Novel
by Smcallis
This is a work of fiction. No similarities between any person living or dead is intended, and any such similarity is purely coincidental. All characters © 2007 by Smcallis.
THE QUADRANGLE MERCANTILE and SHIRTWAIST Company of London, owned and operated by Wallace Squeers, Pierce, Fenner and Smith occupied the top three floors of the eleven-story Asch building in the heart of London’s garment district at the intersection of Greene Street and Wellington Place, just east of Wilmington Square. This was to be my home, my prison, for the next two and a half years.
The Asch building was a huge hulking brick structure constructed around the turn of the nineteenth century. When it was built, it was the second tallest building in London. There were actually four buildings, arranged in sort of an obtuse triangle of which the Asch building formed the anchor of the scalene city block. By the time I arrived, the eleven-story Asch building was already seventy years old and in a state of decrepit decay. It looked more like a fortress, a prison than a place of commerce. It was there I took my very first ride in an elevator. Elisha Otis only recently installed his wonderful vertical transport system, if I hadn’t been so terrified; I think I might have been more fascinated.
I should say this first. Mrs. Mixer, matron, supervisor in charge of the women’s work detail, was no lady. She was a large woman, with tiny feet, and great flowing locks of white hair that cascaded down about making her appear like a graveyard apparition from one of my Grandmother's ghost stories. She always wore the same grey smock and white apron. An enormous ring of skeleton keys hung from her waist, and she carried a cane switch to chase after indolent girls. She resembled more a jailer than a factory floor supervisor, in many ways she was. Mrs. Mixer was a tyrant and despot, a mean dried-up old nanny goat. Interminably sour and bitter about sorry state of her own lot in life, she made it her life’s-quest to make sure that others suffered as she suffered. She particularly hated children and she regarded young girls like myself as chattel, mere property of the London Mercantile and Shirtwaist factory.
Mrs. Mixer’s first order of business was to strip us naked. Our clothes were removed and carted off to the furnace. I stood there forlorn in a room with perhaps thirty other girls. I was left standing there stark-naked mortified beyond belief. It’s funny about being naked. I had been naked with my brothers hundreds of times. We bathed, played, we went swimming naked . . . I was just one of the boys (albeit without a willy). There was nothing immoral or unseemly about being naked. This was a different kind of naked. I felt violated, dirty, no better than a rack of meat hung on a butcher hook. I was the youngest girl there. At not-yet-eleven years old, I wasn’t so womanly, with my flat boyish chest, I was so skinny and pale. I felt like a stick figure standing there bare-skinned in front of all the older girls.
I was further mortified when a male doctor entered the room, in the accompaniment of a nurse. They set up this table, with stapler, ink and blotter. We were lined up for some kind of exam. I felt myself pushed forward under the weight of the queue; I stood there bewildered, clutching my chest.
“Name?” The nurse said, peering down at me sternly across the tops of her reading glasses, her pen poised to write.
“Tessa.” I said in a voice so small it was barely a whisper.
“What is your name?” The nurse was cross. The doctor too became impatient, he wore this silvery reflector disk on his head, the light of which danced in my face like a brilliant star, mesmerizing me. I said nothing.
“TELL THEM YOUR NAME, CHILD!” Mrs. Mixer didn’t wait for my response; she relished the chance to use the cane at the slightest provocation. The switch whirled and landed with a crack on my buttocks. I lurched half-a-step forward, my bottom stung under the assault of Mrs. Mixer’s lash.
“Tessa Claiborne.” I fidgeted, I finally found my voice and the words came spilling out like tea from a kettle. “My name is Tessa Claiborne, I’m from Glamorganshire, I'm not English, I'm Welsh! I was brought here against my will. Mr. Squeers paid my Mama four pounds and nine shillings. I want to go home!”
“THAT WILL BE ENOUGH!" Mrs. Mixer's fat face turned purple, the switch hissed and fell hard on my backside cutting off my words. I clenched my teeth, I did not cry out. I was not going to give her the satisfaction. "Insolent child! Hands down to your side, stand up straight, let the doctor look at you!”
It was all so humiliating, the doctor was remarkably cold and impersonal. He didn’t seem to care that I was young, afraid or embarrassed. He remained completely detached from my misery. It was if I didn't even exist as a human being. The entire exam took less than a minute. Just a perfunctory look at my teeth, say "Ah," a couple of thumps on the chest, hands over my head, I was ask to squat, cough. The doctor appeared to be concerned with only two things, lice and tuberculosis.
My chest was marked with a red circle. I guess that meant I was Ok.
“What do you have to do to fail this exam?” I quipped. I shot a sardonic glance back at Mrs. Mixer, I was out of range of her switch. The fat old cow.
“Next!”
I shouldn’t have been so flippant. There was an assembly line of white smocked grim faced matrons waiting for me in the next room. They seized me and cut off my hair. My beautiful blonde hair, shaved to the scalp, if I hadn’t resembled a boy before, I certainly did now. They then plunged me into a bath of water so cold it burned like fire. They scrubbed me down with course hog’s hair bristle brush in a vicious solution of carbolic and lye soap. I later learned this was to remove lice. I was offered a most ill fitting smock and led into a room with long benches along with the other freshly processed chattel.
It was there we had our first meal. Gruel really, oatmeal, maybe with a bit of meat dragged through it, a chunk of weevily barley bread. Even though I grew up in a poor family, starving, Mama never served us such food. I choked it down, knowing it might be the only food I got for a long time. Several of the other girls I could already tell were going to be trouble, especially at mealtime. I was the youngest girl there, they eyed me like a fish; they thought me small, an easy mark.
During the first several nights, we slept in these dormitories, stacked four high like chord wood. I had trouble sleeping, aside from my obvious troubles, I was plagued with nightmares of being chased by a comical apparition of Mr. Squeers with an enormous bandage on his head so large his top hat sat perched at a ridiculously precarious angle. Mr. Squeers chased me in my dreams. In reality, Mr. Squeers chased me in life. He hated me, even though I never saw him, he took special interest in making sure my life was miserable. All of the supervisors knew I was on the “list.” I was to be punished for the slightest infraction. Over the next two years there were beatings, my rations were cut, I was summarily sent to bed without supper, forced to stand all night out in the rain. No, I paid dearly for knocking Mr. Squeers up side the head. Given a second chance, I think I should have hit him harder.
The worst punishment, aside from being beaten to death (of which several girls did die from floggings) was to be thrown in the Chokey. A sort of narrow closet, with dozens of iron spikes and razor sharp nails driven in at odd angles, a nineteenth century version of the Iron Maiden, a torture device straight out of the court of King Henry the VIII and the Tower of London. Once locked in the Chokey, you couldn’t sit, you couldn’t stand, you could only crouch in this impossible position. The punishment lasted all night, the slightest movement brought flesh in contact with an iron spike. If you urinated or made a mess, you were in for an additional beating. In the morning before first whistle, when they finally brought you out, they sent you strait to the looms, without breakfast.
My bunk mate was a girl from Warwickshire, Sally Fullam. She was two years older than I was, she had red hair and boobs. I guess you might say I learned the ropes from Sally; she was a veteran of the English poor system and grew up in the Workhouses, the White Chapel district East of Charing Cross. As hard as it may seem, work in a factory was a step up from the London poor house. Sally said she liked girls, in a way I had never heard of.
“They’re not any boys around here . . . I think we should be friends.”
I soon found out exactly what Sally meant by being friends. This was all an education for me. I told Sally I wanted to be her friend, but not in that way. She respected me after that.
As I said, I never saw Mr. Squeers. Mr. Fenner, Mr. Smith sometimes walked the factory floor. I think Mr. Smith smiled at me once. We followed the same routine everyday. We toiled in twelve-hour shifts. From first whistle at six O’clock, there was lunch at noon, and we worked again until six in the evening, there was a solemn supper, no talking, followed by lights out at eight O’clock, everyday, six days a week.
The factory was noisy, poorly ventelated, sweltering in summer, freezing in winter. I worked the loom floor. First sweeping up cotton dust and chasing after loose bobbins. It was the work assigned to the smallest girls, of which I was one. It was my job to crawl on my hands and knees amidst the dirt and choking cotton dust and the ever constant danger of slashing mechanical machinery over head to retrieve the lost bobbins that fell down between the cracks of the production machinery. The noise was deafening, it was dangerous dirty work. Only the smallest and most nimble girls could do it, of which I was an expert.
I actually preferred crawling under thundering power looms compared to the sweeping-up work. At least I knew my job was secure, not every girl had the nerve to venture so close to a virtual hecatonchires of slashing moving parts, the danger of being snagged, of being sucked into the machine work was ever present. We rubbed our selves with tallow, lard or whatever grease was available and wormed our way under the whirling clockworks virtually naked. Any clothing at all risk being snagged. It was vile and dangerous work, this is what I did for the first year and a half.
Unfortunately, puberty has a way of taking its toll. Despite a near starvation diet. I eventually developed breasts, curves, hips; I became too large to crawl under the machinery. I was relegated to the main floor, to the looms. I hated it.
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