The Girl in the Ragged Shawl. Cathy Sharp

honest employer can take a child or a young woman from a poor family and treat that person fairly,’ Ruth had told her. ‘But a man who means to work his servant to the bone, giving them poor food and expecting them to work all hours, comes here where no questions are asked. If a child or a woman dies after being beaten, who will bother about them if they are from the workhouse? An honest father might inquire after his daughter if she died suddenly – but who will ask for you or me?’

      Eliza had shaken her head, because she had no answer. The only person who cared for her was Ruth. In the workhouse there were several other children who had no one, but some remembered their parents, many of whom had died of fevers or starvation, for there was little help for the destitute anywhere. Eliza, however, had been brought here as a babe and knew no one but Ruth and the other inmates. Ruth said it could be worse on the streets, though Eliza could not credit it. For some reason the mistress had taken against her and the other orphans stayed clear of Eliza lest her wrath fall on them.

      Even those children who had a mother and father seldom saw them. Families were segregated, the men separated from their wives and children, and the women were not allowed to see their children, except at the discretion of the master or mistress on Sundays when they attended the church. It was forbidden to speak to your husband or wife except during the permitted times and breaking that rule could lead to severe punishment.

      Some workhouses had their own chapel, but the roof of the chapel here had fallen in during a storm last winter and as yet sufficient money had not been found to repair it and so the favoured inmates were allowed to walk to church at the end of the road on a Sunday morning. On their return, the families were allowed time together until after the evening meal, when they were once again locked into their separate wings. All the inmates should have been permitted access to a place of worship, but if they chose, the mistress or master could withhold the privilege, and they did – as with schooling, which was meant to be provided for the children. Here there was no resident schoolmaster and lessons were given by the rector, who came three mornings a week, but children were sometimes prevented from attending as a form of punishment. Eliza was more often than not put to work in the laundry when she should have been at her lessons.

      ‘You have no need of learning,’ Mistress Simpkins had told her more than once. ‘A wicked girl like you deserves no such privilege.’

      The lessons provided did not include reading or writing, and for the girls were more likely to be sewing, spinning and weaving, and for the boys, carpentry, masonry, or anything that would be useful in the kind of work they would be expected to do in their future lives. The rector told them beautiful stories of the Christ Child and sometimes he would write things on a blackboard with chalk, explaining that the squiggles he made were writing and that the stories he told them were all written in a book. Eliza was curious about the letters and had asked what they meant, but he’d looked at her sadly and shaken his head, because only a few of the boys were ever given a chance to learn those letters. Eliza had been taught to mend and to weave a little, but she’d hoped that one day she might be taught what the symbols meant inside the book he called the Bible and resented that she was refused that knowledge. The most she’d been taught were the letters of her name so that she could sign the register, though many inmates simply made their mark.

      Eliza’s rebellion had built in recent weeks, but left here alone, she was afraid that she might never see Ruth again. Ruth had taken her precious shawl, because Eliza feared the mistress would snatch it and she would never see it again. It had once been a beautiful thing, made of soft ivory wool and edged with satin ribbon and lace but the lace had frayed long ago, because Eliza kept it with her always, even when she was in her bed. It was her only link with the past; Ruth had told her that she had been brought into the workhouse, wrapped in that shawl, and ragged as it was, she could do with it around her shoulders now, even though she knew the mistress would have taken it from her when she was stripped.

      It was so cold lying on the stone floor, and very dark in the cellar beneath the workhouse. A tiny chink of light came from an iron grating above her head, but it wasn’t enough to show her more than the shapes of wooden crates and old, broken furniture that had been stored in here. Eliza had tried to find something to sit or rest on, but there were only bits of chairs and broken chests that would one day be used as firewood. Rats scuttled in and out of the rubbish, and one had run over her feet, making her scream, but she was no longer afraid of them: she was too numbed by hunger and cold to feel fear.

      Eliza rubbed at her face, but she wasn’t crying. Tears only made you weak and they didn’t help; she’d learned that long ago. Her first memories were of Ruth talking to her and feeding her bread and milk slops sweetened with a little honey that her dearest friend had got from somewhere. She knew that it was a miracle she’d survived in this terrible place for all of her twelve years, for she’d been brought into the workhouse as a baby of a few weeks and in a few more weeks she would be thirteen. Ruth had told her the story so many times.

      ‘You be the child of a fine lady, my Eliza,’ she’d whispered as they sat huddled together on cold nights, trying to instil warmth into each other, for there were never any fires in the dormitories in which the inmates slept. Only in the kitchen was there a good fire to be found and that was used to fuel the big black iron range that Cook used to heat their food. ‘That shawl be of the finest wool and lace. The mistress didn’t notice, for you be wrapped in a coarse blanket and the shawl be beneath it. She give you to me to care for because she did not want to be bothered with a child that never stopped cryin’ and I hid the shawl until you be older for had she seen it she would’ve taken it.’

      ‘It belongs to me,’ Eliza said and clutched the shawl to her. There was no fear Mistress Simpkins would sell it now, for it was worn thin and the lace almost gone, but she might still have taken it from spite.

      ‘Aye, but if she’d seen it then she would have taken it and I doubt not she’d have sold it,’ Ruth said and touched her hand when she saw Eliza’s anger. ‘She would sell the clothes off her back if it wouldn’t shame her to go naked. But she don’t know all …’ Ruth touched the side of her nose. ‘Ruth be up to her tricks and mistress don’t know all.’

      ‘What do you mean, Ruth?’ Eliza asked.

      ‘I did find somethin’, my lovely,’ Ruth said, ‘and I hid it away where none shall find it – for ’tis yours, Eliza, and one day you shall have it, but not till we be safe away from here, for she would have it off you if she spied it.’

      ‘What is it?’ Eliza was curious, but Ruth only shook her head and told her she must wait. Eliza sometimes wondered if Ruth had just made it up to amuse her and take her mind from the hunger and cold, because even when Eliza wasn’t punished by being sent to bed without supper she was always hungry.

      Despite the rules that said inmates should be properly fed, Eliza and most of the women could not remember being given sufficient food, unless an important visitor was due. Thin soup of some kind was provided in the middle of the day and sometimes they were given a sliver of cheese at night, but a bowl of porridge or gruel and a small piece of bread twice a day was hardly enough to keep her strength up for the tasks she was made to perform. Only on Sunday, which was a rest day, did the women and children sup on a watery stew with more vegetables than meat, or when the Board of Governors paid a visit, though the men were given stew most days because they needed meat and could not work unless they were fed properly. Their work might be anything from chopping wood or repairing the building, to breaking stones into small pieces, or picking oakum, which was used to help repair the holds of ships, though, of late, the master had acquired good work for the stronger men making rope. The women, though, were mostly given domestic chores, scrubbing, washing and sorting rags that brought in a few pennies for their mistress. They washed and ironed the clothes for the inmates; some of the more skilled women did weaving or spinning, and one woman did the most beautiful sewing, which earned money for the mistress, but some were just too sick to work much and they were either lying in beds in the infirmary wing until they died or sitting hunched up wherever they could find shelter from the cold.

      Mistress Simpkins seemed to pick on Eliza more often than anyone else. She was made to scrub floors and empty the slops from the women’s dormitories every morning, and any dirty