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QUEEN VICTORIA'S REALM 1837-40:
Manchester Sam and Jane had travelled back through time to live with Lord Ashley, a famous factory reformer. Lord Ashley thought they were the children of his brother George who worked in India. George had sent his son and daughter back to England to stay with Lord Ashley. Jane and Sam looked like and knew all about them and took on their characters. Lord Ashley visited factories to find out how young children worked so as to change the law to protect them from being used as slave labour. He knew that helping and caring for people was also something that Jane and Sam felt strongly about. They had been brought up as Christians to be kind and to look after others. That was why Lord Ashley had asked them to help with his enquiry into children’s working conditions in a cotton factory in Manchester. The visit Jane and Sam had travelled with Lord Ashley to Manchester. Jane had used her transformit spell to turn Leader into a giant rottweiler, he was with her. They were staying in a smart hotel. Lord Ashley also knew that Jane was a young detective, she had become famous in India for solving a crime, a robbery, that had taken place in their home. Lord Ashley asked her and Sam to: The bedroom It was still quite dark; dawn had only just begun to rise as Sam and Jane stood outside number 12, Union Street. Jane used her wizard chip pickit spell to pick the lock on the front door in the light from a gas lamp. She and Sam quietly crept up the stairs to one of two bedrooms. The door was open, they could see that the room’s thin cotton curtains were drawn, on the wooden floor stood two rickety iron beds, a tatty wooden chest of drawers and two plain brown wooden chairs. The bedroom was the same size as Jane’s, but where was the clock, the computer, the play station, the electric light and the pile of books? Asleep in the room were two children, Alice and Tom. Getting up As Jane and Sam entered the room there was a terrible rattle on the window and a man in the street shouting,’ Wake up, wake up: rise and shine.’ Washing and dressing Alice and Tom quickly washed in a bowl of cold water using a lump of hard, coarse soap and a thin cotton towel. Alice put on a long, brown cotton dress. It reached down to her ankles and was buttoned up from her waist to her neck. On her head she put a white muslin bonnet and slipped black wooden clogs on to her feet. One sleeve of her dress was torn, a flap of cloth hung down from her elbow. Sam put on coarse ragged woollen short trousers that reached down to his knees, an itchy check wool shirt, a jumper with holes in its sleeves, cotton socks and clogs. Orphans Alice and Tom were orphans who had come to live in Manchester three months ago from a farm that their parents had rented. Both children were excellent readers and writers, as they had been very well taught in a church school in their local village. When their parents died they had had to leave the farm as they were penniless. The farms owner seized everything their parents owned. That was why Tom and Alice were now living with their aunt and uncle in Manchester. Their uncle had sent them to work in Fox’s cotton mill, he told them that they had to earn their keep. The terrace house Alice and Tom hurried downstairs to the kitchen to wolf down a bite of breakfast before walking to work at Mr Fox’s cotton factory two miles away. They were living in a two up and two down room terrace house. Downstairs there was a large kitchen at the back of the house, a tiny washing-up room or scullery and a pantry for keeping food. The kitchen and scullery opened on to a small yard with a back gate that led into an alley. At the front of the house was a small, poky sitting room that looked out on to the cobbled street. Upstairs were two bedrooms, one for the children, the other for their aunt and uncle. The toilet was a wooden plank with a hole in it over a bucket in a shed at the end of the alley. Alice’s auntie had boiled water in a thick black iron kettle on an iron coal burning stove. Light came from a gas lamp. Breakfast was a mug of watery tea and a thin slice of white bread and dripping. The children were still hungry as they left the house for the cotton mill. Sam and Jane shared some sandwiches, coke and buns that they had brought with them. To work Sam and Jane walked along behind Alice and Tom as they and their aunt and uncle trudged off to work. Their red brick terrace house faced another row of terrace houses across a cobbled street. Flickering gas lamps lit the street, it was drizzling. Sewage ran down the gutter, rats scurried to and fro. The children passed through street after street lined with rows of soot blackened houses from the smoke that seeped into the air from thousands of chimneys. Jane realised that the drizzle was turning their clothes black. In the distance they could see dozens of factories with tall chimneys that belched out thick clouds of black smoke. The air stank of smoke and sulphur, they could hear the clanging factory bell calling them to work. At the factory they joined crowds of pale faced men, women and children hurrying through its heavy iron gates. The Cotton Factory Tom hobbled along in agony to the cotton mill, with his swollen and sore knees and ankles. At last Alice and Tom, with their aunt and uncle, reached Fox’s cotton mill. The cotton factory was a long rectangular red brick building. It towered over the terraced houses that lined the streets around it. The factory was a hundred metres long, thirty metres wide and three floors high, Jane thought that it was as big as Axminster cathedral. On each floor stood rows of arched glass windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. At one end of the factory a throbbing steam engine powered the factory’s machinery. It stood on the banks of a quick flowing river, a mill race ran from a dam that they could see in the distance. The mill wheel no longer worked, although the steam engine used water the mill race supplied for steam. Alice and Sam left their aunt and uncle on the first floor and climbed to the top floor where they worked in a spinning and weaving room. The door was open, Sam and Jane, still invisible, followed Alice and Sam into the room. The Weaving Room Jane and Sam found themselves standing on the side of a huge room stinking of oil and steam. The din was horrible, a non-stop crashing, banging, rattling; so loud that you could not be heard. In the room stood row upon row of spinning machines to make thread and looms for weaving cloth. Each loom shuddered and shook as shuttles zoomed backwards and forwards and the machine opened and shut its weaving frames. Overhead rapidly turning long iron rods ran the length of the building. They were linked to the steam engine. From the rods hung tight leather looped belts that powered the spinning and weaving machines. By each machine stood a couple of women who looked after them as they clattered, whirred, shook, shuddered and banged. Although daylight streamed in through the big, dirty windows and gas lights were still burning, it was still hard to make out what was going on, despite the whitewashed walls. A grim faced overseer with bulging muscles walked up and down holding a cane in his hand, making sure the children were hard at work. Danger Suddenly, Jane spotted that Alice and Tom were already at work, crawling under a spinning machine to clear away threads of cloth hanging down. With horror Jane saw that Alice was reaching up into the machine to tie a broken thread when the torn flap on her sleeve got caught in the machine. Alice let out a piercing shriek of terror, the machine had yanked her off the floor. In a second she would be swept up into the machine. It would tear off her arm. What could Jane do? Quick as a flash she pointed her wizard chip ring at Sam. Sam realised the danger and how to stop the machine. Still unseen, he vaulted over the loom and pressed a button. The machine ground to a stop, the belts stopped whirring, there was silence in the room. Alice burst into tears as the man in charge, the overseer, freed her from the machine before it had chewed her up into little pieces. Alice rushed across the room, howling, and wrapped her arms around Tom for comfort. Bravely she bit her lip and stopped crying: she was afraid Mr Gurney, the overseer, would beat her. She wiped away her tears. CHAPTER 3: THE COTTON MILL: LORD ASHLEY'S VISIT Lord Ashley Jane and Sam looked on in horror – Alice could have died so easily. At that point the factory door was thrown open and in walked Mr Fox, the mill owner with a tall, gaunt man wearing a black suit, shiny black shoes, a stiff, starched white shirt and collar and a tall black stove-pipe top hat. The man turned and said The office A door opened and Lord Ashley, Alice and Tom found themselves in the office of Mr Fox, the factory owner. The room had long red velvet curtains, a thick carpet, a solid wooden mahogany desk and a long oval table with eight padded chairs for meetings. A large bookcase stood in the corner close to the door. Lord Ashley sat down at the head of the table, by his side sat a man, Mr Miller, with a large, open leather notebook, quill pen and inkwell in front of him. There was a polite knocking on the door, Mr Miller opened the door. In came Jane and Sam with Leader, Jane’s giant rottweiler, trotting at their heels. Jane had turned her disappearing ring so that she and Sam were no longer invisible. Lord Ashley remarked, Jane looked up and replied: Lord Ashley nodded and remarked, Alice and Tom followed Jane and Sam out of Mr Fox’s office. Leader slunk under the table where he was out of sight and fell quietly asleep. Smiling, Jane turned and said to Alice and Tom: The bully From a window Jane could see a scowling Mr Fox talking to Mr Gurney his overseer who held a thick cane in his hand. Jane’s seeing mirror with its hidden earpiece meant that she could hear what Mr Fox said. With an evil leer on his face he told Mr Gurney, CHAPTER 4: THE COTTON MILL: THE CHILDREN'S INTERVIEWS Lord Ashley’s Questions Lord Ashley had a list of questions in front of him. Mr Miller, his helper, held his quill pen in his hand, ready to write down Alice and Tom’s answers in his notebook. Already he had put down the date, place and their names in neat, flowing copper plate handwriting. Lord Ashley pointed to a chair and asked them to sit down.
Kidnap! Lord Ashley said. ‘Grab them. Tie them up and gag them. They must not be allowed to give evidence against us. We will take them down the backstairs and then get rid of them. Also lock the other two children in the cupboard, nobody will hear them shouting for help. If Lord Ashley finds them it will seem they were locked in by accident.’ The fight Mr Gurney rushed past the table and made a lunge to grab Jane. Leader, her rottweiler, leapt forward and with a crunch his teeth sank into his Mr Gurney’s thigh. He fell writhing in agony to the floor, the dog shaking him like a rat. Mr Fox tried to grab Alice. Sam, an expert kick boxer, let fly with both feet and knocked him out with his metal tipped boots. Jane quietly told Leader to let go of Mr Gurney, blood was soaking his trousers from a deep wound. Grim faced, she spat out the words, Alice, Tom and Lord Ashley Alice and Tom looked on, stunned. Jane said,
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