Chapter 12
Late August 1824
House of Industry
Dublin, Ireland
I was fortunate to find summer work in the fields outside of Dublin, but with harvest already upon us, I needed to secure arrangements for the winter. That was easier said than done, however, because so did all the other seasonal workers.
As I walked home from another failed interview, my thoughts strayed to Margaret. If I had only stayed with her that day, sought out Miss McAuley with her, I could be warm and happy right now instead of wet and shivering in the late autumn rain. For the first time in months, I wondered where Margaret had ended up. Perhaps she could help me. Maybe if I visited Miss McAuley, she could tell me where Margaret had gone.
The next morning, I donned my most respectable dress—the only one that hadn’t started showing signs of wear at the elbows and wasn’t dotted with stains—and set out, hope rising with each step. I recalled the route out of Dublin to Coolock House fairly well, making only a few wrong turns along the way. By the time the stately manor came into view, I was certain I’d made the right decision.
The iron gates we had waited at two years prior were open. I started up the long drive to the main house, but not even a third of the way there, a matronly woman called out to me from what I could only guess to be a carriage or gate house. At her inquiry about my business there, I introduced myself and told her I was seeking to speak with Miss McAuley.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, my love, but she is not at home presently.”
“Well, when will she return?”
“She’s taken up temporary residence in France for the next two years, I’m afraid, so it will be a while before she returns.”
“Two years?” My stomach dropped to my feet. “But … I really need her help. Now.” I bowed my head. There was nothing I could do. I had to go back home to my last night in the boarding house and figure out a way forward.
The next morning I swallowed my pride and rented out a tiny cellar in a less-than-respectable area of town. Accessed by a trapdoor in the floor of a rundown house, it was primitive at best, with a dirt floor and cold stone walls that afforded me only enough room to lie down. I had to supply my own candles or coal if I wanted light or heat, and there was no running water or sanitation. I had to sneak to one of the city’s fountains before dawn if I wished to bathe or collect water for the day. Good thing I had stolen my chamber pot from the boarding house, or I would not even have a place to relieve myself. Not that it would have made much difference; the cellar was prone to seepage from the sewer, especially when it rained.
My reduced circumstances made it more difficult than ever to find work. The stench of rot and piss clung to my clothing and I wasn’t always able to complete my ablutions before the night watchman came along and chased me off. If he found me one more time, he threatened to put me in shackles.
As the days grew colder and my meagre income from sewing and other odd tasks proved far too little to heat my tiny cellar, desperation gripped my mind. The last thing I wanted to do was sell my body, but it was rapidly becoming my only option. The problem was that I didn’t have anyone to recommend me at the nicer brothels, so there was no way the madams would let me in, much less offer me employment. I could always work the docks or around the bars and alehouses, but if it became known I had been working on the streets, any hope for the finer establishments was gone.
Every day, foundations for new construction projects were laid, shops opened, and vendors set out carts selling food to passersby, yet I could find little gainful employment. I survived for a while by cleaning at an inn, but as soon as the proprietor realized he couldn’t offer me to his clients, I was sacked.
Finally, I had no choice but to pawn the last of my possessions, even my clothing, leaving me with a single dress, a cloak, and one pair of worn boots. I took to begging on market days and situating myself near the fashionable shops by day, in hopes one of the wealthy ladies might spare a coin or even a crust of bread—or better yet, that one might recognize me and offer me work. At night, when the temperatures dipped well below freezing, I sneaked inside the glass houses, seeking the heat of their embers, wondering how, within six months, my life had plummeted so drastically.
Looking around at the other bodies sleeping around me, children piled on parents like pups, I realized one thing—come the depths of winter, these sandy, ashy illegal beds would not be big enough to meet Dublin’s needs.
If I wanted to live, I had to make a choice, and soon.
*****
I breathed in deep through my mouth, trying to keep the nausea at bay. I hadn’t eaten in two days, so what my stomach could be using to protest was a mystery to me. The very sight of the lime-washed walls of the House of Industry on James’s Street brought back flashes of memory—of a time when the inner side of the workhouse’s walls trapped me within their shadowy heights, rather than offering sanctuary as they did now. But then again, I was much smaller in those days, only just able to form lasting impressions of my world. If I let myself travel back in time, I immediately tasted the bitter bite of slightly-turned milk and encountered the resistance of stale bread—our first and sometimes only meal of the day—and found myself rubbing the muscles in my hand, the ghost pain of so many hours scrubbing and cleaning filling my joints with burning shards of glass once again.
But then again, without such an upbringing, I likely wouldn’t have survived so long without work. If nothing else, growing up an orphan taught me to be resourceful, and doing so here gave me at least rudimentary education, along with basic skills in cooking and cleaning. It may not have been the level of experience many girls had, but it was more than the street urchins had; therefore, I wasn’t picking pockets or prostituting myself then or now.
The line to be admitted to the workhouse slowly advanced, step by miniscule step. My stomach rumbled and my head was beginning to feel hollow. If I didn’t eat soon, I might pass out right here on the cobbles. I doubted there would be any mercy for me then; if one person was allowed to skip the line from fainting, within moments every person in the queue would be on the ground. I shook my head to clear it. Each person had to be processed in the central building before being assigned to one of two perpendicular dormitories, and I would wait as long as it took.
The nearby church bells of St. James tolled the hour twice before I stood before the porter, a young, trim man with black hair and a thin mustache, attired in an official-looking black suit with silver braided trim at the cuff and lapels.
“Name?” he asked without looking up from the log book open on the desk in front of him.
“Grace Ryan.”
“Age?”
“Eighteen.”
He glanced up at me then, his gaze evaluating. He must have believed me, because eventually he nodded and moved on.
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Religion?”
“Protestant.”
As expected, this seemed to please him. “Occupation?”
“Domestic.”
“Last residence?”
I gave him Lord Montague’s address. His eyebrow shot up; he was no doubt wondering how I had fallen so far.
“Have you been housed here before?”
“Yes. I was born here and lived within these walls for ten years.” A memory of the day I left to take on my first job in a household tried to push its way to the front of my mind, but I pushed it down. There would be plenty of time for reminiscing once I was inside with a full belly.
“And why are you seeking shelter here?” He looked up again, poised to record my story.
I told him of the hardship of the last several months.
His pen scratched the page but his face remained impassive as he wrote. At this point I had been through the timeline so many times in my own head, I could recite it without really thinking. Watching his hand move across the page, I couldn’t help but wonder about his life. What other tales of woe and misery had this man heard? Did they make him grateful for his home, his wife, his children? Or did they serve, as they did for so many others, to inflate his sense of superiority? I prayed it was the former but expected the latter.
“One last question, Miss Ryan.” The porter’s voice drew me back from my reverie. “What is the name of your nearest relative?”
For a moment, confusion clouded my mind, but then I remembered they needed to know who would stand for you if you became unruly or who would claim your body if you died. What would become of me if tragedy struck? I didn’t know my family. Margaret would have been appropriate to name, but I had no idea where she was. “I don’t have one,” I finally admitted.
I watched him write “none,” on the final line of the form. With a sinking heart I realized that meant either a lunatic asylum or pauper’s grave could be my end. No. That would not happen. I wouldn’t let it. The very fact that I was here right now meant one step closer to a new life.
“Step over here, please.” The porter gestured to his left, where a guard waited.
The uniformed officer made me remove all my clothing, save my shift. He passed my clothes off to another guard, who inspected them and then placed them in a wicker basket. “You’ll get it back when you leave,” the first guard said, making me wonder if everyone had the same question at this point in their intake process. He then ran his hands over my body, likely searching for bottles of spirits, opium, or other contraband. His sharp squeeze to both breasts startled me, but it also prepared me for his more thorough inspection to come. I was used to being fondled without my permission and I couldn’t help but smile—not from any pleasure, but from picturing the indignant response of Mrs. Donahue or Lady Montague if they were treated the same way.
Once the guard had his fill of me and was convinced I wasn’t carrying anything illegal, he sent me to a back room to endure a medical inspection. There, I was asked to remove my shift and stood shivering as a doctor peered into my eyes and mouth, inspected my teeth, felt my glands, and examined every inch of my skin, cataloging the sores he found from bedbug and flea bites. He then picked through my hair with a thin comb, finding the lice he expected. Thankfully, he didn’t seem inclined to check for venereal disease, so I escaped the worst possible humiliation.
Dressed and out in the hallway once again, I was directed to another room containing rows of metal tubs and about a dozen women, residents and workers included. A young girl stationed at the door took my shift and an older woman of about forty guided me to one of the tubs. I glanced at the water warily, remembering the cold baths after five other girls had already dirtied the water, but to my surprise, the water was clear and steaming.
“We don’t do it that way anymore,” my caretaker said with a knowing smile. “I remember those days, too. I’m Martha, by the way.”
“Grace,” I replied, feeling I had made my first friend on the inside. I lifted one leg into the water and then the other. A groan of pleasure rose to my lips, but I stifled it. I couldn’t recall the last time I had had a proper bath. Though this was a matter of necessity rather than luxury, I couldn’t help but feel Martha took her time lathering and rising my hair and body with a strong soap she said would kill the vermin. Finally, after she had poured a last pitcher of warm water over my head, it was time to get out.
I dried myself with the coarse towel provided, then stepped into the gingham shift Martha gave to me. Over that went a petticoat of linsey-woolsey and a coarse grogram gown. I pulled on a pair of worsted stockings and then skipped my feet into woven slippers. By then, the heat of the baths had mostly dried my hair, so I twisted it into a bun and secured it beneath my new day cap. Finally, Martha placed a second shift, this one of a softer calico, into my arms. I noticed it had a number stitched into it, as well as a tag that declared it property of the workhouse. No one would be able to remove it without causing a noticeable hole in the garment. Come to think of it, each piece of clothing had had the same identifiers, but I had been in too much of a hurry to notice. That was certainly one way to keep the items from being stolen and sold for profit.
Martha led me out of the bathing area and into a large, empty rectangular room. Beds lay on the floor perpendicular to each of the long white walls, a fireplace crackling at one end and a communal privy at the other. To my great relief, she led me down the narrow center aisle away from the stinking hole and closer to the heat. She pointed to a straw mat. “That one is yours. I’d make it now and place your nightclothes under the pillow. That will show the others it is taken. Can’t be too careful while you’re in confinement.”
She was right. In a place where women cycled in and out on a daily basis as they were released with a bill of clean health into the general female dormitory or sent to the infirmity to suffer through whatever catching disease they developed, not even one’s one bedding was safe. Every person did what she must to mark one small scrap of space as her own.
On top mattress lay a pile of linens. “Do they still make the beds sheet first, then the blankets and coverlet?” I asked, my hands beginning to do the work without conscious thought.
Martha nodded. “It’s remarkable how quickly it comes back to you, isn’t it?”
I was about to ask her about her previous experience here, when a bell rang in the distance. Martha looked up. “That is the dinner bell.” She bustled over to me and helped me finish making my bed. By now I had noticed even my sheets bore the same number and markings as my clothing—not that that would stop anyone from trying to claim them for her own use.
“Be thankful you came to us on a Thursday,” she said, leading me to the refectory. “Tonight we eat ox head porridge. Tomorrow they are serving plain, with only vegetables and a bit of seasoning. Tastes like glue,” she said with a small laugh.
The very thought turned my stomach. I never did develop a taste for the sludge-like dish. I would have to remember to try to eat extra supper on beef days and breakfast on plain days.
We stood in line in the refectory, listening to the buzz of conversation all around. Once we reached the front, a woman spooned a ration of slop into a bowl and I held out my hand for my allotted piece of bread and cup of small beer. Martha led me to a long table where three other women, similar in age to me, were already rapidly consuming their meal. I sat at an open seat in the middle, nodded a greeting to them, and picked up my bread. Though the hunger pains had long ago subsided, I was lightheaded, like a hive of bees had taken up residence in my ears. I grabbed the bread, but before I could bring it to my mouth, Martha had stayed my hand.
“Wait.” She squinted at the three dark-haired girls. “Did you say grace before eating?” After moment of silence, she shook her head. “I thought not.”
At a look from her, three spoons clattered to the table, three pairs of fingers were interlaced in prayer and six eyes shut. I hurried to follow suit.
“Dear Lord, we thank you for the meal we are about to eat. We thank you also for the opportunity to do your work this day and for bringing Grace to safety here with us. Give her strength and guide us all in your holy wisdom. Amen.”
A chorus of “amens” followed.
When I opened my eyes again, all three girls were staring at me.
“Ladies, don’t be impolite. Introduce yourselves.” Martha said as she brought her first spoonful to her mouth.
“I’m Isadora,” the girl farthest to my left said, flipping an auburn braid over her shoulder and offering a small wave. “Everyone here calls me Isa.”
“Jane,” the middle one said, smiling down shyly at her plate.
“I’m Cressida. It means ‘gold,’” the third added, watching me carefully through long dark eyelashes. “My mother named me that because she wanted me to be wealthy, and I intend to be.”
“Then you are in the wrong place,” Isa noted.
Jane giggled into her cup and Cressida scowled. “In here everyone calls me Wren,” she added.
“Because you are small?”
“Partly, but I’m also clever and I hide my secrets well.” Her eyes glimmered.
“Not to mention she has a beautiful voice,” Martha said, sounding just like a proud mother.
“Surely you could use that gift to lift you out of poverty,” I said.
“It takes more than a beautiful melody to get you on a stage or to secure a patron. You need training and that costs money, which I don’t have.” Wren fell silent a moment and muttered into her cup, “And even then, you’re still considered a harlot.”
Isa shook her head at her friend, then turned her attention back to me. “Have you gotten your assignment yet?”
I looked to Martha for guidance. “My assignment? No.”
Martha smiled indulgently. “She’s asking where you’ll be working while your here. The matron might assign you to the infirmary, the nursery—which is where Jane works—or have you sew or clean. What skills do you have?”
I swallowed the spoonful of porridge I had just put into my mouth. “I can cook and clean. I’ve been in service for years.”
Cressida leaned toward me. “Oh,” she said, drawing the word out like I’d given her a juicy piece of gossip. “So how did you end up here?”
Martha swatted at Cressida and gave her an admonishing look. “Don’t be rude, girl.” She turned back to me. “They will likely put you in service here, too. Not a bad job. You’ll find out in the morning.”
I regarded my new companions. “If you don’t mind me asking, how long have the three of you been here?”
The girls looked at each other. “We all arrived last month,” Isa volunteered. “I work in the spinning shed.”
“I was in service, like you.” Jane said. “But my employer experienced a downturn in his fortunes so he had to let several of us go. Now I care for the children.”
When Cressida didn’t immediately answer, I glanced up at her. “Cressida?”
She sighed loudly. “My mother brought me and my sister here after my father died. He owed his employer a lot of money, so we had no choice but to seek shelter here.”
“Where are your mother and sister now?” I looked around, attentive for a face with similar large brown eyes or generous lips.
“They’re dead,” she said without emotion.
“What?” I cried. “Wait—didn’t you say you just arrived last month?”
“Yes,” Isa cut in. “They developed a fever the night after being placed in probation.”
“I fell ill as well,” Cressida said in the same monotone. “But I survived. They didn’t.”
I looked from her to Isa, to Jane, then at Martha and back again. Was I missing something? Why wasn’t Cressida sad? I would have been heartbroken in her place.
Cressida finally met my eyes. “They are the lucky ones. Believe me, if you’d come from where we did, you’d consider death a blessing, too.”
I shrank back in my chair, embarrassed to have read the situation so wrong. After a few bites of bread in silence, I asked Cressida, “How do you plan to make your fortune?”
“What?”
“You said you intended to become wealthy. How?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know yet. But I’m taking you lot with me when I do.”
*****
Two weeks passed quickly, and before I knew it, Martha had somehow arranged for the four of us to be assigned to the same dormitory. The days melted into nothingness, with little time for thought beyond our work, the plain meals, and sleep. We rose each day when the bell tolled eight, put on the uniforms for our positions—mine included the white apron and cap of a domestic, just as Martha had predicted—and made our way to the rectory to dine on either stirabout or a mush of potatoes and milk. The next ten hours were taken up with work, save for a one-hour break for dinner, and then prayers before the bells ordered us to bed once again.
Sundays were the only reprieve from this grueling routine. While many of the residents spent the day in prayer in the refectory-turned-chapel or catching up on sleep, those who were Catholic and those with hardier constitutions—like the domestics, nurses, and nannies, who were used to long days, hard work, and unpredictable schedules—used the time to gossip, work on personal sewing and stitching, and relax as much as possible around the dormitory fire.
“You girls better find a way out of here by spring,” Martha advised, her hands moving seemingly of their own accord as she wove pieces of torn blanket in and out of each other, finishing them in knots, until she had a much thicker and more useful blanket.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“There are plenty of people here right now to run this place,” she said, her eyes drifting from a trio of older women praying the rosary to a gaggle of young mothers who were either nursing or encouraging their children to play with one another. “But come late spring and especially by early summer, most will have left to find work in the fields or at country estates. There won’t be enough of us to maintain it to any level of sanitation. It happens every year, but no one seems care. Besides,” she added with a hint of mirth, “by then you’ll be well and truly tired of the food.”
“What about you? Won’t you come with us?” I asked.
Martha shook her head. “No. I’d sleep better at night staying in here and caring for the elderly women and the new lasses like yourselves. Someone has to, and besides, I wouldn’t last long out there. Too many mistakes, too much past.” Her voice held a regretful note.
“What would we do? How are we to survive?” I asked, only now realizing that in my desperation to escape my current circumstances, I hadn’t thought about ever leaving the workhouse. “They don’t pay us here, so how will we afford food or a place to live?”
Wren snorted. “You really are a sweet young thing, aren’t you?”
Hardly, but she didn’t know that.
“We already have everything we need. These …” she wigged her fingers, “and this ...” She gestured at her body.
My heart sank. “You don’t mean—”
“Yes, saint Grace, that is exactly what I mean. We use what we have to, at least in the beginning. We may not be able to take anything from here, but there are plenty of women among this lot who would be willing to teach us to steal—and maybe even help us—if they knew we were building a future for all of us.”
Isa looked up from her knitting, interested for the first time. “Building a future? How?”
Wren let out a sign of frustration. “Do I have to figure out everything? I’ve been listening to the stories of the new residents, and there is talk of a group of women outside of Kildare who have united to protect one another from the dangers of plying their trade.”
“Like in a brothel?” Isa asked, keeping her voice low. Speaking of prostitution in here was considered the precursor to doing it, and if the wrong matron overheard, you could be punished for engaging in lewd conversation or inciting immorality.
“Yes and no. They live completely in common—money, food, everything. What happens to one of them happens to all. I get the impression they are completely self-sustaining. We could do to the same. Between the four of us, we already have enough skills to get started. Grace, you can keep house and cook. Jane can assist with the cooking while you are entertaining,” she winked at me, “and see to our health needs. She has as much training as any nurse. Isa, you can continue your sewing so we have items to sell for honest income.” Wren’s eyes were shining with anticipation.
“You could sing, as well,” Isa said.
“This is all well and good for dreaming, ladies,” Martha put in, “but what of reality? When you leave here, you will start from the dirt. Say you manage to steal your food without getting arrested, you still will need clients. You could start on the docks or at the barracks, but you’ll be known quickly and not by the clientele you are looking for. Where will you live? We’re in the middle of a city where the night watch doesn’t take kindly to women who attract that kind of attention.”
“You’re right,” Wren said, chewing on a fingernail. “We need the captains and officers as our benefactors, not the sailors and soldiers any woman can snare.”
“Or even better, the nobility,” I said.
Wren laughed. “Grace, you know as well as I that is near to impossible.”
“Not necessarily. It wasn’t only his servants my employer consorted with.”
Wren scoffed and Martha gave me a dubious look.
“Hear me out. If there is one thing I learned in my years of service, the rich will patronize anyone they believe can benefit them. If we have connections in most areas of trade, we can use them to continuously snare bigger fish. What we need is something that makes us special, so that we are the ones men want to patronize over others,” I said.
“What could we possibly provide that men can’t get elsewhere? Sex is sex,” Wren said.
“Maybe,” Isa said. “But that is not the only reason why men take up with that type of woman.”
I heard their exchange, but only just. I was wracking my brain for what might set us apart. “The thing those men value most is their reputation. No woman in this trade wishes to be caught, but we need to become their best-kept secret, like an exclusive club you can only access with approval … from us. And they can only find out about us by recommendation.”
“That’s it!” Wren snapped her fingers. “Unlike the high-end brothels, they won’t have to go to us. We will already be where they are. It’s less risk to both of us. We need to be accessible to our clients but untraceable by the authorities. If the men don’t vary from their routines, they won’t arouse suspicion.”
“What if we move around at first while we’re building a reputation? We skip the base workers of any trade and begin at the parties held for their superiors. We move up from there,” Isa suggested.
“And use different names with different groups. That will make us more difficult to find, but also keep each group in the dark about the others,” Jane added.
“We can use the upcoming social season to find out who the key players and competition are,” I was thinking aloud, warming to the idea. “Then we’ll have ten months to cultivate our contacts and build out our plans. We should spend that time outside of the city; it will be safer for us to move around, plus the men we aim to attract spend most of the year in the country. If we can find a toe hold there, we’ll be the ones they will seek out in the city. A year from now, you may well have your fortune, Wren.”