And besides, the girls were safer here at school than at home.
The newsstands were full of headlines trumpeting free education and housing for all, but that hadn’t happened in their parts, south of the river. Miss Barnes, Gertie’s kind teacher, had told Essie it might not be happening for some time yet if the rumours were to be believed. Still, Miss Barnes wanted Gertie to finish her schooling and matriculate.
Ma wouldn’t hear a word of it. ‘It’ll be the factory for Gertie, or the workhouse,’ she said. ‘Don’t be putting fancy ideas in her head, Esther. No good’ll come of it.’
But fancy ideas filled Essie’s head when it sank into her pillow of an evening. As her bones ached and her sisters coughed, spluttered and scratched beside her, she wished more than anything for the girls to have their own beds. New shoes and a coat for winter. Most of all, she wished for them to stay in school so their days would not end up like hers.
Essie now eyed her sisters standing in a line, bravely awaiting a punishment from their headmaster they did not deserve.
Mr Morton pulled out his short horsewhip and Maggie flinched. Flora dipped a little to one side, as if her knees were buckling under her skirts.
A whoosh and then a sharp slap as the whip hit Maggie’s hand.
The child, so frail compared to Flora, started to sob and cough just as the second slap landed with a hiss. She coughed more, and the headmaster, whose face had gone red, retaliated with two more lashes, each harder than the last.
Flora trembled as it was her turn and, over their heads, Gertie looked at Essie and raised her chin a little higher, eyes glinting with anger. Her message was clear: Leave.
Helpless, shamed and left with no choice, Essie forced herself to do as she was bid. She turned and hurried off to work.
Chapter 4
Essie had been sitting at her machine hemming men’s evening shirtfronts for three hours when old Mrs Ruben came and rapped her scarred knuckles on the side table.
‘Enough, Miss Murphy!’
Essie stopped pedalling, but the thrumming in her ears continued. There were fifty other machinists on this first floor of the factory.
‘I want you to do a delivery. It’s urgent.’ Mrs Ruben waved her hand at the table beside Essie’s as she continued. ‘And take Miss Davis with you.’
‘It’s Miss Avery, ma’am. Miss Davis left last week.’ The skinny girl with riotous ringlets bursting from her hairnet blundered on, oblivious to Mrs Ruben turning a deeper shade of purple. ‘Tub-er-culosis, ma’am. Remem—’ The girl’s sentence tripped, then stopped.
‘I am well aware of the situation. I’ll thank you not to bring it up again.’ Mrs Ruben squared her hefty frame and eyed Essie. ‘I need you both to take these to The Goldsmiths’ Company in Fosters Lane off Cheapside.’
She wheeled over a rack with a black tailcoat, white bow-ties with matching waistcoats and half-a-dozen stiffly starched white shirtfronts and collars.
‘Mr Ruben’s automobile and driver is waiting for you downstairs. You’ll make your own way home. Now be gone with you. Don’t be getting any ideas, mind. This is a friend of Mr Ruben’s who is over from Antwerp and needs a dinner suit for tonight. And Miss Murphy …’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘They’ll pay you a tuppenny at the other end for your trouble. Don’t embarrass the firm. No creases.’ She was yelling now across the noise of the unending machines. ‘Do not disappoint me.’
The girls carried the rack slowly down the six flights of stairs, stopping for a rest on each landing. Judging by Miss Avery’s bagging sleeves and pinned skirts, there was as little for breakfast at her house as at the Murphys’.
‘I’m Essie,’ Essie volunteered.
‘Bridget,’ the other girl replied breathlessly as they wheeled the rack out of the factory to the waiting car.
They loaded the pieces carefully into the middle of the back seat, then, as the driver held the door open for them, the two girls slid onto the buttery leather seats. Essie had never been in a motor and, if Bridget’s saucer-wide eyes were anything to go by, she never had either.
Both girls were too nervous to speak, so they sat stiffly in their patched pinafores and scuffed boots as the car motored away from the warehouse on the Thames, passing other automobiles, horse and carts loaded with wooden barrels, and tired, filthy navvies.
Essie thought of her brother Freddie, gone with his pickaxe before dawn on one of these carts to join his