A Land that You do not Know

By David Morisset

Many of Australia’s first European settlers were convicts transported across the seas from the British Isles. There were also free immigrants. While online databases have made it possible for today’s Australians of European descent to trace their ancestry and acquire an understanding of the outline of their family trees, amateur genealogists usually confront baffling questions. What events led to criminal transgressions that deserved exile in a distant penal colony? How did convicts win their freedom and earn an ostensibly honest living in unfamiliar surroundings? Why did individuals choose to leave their homelands and journey to the other side of the world? How did their progeny — the sons and daughters of convicts and free settlers alike — fare as the decades unfolded?
Partly inspired by Patrick White’s ‘The Tree of Man’, David Morisset’s novel, ‘A Land that You do not Know’, imagines the lives and times of Hugh Wadkin, an English convict, and Maggie Kintyre, a Scottish free settler. Both became residents of the Hawkesbury District on the outskirts of Sydney — although Maggie arrived seventy years after Hugh had first trudged along the Windsor Road on his way to the foothills of the Blue Mountains. Their circumstances were dramatically different. They brought with them sharply contrasting expectations. Eventually, their Australian family trees would intertwine.
David Morisset is the pen name of an Australian writer who grew up in the Hawkesbury District, at Riverstone, west of Sydney. After roaming the world, first as a diplomat and later as an economist, he published several novels as well as collections of short stories and poems. His poem, 'Persian Princess', was commended in the John Shaw Neilson Poetry Award (2009 Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary Awards).

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Morisset
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005790578

David Morisset

David Morisset is an Australian author who grew up in Riverstone, which was then a meatworks town in Sydney's semi-rural western districts. He moved to Canberra to study at the Australian National University and chose to roam the world, first as a diplomat and later as an economist. Although he has spent most of his life in Australia, he has also lived in Iran and Tanzania. His work as an economist involved extensive travel throughout Asia, North America, Western Europe and Oceania. Over recent years he has published several novels as well as collections of short stories and poems.

Book preview

A LAND

THAT YOU

DO NOT KNOW

David Morisset

Copyright David Morisset 2021. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or actual places are made fictitiously in order to anchor the narrative in particular locations and points in time. Where institutions of state, government agencies, public offices, and private businesses are mentioned, the circumstances involved are fictitious. Otherwise, names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Please see the author’s notes and acknowledgements as well as his select list of reference materials.

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For my children

Jane, Lara, Marissa and Josh

I will cast you out of this land

into a land that you do not know.

(Jeremiah 16 : 13 NKJV)

Until the day break, and the shadows flee away,

turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe

or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

(Song of Solomon 2 : 17 KJV)

Prologue

‘It’s truly hellish. Beelzebub has come to claim them,’ muttered an old women with cheekbones like creamware made pink by the flames.

‘That’s a dreadful thing to say, that is,’ protested a stout man with the bulging eyes of a frog.

Sadly, even on this day, which, as it happened, was Christmas Eve, such disasters were not uncommon in the cities of Georgian England. Whether this instance of fiery demolition was a case of an inevitable accident caused by too many people living in too few dilapidated rooms, or a blatant attempt to hurry the pace of urban renewal in pursuit of monetary gain, would never be known. What was once a handsome tenement had become a slum over many years of incidental neglect and incompetent, but profitable, responses to an exponential surge of demand for low-priced housing for the supply of cheap labour that was being drawn to the factories, workshops and warehouses of Sheffield. Now the luckless building was being refashioned into cinders and ashes by a rampaging monster breathing fire so vicious that it scorched the faces of all those foolish enough to doubt its ferocity and stand, as useless spectators, too close to the inferno.

The old woman’s exclamation caused some onlookers to recall the Bible’s description of hell as the final destination of unrepentant sinners sentenced to damnation. In homilies it was depicted as a blazing furnace where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. On this day in the blistering heat of a ramshackle Sheffield street, there was almost certainly weeping but it was not heard above the roar of flames and the crashing of timbers. However, there were screams of pain that rose above the furore. There were also the cries of babies.

One pious observer — a man of the cloth — was reminded of passages in the scriptures that associated the place of the damned with Gehenna. His eyes streamed with tears generated by profound sorrow, as well as by irritation from the acrid smoke. To rid himself of his conviction of uselessness, he started to pray in a loud voice.

‘Oh Lord, we pray that you would deliver these poor people from this present day Gehenna. We know, Lord Jesus, that when you walked the earth, Gehenna was a putrid valley outside the walls of Jerusalem. It was always filled with smoke from endless fires that were kept burning to counter the stench of the garbage that was dumped there. And we know that, centuries before Your ministry, it had been a place where pagan Canaanites and Israelite apostates had made sacrifices, sometimes offering their own children, to Molech, who was depicted as a horned beast, sometimes an ox and, also, as a man with the head of a bull.’

‘What’s that? Gehenna? Molech? You’re talking twaddle!’ The condemnation was slurred by a tall man, who had lost patience with the priest’s rambling prayer. He seemed to be either drunk or otherwise discombobulated by the heat of the conflagration.

‘Don’t you know your Bible, you arfarfanarf?’ The stout man with bulbous eyes chimed in again.

Tenement living was not the worst outcome of impecuniosity in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Sheffield’s vagrant population was a testament to that grim fact. There were hundreds of men sleeping in doorways or under the partial shelter of awnings that jutted out into the township’s sordid public spaces. It was just such a man of the streets who, apparently with nothing to lose, strode into the smouldering embers. He kicked aside a pile of rubble and picked up an anonymous object. As he emerged from the ruins it became clear that he was carrying a noisy baby wrapped in a blackened shawl. The child was eagerly accepted by an anonymous woman, who had, until this moment, stood idly by, feeling pathetic and helpless in the face of such a catastrophe. In the celebration of deliverance that followed, the vagrant was ignored. He withdrew, perhaps breathing a sigh of relief that he was not about to be lionised, and, as the crowd later assumed, he retired to whatever temporary refuge would be his home for that night.

I

Hugh Wadkin waited to be called for his appearance before a justice of the peace. He had turned 20 years of age a few months ago at the beginning of yet another winter that found England still under the rule of His Royal Highness The Prince Regent — not that anyone was keeping count of the span of Hugh’s benighted life. A pale early morning sun’s weak rays were spilling through a tiny barred window to bring some light to the bleak situation. Wadkin had spent the night huddled against the damp wall of a holding cell in a Birmingham watchhouse that he had shared with eleven others, most of whom had been apprehended by the nightwatch. Large patches of mould discoloured the masonry of the cell and there was evidence that desperate former prisoners had tampered with some of the mortar, albeit without any signs of meaningful achievement.

***

Two decades earlier, a few weeks before Christmas, Hugh Wadkin had been born into an England that was tottering towards the turn of yet another century. The nation was on the verge of changes that would be far-reaching but, with France’s upstart revolutionaries undermining confidence in the future, few pundits were inclined to make optimistic predictions. In castles and palaces well away from his struggling subjects, His Majesty King George III was enjoying a temporary respite from the bouts of madness for which future generations would remember him. A fraught civil political climate saw parliament under the thrall of William Pitt the Younger.

Although he was born into the family of a labourer, who had found steady work that mostly amounted to drudgery in the cutlery warehouses of Sheffield, Wadkin had spent his childhood in an orphanage. Both his parents had perished in a fire that tore through the decrepit tenement in which their miserable accommodation was located. The inadequate resources of the orphanage to which he was sent meant that Hugh had only the most rudimentary schooling. However, although he was barely literate, he had managed to attain a good grasp of arithmetic.

At the age of 12, Hugh was set on a pathway to a productive but meagre living by an act of benevolence. Lord Tirrold, a man with political connections, and a benefactor of Sheffield’s orphanages, had been impressed by the dramatic story of how an unnamed vagrant had plucked a squealing baby from the flames of a collapsing tenement. He took a special interest in that rescued infant, who was known as Hugh Wadkin. Tirrold arranged for the lad to learn the craft of a cutler in the service of a Mr Amos Blenkinsop, a wealthy local businessman who was active amongst Tirrold’s political supporters.

Sheffield, because of the quality of the steel plate created by local forges, had grown prosperous as a place where fine cutlery as well as armaments like knives and swords were produced. The invention of a method for making silver plate using copper also generated new opportunities for the city. Blenkinsop had built up a lucrative portfolio of small businesses over two decades. As part of his expansion strategy he had purchased an old house, the ground floor of which had been converted into a sword blade polishing workshop by a previous owner. Blenkinsop’s intention was to diversify the workshop’s activities by providing ancillary services for the cutlery industry and to the manufacturers of various silverware items.

Aided by ready access to capital following his marriage to a daughter of a banker, Blenkinsop had gained a reputation as a shrewd operator. He had a knack of identifying new trends. Before most others realised it, he recognised that Sheffield’s position as a centre for the production of bladed armaments, and for their maintenance and mending, was under threat. The procurers of swords, knives and bayonets for the military were becoming less interested in the weapons of past wars. Modern armies were likely to be more reliant on new technology. For instance, the rifling of muskets was being promoted as the main way ahead for the equipping of infantry regiments. Blenkinsop became even more certain that his judgement was correct when Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow and, later, the defeat of the Corsican fiend at the Battle at Waterloo began to foster an air of optimism and hopes for a long and sustainable peace.

Oblivious to the commercial oracles that his employer divined, Wadkin worked away at his craft and earned enough to survive, albeit barely, by making finicky fixes to restore cherished items of silverware and applying dainty finishing touches to expensive handmade items like the hunting knives prized by the expanding numbers of newly rich gentry living in the stately homes of Sheffield’s hinterland. Always short of money, he had to make compromises when it came to his lodgings. With three other workers, he shared a room above Blenkinsop’s workshop.

Because the premises housed a small forge, grinding wheels, specialised whetstones, and a working supply of gold and silver leaf and related metals and alloys, Blenkinsop preferred some of his staff to live on site for security reasons. The inventory of both precious and base metals was an obvious temptation for thieves. While grindstones were expensive items, they were probably too big and heavy for opportunistic rascals on foot. However, whetstones suited to the most delicate and lucrative restorative work were potential targets for burglars. Despite the presence of sleeping workers, the nightwatch had interrupted a number of attempted break-ins. On two occasions, Wadkin had been interviewed by the parish constable about such incidents. The orphan had found his encounters with the constable rather unsettling. It seemed to Wadkin that he was somehow under suspicion until Blenkinsop had defended him and vouched for his honesty.

Blenkinsop, with his wife and their eight boisterous children, lived half a mile away from the workshop in a new residential neighbourhood favoured by the flourishing middle class of factory owners and trade financiers. It was, for its time, a splendid environment. The locale of Blenkinsop’s workshop was another matter entirely, as were the gritty sites of other grungy workplaces the entrepreneur had acquired over the years.

Wadkin’s bed was shunted against a wall below a casement window of mostly intact crown glass that, when opened, offered a lacklustre view of a dreary street typical of much of the old town. The situation was not ideal because the murky window made it the coldest part of the room in the winter months. Across the rough thoroughfare outside was a row of dingy houses blackened by the soot emanating from the numerous forges in the district. Increasingly, the occupants of these hovels were being drawn into new lines of employment at factories that were reliant on economies of scale rather than quality of craftsmanship. Soon it was likely that they would all move out of the area, forsaking the smoke-filled sky and the squalor epitomised by the communal wash basins and the putrid toilets shared by multiple families in the grubby alleys.

Apart from during the few hot days of the summer season, the best position in the room above Blenkinsop’s workshop was the bed in a corner that benefited from the warmth rising up from a small forge on the ground floor. It was generally occupied by the employee who could best bully his way into it and then successfully resist all attempts to evict him. Last autumn it had been claimed by Josiah Pritchard.

A Londoner, Pritchard had come to Sheffield in search of work as a labourer. He did not bother explaining why he could not obtain such employment in the capital. Blenkinsop suspected that Pritchard was on the run from the law but gave him a job anyway in the belief that Christian charity demanded such largesse. The employer also reasoned that the presence of such a big, bulky lad would prove useful. Because of his stature, it was likely that the Londoner would make an imposing night guard who could easily frighten away potential intruders. Pritchard, at just on six feet tall and a broad-shouldered 14 stone, dwarfed Blenkinsop’s other workers.

From the day of his arrival Pritchard seemed intent on forming close bonds with Wadkin, who was at first sceptical about Pritchard’s motives but later found him mildly amusing, mainly because of the cockney’s glib tongue and dry sense of humour. Jokes about employers in general and Blenkinsop in particular were his stock-in-trade.

‘The master is so fat his driver uses his shadow to grease the wheels of his carriage.’ This straightforward quip was one of Pritchard’s favourites. Another was slightly more complicated. ‘Blenkinsop tells me that he’s so rich that he’s got enough money for both of us. I told him that he must be a very frugal man.’

Pritchard had a face that protested innocence, even when his words were at their most acerbic, partly because of his inability to grow a convincing beard. His jawline was disguised more by a certain youthful puffiness than the sparse tufts of light brown fluff that masqueraded as whiskers.

Despite his candour and joviality, Pritchard was a very private man in many ways. He usually took great care to ensure that none his colleagues had access to his belongings, most of which were crammed into a satchel that he guarded as if his very life depended on its safekeeping. Also, he had a habit of venturing out until late at night, carrying his precious satchel, for reasons that he insisted were his own business. When pressed, he sometimes cited the opinion of anonymous medical experts that long walks in the fresh evening air were conducive to a sound mind and a healthy body. How the air of most parts of Sheffield could ever be described as fresh remained an unanswered question in the minds of Wadkin and the other workers.

***

One cold but unusually sunny morning in the final month of winter, Blenkinsop sent Wadkin to collect some knives that a customer wished to have repaired and sharpened. It was a short walk but it took Wadkin along a path near a brick and iron fence at the front of the orphanage in which he had spent his childhood. When he came to the gates of the institution, which was actually two separate orphanages, one for each gender, he saw a young woman who seemed familiar. She was just about to push the gate open when she turned and stared at Wadkin.

‘Hugh? Well! It is you, isn’t it?’ She was so pretty that Hugh was rendered speechless at first. Her buttery hair peeped out from her bonnet, some of it hanging in ringlets, and her green eyes sparkled. ‘It’s me. It’s Kitty. Kitty Darnton.’

‘Oh. That’s right. You’re different. I mean you’re older. All grown-up, I mean.’ Wadkin was sure that his ruddy face had turned a purply red and he felt tongue-tied. It was all he could do to get his lips to make intelligible sounds. He suddenly remembered to remove his cap. His fringe of russet brown hair, suddenly set free, flopped on to his forehead.

‘Fancy seeing you here! What is it, five years since you left? Or six? Or more?’ Kitty was tempted to count the years on her fingers in an act of coquettish playfulness, but she lowered her hand when Wadkin answered.

‘I think so. What are you doing here? Do you still live here?’ Wadkin was regaining control of his mouth, although it felt dry for no obvious reason and his lips felt as thick as pork sausages.

‘No, of course not. I live in a boarding house run by a very nice family. Just down there.’ Kitty pointed over her shoulder. ‘But I work at the girls’ orphanage as a teacher. Are you well?’

‘Yes, thank you. And you?’

‘Oh, I’m very well. It’s lovely to see you again.’

‘Yes, well I’ve got to be on my way. Visiting a customer.’

‘Oh, has Mr Blenkinsop’s workshop proved to be satisfactory for you?’

‘Yes, so far.’

‘I’d love to hear more about it.’

‘Some other time, perhaps. When I’m not working.’ The words were out before Wadkin could change them.

‘I know! Why don’t you meet me at church on Sunday morning? Do you remember the chapel that we attended with the chaplain of the orphanages? Please come!’ Kitty pouted as she pleaded.

Wadkin had no choice but to agree out of politeness and, in a way, he was glad of that fact. To be sure, church services had never much interested him. Even the low church gatherings that he remembered from his childhood visits to the chapel struck him as extraordinarily complicated affairs. The Bible readings occasionally generated a little excitement, particularly the Old Testament stories of heroes like Samson and David. Sermons were largely incomprehensible, although there were times when the antics of the preacher were mildly diverting. Regardless, the chance to spend an hour or more with Kitty certainly appealed. She had grown into a splendid young woman. As she spoke Wadkin was mesmerised by the rhythm of her voice. The pout, that she had affected when his hesitation suggested that he was going to decline her invitation, had produced sensations for Wadkin that were akin to the stuff of dreams that upright young men never talked about in mixed company.

‘I’ll try to be there.’ Wadkin attempted to fake a certain reluctance but no observer would have found his posturing at all convincing.

‘Please try!’ There was that pout again, this time accompanied by blushing cheeks as Kitty realised that she might be accused of tempting the young man in a way that was not seemly for a chaste Christian woman.

‘I’ll try. Anyway, I hope to see you then.’ Wadkin restarted his journey. At first, he turned to head back towards Blenkinsop’s workshop. Realising his mistake, he turned back again and walked past Kitty in the direction of the customer he was supposed to visit.

Kitty giggled and waved goodbye.

***

When Wadkin arrived at the chapel on Sunday morning, Kitty was there waiting for him. She waved enthusiastically and gestured with her right arm to suggest that he should hurry.

‘I’m so glad you came. Quick. Otherwise we’ll have to sit in the pews right up the front.’ Kitty led the way deep into the nave. The pews towards the rear were all occupied but the couple were able to squeeze into a space just big enough for both of them some four rows back from the front. Even so, they were perilously close to the pulpit and not far from the places reserved for the small choir in attendance.

Once they were settled, Wadkin found that he was so close to Kitty that he was afraid his head might start spinning. Kitty, on the other hand, seemed totally relaxed with the proximity of his body and, after performing a mechanical genuflection, she bowed her head in what seemed to be silent prayer. Wadkin felt dozens of judging eyes looking his way and decided that he should copy Kitty’s attitude, although he omitted making the sign of the cross because he could not remember the sequence involved. When he looked up again, his critics had lost interest and were staring straight ahead as if they expected the imposing pulpit of varnished timber to explode and they did not want to miss the fireworks.

The unassuming chapel’s architecture was austere. Nothing much seemed to have changed since Wadkin’s last visit. The place lacked colour with its walls painted ivory — a neutral shade that was replicated on the uneven slats that defined a slapdash ceiling. Only the ebony brown pews broke the monotony, albeit with a tedium of their own. There were windows but none were enhanced by stained glass. Candles and lanterns shed barely enough light to mitigate the gloom more than fractionally. A brass cross stationed near the communion rail was the only concession to the grandness one might have expected in a house of God.

Wadkin struggled to anticipate all the twists and turns in the order of service. He felt as if he was a traveller in a foreign land where some of the language was familiar but he understood it in ways that suggested he was just guessing what the words actually meant. The songs were a special sort of nightmare, despite his enjoyment of Kitty’s soprano trills and her occasional beguiling vibrato. His own baritone mumbling made him embarrassed enough to wish he was somewhere else.

The Bible readings were confusing. When the Old Testament passage was announced, Wadkin was temporarily gripped with suspense, anticipating a tale of kings and conquerors. Instead, it turned out to be a passage of poetry from the Song of Solomon. Wadkin listened to the recitation but it was not what he had anticipated. By the time the reader was saying ‘until the day break, and the shadows flee away’ Wadkin had had enough. Mercifully, the reading concluded a few words later with a line about various species of deer on some mountains that were obviously not in the Sheffield region. The New Testament passage was taken from a letter addressed to people waiting for Jesus to return in glory but it went on and on interminably. A Psalm was read as an introduction to a series of prayers. It was also about deer, but these animals were panting for water.

Eventually, the vicar, who wore a simple cassock befitting the low church situation, climbed the steps to the pulpit and arranged his Bible and some pages of handwritten notes so he could refer to them as he towered over the congregation. At that very moment, as if on cue, sunlight filled the windows on the eastern and southern walls of the building. Shafts of light illumined the congregation and, rather dramatically, made it appear that the clergyman was adorned with a halo. He spoke in a voice of such rich timbre that Wadkin was startled into listening for a time before the lad’s mind began to wander again. In an intriguing piece of logic that made no sense to Wadkin’s agnostic ears, the minister explained that the verses in Solomon’s song constituted a prophecy about the day of Christ’s return and, therefore, a cause for great rejoicing. As compelling as such a crucial point of doctrine was for many in the congregation, Wadkin was by this stage otherwise engaged. His thoughts strayed away from contemplation of a heavenly saviour, whom he imagined as a mere phantom, towards reflections on more worldly obsessions. He relished sitting beside an angel endowed with generous portions of feminine flesh as, from the corner of his eye, he watched Kitty’s chest rise and fall as she breathed.

As the congregation filed out of the chapel, Wadkin wondered how he might further ingratiate himself with Kitty. The splash of daylight that hit his eyes as he exited the building blinded him for a split second. When his eyes began to distinguish shapes and shadows again, Wadkin saw a soldier in a scarlet coat standing in front of Kitty. She reached out and took the interloper’s gloved hand before rising on her tiptoes to kiss the man on his cheek, which he duly turned towards her lips with a flirtatious snigger.

‘Hugh, this is Ensign Rayner. He’s come to walk me back to my lodgings. The guesthouse is owned by his aunt. He’s visiting from London.’ Kitty gave every sign of being smitten by the young soldier. ‘When he’s in Sheffield, Ensign Rayner attends services at Holy Trinity. His aunt has a family pew there.’

Wadkin shook the man’s hand, albeit grudgingly. He was handsome in a rakish way. His dark hair swirled in waves that broke on his high collar. A face that bore no scars nor lines of age was dominated by hooded dark eyes and a pointed chin, which was visible because there was a smartly trimmed gap between his thick mutton chops. His moustache had extravagantly curled waxed tips that made his mouth and teeth seem to be of secondary importance.

‘Well, it was nice to see you again. I’ll be on my way.’ Wadkin attempted to adopt a jaunty, carefree tone.

‘And you. Please stay in touch. I’m here every Sunday.’ Kitty astonished Wadkin by leaning forward to kiss his cheek by way of a farewell that was a half-hearted imitation of the welcome she had granted Rayner.

***

In the days that followed, Wadkin took to strolling by the orphanages but, despite his persistence, he failed to catch even a glimpse of Kitty Darnton. On the following Sunday, the first Sabbath in the new month of March, signifying the onset of the new spring season, he showed up at the chapel. There was no sign of Kitty. Perhaps, Wadkin thought, they had made space for her on the Rayner family pew at Holy Trinity. Her absence left a bitter taste and induced a feeling of moroseness that Wadkin found hard to shake.

II

When the silky white wisps of eddying mists and the colourless downpours of teeming rain were coincidentally absent, and there were silent shafts of feeble sunlight filtering through capacious clouds, then the chiselled summits of pitching hills, the bonny green slopes of yawning glens and the bluish grey swells of the Firth of Clyde that slapped the bows of merchant vessels were pleasant enough to enchant first-time travellers among the thousands of mariners who crewed the hundreds of ships that sought the dozens of wharves fronting the town. Had they journeyed during epochs preceding the middle years of the nineteenth century, they might have been further charmed by the sight of fishing villages and the raggedy sails and gnarled hulls of boats of earnest seekers of maritime staples. Now, however, tucked into irregular pleats in a patch of earth that was abutted by the uplands to the south and the waters to the north, there were refineries that spewed the sickly bouquet of burning sugar, textile factories from which hissing columns of steam rose skyward, and decaying tenements filled to the brim with workers and their wives and bairns.

Greenock had become a place where life was hard, hearts were beaten by the hammers of poverty, and people prayed to an old deity for the consolations of another life. On the shoreline, beside the chaotic bustle of the docks and the neoclassical façade of the Custom House, there were cutting-edge shipyards, in which the technological marvels of their day were constructed. Away from the town centre were neighbourhoods where the money of commerce had built opulent homes. In these precincts, the newly rich, many of them being shrewd entrepreneurs of revolutions inspired by the new gods of mechanised industry, cohabited snugly with the oblivious recipients of fortuitous inheritances.

***

Margaret Kintyre was born five years after her mother had assumed her childbearing days were over. So Margaret was a surprise bordering on a shock. The birth was stressful but the youngish midwife was skilful and the mother was both determined and experienced.

The Kintyres made their home in one of Greenock’s many ignoble tenements. Originally neatly assembled houses, these rough dwellings had been hastily converted decades ago. The ground floors with street frontages were often venues for shops, while the upper floors housed either the retailers’ families or poorly paid employees and their penniless dependents. Most of the men worked in the docks, or the refineries, or the factories, or the shipyards, or the slaughterhouses. Some of the women found work as domestic staff in the homes of the wealthy, or as maids in the establishments providing accommodation for foreign seaman, or as skivvies in the industrial plants. There was another class of women, about whom little was said, except in whispers of condemnatory gossip amongst respectable mothers and daughters and in rather less moderated volumes by wobbly men who delighted in drunken sagas of the most sleazy sort over a parting glass or two at the convenient inns that were advantageously located between the burnished gates of their unforgiving workplaces and the putrid vestibules of their child-blessed dwellings. For, it seemed, some of the itinerant sailors had appetites for sustenance beyond that which might be gleaned from food and lodging. Of course, the local men eschewed such cravings.

When Margaret was born, barely a week before Christmas celebrations temporarily provided some relief to the Scottish town’s bleak midwinter days, Queen Victoria was about to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of her reign. Margaret’s family had no direct knowledge of the glories of empire and the luxuries of monarchical office. They inhabited three upstairs rooms above a street which served as a thoroughfare not only for pedestrians but also for livestock on their way to the nearby abattoir. The stench from the doomed beasts was disagreeable, although it was less objectionable