Killing's Reward by Andrew Wareham

Author:Andrew Wareham [Wareham, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 46033169
Publisher: The Electronic Book Company
Published: 2019-05-26T22:00:00+00:00

Mr Higgins had never seen a pit before – they did not have them in London. He was in equal parts fascinated and appalled as he was led around the pithead and then taken down the drift to the black coal face. Mr Burkenshawe noticed his reactions with grim amusement while Mr Pattisdale was inclined to deplore his ignorance of the realities of the underground man’s life.

“There’s women and children ‘ere as well, Mr Pattisdale!”

Mr Higgins sounded scandalised.

“The family works together, Mr Higgins. Between them, they make a wage far higher than they could earn on a farm, which is where most originated. A six day week only – the Sabbath is needed for the prop men to work and for the carpenter to mend the trackway and the blacksmith to sharpen and straighten the tools and repair the little wagons. They will take home, a man and his woman and three or four living children, the better part of thirty or even forty shillings. Buying in their bread and mutton from our store will cost them less than ten shillings for the week and their cottage comes rent-free. You will be expected to match that for your better men, of course.”

That was not so easily attained, Mr Higgins thought, before he realised that the children could do much in the cone, loading in the bottles to be annealed and emptying again and working with their mothers to pack the bottles in straw to be carried away. The women could shift the sand and coke to the furnace and take over all of the unskilled labour, leaving the men to the blowing. He promised himself a few hours with pencil and paper, working out precisely how his new manufactury should be organised.

A good word, ‘organised’. His father’s place operated by tradition and long habit rather than by scientific analysis of all that could be done. It was a new age coming in and new men would profit from it.

Mr Burkenshawe took him to the coke ovens, stinking and dirty and dripping with tar.

“Can nothing be done with the tar, sir?”

“Some little is smeared over the timbers underground, Mr Higgins, and retards the rot. An amount is used on the axles of the wagons, so that they turn the more smoothly. The bulk is a great nuisance to us and we burn it as we can – filthy though the smoke is. Some of the people will take buckets home in winter to pour in small amounts on their fires in the cottages, adding to the heat, but it stinks the places out.”

It was wasteful but evidently there was nothing to be done… Mr Higgins was struck by a memory of the shipyards on the Thames, within sight of his father’s glass cone.

“Tar for waterproofing., sir. Would not the shipyards wish to use it?”

“Possibly, Mr Higgins, but the yards are far distant from us and the tar is heavy.”

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