by Charles Egan
‘Oh, don’t worry about it. She’s had a hard time.’
‘Hard or not, she should have more respect for the people she’s staying with. Do you know what she told me this morning? She said we were living in sin, the two of us. Sleeping together and not even married. Is the woman mad or what?’
‘You’re worrying too much,’ Danny said. ‘You must realise, she comes from a Catholic country and the priests control her. That’s the way they think now. When they’re over here long enough, they’ll think different.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
Danny blew out the candle and got into bed.
‘But it’s not just that,’ Irene said in the darkness. ‘She’s in a terrible state, whatever the causes. She hardly talks, and when she does it’s only to criticise. If it’s not our morals, it’s the amount of money we’re spending, and if it’s not that, it’s the way we’re dressing. I can’t stand that day in, day out.’
‘You’ve got to understand that she’s a frightened woman. She’s been years worrying about the school closing, and that they’d have nothing to live on. Nothing at all, and you know what that means in County Mayo.’
‘Weren’t you sending them money? And Murteen, couldn’t he send them some?’
‘True enough, but that’s charity. All the pride of being a teacher’s wife, reduced to charity. No, I can understand it well enough.’
‘She’s just like you so. Worried to death, isn’t that it?’
‘I’m not worried,’ Danny said.
‘Even so, your mother is,’ Irene said. ‘Or maybe it’s just a form of madness. One way or another, she can’t live on her own. Have you ever thought of what she might do when there’s no one around? She’s so wretched, she could well kill herself.’
‘Don’t be silly. She’d never go that far. Don’t forget she’s a Catholic.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Catholics never kill themselves.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Irene asked.
Danny did not reply.
Chapter 12
The Tablet, Kent, October 1847:
The commercial crisis under which England is suffering is becoming more intense every week that passes over our heads, nor does there appear any present symptom of its cessation. Having indulged itself with a sweep through the commercial world, as if to prove by experiment how many failures for above half a million it would be possible to bring about in a quarter of a year; having performed a terrific dance through every department of commerce with every part of the world — at length the Monster-Crisis makes an inroad into the world of Banking, and at one blow levels the most powerful establishment of the second city of the empire. How far this dire calamity may reach; what may be its direct results; what the effect of its example; what panic-terrors may spring from its roots, and how many neighbour trees of the forest it may tear down in the violence of its fall, no man can possibly predict. The general solvency of the great Banks appears to be no adequate defence against such a wide-spread catastrophe.
All through September, Danny’s requirement for workers was extreme. Sourcing them was getting more difficult too. He had been concerned about dealing with Brady, but he was beginning to feel that this was the only way he could get sufficient workers at low wages. Liverpool Workhouse could continue to supply them, but this would be nothing like the numbers they had given him in the past. From letters received from Mayo over the past weeks, his gangers were able to tell him what was happening. The massive death toll in the Famine and the enormous emigration to both England and America were both reducing the number of labourers in Ireland itself. The big farmers in Ireland were now becoming desperate for workers. They too were hiring poor men from the west of Ireland. They had been paying ten pennies a day plus board and lodging, but, through the harvest, this had jumped to two shillings. The Mayo Workhouses were no longer as overcrowded as they had been. Even on the west coast of Mayo, men were not as desperate as before.
One night, Danny wrote a letter to Pat, asking if he could source labour directly from the Workhouses in Ballina and Newport, as well as whatever might still be possible from Ballinrobe and Westport.
As he expected, Pat’s reply was ambiguous. Many men had left Knockanure Workhouse to work in Tipperary, Kilkenny, Kildare, Meath and other counties in the Irish Midlands. From what he had heard, other Mayo Workhouses were the same. Pat felt he could get a limited number of workers in the west of Mayo, but far, far fewer than before.
Then, the floods came.
For days, there was torrential rain. At first this did not concern Danny unduly. Wet or dry, work would continue on the railways.
He became more concerned though as the rain went on. He watched as the Mersey rushed through Stockport, becoming deeper every day. A number of the roads around were flooded, as the river burst its banks.
He decided to visit the sites. He travelled, first by train, then by stagecoach.
When he arrived at McManus’ site, he was relieved to see that the Works were still proceeding. The men were drenched through, but still they were shovelling wet mud into barrows and wheeling it away, or shovelling it directly onto railway carriages. He spotted McManus in a heavy mackintosh and sou’wester.
‘Well, Jamesy. Still working.’
‘Trying to make up time, Danny.’
‘Will we make it?’
‘We will now.’
Danny left.
At Kearney’s site, he saw the fields around were all flooded. The Works were stopped. The flood had not reached any of the site, but there were no men working. He walked to the site office. Kearney looked up.
‘All stopped, Danny.’
‘I know,’ Danny said. ‘I’d noticed. Where are all the workers?’
‘In the shacks, God help them.’
‘Why so?’ Danny asked.
‘Most of the shacks out the fields have flooded. They’re all squeezing into the higher ones, and even there, the rain is coming in through the roofs.’
‘Might be as well to have them out working. What do you think?’
‘I tried that. They just won’t do it.’
‘Damn them to hell.’
He travelled on to see Lavan. He went to the site office. Lavan was stretched out on a truckle bed. He looked up as Danny entered.
‘Not a thing we can do about it, Danny,’ he said. ‘Not in mud that deep.’
‘I know,’ Danny said.
He was thoroughly drenched when he reached Stockport late that night. Irene was already asleep. He stripped, and rubbed himself down well.
He left before she woke, and travelled down to the North Staffordshire Line. At the site, the Works were flooded. Roughneen was not in the office but he found him in an inn nearby, where he had rented a room.
‘All stopped?’ he said to Roughneen.
‘Worse than that, Danny,’ Roughneen answered. One of the puddle banks has collapsed. It’ll be a while ’till we dry this one out, and even then we’ll have to re-build the bank.’
Danny travelled back to Manchester, and out to Ancoats. He almost felt he was dreading this, but if he was tougher than most, he would have to brave it out. He had a hard reputation, and that reputation had to be maintained. Even so, he was shocked by what he saw when he reached Ancoats.
The site was fully flooded. Broken furniture and dead pigs floated in the water, a dead dog on one bank. There were no workers, though that was hardly surprising. Where the railway was being built, he could see a few dozen mud cabins. Across Oxford Road itself, there were more cabins, if they could even be called that. They reminded him of the famine sceilps that he had seen in County Mayo.
He went to Steele’s office. Steele was there, playing cards with three constables. He stood up at once.
‘We can’t work today, Mr. Ryan.’
‘I know,’ Danny said, indicating him to sit. He pulled up a crate, and joined them at the table.
‘They’re in a desperate way,’ S
teele said. ‘Fever and worse. Two pigs were drowned in one of the cellars, and the family ate them raw. Passed a few hams across to some of our fellows, and now they’re doubled up with the shits too. I’d say a few might have fever, and I’m just hoping it doesn’t spread.’
‘Nothing much we can do about it, until things dry out,’ Danny said. ‘What are ye playing?’
‘Pontoon.’
‘Deal me a hand.’
Over the subsequent days, he and Irene went through figures again and again, trying to calculate the cost of the storms. Irene suggested that for as long as the workers were not working, they should not get paid.
‘But we can’t do that,’ Danny responded.
‘Why not? We can feed them, and they should be glad of that.’
He considered that.
‘Fine so, half wages, and I’m not going lower.’
Afterwards, Danny discussed the matter, first with Roy Anderson, who, he was surprised to hear, had built in contingency and allowed Danny for excess costs and wages.
Danny thought of asking Edwin Kane whether Tom Brassey would consider the same, but then decided not to. The Brassey contract was far too important, and if Edwardes & Ryan could take the hit from the floods, it would prove the quality of contractor they were.
He was surprised when Irene accepted this point at once.
‘So how much will the puddle bank at on the Brassey cost to build again?’ she asked.
‘About a hundred pounds, I’m estimating,’ Danny said. ‘We’ll probably lose another fifty on all the extra wages we’ll have to pay, just to catch up. Say two hundred at the most.’
‘So that’s that then,’ Irene said. ‘Lucky we built in such an amount of contingency, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ Danny said. ‘You’re always right.’
But floods were not the only problem that Edwardes & Ryan had to deal with. In spite of his demand for labour, Danny had been getting more edgy about business prospects in the long term. At first, he had been able to hide it from Irene, but that was no longer easy.
Share prices in the London and North Western Exchanges had been dropping. He watched the Manchester and Liverpool exchanges avidly. Manchester – the commercial and trading centre for the industrial west of England – was the centre of his business. Liverpool – the largest port on earth and second city of England – was the source of his cheap Irish labour. Only forty miles separated them.
The drop in the share prices of the railway companies was more disturbing. If any of his customers went bankrupt, his contracts could disappear. Every day, he watched for news of the North Staffordshire Line, or the other lines, but there was no dramatic news on any.
Equally disquieting though, a bankruptcy of one of the major banks could have a knock-on effect on other banks, and if the Manchester & Salford suspended trading, then Edwardes & Ryan would have no source of credit.
But more than the Manchester banks, it was the Liverpool banks that worried him. There were sudden bankruptcies among many Liverpool trading houses and importers, and Danny feared this could spread to the banks who were lending to them. Any collapse in Liverpool could certainly spread to Manchester. In Liverpool, the top bank was the Royal Bank of Liverpool which was seen as one of the strongest in the country. But for weeks now, its shares had been dropping. Then, one day, Danny was startled to see that its share price had dropped by a third in just two days. He read the Liverpool papers, trying to deduce what was happening, but while they detailed the drops, none of them gave any cause. And the shares of the Royal Bank went on dropping.
But what of Irene? Danny knew she was not worried.
She had a different approach to hiring labour. In spite of Danny’s concerns, she reckoned too that their strategy of employing desperate men from the west of Mayo was working well, and would continue to do so. The men they already employed had little alternative. Few of the other contractors were taking on labour.
She was totally ruthless. She reasoned that if they wanted to increase profits, wages would have to be reduced. The other contractors were taking on far fewer navvies, at any wage. The men on the gangs were trapped. No work anywhere else, and no way home. Only death by starvation or fever awaited them in Mayo. If they could even get that far. Edwardes & Ryan was the only contractor that needed new workers.
But Danny would not reduce wages. They were already the lowest in the North West, and he would not be moved on this.
Food was the one area they agreed on. Irene did not want to cut back on feeding the men. The business had to maintain the strength of their workers. Building railways was hard work. Still Edwardes & Ryan paid less for meat than other contractors. No prime cuts of beef here. All the Edwardes & Ryan workers ever got was sheep heads and offal stews. Irene knew that this was just as nutritious as prime beef, but far cheaper.
Now though, her respect for Danny was lessening, and Danny knew this. She had seen him as a powerful and ruthless man, reflecting her own strength. Now, seeing how he was worried by every move in the stock market, she was no longer as sure as she had been. The first hint of softness she had detected in him was bringing his own parents over from Mayo, but she had accepted this. She had little respect for Murty, but kept him in the office working on accounts, or out inspecting the sites. At least he could add, subtract, multiply and divide, and he had known most of the gangers since childhood.
But Danny’s mother, Aileen? Terrified of everything. Working in a mill – that was all she was good for. But the mills were closing. Perhaps Danny had inherited his unknown fears from her.
She wondered if she could bring him back to what he had been before he started reading the Manchester Times. Could she bring back his old ruthlessness? She knew Edwardes & Ryan could survive any crash and come out of it far stronger as all their competitors went bankrupt. But could she convince Danny of that?
She crossed to his desk.
‘What’s frightening you?’
‘I’m not frightened,’ Danny said.
‘Not frightened! There you are, reading the Manchester Times every day, looking for the worst.’
‘But it is bad,’ Danny said angrily, ‘and getting worse. You know it yourself. The banks are just not lending.’
‘The Manchester & Salford are lending to us. They’ve given us a lending facility, and they can’t withdraw it. They might cut back their new lending, but they can’t – and they won’t – cut back on us.’
‘Fine,’ Danny said, ‘Even so, the railways might pull out of some of their contracts.’
‘And what if they do?’ Irene said. ‘We’ve got the Brassey contract, and he knows what he’s doing. And just remember this, the ones who go to the wall are the ones who can’t handle tough times. But we can. One way or the other, we’ll come through, and when we do, when times get better, there’ll be less fools of competitors to compete with. No, this is a time of opportunity, and I don’t want you to wreck it all by being terrified when opportunity is staring you in the face.’
Next morning, a letter arrived from Manchester & Salford Bank. Danny opened it, but said nothing.
‘What now?’ Irene asked.
‘It’s Winrow. He wants to meet me, Tuesday next.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ Irene said, dispassionately. ‘It doesn’t worry you, surely?’
‘Damned right it does,’ Danny said.
Irene sat on the side of his desk.
‘It’s not you that should be worried, Danny,’ she said. ‘It’s the bank. Think of it this way. We owe them money. We have the whip hand.’
‘But what if they close our facility?’
‘We refuse to pay them what we’ve borrowed already. If they end the facility, they’re in breach of contract, and they know it.’
The day before the meeting with the Manchester & Salford, Danny and Irene spent much time in the office, with instructions that they were not to be interrupted. They went through accounts again, and again. Sometimes they checked newspapers, mostly
they didn’t.
For the most part though, Irene insisted on her own approaches to minimising any crisis Edwardes & Ryan might face. By Sunday evening, she was confident that Danny understood exactly how the crisis could be turned to their own advantage.
Winrow rose to meet him, when he was ushered in.
‘Mr. Ryan. Good to meet you again. I hope you won’t mind the inconvenience.’
‘Of course not,’ Danny said. ‘We had agreed to meet regularly, so it was no surprise to me. All in the course of normal business.’
And I know damned well that’s not what’s on your mind, he thought. There’s other reasons for this meeting. No need to say that. He waited.
‘Indeed,’ Winrow went on, ‘though it’s not just normal business that I was thinking about.’
‘The floods, then?’
‘And more, Mr. Ryan. I think I can say, the last week has been among the most remarkable in the history of British banking. You may have noticed the turmoil on the Stock Markets.’
‘Yes,’ Danny answered. ‘The drop in the shares of the Royal Bank. They had the highest reputation possible. I couldn’t understand how that could go down so far, and so suddenly.’
Let’s see how he handles this one, he thought. If the Royal Bank can go so low, the Manchester & Salford can do the same.
‘Too true,’ Winrow said. ‘It turns out though that their position was not as strong as they thought. They had massive amounts of lending to three customers, and that makes any bank vulnerable. It is rumoured that one of the three is not in a position to honour their commitments. It is not our policy to lend as recklessly as that. The Manchester & Salford will never allow itself to be so exposed. Don’t misunderstand me though, Mr. Ryan. I have no reason to think Edwardes & Ryan will not honour their obligations. Having said that, you are a substantial customer now, and it is the policy of the board that we should have a good understanding of our top borrowers. Particularly, those in the railway sector.’
So that’s it, Danny thought. Railways.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I can understand your concern. I am here to help.’
