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Book One: A Poor Man

at the Gate Series

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Chapter Seven

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Tom laid back in the big bed in Mary’s cottage, pleasantly tired – he had been away from town for three weeks, off in the North Country visiting a works in Sheffield, in a county where there seemed to be more going on in iron; Lancashire was increasingly a cotton area, iron and steel very big but not quite the leader that it was down in Birmingham or far away in the North East. Clapperley had put the possibility of an investment his way, had told him of a Mr Edwards, a man of vision and ideas with a particular interest in steam but short of funds; the papers Edwards had sent were clear and his proposals were original and, probably, workable. Tom had gone north with high hopes – had come away disappointed; Edwards was an inventor of some genius, but he was a disaster as a businessman, his works a disorganised shambles, his accounts rudimentary and seeming to consist of a running journal detailing cash payments in and out and made up whenever he remembered. The man should not have been let out on his own.

Tom had spoken long with Edwards, had tried to persuade him to concentrate on his inventions and to sell up his works and then come down to St Helens where there would be a workshop and a salary and share of all the profits he made, but he was sure that Edwards would not take his advice. The man had known that his inventions were good, brilliant in fact, and that customers would soon be beating on his door – he must have quoted ‘Build a better mousetrap...’ a dozen times over – a pity, for he would end up in debtor’s prison within a very few months and would die there, his ideas with him. Tom did not regard himself as a great man of business, in fact he was increasingly disenchanted with the life, but he knew how to run his own concern and could tell when another man was failing; Edwards was bound for bankruptcy, would lose all of his own money, but he would take none of Tom’s with him.

“Not to worry”, Tom murmured aloud, allowing a hand to slip down Mary’s breast and gently find the nipple, stroking and teasing and bringing her out of her doze; he grinned in satisfaction as she rolled on top of him and spread her thighs wide, taking him deep inside her. She had learned a lot in four years, and had invented one or two tricks of her own, providing him with all the home comforts he required and pleasantly undemanding as well. She appeared to be content to live very quietly, pottering in her little house, borrowing novels from the Circulating Library, playing on the piano he had bought her two years previously, going out to the market and the town shops and nodding to a few acquaintances but making no friends, no close contacts at all, remaining effectively invisible; he doubted a dozen people in the town knew her name and even fewer associated it with his.

It was very different to the life she must have expected, he thought, a little guiltily because he almost never thought of her at all, she was merely there, a convenience to him, rather like a pet dog would be he supposed. She had told him of the tutor, Jevons, who had ruined her and had wondered in passing how many other silly girls had fallen victim to him; perhaps he should do something about that, he owed her a favour, several, in fact.

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“Mr Clapperley, two things, I wonder if you could assist me with some information about an enterprising young gentleman...”

A month and Mr Jevons was found to have left Birmingham and to have been run out of Warwick; he was currently living in rooms in Coventry, still tutoring young girls in their homes. Clapperley introduced Tom to two pugilists of his acquaintance, men who travelled with the fairs in a boxing booth, inviting local hopefuls to step into the ring for free, a guinea the prize for being on their feet at the end of ten minutes, five guineas if they achieved a knock-down. They charged a penny to spectators at the ringside and made a steady profit fighting clean and fairly – they were hard men; they also did not like flash gentlemen who abused young girls and were very willing to earn fifty guineas, gold, for the privilege of putting a stop to this one’s capers. They promised to do a thorough job and to explain exactly why while he was still awake, left on the stage in holiday mood.

They returned three days later, job done. Mr Jevons was no longer a handsome young man, nor would he ever be so again with a flattened nose and no front teeth; nor would he teach piano again, they having taken a ball-peen hammer with them and used it very carefully on his fingers – not a bone left unbroken, they cheerfully told Tom, thanking him for his payment and assuring him they would be at his future convenience if he ever needed them again.

Tom saw Clapperley, thanked him for his recommendation, his men had done all that could be asked of them, and collected the results of his second commission before going off to Mary’s cottage.

“Mary, I found out the whereabouts of Mr Jevons just recently and have taken steps to assure that he changes his way of life. There were some ‘silly young girls’ after you, but there will be no more.”

“What did you do, Tom? You did not kill him? You cut it off?”

“No, not that!” There was a limit to revenge he found.

“Tell me, please.”

“I sent two men to beat him and make him ugly and they broke his fingers as well.”

“Good! Thank you! Let him make a living now! He has no money of his own – he told me how he had been brought up to wealth but his father had lost all and left him to earn his way – now let him prosper if he can. I doubt he will have the alternative that was open to me!”

She burst into tears, hauling her dress off as she dashed at her eyes.

“I can at least show you my thanks, Tom.”

“Wait a moment, Mary. I thought of something else last week. Here, this is for you.”

He handed over a large, stiff envelope, sealed with official wax on the tape binding it.

She pulled out the documents inside, standing nude and uncaring to read them, having difficulty with the legalisms.

“Deeds... my name, Mary Amberley, on them. This direction. You have given me the house, Tom?”

“Yes, it is yours, and Mr Martin the banker will pay one hundred pounds a year into an account in your name and will pay Mrs Johnson and Martha their wages and the housekeeping monies. I thought it was best, realising that I might catch the smallpox tomorrow and then where would you be? Now you will be safe and comfortable whatever happens.”

“Not comfortable, Tom, never that, but well looked-after by a kind gentleman, and I know how lucky I have been – it could have been much, much worse. I wonder if Mama still thinks of me, whether she worries, or whether she has forgotten me, a sinner condemned? Do you think I could send her a letter, just to say that I am safe and well?”

“You could...”

“But perhaps it would only open the old wounds, you think?”

“I don’t know – you must choose.”

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“Hallelujah, Thomas!”

“’Morning, Joe – have you got religion or is it Christmas and I didn’t notice? Or is Amelia increasing, again?”

Three children under the age of four suggested that the last was by no means unlikely; Joseph grinned and said he thought not, but he would really like a second daughter and when there were three in the nursery, a fourth would make very little difference, just another maid brought in to assist Nurse.

“Well, you will be able to give her a good dowry, so why not?”

“A man named Cartwright, Tom, has published that he has a power loom, and the word is that it works.”

“Is he selling them?”

“A fee for building to his design. McKay is making our first already.”

“Then build the mill, brother – next to the spinners, I suppose? Will there be enough head in the stream to run another wheel?”

“Arranged, Tom. We build a little higher up the hillside and divert another stream across; we have talked with the farmer already, paid for using his land, and can dig a channel across to another header pond, flowing over to the spinning mill stream and away. Costs us precious little because it also drains the farmer’s bottom lands, something he could not afford to do on his own, so he has charged us almost nothing.”

“Have we got enough set aside, or do we need to put more into it?”

“Five thousand in the pot and that will cover us for this year and with reasonable good fortune for as long as we need. We calculate to make thirty looms this year, add ten or twenty more next, then probably rebuild them all in the third year, with our own improvements.”

“What do you intend, run a single shift Monday to Saturday to start with, then go to double working if they are reliable enough?”

“Probably – we think we will be able to sell everything we can make from the very beginning. Kent, the man who makes shirts and chemises, says he could sell five thousand pairs of ladies drawers a week, if he could find the cloths to make them, and Isaacs was round last week looking to buy cotton handkerchiefs and neckcloths rather than import them from India as he does now. Provided the looms are reliable, we can undercut the East India Company and make a good profit the while.”

They had banked all of the profits from the spinning for three years, paying Joseph a thousand a year and setting the rest to accumulate at interest in expectation of the day when they built a weaving mill; they had known the day must come – too many intelligent engineering men were working on the question for it not to be solved.

Tom had few questions to ask, little comment to make, for Joseph was far the better businessman, enjoying nothing more than to immerse himself in his mill, talking easily with his people, casting a knowing eye over the quality of their produce, keeping his accounts, bidding at the dockside auctions, selling his yarns and threads, poring over his engineer’s drawings and, in the evenings, keeping his vigorous young wife happy. Apart from a necessary extension of Lodge Cottage, and the probable need to build on another wing in a few years, very little seemed likely to disturb the comfortable, and highly profitable, existence he had built for himself. Memories of Antigua had faded and his boyhood was now so alien to him that it might have happened to someone else; his life had begun on the Star and he kept the pair of horse pistols as a memento of that happy, lucky ship, making sure they were safe on a very high shelf, well clear of little boys’ hands.

Just occasionally Joseph made plans for his children, though he was normally sensible enough to accept that they would grow up to be their own men and women. His eldest boy, Thomas, would inherit the firm, of course, but young Bob might become a soldier, or a midshipman in the navy and pretty little Jenny would marry a lord!

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Tom had given the management of Roberts almost wholly into George Mason’s hands – he was much better at it, had no other life except for the chapel which now took up almost all of his few free hours, being single still, and saw the burden as a privilege. They had built a third furnace and casting shed, extended the canalside wharf, fitted the trackway with wrought iron rails and installed a pair of steam engines to turn the winches to pull tubs all the way from the quarry – itself extended by the purchase of the rest of the hillside – to the furnaces and then down to the canal. The ropes that pulled a train of half a dozen tubs at a time - long, long cables bought new from ropewalks that contracted to the navy, the best that could be obtained - were a permanent worry; they were four hundred yards long and the loads were heavy and as they coiled and uncoiled so the coal dust and ironstone particles worked into their fibres, weakening and wearing them through so that they had to be replaced quite regularly – and they were very expensive so it was necessary to get every day’s work from them that was safely possible. Cables had snapped and whiplashed and killed and maimed a dozen men at a time at other works, and that did give a place a bad name, one that Tom wished to avoid – better far for George to make those decisions.

Tom had become somewhat more interested in general finance, investments outside of the ordinary run of trade and the five thousands he had set to speculation a few years before had grown to eleven – the country was booming and more and more people wished to borrow at higher and higher rates, the main problem seemed to be to choose between them.

It was a time of prosperity and the Corporation had shared in it and had built for the benefit of the town; the Infirmary had put a cool thousand in Tom’s pocket by way of profit on its land and a thank-you from the builder who had obtained the contract, but the Workhouse, an austere building, had contributed only four hundreds. Tom had great hopes of the new Town Hall, planned to represent the glory of the town and with a wealth, in both senses of the word, of Gothic ornamentation promised. Mrs Morris had shared in the general prosperity, gambling flourishing while men’s purses were full; she had bought a second house with Tom’s capital and was paying him a share of her profits; she had also gladdened the hearts of the local silk merchants with her frequent purchases as well as hiring on a young and powerfully muscled footman whose duties were said mainly to take place after hours.

The Irish horse coper had been a disappointment, a rare failure on Clapperley’s part that he was deeply conscious of – the man had been hanged for horse-theft in his third season to a loss of five hundreds in cash, partly offset by the seizure of a score of his van-horses, now drawing light wagons around the town

With the surplus from Roberts that he had tucked away, Tom had about eight thousand pounds uncommitted and separate from the speculative funds and he felt he should get into coal to protect his interests in the iron works; the price of coke was creeping up and there had been occasional shortages, possibly due to fluctuations in output, probably due to mine-owners rigging the local market. There was a small mine, no more than a drift, a single gallery cut almost horizontally into a hillside outcropping, not more than two miles from Roberts and close to the canal. A short spur from the canal, needing no lock and costing a thousand at most, would provide transport and there was flat land at the pithead where coke ovens could be built for another couple of thousands. Expanding the mine would cost a thousand or so, at a rough estimate, and then would fund itself from the increase in output. Say five thousands in investment, leaving three for the initial purchase of the three hundred acres of land and the goodwill. The land was rough, fit only for the sheep which could not be run close to a pit – their fleece became much too dirty for practical use; four pounds an acre, at most, leaving some eighteen hundred pounds for the pit itself, a very thin price unless the owner could be persuaded to leave the trade. Clapperley was investigating the possibilities, had so far been discouraging.

“Mr Dakers is a man of uniform virtues it would seem – I cannot discover him to drink, gamble or fornicate, which reduces the normal avenues of approach. He is unmarried and at age fifty may be expected to remain so. He is content with a small income, working his pit with no more than a dozen hands and loading up a couple of wagons each day to sell coals for winter firing to local householders; he has no ambition at all, refused out of hand the possibility of a contract with Roberts for a couple of hundred tons a week.”

A pity, tied into a contract it would soon have been possible to refuse to pay a bill on grounds of poor quality and stretch his cash-flow to breaking point.

“What does he do for his amusement, Mr Clapperley?”

“He teaches reading and writing at the Sunday School after chapel, as do a number of other worthy gentlemen, of course, your Mr Mason prominent amongst them. Probably every literate farmhand in the villages learnt on Sunday, and many borrow books from the little library they keep. Improving tomes, I understand. I expect he contributes many of the books, being better off than most. I shall enquire – it may be a possible weakness.”

A week later and Clapperley was exultant – his detective work had paid off, his legal training had led him in the right direction to dig up the dirt which he firmly believed could be found in everyone’s past and most people’s present.

“Sunday School indeed, Mr Andrews! Not quite the three ‘Rs’ – Reading, Writing and Buggery in this case! He buys a few books for the chapel library, but favoured boys get to visit his house and choose from his own collection – some of them visit twice or thrice a week. I have witnessed statements from two ten year olds, detailing exactly what was done to them and by them, dictated in the presence of my clerk – nothing particularly imaginative, I might add, merely the normal.”

“Not being a lawyer with your wide experience of humanity’s frailties I am afraid I do not know what ‘the normal’ might be – and please don’t tell me!”

Clapperley sniggered his appreciation – Mr Andrews was such a card!

“I shall pay Mr Dakers a visit this afternoon, Mr Andrews – I should expect him to be knocking at your door tomorrow morning.”

Clapperley was wrong – Dakers had saddled his riding cob within minutes of their painful little interview and was stood at Roberts’ office door before nightfall.

“Is Mr Andrews at leisure the while?”

Tom came to the door, nodding the boy away. “Mr Dakers, is it not? We met a couple of months ago when I wondered whether you might not be prepared to sell your workings – so close as it is, it would have been very handy. Do come in, sir. Kettle, Richard!”

Dakers allowed himself to be led inside, to take his greatcoat off, to accept the offer of tea and to discuss the unpleasantly wet weather, so typical of recent years.

“You say, ‘would have been handy’, Mr Andrews? Are you no longer interested in buying your own source of coal?”

“Well, to be honest with you, Mr Dakers, I have committed the bulk of our funds into expansion of our cotton firm – Star Spinners – now that there is a reliable power loom available. I doubt I could lay my hands on more than twenty-five hundreds at the moment, so it is not so much ‘not interested’ as ‘not able’.”

Dakers made a little face of dismay – he had no idea of another purchaser and suspected that it might take weeks, months even, to discover one, and the kindly-spoken legal gentleman who had just visited him seemed to think there might be a public furore within days, on Sunday, in fact. The gentleman had explained, so Dakers had thought, trying to follow his mass of legal jargon, that he was in some way the representative of the elders of the chapel who had received an intimation of unspecified wrong-doing on his part; they proposed to hold a meeting of the faithful, after service on Sunday, in the chapel, there to air any complaints there might be and to thrash out the misunderstandings that they were certain lay at the root of the little problem – this, after all, was the traditional way of keeping order in their flock and it was better far to bring everything out into the light of day rather than let grievances rankle and fester unseen.

Dakers, however, felt he would far rather not have to stand and explain himself in public – it was not as if he had done the lads any harm, after all, and they had always earnt a sixpence and use of his books, but people made such a fuss about what was really a very trivial matter – look at what had happened to poor young Jonathan Roberts, such a nice boy, only five years before.

The office boy brought in the tea tray, with best china cups, and made a performance of pouring, giving a couple of minutes grace, time for Dakers to think, to decide that twenty-five hundred in the pocket was better than a load of buckshot in the belly.

“I find I have to leave England, Mr Andrews. My elder brother married an Irish lady and we lost contact with each other; I now discover she is dead and he is poorly, in a very bad way, and they never had children and he wishes me to visit him and inspect my inheritance while he is still there.”

It was a very clumsy lie, Tom thought – he was sure he could have done much better.

“As a result, Mr Andrews, I would be pleased to accept an offer of two thousand five hundred guineas for my pit.”

“Pounds,” Tom corrected automatically, somewhat dismayed – he had obviously been too impulsive, could probably have screwed him for another couple of hundred; he should not have mentioned a figure at so early a stage – he would know better next time.

They shook hands on the deal and exchanged names of attorneys – not Clapperley on Tom’s part, it having occurred to them that it might seem the least bit suspicious to Dakers, even allowing for coincidence in a small town – and they agreed to press for the earliest possible payment. All things were possible when the willingness to oblige was present, and Mr Andrews had a name in town already as one of the wealthiest of businessmen so the attorneys were very willing indeed and Dakers was off to Liverpool on Saturday morning, contract signed, sealed and delivered. By noon Dakers was aboard ship for Ireland, intending, very craftily, to instantly board another bound for Bristol and then to take the Mail Coach to London where he would buy a small house, much less visible than lodgings, and disappear in midst of the teeming hordes of the Metropolis. He lasted three months in London before inviting a very pretty, and available, boy back to his house – so much more comfortable than the back-alley - thus revealing his address to the boy’s minder, who extracted his remaining cash with a red hot poker before leaving him naked and dead on the floor; there was no inquiry, the constable and magistrates content that whatever had happened to the gentleman had probably been very thoroughly deserved – the innocent were expected to be less lewdly displayed in death.

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Tom made his entry to his pit on the Monday morning, found there was no such thing as a foreman or underman and very little in the way of coal or tools or carts above ground – he should have been there on Sunday it appeared. He looked about underground and found little more than a hole, a large cave haphazardly worked as was convenient – there were a couple of men with a wheelbarrow pottering at the face; neither was much better than half-witted, could answer none of his questions. He left telling them to carry on as normal, promising to be back soon.

“George, do you know anything about mining?”

“No, Master, nor I ain’t going to, neither!”

The drop out of acquired gentility and into deep Kentish alerted Tom to the distress his question had created, made him instantly back away.

“Nor should you, if you do not wish, George. How might I find a man for the pit?”

“Not easily, Master, for the pits be growing apace and miners with knowhow are increasingly few. The stannaries, the Cornish tin mines, are about the only place where there are mines closing down and men looking for work, though I hear that the lead and Blue John mines in Derbyshire are less busy than they were. On t’other hand, the pits in South Wales and the slate in North Wales are snatching up every body they can find and the salt digging down Cheshire way will take men out of Derbyshire, I should expect. Coal ain’t that well-loved, Master, for men and women die too easy down the pits and the money ain’t so good as to make it worthwhile, so it won’t be easy to find a skilled man to do the job.”

“Then I’ll do it my bloody self, George – it’s not what I fancy, but if you buy a place in the game then you have got to play your part.”

Mason agreed, quietly, afraid that he was letting Tom down, but even more afraid of going underground every day – he had gone down one of the new pits in a previous year, out of curiosity, and would never do so again, the black and the smell and the dirt and the noises, the creaks and groans coming out of the very rock and the feeling of the roof pressing down on your head... Never again!

“Let’s see – Joe’s engineer can build coke ovens for us, and we can get a canal contractor to build the spur as a little winter job – a few week’s work in the dead season will be welcome, I would think. We can get everything prepared while we look about for a man to run it.”

Mason agreed.

“How’s the works going, George? Did we get that contract for the mill roof your brother was after?”

“That and three more, sir, work night and day for the next three months and we’re turning away customers for steel. I’ve had to tell him to go easy or we shall be letting people down for date and quality, so he’s got time on his hands at the moment, more’s the pity!”

“A problem, George?”

“He met Miss Roberts a few weeks ago, sir, and has seen her frequently since.”

“Is he thinking of marriage?”

“Maybe... I don’t know, because I haven’t asked, but it is not a family I would wish to be involved with, Master. I am unwilling to be seen to interfere, for I do not wish to cause a breach between us – no better way of offending a man than criticise his beloved! I have made sure that the stories have come to his ears, but I don’t know whether he believes them - she don’t look the sort to have killed first her brother and then her own father.”

“Who does? Do you think she did her brother, too? I hadn’t considered that, I must say, though, I was pretty sure she held a pillow over the old man’s face when he was drunk in bed.”

Tom was not shocked, he found, intrigued more – it showed a certain determination not to be shackled by the bonds of conventionality.

“Logic, sir! Murder ain’t that common and for two in the same family to die by two different hands, all in the same year, suggests a bit more than coincidence to me. If she topped the one, odds are she did the other too.”

“You could well be right, George – so if young Fred gets involved there he would be well advised to watch his manners – she’s likely to do more than cross her legs if she gets angry with him.”

Mason could not approve of such vulgarity but permitted himself a prim smile – the Master must be indulged, he was still very young.

“Perhaps, Mr Andrews, you might wish Frederick to seek other employment in such circumstances?”

Would he? Probably, but he needed George too much to risk losing him as well.

“No! Not at all! Where would I find a man of his worth to replace him? In any case, his private life is no business of mine and I believe him to be man enough to run his own affairs quite satisfactorily. No, what I would do, I think, is offer him tenancy of the house and then set him to work, to use that spare time you say he has. Is he interested in running part of the works? Has he ideas of his own? Is he mechanically minded like you, George? Do you think he could learn coal?”

“Not coal, no, Master. For the rest, well, he has often looked about him and pursed his lips and shaken his head, as if he could do better. Maybe he could...”

“And maybe he’s too big for his boots? Find out, George – he’s an intelligent man, let’s use his brain before he gets up to mischief with it. What about our quarryman, do you think I could talk to him about coal?”

“Shouldn’t think so, Master – open quarrying be what he knows, not underground work.”

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From the works he made a rushed visit to Clapperley, the indispensable agent whose knowledge of the local business world was encyclopaedic, resulting in the opportunity to go more than one hundred feet underground in the largest local pit. It wa