Deadlight Hall
October 1882
My dear Mr Breadspear
Tomorrow I am sending you Douglas Wilger, who should be sufficiently strong for the work, being twelve years old, but could pass for fourteen. He may need discipline, for he has turned out to be a wilful and ungrateful child, one as needs a firm hand. Already he has had the impudence to say that to work at Salamander House is what he calls ‘beneath him’. He also makes objection to the hours, which he says are very long, and adds that it is a dangerous place.
I do not know what the world is coming to when a child born in shame is so ungrateful, although I will allow that his father – whoever that may be – pays our accounts very prompt.
To my mind the work at Salamander House is easy and the hours reasonable. My goodness, I should like to see how these young people would fare if they had to stand behind a counter in a busy apothecary’s establishment all day, as I did in Mr Porringer’s establishment.
The Wilger boy will come to Salamander House tomorrow morning at 7.00 sharp.
Respectfully yours,
Maria Porringer (Mrs)
Following this letter was what appeared to be an official report from the same year.
DEADLIGHT HALL TRUST
ENQUIRY HELD INTO INJURY AT SALAMANDER HOUSE.
Governing Chairman of Enquiry Board and author of report: Sir George Buckle.
Statement made by Mr Augustus Breadspear, owner, managing director, and Chairman, of Salamander House Glass Manufactory.
I attest that the boy, Douglas Wilger, was employed by me for work in the furnace room of my manufactory at Salamander House commencing on the 10th day of October, in the year 1882. His hours were from seven o’clock in the morning to seven o’clock each evening. (Saturdays are seven o’clock until four o’clock, and Sundays, of course, are a day of rest, although I make sure all my apprentices attend Church service.)
My workers are looked after properly and considerately. They are allowed half an hour for breakfast at half-past eight, and another half an hour for dinner at midday. I provide breakfasts and dinners for them all – which is more than I can say for a great many other factory owners – and good substantial food it is at Salamander House, none of your rubbishy bread and dripping or onion broth. There is a delivery each day from Hurst’s Farm, of fresh eggs and milk, as can be seen from my account books, which are all kept in proper order and can be inspected by anyone who wants to see them.
Douglas Wilger’s duties were to carry the blown glass objects from the manufactory benches to the furnaces for firing and finishing, to lever open the furnaces and to ensure the doors remained open while the products were placed inside. He had also to assist the glass blowers to arrange such products on the inner shelves of the furnaces.
So Salamander House was a glass manufactory, thought Michael, coming up out of the nineteenth century for a moment. Of course it was. The clue’s in the name.
He returned to Augustus Breadspear’s statement.
I am unable to give precise details of the tragedy, since I was not in the kiln room at the time it happened. I can say, though, that the Wilger boy was unsatisfactory. He was resentful of the tasks assigned to him, and during his first week was reprimanded for carelessness three times.
I am very sorry about what happened to him, but no blame or responsibility can be assigned to Salamander House or to my overseers. Douglas should have looked where he was going. An entire tray of expensive work was ruined by his clumsiness – work that had taken considerable time and skill to produce, and my customers will now be kept waiting.
I believe Douglas may have to come on to the Parish for his upkeep, which is a further burden on funds that are already sparse, although I should like it known that I subscribe generously and regularly to the Parish funds. For the moment the boy is still living at Deadlight Hall, in the good care of Mrs Maria Porringer.
It should be borne strongly in mind that any statement made by Mr John Hurst about this incident is likely to be biased and even spiteful, Hurst being a troublemaker. Since I discovered certain disreputable facts about his private life he is keen to discredit me in any way he can. A mannerly reticence as well as a gentlemanly respect for the lady in question (perhaps that should be ‘ladies’) forbids me to disclose those facts, even if this were the place to do so, which it is not.
The next statement was considerably longer, and Michael saw that it was indeed made by John Hurst of Willow Bank Farm.
Statement made by Mr John Hurst of Willow Bank Farm, in this County.
I attest that on the morning of 22nd day of October, in the year of 1882, I was making a delivery of provisions to Salamander House. As a result, I saw exactly what happened in the firing rooms, and you can take this statement as completely true, never mind the moonshine flummery that Augustus Breadspear will have spun you.
A regular order for eggs, milk and butter is placed with my farm by Mr Augustus Breadspear, who would like everyone to believe the food is for his workers. This is not true. The delivery is taken to Breadspear’s private house, which is next to the glass manufactory, although separated from it by a high wall, as you know – and if you do not know it, George Buckle, then you should, and you a Justice of the Peace.
Not a morsel of the food delivered to that house reaches the workers in the manufactory, not so much as an egg yolk or a scrape of butter. A more mean-spirited individual than Mr Breadspear I hope never to meet—
The next line had been vigorously scored through, so that it was almost impossible to read it, but Michael, tilting the paper closer to the window’s light, made out the word skinflint. He read on.
It is normally the business of my herdsman to make milk and egg deliveries to customers, but on that morning I took the Salamander House order myself. You may well ask why I should do such a thing, being so busy with the farm, but I am compiling evidence against Breadspear. It’s my firm belief that he half-starves his apprentices, works them every hour God sends, and gives not a jot of care to their safety. They labour for hours on end in the firing rooms, and constantly suffer burns and blisters. Their eyes are often affected by the constant heat of the kilns, and their lungs become dry and scorched. In extreme cases I believe there can be permanent impairment to their sight, and that damage to the lungs is often permanent, as well. If any of those wretched creatures survive much beyond thirty years of age I should regard it as a miracle.
I make no secret of my suspicions regarding Augustus Breadspear, so you may write all this down fair and true, George Buckle, and I shall look at it very sharply before I put my name to it, to be sure it is exactly as I have said. Nor I shan’t listen to any nonsense about knowing my place and respecting my betters, for I farm my own land and Willow Bank came to me fair and square by inheritance and an entail. In short, I am as good as you – in fact I am as good as any man and a sight better than most. I pay my dues and I owe no man a brass farthing, which is more than can be said for a great many folk hereabouts. As well as that, I know my rights, because I have read Magna Carta, which I’ll wager is a sight more than you have.
On the morning of 22nd October I had resolved to see the firing rooms for myself while they were in full working operation. I wanted to catch Breadspear and his overseers at their cruel ways, which would give me evidence for a formal charge. The laws are disgracefully weak when it comes to the treatment of young people in manufactories (Magna Carta did not provide for every eventuality), but I am resolved to fight for what is right and kind. If it means a change in the law, then that is what I will fight to achieve. No, I am not an anarchist. If I am anything, I am a reformer.
I took the dray along the lanes and across Watery Toft, and delivered the eggs, milk and butter to the kitchen door of Breadspear’s private house. I dislike that house. I do know what happened there a couple of years ago – even as a relative newcomer to the area I have heard about it – but I take no notice of the tales spun by the credulous and the spiteful. It is simply an ugly, mean-looking house, in which a bad and tragic thing once happened.
It is nonsense for Breadspear to say I slunk into the manufactory and crept through the corridors like a homing tomcat. I unlatched the gate in that wall and walked openly across the courtyard, entering the manufactory through the main doors.
It was a little before eight o’clock, but even at that early hour there was a thrum of machinery and a clatter of steel and metal. I followed these sounds, opening several doors, but finding only store rooms or packing bays. Trays of glass ornaments were set out, ready for packing, and in Breadspear’s favour I will say he has a thriving manufactory and the trinkets and goblets and decanters he makes are of a beautiful quality. That, however, does not excuse his treatment of his workers.
In the end it was easy to identify the firing rooms; the heat from the kilns belches out into the corridors, and as you approach that part of the building the very stones glow with uncomfortable heat. In the height of summer it must be an unbearable place in which to work.
The instant I opened the door of those firing rooms I felt as if a burning fist had dealt me a massive blow. My eyes prickled and heat scoured my skin. I put up a hand instinctively to shield my eyes, and when I felt able to remove it, for a wild moment I believed I had stumbled into a living depiction of hell’s deepest caverns – that a painting by one of the dark masters had sprung into life around me. Bruegel perhaps, or Hieronymus Bosch, or Botticelli who mapped the diagram of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell – Yes, I will spell those names for you, although you should think shame, George Buckle, that you do not know them.
At the centre of the firing room was a large six-sided structure, almost like a summer house or the kind of folly that rich men sometimes build. Thick stone pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, but between those pillars – inside the structure – the kiln itself blazed. It was fiercely, intensely hot, and impossible to look at directly, but from where I stood I could make out rudimentary shelves within the fire, with trays of objects I took to be the glass pieces.
The workers moved around this structure, carrying and fetching, some of them using hooked iron rods to pull out the trays or push them deeper into the roaring heat. Some wore makeshift eye protectors which had the appearance of having been fashioned from odds and ends by the workers themselves. But most simply kept their heads turned away from the intense heat as much as they could.
Those rooms are terrible places. They are filled with fire and yet they are somehow dark, as if the fire has severed day from night, and sucked the light from the forgotten sun—
No, those are not indelicate remarks, they are quotations from two of our greatest writers and poets, Shakespeare and Tennyson. Have you never read the great works of our men of genius, Sir George, or wandered amidst the groves of their imaginations? Well, I suppose I am not surprised to hear you have not, and yes, I do want that written down, if you please, for it is as much a part of what happened that morning as anything else.
One of the dreadful things I discovered about the kiln room inside Salamander House that morning was the extreme youth of most of the workers. They were little more than children – perhaps ten- and twelve-year-olds, most of them boys, but there were also one or two girls. They ran about, obediently doing the bidding of the four overseers, who directed and controlled everything. It was a terrible thing to see small children cowed into such docility.
Every few moments molten gobbets and splinters of glass flew outwards from the kiln, as if demons were spitting their anger and venom from within its depths and, as a particularly fierce shower of splinters cascaded out, an order was rapped out for one of the trays to be repositioned. One of the boys went towards the kiln, clutching a hooked iron pole – I now know him to be Douglas Wilger, but at the time I did not realize who he was. As he went forward, a worker from the far end of the room set off across the room, carrying a large iron tray, on which were a number of glinting shapes – ornaments and suchlike, intended for firing.
Douglas Wilger was intent on obeying the order given to move the firing trays. He was also clearly intent on trying to avoid the scorching heat. For that reason, he was not aware of the man with the iron tray, and the man was concentrating on balancing the heavy tray.
The two of them collided. The tray fell clattering to the ground, sending the glassware flying, splintering into glinting shards. Wilger gasped and instinctively threw up his hands to shield his face and his eyes from the showering fragments. In doing so, he half fell against one of the stone plinths, knocking his head against it, and slumping to the ground. I started forward to help him, but it was already clear he was no more than slightly stunned, for he sat up almost immediately, brushing off the shards of glass, but looking fearfully at it, clearly expecting punishment.
There was a movement behind me, and I saw Augustus Breadspear standing in the doorway. I don’t think he saw me; he strode forward to where Wilger half-lay. It was, I suppose, stupid to expect him to help the boy to get up, to make sure that neither he nor anyone else was cut from the glass. He did no such thing. His concern was all for the damage to his precious glass, intended for customers.
His large face was suffused with purple, and he shook his fists at the hapless boy, shouting that he was a clumsy oaf, fit for nothing but the most menial work, and that an entire tray of expensive materials had been smashed to splinters because of his inattention.
Before anyone could intervene – not that I think anyone would have dared, because even I was hesitating – Breadspear had kicked the boy hard in the ribs. Now, I am an honest and a fair man and I would have to say Breadspear’s intention was almost certainly to simply remove from his path the boy who had ruined a batch of glassware, and then to see if anything might be salvaged from the wreckage. But the kick sent Wilger – still partly stunned – skidding and toppling towards the stone pillars enclosing the open kiln. There was a moment when he fought to stop himself, flailing at the air with his arms, but the force of the kick was too strong. He fell between two of the pillars, half into the kiln itself. The fires roared upwards, and the sudden glow reflected on the trays, causing the glass to glint redly like the eyes of watching devils.
Wilger was silhouetted blackly against the fire, writhing and struggling like a spitted worm on a pin, and screaming like a trapped hare. The sounds were only partly smothered by the frantic rush of the others towards him – I was among them, of course – and amidst confusion and panic we managed to pull the boy clear. His clothes were smouldering, and we had to beat at them to quench the sparks. I shouted over my shoulder for a doctor to be fetched, and when I saw Breadspear hesitate, I yelled furiously at him to damn the expense; I would pay.
By then someone had fetched a servant of some kind, for a stout woman, flushed and puffing with agitation, arrived with a bowl of something and cotton cloths.
‘Soda bicarbonate, sir,’ she said. ‘Helpful for burns.’
They slathered the mixture over the boy’s skin – I helped by cutting away some of his clothing, but two of the overseers had to hold him down. And even then I think it was clear to all of us that the burns were far beyond the help of the mild domestic remedy. Almost the whole of one side of Douglas Wilger’s upper body was burned – in places the skin was charred for pity’s sake – and although most of his face had escaped, angry weals and blisters showed down one side, down his jaw and neck. Mercifully his eyes seemed to have been spared, but this was a very small mercy indeed.
I intend to place this information and evidence before the appropriate authorities, representing that Salamander House in general and Augustus Breadspear in particular be thoroughly investigated. There are several Acts of Parliament in existence, protecting workers and young people, and all workshops and factories who employ more than fifty people have to be inspected regularly by government inspectors. I cannot tell yet if Salamander House comes into this category, having no information as to the number of people employed there. Possibly, the jurisdiction will still be with the local authority. However, whoever is responsible is fulfilling the task very poorly, and I intend to see to it that Augustus Breadspear pays for his brutality. He has certainly ruined Douglas Wilger’s life, and very likely a number of other lives, as well.
There is one final fact I wish to be set down, and it is this: the frantic promise I threw out to pay a doctor’s expenses for attending on young Wilger was taken up by Augustus Breadspear. Three days after the incident, he sent me the doctor’s note of fee. It was half a guinea for attendance and 2s.9d for potions and dressings. I paid it the same day.