London - Edward Rutherfurd [502]
“You are young, Mr Penny. You must get established. And, of course, Mary may get a better offer. But if not, in a few years, we’ll look at you again.” He nodded, apparently with general approval. “In the meantime, you may call to see Mary. . .” Here, a huge and definitive sniff “. . . from time to time.”
Lucy passed the place nearly every day, but she always looked away in case the sight of it brought her bad luck. It was the one place the family had to avoid.
The workhouse was the dread of every poor family, and the parish workhouse of St Pancras was as bad as they came. Lying in the angle between two dingy thoroughfares, it had long ago been a gentleman’s residence. But there was nothing gentlemanly about it now. Nearby stood a broken-down old stocks and a cage once used for prisoners. Its filthy yard was strewn with refuse. They had been obliged to enlarge the old house some years back, for into it were crammed God knows how many poor souls, filling every hole and cranny, making it a sort of rabbit warren of the destitute.
In theory, the parish workhouses were to help the poor. Those unable to fend for themselves were to be housed, the children apprenticed to trades, the adults given work to do. In practice it was different. People had been complaining for centuries about the parish poor: to pay taxes for a fine new church was bad enough, but at least you had something to show for it; whereas when you spent money on the needy, they only seemed to ask for more. In practice, therefore, parishes spent as little as they could. Supervision was perfunctory. Most of these places filled with the sick – and poor folk who came there healthy seldom stayed so for long.
Soon after her father died, Lucy had nervously whispered to her mother: “Could we have to go to the workhouse?”
“Of course not,” her mother had lied. “But we must both work.”
Her mother had found work in a little factory nearby that made cotton dresses. But the hours there were very long, and the owner would not allow little Horatio in there. So each morning accompanied by her brother, Lucy would walk past the workhouse on the way to her new job in Tottenham Court Road.
Whatever he might think about the general state of the world, the furniture business had been good to Zachary Carpenter. “I can sell as many davenports and chairs as I can make,” he would confess. He had taken extra space and employed ten journeymen now and an extra apprentice. His total workforce was twice this number, but the others were neither journeymen nor apprentices: they were little children.
“Their small hands, when properly trained, can make for very neat finishing work,” Carpenter would explain. He did not know of anyone in his line who did not use them. As for whether it was right, that social reformer would say: “They ought to be in schools. But until there are schools, I at least keep them from starving.” Or from the workhouse.
Carpenter, like most masters, did not employ children under seven, but he had made an exception for Horatio. Since the tiny boy was eager to help, he gave him a little broom and let him sweep up the wood-shavings for which, from time to time, he would reward him with a farthing.
It took both Lucy and her mother to replace even the majority of Will Dogget’s wages. He had usually brought home between twenty and thirty shillings a week. His widow earned ten shillings, Lucy five. The picture was the same all over England: woman was paid about half a man’s wage; a child, something over a sixth. These were the economics of avoiding the workhouse.
In the Easter of 1825, Eugene Penny took the advice of Mr Hamish Forsyth and reduced all his investments to cash and safe government stocks. If he’s right and I don’t follow his advice, he’ll never forgive me, he reasoned; whereas if I do, and he’s wrong, it puts me in a slightly stronger position with him.
Whether the dour Scot was correct it was hard as yet to say. The foreign loan boom continued. “We’ve never made such profits!” Meredith declared. But as Penny looked at some