“Does Chris know where you’re going?”
She donned a mantle and smiled her thanks at the servant. “I believe so. Almost all the orphanages are in that area or farther south, toward St. Katherine’s and Wapping.”
“You’ll have to travel through Whitechapel,” he said.Did she know where his sister died?
“It’s not nearly as bad as one thinks,” she said, seemingly unperturbed and oblivious to his growing apprehension. “At least, the Whitechapel High Street or Whitechapel Road aren’t. It’s the warrens of small side streets leading off those main thoroughfares, hardly more than alleyways, where the most poverty and despair are to be found. I’ll be in my carriage, and I have a trusted driver.”
“Anyone else?”
She looked up at him sharply. “I don’t need a nanny, Owen. I can take care of myself.”
Sophia believed the same thing when she went traipsing off to a far safer area to buy perfume. And yet, after heading into the East End, she’d never returned.
“I shall go with you,” he decided. “In fact, I’ll take you in my carriage. You can tell me all about orphans on the way.”
She hesitated, but Owen didn’t care what she said or did. He would not take no for an answer, and he would refuse to let her leave. He owed his friend Chris such a kindness, and he would take it up with him later. The marquess was being remiss in letting his pretty wife, the mother of his child, traipse off to God-knew-where as if the world were a safe place.
Thus, despite her protests and at the cost of missing hearing about new coal tariffs and possibly fighting them, Owen found himself with the Marchioness Westing on his way to Spitalfields.
It was an enlightening journey, not only hearing her speak about the good work her sponsored orphanages were doing, but also actually seeing one. Foundling homes, he learned, had been around for a century, at least. The luckiest orphans were the newborns, who were often quickly adopted to replace babies who’d died in infancy, even in the homes of the wealthiest members of society. The other children usually got a modest education and stayed in an orphanage until they received employment situations.
“The boys get apprenticeships at fourteen,” Lady Jane said, “if no one adopts them sooner. And the girls at sixteen.”
That sounded like a good system to him, but she looked sad. When asked why, she told him, “It’s rare to keep them that long. Sometimes they run away and end up in unfavorable conditions, which they can rarely get out of. Or worse happens.”
Worse happens. He didn’t have to ask.
The streets leading up to the orphanage looked very different from what Owen saw at night, when only drunkards, whores, and cutthroats were out. In the daylight, he saw crowds of children, many shoeless, wearing rags, whose parents, if they had any, were working for pittance either at the docks or in one of the smoke-spewing factories by the river where enormous coal stacks lined the horizon.
The children looked so industrious Owen couldn’t help watching out of the carriage window. Some were sweeping hopelessly filthy sidewalks in front of shops. He assumed they were doing so for pay or for food. Some were doing laundry in tubs, some held baskets, although he couldn’t imagine what they were selling. And some were sitting on the sidewalk, holding a tabby cat or a mangy dog, and he felt a lump in his throat at the comfort they were giving or receiving in such a squalid life. He turned to look at Lady Jane, who nodded to him, as if to say,I’ve seen it all.
Thankfully, the orphanage turned out to be large and clean, run by ladies in white aprons. Unfortunately, it was also overcrowded with children of all ages and, thus, very noisy.
While not exactly filled with laughter and cheer, it was not anywhere near as miserable as a workhouse in which the mortality rate for children was still abominably high. Nor was it as dangerous as the gutters from which many of the children had been rescued. If they were lucky enough to secure bed and board at an orphanage, especially one of Lady Jane’s, they would have a clean, safe place to sleep and hearty food at the very least, and possibly a future.
Westing’s wife managed to surprise the director, a tall, gangly man with a large mustache and sideburns that almost hid his face entirely. But when faced with two aristocrats entering his office and one of them being the capable marchioness demanding to inspect the facility from cellar to attic, the director had an unperturbed air. This reassured Owen as to the man’s trustworthiness.
Moreover, when they toured the building from floor to floor, the director was often greeted by the children, obviously without fear.All the better.
Owen took the opportunity to look at each and every sandy-haired boy he could see. Detective Sergeant Garrard was right about the number of them. Just as Owen decided to ask one if he’d ever delivered a note to Piccadilly, another popped up, and another. He didn’t want to upset anyone’s applecart, especially Lady Jane’s, but he did sidle up to one boy.
“Do you perform odd jobs, like being a courier?” Owen asked.
“What’s that, guvnor?”
Owen hid a smile over the term of address. “I mean to say, would you carry a message for someone?”
The boy shook his head. “We’re not allowed to do those sorts of jobs, in case we get in with a bad lot. We have to wait for the director to give us work. I’m going to be a cobbler, I think.”
Owen nodded. “Good choice.”
“Lord Burnley, we are going into the yard,” came Lady Jane’s voice, and he left the young boy with a nod.
At the end of the tour, Lady Jane seemed very pleased, and only suggested they get the children outside as much as possible in good weather and add an extra pudding course on Sundays if possible.
The director smiled and said he would endeavor to do so, or at least to add more fruit, which the children saw as a delicacy and loved nearly as much as biscuits.
“I shall send a few bushels of apples over tomorrow,” Owen promised as they reentered his carriage. As it started moving, he stared at his friend’s wife, noticing she had tears in her eyes.
