Taylor’s hands because it would be a day of hearing her own voice in a packed courtroom, telling everyone the virtues of the Suffragette movement. My mother and myself – and hopefully, one day, my headstrong daughter – have been standing up to men for generations. The world will change, and women will be equal one day, but not through violence. I will be at your station around six, Sergeant Monks. Do with Nellie Taylor what you want, but keep her away from my daughter.’

  Isabelle lifted her skirts and stepped back through the revolving doors of Atkinson’s. As she did so she sighed; her silly daughter; she applauded Jane’s beliefs, but not to the exten
t of getting arrested. She would talk to her tonight and get to the bottom of what had been upsetting her of late. Although, deep down, she knew that it was because of her father’s actions; their home life was not good just now, and it was time to forgive and forget and try to make life return to normal at Windfell. She and James must stop shouting at one another and think of their family, before it was too late and irrefutable damage was done.

  20

  ‘This is all your fault. She’s upset and rebelling because of the shame you have brought upon the family.’ Isabelle was taking her frustration with Jane out on James, as she paced backwards and forwards in the parlour of Windfell Manor.

  ‘It’s more than that. She must be missing her grandmother, and I know that she must be upset with us arguing constantly,’ said James. ‘I am upset about it myself. Isn’t it time we put an end to it? What’s done is done. I can’t amend the past, and I admit that I have been a fool.’ He looked at his wife. He’d found it hard to believe that his daughter had as good as been arrested for being involved in smashing her own mother’s window. Yes, it was for a cause that was worthy, in Jane’s eyes, but it was not like her to be so demonstrative. She’d say what she thought, yes, but she wouldn’t normally have caused criminal damage.

  ‘I was going to suggest that, once you return to work, Jane could be your assistant, as she’s not enjoying working in the warehouse. And you will need someone to help you, once you return, in the next week or two. That might give her more purpose in life, and she always has been closer to you than to me. You know what daughters are like with their fathers – in their eyes, fathers can do no wrong. Even if he is the biggest cad in the district.’ Isabelle’s eyes flashed at James. She would never forgive him for doing her wrong, no matter how hard he tried.