August 1904
Annie was downstairs by seven the next morning. Her whole body felt electric with nervous excitement. Her job started today – she was to be a worker in God’s vineyard, an explorer of social conditions like Dr Barnardo and Mr Rowntree. It felt as though her real life was beginning at last!
Uncle Eb had been up a good while, busy with the furnace in the cellar under the workshop, preparing the gold for working. His clothes gave off an acrid whiff of smoke and chemicals.
‘So,’ he said as they all stood crowded into the kitchen which smelt of the porridge bubbling gently on the range. ‘Off to work for Messrs Masters and Hogg then, eh? Very wealthy men of the city, those two. Very fine house that Mr Masters has, out towards Worcester, I believe – comes into the works in a top hat in his own carriage. And I believe Mr Hogg has got a fine collection of paintings in his country mansion.’
Annie heard the admiration in his voice for these two successful manufacturers, but it seemed to her that Uncle Eb was laughing at her. There was a definite gleam of amusement in his eyes and she was not sure she liked this.
‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’ she asked, rather pertly.
‘Oh, I do, I do,’ he agreed, holding his hands up as if to defend himself. But again, there was a teasing note in his voice.
‘Well, he might think so – but I’m not so sure,’ Aunt Hatt said, pouring water into the teapot, steam billowing round her. ‘I don’t know what you want to go and work in a place like that for. You won’t find it easy, I can tell you. But if you’re that set on it, you’ll have to see for yourself.’ She turned, holding out a bowl. ‘Go and sit down. Sugar on your porridge?’
‘Salt, please,’ Annie said, settling at the table.
‘You can come out at dinner time if you like,’ Aunt Hatt said. ‘You’re not too far away. Or I can get Margaret to bring your dinner over to you. That might be best.’
Annie was startled. She had not thought about these practicalities. Aunt Hatt stood over her in her apron, arms folded, her lovely face rather stern.
‘You’ll have to step out and get it off her. They won’t just have anyone wandering into the works.’
‘Have you worked in a pen factory?’ Annie asked, hurriedly eating her porridge. The last thing she wanted was to be late on her first day.
‘No,’ Aunt Hatt said, with an air of being a cut above that sort of thing. ‘Of course I haven’t. I worked for my father, God rest him. But I know one or two who have. I just hope you can keep up.’
Of course I’ll be able to keep up! Annie fumed inwardly. When in her life had she not been able to keep up with something? But she held these thoughts to herself. Aunt Hatt was still standing looking solemnly at her.
‘It’s not going to be the life you’re used to, you know.’
‘I know, Aunt,’ Annie said, trying to hide her irritation. That was what she wanted – a life that she was not used to! Demurely, she said, ‘I’ll do my best, though.’
She had dressed in her oldest grey frock and black shoes, carelessly combed her hair back into a low bunch on her neck and plonked her hat on. When she stepped outside the house, she found that the weather had changed. It was cooler, the sky a heavy grey over the rooftops, the streets wet and mucky beneath the many feet that were moving along them.
She was standing on the step of number twenty-six Chain Street, when Jack Sidwell appeared out of the sea of unfamiliar faces, at high speed, turning to come into the house.
‘Oh!’ He was so startled to find her standing there that he almost fell back down the step and had to recover himself. He pulled his cap off, revealing tousled blond hair. ‘I, er . . . Morning!’
‘Good morning,’ Annie said pertly.
Jack stood.
‘Did you want to come in?’ She stepped out of the way.
‘Er . . . I . . . Yes.’ He fled past her and she heard his feet hurrying up the stairs.
Annie stood tall and took a breath of the smoke-filled air. I must put upon me the armour of God, that I may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil . . .
Full of a sense of responsibility for making disciples of all nations, she stepped out into the bustle of the street. Most people had their heads down, hurrying towards the working day. There were carts halted at various points along the road and the crowds poured past them like water.
Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory . . .
The Masters, Hogg & Co. manufactory seemed a bigger, even more imposing place than she remembered. By the time she arrived a soft rain was beginning to fall. Everything appeared doused in grey; the entrance was thronging with people trying to get inside out of the wet and for a few seconds Annie’s bullish confidence began to ebb away. She was used to being a queen bee, but here there were so many people, all strangers, that she felt suddenly small and defenceless. How was she to manage and where was she supposed to go?
Nearby she saw a gentle-looking young woman standing aside from a group of others who were cracking jokes in what seemed to Annie rough, intimidating voices. Going up to the girl, she said quietly, ‘I’m new today. Can you tell me where I’m supposed to go?’
‘D’yer know which room ye’re in?’
Annie shook her head.
‘I’ll take yer to Miss Hinks,’ the girl said. ‘’Er’ll tell yer.’
She delivered Annie inside where there was another girl waiting to start work that day; skinny and frail looking, the same height as Annie. She looked anxious, dark rings under her sad-looking blue eyes and mousey hair scrailed up into a bun.
Miss Hinks, their forewoman, was a gaunt, unsmiling person, an apron tied over her straight black skirt. She already seemed to know the other girl and called her Lizzie, though not with any particular friendliness.
‘So – you’ve not done press work before?’ Miss Hinks asked Annie in a sharp tone.
Annie was about to announce that she was sure she could pick it up in no time, but for once feeling compelled to be humble, admitted, ‘No.’
‘Right. Come with me then.’
She walked off, clearly expecting them to follow, up a stone staircase and into a long upper corridor which echoed with the sound of many women hurrying along it. Through its high, arched windows, Annie could see that this factory, one of the bigger ones in the area, occupied three sides of a rectangle. In the yard enclosed by its walls was a small building with a clock facing her, which now said five to eight. Close to it soared a brick chimney, a flag of smoke coming from it; beyond, other chimneys of the nearby works were belching out thick swirls of filth. She remembered their train journey into Birmingham, the way the countryside had died away, built over by a seemingly endless vista of factories and smoking chimneys until the train was so shut in between them that all they could see was blackened walls and, occasionally, a glimpse, for a second, of a ribbon of canal winding between them.
A moment later they entered a long room, beams arching across the ceiling and windows all along one wall through which fell the morning’s dull light. There were benches down both sides with rows of cast-iron machines, each with a handle on one side and a ball counterweight at the other, similar to the ones she had seen in Uncle Eb’s workshop. Each had a stool positioned by it, on which the women were in the process of settling themselves in front of their machines.
‘Come along here,’ Miss Hinks instructed.
Annie could sense heads turning to stare at them but she did not meet anyone’s eyes to see if they looked friendly or hostile. She heard one woman whisper, ‘Hello, Lizzie – how’s your mother?’ Lizzie was slightly behind her and Annie did not hear the reply.
‘Here you are – you can work here.’ There were two machines, side by side, with no one seated at them.
A moment later, the clock struck eight and a bell rang. Annie was aware of movement, like a sudden rustling of trees, followed by a metallic clatter, then thumps and bangs as the women around them started working the presses. She only had a second to glance, because Miss Hinks was starting to tell her and Lizzie what to do. But in that second her confidence that she would learn easily, that she would certainly be better at the job than this little worn-out rag of a girl Lizzie, began to slip.
The women were pushing something into the press, stamping it, spitting it out and starting on another at such speed that it was as if the work was a natural part of the movement of their bodies, like breathing or walking, which could be done without thought or effort.
Dear Lord, Annie thought, a knot of dread tightening in her belly. How on earth do they do that so quickly?
She and Lizzie stood as Miss Hinks instructed on one of the machines. She could see that Lizzie already seemed familiar with the work.
‘These are blanking presses.’ Miss Hinks nodded towards the nearest black iron machine on the bench. They looked much like the presses in Uncle Eb’s workshop, with a round counterweight at the other end of the handle. She directed her instructions mainly at Annie, and went over to pick up a flat strip of metal. ‘So what we’re doing is pressing out blanks to make the nibs. Some are brass and some steel – these ones are steel. You press out the shape of the nib like this.’
She laid the strip in the machine and tugged the handle briefly back and forth and showed them the nib-shaped hole in the strip.
‘Keep ’em as close together as you can – the less scrap left the better.’ She picked up the remains of a strip, showing them the thin metal lacework remaining after as many blanks as possible had been cut from it. ‘The blanks drop down into here.’ Reaching under the machine, she pulled out a flat, nib-shaped piece of metal and handed it to Annie. It was rough at the edges and felt almost weightless in her hand.
‘These ladies,’ she waved an arm towards the feverishly stamping women all about them, ‘can cut out a hundred and twenty or more of these a minute when they’re really going. There’s some can do a hundred and sixty a minute.’
Annie stared at her. ‘That can’t be possible.’
‘Oh,’ Miss Hinks’s expression grew a fraction grimmer, ‘it’s possible. For them that are used to it. Any road – your quota’s thirty-six thousand in your shift – you won’t make that today, nor tomorrow neither. If you still can’t make it in a week or two you’ll be out that door, all right?’
Annie’s mind was calculating furiously. Thirty-six thousand a day! That was . . . Nine hours, so in an hour it would be four thousand . . . Per minute, sixty-six . . . Still more than one a second on average, but at least not as bad as one hundred and twenty . . .
‘Most of this lot’re on piecework,’ Miss Hinks was saying. ‘Which you won’t be until you’ve got quicker at it. You’ll be on eight shillings a week to start. So –’ Her face softened fractionally. ‘You two’re lambs to the slaughter today.’
Annie did not like to admit that she did not know what piecework was. But another problem had already presented itself.
‘Go on, then – have a go,’ Miss Hinks ordered.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie confessed, as Lizzie went to her press. ‘But I’m not sure I can. I’m left-handed.’
‘Well, why dain’t yer say so?’ Miss Hinks said, rolling her eyes. ‘You all right, Lizzie? Wait there,’ she said to Annie. ‘I’ll have to fetch someone to turn it round for yer.’
Annie stood feeling foolish as Lizzie began work. She already seemed to know what to do and have a feel for it. All the other women were thumping away, managing to chat to each other at the same time, and there was a busy hum in the room.
‘What’s up wi’ you then?’ The woman the other side of her seemed very old to Annie, as well as very stout, and her voice sounded aggressive. Her face reminded Annie of a big angry dog’s. Several of her teeth were missing and her tone was not friendly.
‘I’m left-handed,’ Annie said.
‘Ooh, left-handed,’ the woman mocked.
‘My old man’s left-’anded,’ someone said from the other side of the room.
‘I ’ope ’e’s good with both ’is ’ands, bab, whatever ’anded ’e is!’ the first woman cackled, all the while working at the speed of a turbine.
‘Dirty girl, Doris!’ the other woman called back amiably. ‘That’s what you are. Dirty-minded.’
Annie looked down, her cheeks flaming. She was not entirely sure if she had guessed what the woman meant but she had a nasty feeling she had. She was not sure how to deal with any of this.
‘Ooh – brought a blush to yer cheeks, ’ave I, bab?’ Doris said, in a rude, mocking tone which Annie did not like. She chose to ignore her.
‘Don’t you mind ’er,’ the other woman called over. ‘’Er don’t mean no harm. New to it, are yer, bab?’
‘Yes,’ Annie admitted.
‘You’ll soon pick it up – nothing to it.’
Lizzie looked round at Annie and rolled her eyes. But she gave a little smile.
‘You wanna keep yer eye on the job, Lizzie Poole,’ Doris shouted to her. ‘Or you’ll ’ave the end of yer finger off. And that goes for you an’ all,’ she nodded at Annie.
Miss Hinks appeared with a middle-aged man at her side and all the chatter quietened down. In a few skilled movements, screwing and unscrewing bits of the press, he had converted the handle to the other side.
‘There yer go, bab. Left-handed press,’ he said, rushing off before she could thank him.
Annie, fumblingly, copied what Lizzie was doing, with Miss Hinks peering over her shoulder. It was not too difficult, but she felt unexpectedly overawed by the thought of how fast the other women were working.
‘Well,’ Miss Hinks said in an unimpressed way that punctured Annie’s pride, ‘you’ll do, I s’pose. You’re going to have to get quicker than that, though.’
Lizzie, who had deft little fingers, seemed to fare better. As Annie struggled to get going, she could feel her cheeks burning with humiliation. She was used to being the one telling other people what to do and being the fastest and cleverest at everything!
‘Rules’re on the door. Work starts at eight, and two after dinner. That’s when they shut the doors. If you’re late it’s a penny stopped from your wages.’
Annie wished Miss Hinks had chosen to tell her all this before she tried to operate the press at the same time. She half listened, struggling to take in the information.
‘Dinner at one. Lavs are down in the yard. Only for in the break. I’ll show you how to weigh your work in later – that’s if you have any,’ she said acidly. ‘You can read the rest for yourself. On you go then.’
Lizzie already seemed to be pressing out the blanks as if she had been doing it all her life. Annie set to, at first trembling with the effort to hurry, inserting the metal strip and cutting blanks from each end of it until the metal ran out. Her little box of nib blanks seemed to be filling terribly slowly. She was concentrating so hard that she was barely aware of what any of the women were saying around her, which she soon realized was just as well. Any thought of finding energy to preach the word while she was working had been pushed right out of her head. At this moment she had far more basic things to worry about!
She eyed Lizzie, who was definitely working faster. The girl must have felt her look and she glanced back, a faint smile lifting the anxious set of her face. This warmed Annie, who was already wondering what she had done by coming here. She felt as if she had been fed into a huge, devouring production machine with which she would never be able to keep up. And the fragments of talk which reached her were of a character far riper than she was used to. Five hours stretched ahead of her until Margaret was to come to the gates with her dinner. It felt like an eternity.
I’m not going to let this beat me, she thought, clenching her jaw. If this is the first of God’s challenges, I must not fall at the first hurdle. She was sure there was something immense she was meant to do. And her competitive spirit did not want to be beaten by all these women around her, some not much different from her in age. A hundred and sixty a minute? It seemed beyond imagining. Even a hundred and twenty – two every second! But it had set light to her determination. All she had to do was get to seventy-five a minute, and she was damn well going to show them she could work as well as anyone!