Death at the Workhouse Read online

  Death at the Workhouse

  Penny Green Mystery Book 8

  Emily Organ

  Contents

  Death at the Workhouse

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  The End

  Historical Note

  Thank you

  Get a free short mystery

  The Churchill & Pemberley Series

  Death at the Workhouse

  Emily Organ

  Books in the Penny Green Series:

  Limelight

  The Rookery

  The Maid’s Secret

  The Inventor

  Curse of the Poppy

  The Bermondsey Poisoner

  An Unwelcome Guest

  Death at the Workhouse

  Chapter 1

  “Mr Torrance has been making complaints,” said my landlady, Mrs Garnett.

  “Who’s Mr Torrance?” I asked as I adjusted my hat in the hallway mirror.

  “The man who rents the room beneath you.”

  “That’s who he is, is it? I didn’t know his name. He’s the man with the large moustache, I assume?”

  “Yes. He’s a clerk at one of those law firms. He’s been making complaints about the noise.”

  “What noise?”

  “From your new typewriting machine.”

  I laughed. “It doesn’t make such a terrible noise!”

  “He says it’s like the pounding of a dozen tiny hammers.”

  “He must have exceptionally good hearing.”

  I stepped away from the mirror, and as I did so Mrs Garnett brushed her feather duster over it.

  “Apparently, he’s a light sleeper,” she replied. “And you do have a habit of working at that thing until late into the evening.”

  “It’s quite often the only time I have.” I had recently acquired my first typewriter and had been busy working on the book I was writing about my father’s life.

  “I realise that, Miss Green, but it’s still noisy.”

  “Do you also hear it?”

  “Yes, I could hear it from his room. Unfortunately, your writing desk is situated just above Mr Torrance’s bed, and the poor man has to rise at five each morning.”

  “What would you have me do, Mrs Garnett?”

  “There must be some agreed hours of use, and it cannot be late in the evening.”

  “But I do my best writing late in the evening!”

  “That may be so, but Mr Torrance needs his sleep.”

  “Might I try moving my writing desk?” It was a reluctant suggestion, seeing as my desk sat in front of the little window in my garret room, and from there I could enjoy an easterly view over the rooftops of London.

  “You could try that, but I doubt it would solve the problem completely. Mr Torrance would still be able to hear your machine.”

  “Perhaps he could push some cotton into his ears when he wishes to sleep.”

  “We can hardly expect him to go to such absurd lengths, Miss Green.”

  “Why not? If he’s a light sleeper, as he claims to be, the cotton will ensure that nothing wakes him up. And besides, we’re situated right beside the railway lines of Moorgate Station! How is it that my typewriter keeps him awake when the trains fail to do so?”

  “It’s easy to become accustomed to the noise of the trains, but a typewriter is a different kettle of fish.”

  “Most likely because I’ve only recently acquired it. I’m sure he’ll become accustomed to the typewriting noise in time.”

  “That’s hardly fair, Miss Green. I think the best solution would be to agree upon a curfew.”

  “Ten o’clock?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “But that barely gives me any time at all to do my work in the evenings!”

  “Then may I suggest that you discuss this issue directly with Mr Torrance?”

  I sighed. “Well, I don’t have time to discuss the matter much further, as I must go to work now. When you see him today, Mrs Garnett, tell him that he has nothing to worry about this evening as I shall be spending the night at the workhouse.”

  “The workhouse? Goodness, there’s no need for you to go to such extreme measures in response to his complaint! I’m sure we can reach some sort of compromise. And besides, I shouldn’t think you’d be allowed to take your typewriter in there.”

  “You misunderstand me, Mrs Garnett. I’m staying at the workhouse tonight as I shall be writing a piece about it for the Morning Express.”

  Mrs Garnett sucked her lip disapprovingly. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand your profession, Miss Green.”

  Chapter 2

  I stepped off the omnibus on Hoxton Street that evening wearing a thin dress, bonnet and shawl I had bought from a second-hand clothes shop. A bitter January wind whisked along the street, and I shivered as I waited for my sister beneath a gas lamp outside the Britannia Theatre. A noisy crowd was gathering around me for the evening’s pantomime performance.

  “Hello, Penelope. Isn’t it cold?” Eliza joined me beneath the gas lamp, rubbing her hands together. She wore a similar outfit but had managed to find a pair of fingerless woollen gloves to team it with.

  “I wish I had some gloves,” I said. “My hands are almost numb.”

  “I suppose this is only the beginning of the night’s discomfort,” she replied. “If you wish to write about a pauper’s lot you must first experience it.”

  “Thank you for joining me, Ellie,” I said gratefully. “I shouldn’t have liked to do this on my own.”

  “I must say that I feel rather intrigued and nervous at the same time. I’ve heard so many stories about the workhouse.”

  “None of them good, I imagine.”

  “No, none. But I think it’s important to see these things for oneself.” She glanced around cautiously. “I can’t say that I’ve ever visited East London before. It has a certain odour to it, doesn’t it? Quite a different world from Bayswater. What are all these people here for? Oh, I see.” She looked up at the billboard. “Harlequin BonBon and the Golden Serpent. I’d much rather be going in there than to the workhouse. Wouldn’t you, Penelope?”

  “Yes, but we must get on with it.”

  “What time do they open the doors to the casual wards?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  It was a short walk up Hoxton Street to Shoreditch Workhouse. The entrance sat between the Unicorn public house and an attractive red-and-cream building, upon which I coul
d just discern the lettering ‘Offices for the Relief of the Poor’ in the lamplight. The little street that led to the workhouse entrance was named ‘The Land of Promise’, and within its confines a group of dishevelled people waited to be admitted to the foreboding building which lay beyond the walls.

  The workhouse’s casual wards provided food and a bed for the night for those who were too poor to pay the sixpence for a night at one of the city’s squalid lodging houses. Having read several accounts of the men’s casual wards in various publications, I was keen to discover for myself what the women’s wards would be like. I hoped that by writing about the unfortunate conditions I was anticipating, more might be done to alleviate the suffering of London’s destitute. I was expecting it to be a difficult experience, so I had been both surprised and grateful when Eliza had agreed to join me.

  Although the gloom made it difficult to discern the faces of the others around us, I became aware of a stooped elderly lady whose chest rattled when she coughed. A younger woman was accompanied by two children who seemed unusually still and quiet for their age, while two old men were busy reminiscing about Bartholomew Fair, which had ceased running many years before.

  We were startled by the slam of a door at the side of the Unicorn pub, and turned to see three loud young men sauntering toward us.

  “Gotta match, old pal?” one of them asked a slumped figure.

  The match was produced, and the smell of tobacco smoke soon drifted around our heads.

  “Annuver night at Buckin’am Palace!” announced one of the young men. “We all lookin’ forward to annuver night at Buckin’am Palace?”

  One of the elderly men tutted at him.

  “Bill, you ain’t never stayed in this one afore.”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “What’s the worse one as you’ve stayed in, Bill?”

  “Poplar.”

  “That’s a rotten one, ain’t it? Tottenham’s rotten an’ all. This one ain’t so bad.”

  “’Cause it’s Buckin’am Palace!”

  The men sniggered, and then one of them accidentally knocked me with his elbow.

  “Beg yer pardon, m’lady.”

  “It’s quite all right.”

  My polite reply seemed to amuse him, and he grinned at me. In the gloom I could see that he looked to be about twenty years of age, although his features were prematurely lined. He was dark-eyed and would have been quite handsome had his face not been so careworn.

  As the workhouse bell chimed six, we heard the turn of a key in the door at the top of the steps. The door swung open and the warden peered out at us.

  “Any married couples here?” asked the beetle-browed man with thick, dark whiskers.

  A middle-aged couple stepped forward.

  “Have you stayed here before?” asked the warden.

  “Yeah,” said the husband.

  “Come back to sponge off the rates then, have you?”

  They nodded but said nothing.

  Women and children were admitted next, and I felt distinctly nervous when our turn to be admitted came. Would the warden realise that Eliza and I weren’t genuinely destitute?

  As we stepped up to the desk in the dimly lit hallway, I felt keenly aware of how well-nourished we must have appeared.

  The warden surveyed us through narrowed eyes. “Sisters?” he asked.

  Eliza and I nodded.

  He dipped his pen into the inkpot. “Have you stayed here before?”

  “No,” I said.

  “’Tis a shame you’ve found yourself in a position in which you have no choice but to stay here tonight. Don’t be coming back here again, will you? What are the circumstances that have brought you here?”

  “My husband deserted us,” said Eliza. “My sister and I have lost our means of income as well as our home.”

  “Can’t you find any work?”

  “We’ve been charring, and most days we can earn something, can’t we, Penelope?”

  I nodded.

  “But we’ve been unable to find any money for our lodgings today.”

  The warden sighed and shook his head. “What a sorry state when two gentlewomen find themselves down on their luck. Where did you stay last night?”

  “At a lodging house in Drury Lane,” I said.

  He asked us for our names and ages, writing them down in the admission book.

  “Who is your closest relative?” he asked.

  “I suppose that would be our mother,” said Eliza.

  “What’s her name and address?”

  Eliza gave him the details and he jotted them down.

  “Now, go through that door and it’ll take you to the women’s bathroom. The portress will meet you there.”

  As we walked on, I heard the warden call the next person forward.

  “Where did you stay last night?” he asked.

  “St Pancras.”

  “Staying at the ratepayer’s expense again, eh? Can’t you afford lodgings?”

  “I’m a watercress hawker, but it ain’t the season for it.”

  “May I suggest that you find something else to hawk? You can’t keep staying at workhouses at the ratepayer’s expense, you know. I don’t want to see you down here again.”

  “The bathroom?” Eliza whispered to me. “Do we have to wash?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I fear that doing so will make us dirtier than we were when we came in!”

  The stern-faced portress was a stocky woman of about fifty wearing a pale blue dress and a white apron. She showed us into a cold, whitewashed room with two dirty bathtubs in it.

  “Have you any tobacco?” she asked.

  We shook our heads.

  “Tobacco is not allowed here. You’ll be in trouble if we find any on you later. Take off your clothes and tie them in a bundle. You’re some of the first here this evening, so you’ll get the clean water.”

  Eliza and I removed our old garments and shivered, partly from the cold and partly from the lack of dignity. The order to have a bath seemed to be intended to demean poor people rather than to ensure their cleanliness. I peered into the bathtub and saw about six inches of grimy water inside.

  “Wash your hair, too,” ordered the portress as we stepped into the water, which still had some warmth to it.

  I saw Eliza open her mouth to argue, but she evidently thought better of it. We reluctantly began to unpin our hair. We both had long, thick, fair hair and I knew that it would take a long time to dry in this cold place.

  We were given threadbare towels to dry ourselves with, and I could see that they were quite unclean. Then the portress gave us rough blue flannel nightgowns to put on. These were clearly unlaundered and had an unpleasant musty odour to them, as well as stains around the neck. We were given three thin blankets each, and I tried to remain calm when I spotted a large louse crawling across one of them.

  We left through a door which led into a room filled with long wooden tables. Around a dozen women wearing the same blue nightgowns were seated at these tables eating from enamel bowls.

  Eliza and I collected our ration of thin gruel and dry bread from two pinch-faced women wearing the workhouse uniform, which comprised a thick, grey, collared dress with a matching apron. These women were from the main workhouse which admitted the destitute to live on a more permanent basis. In the main workhouse they were called inmates, as if poverty were a crime.

  “I’m trying very hard not to cry,” said Eliza as we sat down to eat. “This is a dreadful place. I wish we could leave it immediately.”

  “So do I.”

  “And that’s just it. We can, Penelope,” she whispered. “If we wished to, we could walk out the door this very minute and return to our comfortable homes. These other people, they…” She stopped to wipe her eyes with her hand.

  “They have no choice, do they?” I whispered, a lump rising into my throat. “This is why I need to write about this, Ellie. All the people residing in their comfortable homes need to
know that some people are forced to live like this.”

  “And it’s so filthy!” Eliza gave a shudder. “Look at those bugs down there.”

  I reluctantly turned my head to look at the base of the wall, where beetles of some variety were scuttling past. “I won’t be getting any sleep tonight.”

  “Me neither,” replied Eliza. “How do you suppose anyone manages it?”

  “I imagine they must drink a lot of gin and fall asleep from its numbing effects.”

  “It explains why so many paupers take to drink,” said Eliza sadly. “That must be the only way to cope with it all.”

  The gruel was a watery mix of oatmeal and water with a slightly sour taste to it, and I could only manage a few mouthfuls. The bread was so dry that it was a job to eat any of it at all. The meal left me feeling rather thirsty.

  “I thought we might get some tea,” said Eliza. “Do you think they’ll give us a cup?”

  “There only appears to be water,” I said, pointing toward a pail which stood beside the table where the gruel was being served from. A tin cup had been chained to the pail, and the women and girls gathered were dipping the cup directly into the pail and drinking from it.

  “The warden who admitted us was rather ill-mannered, wasn’t he?” commented Eliza. “I can’t believe he’s allowed to speak to people in that way.”