The Baker's Tale (10 page)

As the man spoke, a young woman—more likely, a girl—stood by his side. Her torn, coarse dirty clothes bore the marks of work in the pit.

“How old are you?” Edwin asked.

“Fourteen, sir.”

“She is my daughter,” the man with the scarred face said.

“How long were you underground today?”

“Ten hours,” the girl answered.

“What do you do down there?”

“I hurry the corfs.”

A voice from behind sounded.

“And she has not seen the sun high in the sky except on a Sunday for almost a year.”

Edwin turned.

The speaker was a large round-shouldered man about thirty years of age with a good deal of hair and whisker. Most likely, its natural colour was red, but coal dust and smoke made it darker.

“You asked what this young woman does in the pit,” the man said, looking directly at Edwin. “So I will tell you. A thick girdle is bound round her waist. A chain is passed between her legs, with one end of the chain attached to the girdle and the other end to a corf filled with coal. She then crawls on all fours as the chain passes between what might be called her hind legs, and she pulls the corf through tunnels as narrow as a sewer. She is clothed now, so you cannot see the price she pays. The girdle blisters her sides. Her skin breaks and blood runs down her body. Her legs are swollen. A more indecent sight cannot be found in a brothel.”

“That is quite enough,” Julian White interrupted.

“And her older brother died in the mines,” the man continued, oblivious to the warning. “Although older seems a strange word, since he was ten years old at the time.”

“You are overstepping propriety,” White snapped. “Another word and your employment will terminate.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” the man said with more than a trace of mockery.

“Be gone.”

“As you wish, sir.”

Neither White nor Edwin spoke in the wake of the man's departure.

Edwin broke the silence.

“I have a question, sir.”

“What is it?”

“My understanding is that the law forbids all women from working underground in mines.”

A look similar to the look that Edwin had seen many times on Alexander Murd's face crossed White's eyes.

“I object on principle to government interference in the management of any private business.”

“Why is that, sir?”

“Mining is a complex science that does not lend itself to oversight by those who are unfamiliar with the trade.”

At the end of the day, Edwin returned to the inn. He was readying to go to the common room for dinner when there was a knock on his door.

“It is Ethan Crowl,” a voice said. There was a pause. “You do not know my name. But if you open the door, you will know my face.”

Edwin opened the door. The miner who had confronted him at the pit regarding the conditions under which the fourteen-year-old girl laboured stood before him.

The two men eyed each other.

“How did you know where to find me?”

“There is only one inn in town,” Crowl answered. “And the housekeeping staff is not always discreet.”

“Why have you sought me out?”

“I trust your face.”

Edwin extended his hand.

“My name is Edwin Chatfield.”

Crowl's handshake was firm. “I would like to tell you more about the mines,” he said.

Edwin offered his visitor the only chair in the room and sat on the bed.

“When society sees a labourer who speaks out,” Crowl began, “it warns, ‘He is suspicious. Watch that fellow.' The men who own the mines look upon us as toys to be played with for their advantage and discarded when broken. They see us in no other light. It is harder than you think to grow up right in a place like this. Pay us a fair wage so our children can have decent homes, so we can have better food when we are working. Treat us with fairness, and we will be as grateful as men can be. As things now stand, the extraction of coal from the ground costs less than the transportation of that coal to market.”

“I have no control over what you and the others are paid.”

“I know that,” Crowl said. “I am here simply to tell you of our lives. I saw you at the pit on Saturday and again today. You looked at us as men and women, not as beasts of burden. It was in your eyes. You studied everything you saw. When you leave this place, I want you to remember what is here. Someday, perhaps, you will be able to help us.”

“What more should I know?”

“Each of us has a story. I will tell you mine. When a vein of coal is exhausted, it is the practice to make a new cutting that extends off the tunnel until another vein is found. Six years ago, two dozen men and I were cutting from an exhausted vein. We holed into a tunnel that had been worked years before and was filled with water. Some of the water came in on us. We moved to the shaft and were hoisted to the surface. Then we were told that there was no danger and we should go back underground.

“We did as we were told. Two hours later, the roof of the tunnel collapsed and water rushed in. Seven were drowned. The rest of us moved to the highest part of the air course and huddled together with little air to breathe and no way of escape. Death was staring us in the face. To add to the horror, because of the fear of gas, our lamps were put out. We were in total darkness. One of the men, twenty-two years old, shrieked in agony. He cried out the names of his wife and infant son again and again, and tore his hair from his head. He died two hours later. Some of us sat silent, awaiting death's arrival. Others prayed aloud or wept.

“My own mind was not right. I was dazed. A rock had fallen on my head. To keep me out of the mud and water, a young man named Adam Lockett took me in his arms and laid me across his lap. I went to sleep. When I awoke, he was dead. We were tempted to drink some of the water in the tunnel, but it was sulfuric. To drink meant certain death. We were in this condition for two days and two nights. During this time, four more men died.

“On the third day, help arrived. The first person to break through was my brother, Joseph. The first man he reached was Robert Watts. Joseph asked, ‘Is Ethan alive?' ‘He is,' Robert told him. My brother crawled over bodies until he got to me. He shook me and called me by name, and I answered. Then he took
me in his arms and, as the water had risen to within a foot of the tunnel roof, Joseph lay on his back and paddled himself through the tunnel, holding me above the water until we reached the shaft. These things happen all the time. And the business of mining goes on the same, with no change in the practices that lead to disaster.”

Edwin sat silent.

“What about the coroners' inquests?” he asked at last. “The law of England requires them so that the cause of an untimely death is addressed.”

Crowl laughed a bitter laugh.

“The coroners are placed in their office by mining interests. After each fatality, a lawyer for the mining company shapes their findings. Sometimes the coroner puts his name to the report while the inquest is still pending.”

“Is it always that way?”

“The inquest reports are in the courthouse. Look at them and judge for yourself.”

It had been planned that Edwin would spend Tuesday at Julian White's office before returning to London the following day. Instead, he went to the courthouse.

The building, like most of the substantial buildings in the town, was made of brick. Its windows were so encrusted with dirt that the bright May sunshine seemed dim. Edwin stated his reason for coming to a clerk and was directed to a room where the coroners' inquest reports were kept.

The law of England provides that no man, woman, or child who has come to a violent end shall be buried without a judicial investigation into the cause of death. This is done to determine whether any individual, by neglect or criminal intent, was responsible for the death and should be held accountable. The
inquests are also conducted with an eye toward learning from the fatality and, as far as humanly possible, preventing similar calamities from happening again.

But eagle flights of the law are rare. More commonly, the legal process is marked by slippery crawlings. Writs are issued, judgments are signed, various machinations are put in play largely for the enrichment of the ruling class.

The facts of each coroner's inquest report that Edwin studied differed. But the conclusion was always the same.

An explosion resulted in a fire and the death of six men as well as four boys ranging in age from nine to twelve. One of the miners had been using a naked lamp to work more quickly while blasting was under way.

Nine miners were being hoisted up a shaft when a badly rusted chain broke. They plummeted eight hundred feet to their death.

Two men were suffocated by poisonous gas, having been instructed to remain in the tunnel after a leak of noxious air was suspected. Their bodies were recovered three months later, by which time they had been reduced to skeletons.

In each instance, the inquest report concluded, “Accidental Death Without Blame.”

At noon, Edwin made his way to Julian White's office.

“Is it possible that the company could do more to protect the men and women who work in the mines?” he asked.

“These matters are investigated fully,” White responded. “The coroner conducts a thorough investigation. In every instance, the facts have been clear that there was no wrongdoing on the company's part. If you think logically for a moment, you will come to the conclusion that it is in the company's best interests to prevent accidents from happening inasmuch as they interfere with the profitable operation of the mines.”

“What causes the accidents to happen?”

White shrugged.

“It is in the nature of mining that these things occur, just as it is natural that some men are lost at sea. Jonathan Hunt is employed at a generous salary to examine the pits and ensure that they are safe.”

“How is that done?”

“You are here for me to teach you about the business of mining. You are not here for me to instruct you on how to become a miner.”

“I would like to revisit the mine,” Edwin said.

“I advise against it. There has been a hint of rebellion among the men as of late.”

“With all due respect, sir, I wish to go.”

“Then you will go alone. I cannot vouch for your safety.”

Ethan Crowl was not in sight when Edwin arrived at the mine. Edwin asked several of the men if they knew where he was without satisfaction. Then a man with a stooped gait approached. His face was worn by time and notable for a deep gash, now healed into an ugly seam, that must have laid his cheekbone bare when inflicted.

“He is in the pit,” the man said. “Wait here. He will be up in an hour.”

Two hours passed before Crowl appeared. Edwin discussed the coroner's inquest findings with him.

“Why do the men work without tops on their lamps?” Edwin asked.

“If the colliers do not mine a given amount of coal each week, they are fined a certain sum per basket. No abatement is made if they have been required to curtail or leave their work because of safety concerns. Every man should be compelled to work with the top on his lamp, and his wages should be raised so that he may
earn, under that disadvantage, as much as he is paid now. If that step were taken, far fewer lives would be lost from explosion. But that would lower the company's profit.”

Crowl looked directly into Edwin's eyes.

“Mining will never be safe. But it can be made less dangerous. The present conditions exist because men like Alexander Murd have persuaded the ruling class that it is inevitable and thus acceptable that miners will suffocate, drown, and burn to death by the thousands each year. One wonders how Murd can lay his head upon a pillow in peace at night.”

“I would like to go into the mine,” Edwin said.

The words seemed spoken impetuously, but they were not. Edwin had been thinking about them for three days.

“Are you certain?” Crowl pressed.

“I am.”

“It is not a game.”

“I understand.”

“Very well then.”

Men who are about to descend into a mine shaft climb into what is known as a bucket. The bucket is then lowered with the aid of a windlass, a piece of heavy machinery that consists of a horizontal barrel rotated by the turn of a crank with a chain wound round the barrel. The less sophisticated windlasses are powered by a horse that is harnessed to a wheel and walks in a circle, clockwise or counterclockwise as the case may be, to lift and lower the bucket. This windlass was powered by an engine.

“I will go down with you,” Crowl said.

Two other miners joined them. One was a strongly built young man with a handsome face. The other was about forty years old with a weary expression that had worn into his features as hard weather wears into rock.

The bucket descended into the shaft.

Deeper and deeper.

The light of the sun grew dimmer until everything was dark.

Edwin's heart was pounding. His survival was now linked to a handful of men above and below the surface of the earth. And to fate.

The air in the shaft grew more fetid and humid.

The bucket hit bottom at eleven hundred feet.

The darkness was claustrophobic.

Crowl lit his lamp, keeping the top on.

Edwin saw an opening in the shaft wall, a tunnel four feet high. No sunlight had ever made its way inside.

Crowl nodded toward the tunnel.

“After you, Mr. Chatfield.”

The tunnel had a forbidding look and an earthy deadly smell.

“I would prefer to not go in the tunnel,” Edwin said.

“Why not?”

“I am afraid.”

“Of a hole in the ground?”

“I know that you do this on most days of your life, but I do not wish to endure it.”

Crowl reached an arm around Edwin's shoulders.

“You are braver than you think you are, my friend from London. The pit is more cruel than battle.”