The Quietness (25 page)

But what should she confess? She knew what she had done and she knew what she hadn’t done. And she hadn’t killed any babies. God would know that because it was the truth. God could see everything, the chaplain told her. Even what was in the deepest part of her heart. You couldn’t hide anything from him. That was what frightened Queenie the most. That was what she tried not to think about. If God could see behind the curtain in her head and into the darkest most secret part of her heart, he would know what she knew. The awful, dreadful truth that she knew the babies were being killed and she did nothing to stop it till the end. She could have saved some of the poor little mites, but instead she bought soap and ribbons and fancy new boots.

She couldn’t tell the chaplain that. She couldn’t tell anyone that. There was no need, if God already knew. Queenie thought that maybe she should pray. She could pray for the babies that were left and the babies that were gone. But what good would it do now?

‘I have nothing to confess,’ she kept telling the chaplain. ‘I have nothing to say. Only that I am innocent.’ The chaplain always sighed heavily at this and left her cell with disappointment in his eyes.

Mam and Da had visited a few times and brought some comforts: a thick blanket, an extra shawl and parcels of bread, cheese and apples. Da was in a terrible way. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild-looking, but there was no whiff of drink about him. He kept holding Queenie to him, but wouldn’t say a word.

Mam was better at it all. She talked of what they would do when Queenie came home; about the fine knees-up the lot of them would have with Ellen and Mary and all. She told Queenie how big the new baby had grown, how Da had been off the drink for an age now, and how Tally had been taking himself off to school. She brought Tally in once. He’d grown so handsome. He looked Queenie straight in the eye.

‘You ain’t done nothing wrong,’ he said. ‘No matter what they’re all saying. I know you ain’t done nothing wrong.’

Ellen had been released without charge and came to visit too. Queenie was glad her sister had only had to endure a week in the cells. She was in lodgings now with her baby and Mary, and Queenie was chuffed that Ellen had named the baby after her. Little Queenie. She was doing well, Ellen had told her. Ellen had stayed an hour. It had been hard to know what to say in all that time, so they’d mostly just held hands.

Yesterday, at just before nine in the morning, the bells had rung out for the hanging of Mrs Waters and Mrs Ellis. The crowds outside had been jubilant.

‘Hang the murderers. Hang the murderers!’ they’d shouted. Queenie had stuffed her fingers in her ears and hummed to drown out the noise.

And now here she was, with one more night left. Tomorrow she’d be in front of the judge at the Old Bailey. Tomorrow she’d know.

She heard the clanking of keys and banging of doors, and the moans and cries of other prisoners. She pulled the blanket tight around her shoulders and tried to imagine herself at home and away from this nowhere place that was neither before nor after. She pictured them all huddled round the fire with hot cheeks and cold toes. Da would be singing and Mam would be smiling and the little ones would be curled up in her skirts. Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow will be different. And she closed her eyes and wished and wished for some quietness.

Guilty.

A word, just a word.

And then there was silence. Like the air had been sucked from the room; a moment stretched tight. Then slowly, slowly the soft whispering of voices and the rustling of petticoats and skirts and the scratching of pens on paper filtered into the courtroom. Queenie – standing trembling in the dock – felt her knees buckle beneath her and a blackness swam in front of her eyes. A shriek burst from the spectators’ gallery. Two officials rushed to the dock and hoisted Queenie to her feet. They slapped her face until she was forced to open her eyes.

Silence again. Then the judge cleared his throat and asked Queenie whether she had anything to say as to why sentence of the law should not be passed upon her.

‘Only that I am innocent, sir,’ she whispered. The square of black cloth was laid upon the judge’s powdered wig and he looked at Queenie solemnly as he spoke the most dreaded words of all.

‘The court doth order you to be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and thence to the place of execution, and that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your body be afterward buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall be confined after your conviction. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul!’

The judge’s words sailed over Queenie’s head. She looked up to the spectators’ gallery and, as a strange quietness pounded in her ears, she saw Mam, Da, Tally and the little ’uns looking down at her, and she knew she was not alone.

The guests will soon be arriving. I check the clock on the mantelpiece. A quarter to six. I must go out to the hall soon and ready myself to greet everyone.

Tally walks into the room and I smile to see a black curl has escaped his efforts to tidy his hair. ‘Come here,’ I say. He stands in front of me and I lick my fingers and smooth the errant curl back in place. I step back and look him up and down. In truth, he looks so handsome in his new dinner jacket and silk bow tie that my voice catches in my throat as I brush imaginary dust from his shoulders and say, ‘There. You will do.’

He bends and kisses my cheek. ‘And you, big sister, look good enough to eat.’

I shrug modestly. ‘It is only my old blue silk. But I must admit,’ I twirl around in front of him, ‘Mary has remodelled it beautifully!’

Tally walks to the sideboard, where there are glasses laid out and bottles of wine and Madeira. He pours two small glasses of Madeira and hands one to me. We turn to look at the back of the room – once a grand drawing room, but now used by our girls and their young ones as a place to meet during the day – at the banner that stretches from one corner of the ceiling to the other.

‘It’s hard to believe it’s been four whole years now,’ says Tally. ‘To think, Ellen, we started with just one girl and now we have fifteen!’

I turn to him and we clink our glasses together. ‘Oh!’ I suddenly remember. ‘There is a piece in yesterday’s
Morning Advertiser
that I meant to show you.’ I go to the table under the window where a newspaper is lying next to a vase of pink roses. I pass the newspaper to Tally but he waves it away.

‘You read it to me,’ he says. ‘You know how slow I am.’

I put my glass down, shake out the newspaper and clear my throat.

‘The Haven of Hope for Homeless Little Ones,’ I begin, reading out loud.

I finish reading and look at Tally for his reaction. He is silent for a moment, then his usual serious frown turns to a smile.

‘We
are
making a difference, ain’t we?’ he says.

I put the newspaper down and put my hand in his. ‘I
know
we are,’ I say. ‘Our girls know we are, and . . .’ I squeeze his hand tightly, ‘you can be sure Queenie knows we are too.’

There are noises from the hall. Mary puts her head around the door. ‘The first carriages have arrived,’ she says, her cheeks flushed with excitement.

A dark head appears behind her, then a pair of startling green eyes. ‘Mother! Hurry!’ says Little Queenie. Although these days she prefers to be called plain Queenie, to her constant frustration, we always forget. ‘Come on!’ she shouts again.

I keep hold of Tally’s hand, and together we walk to the hall to meet our guests.

A few years ago, while researching the dark side of the Victorian era for another book I was writing, I came across the mention of a practice I had never heard of before – baby farming. I dug deeper and was appalled and fascinated by what I learned.

In Victorian England, it was considered the ultimate sin for an unmarried girl or woman to fall pregnant and give birth to an illegitimate child. A single mother was shunned by society and often by her family too. Abortions were illegal and ‘back street’ abortions dangerous. It was impossible to find work with a child in tow and ‘fallen women’, as they were labelled, were left with little choice but to throw themselves at the mercy of the workhouse, or to turn to prostitution. But there was a third option.

In most newspapers of the day, if you looked carefully among the miscellaneous advertisement columns – those advertising pieces of furniture for sale or seeking someone to take in washing, for example – you could find coded notices such as ‘Child wanted to nurse’ or ‘Respectable married couple seek care of child’.

These adverts were usually placed by baby farmers, that is, women seeking to adopt illegitimate children for a sum of money. A baby farmer offered a solution to single pregnant women desperate to avoid shaming themselves and their families. If a pregnant woman had the means to pay, she could also rent a room in a ‘house of confinement’ and hide away for the duration of her pregnancy. Many baby farmers offered this service and for an additional fee, they would keep the newborn baby, allowing the mother to go back to her life as though nothing had happened.

Most single mothers who handed their child over to a baby farmer knew they would never see that child again. The majority of baby farmers looked after the children for a while before re-homing them or selling them on to childless couples. But some baby farmers had a far more sinister method of getting rid of these unwanted children.

The characters of Margaret Waters and Sarah Ellis are based on real-life sisters of the same names. They were known as the ‘Brixton Baby Farmers’, and between them were thought to have murdered by starvation at least nineteen infants. In 1870 Margaret Waters became the first baby farmer in England to be hanged for her crimes. Sarah Ellis was convicted of obtaining money under false pretences and was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

I read the original transcript of the trial which took place at the Old Bailey. One of the witnesses was a young servant girl who worked for Margaret Waters and Sarah Ellis. I could hear the girl’s voice through the transcribed words and became fascinated by the life I imagined she led and the circumstances she lived through. The horror of what went on inside the baby farm lived with me, alongside the voice of the servant girl, and I couldn’t help wondering what life would have been like for this Victorian teenage girl and whether she had been fully aware of what was going on.

The servant girl was to become the Queenie of this book. Here’s an extract from the trial transcript which gave me her voice.

In June last I was employed as a servant by Mrs Waters at 4, Frederick Terrace.

I am getting on for fourteen. There was no other servant in the house besides myself. I did all the housework and used to attend to the children very often. There were about fourteen persons in the house. Mrs Waters, Mrs Ellis, myself and eleven children.

None of them used to cry hardly, they all seemed to be ill. The whole of them. The children used to be laid all day on the sofa up till about six thirty, sometimes seven o’clock. I might hear one of them just begin to cry and I would go and put a teat in its mouth and it would go to sleep again. They were very silent children – nobody ever tried to rouse them. I thought the children were ill
–
I used to say, ‘That child is ill ain’t it ma’m?’

Persons used to call at the house sometimes. If anyone knocked at the door with a double knock I was to take the children into another room. She said she would not get another child if they heard the children crying. I always did so when they came – sometimes there would be one a day – someone would come perhaps and knock a double knock, and then we would take the children into another room before we undid the door.

The children that were taken away used to be washed in the morning, and sometimes their faces were sponged when they were taken out. They looked very ill when they went away. Mrs Waters used to say she was taking them home to their parents or to a better home in the country.

I don’t know what became of the servant girl. I’d love to find out. Did she know what was happening, or not? Maybe I’ll look her up on the census one day. I do wonder though, what she would have thought of being the inspiration for a book written nearly one hundred and fifty years later.

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First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hot Key Books

Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT

Copyright © Alison Rattle 2013