HIDDEN treasures

Biddy’s family were depending on her, but did she have the inner strength to succeed?

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Birmingham, 1861. Hurrying through the freezing winter streets, Biddy Ryan pulled her shawl close around her skinny nine-year-old shoulders. All around were the sounds of creaking carts, the tap of hooves on the cobbles, and thump and clang from the factories. Smoke and metal dust clogged her nostrils. The pavements were crowded with people hurrying to their workplaces. A normal morning in these streets she had known all her life.

Except that today was her first day of work. And she was terrified.

'We'll have to send you out for a wage,' Da had told her sorrowfully. 'Mammy can't leave our John, you've just become old enough to legally work and with our Maura gone to the angels...' Biddy took courage now from the thought of his arms around her, warm and reassuring, as she reached the narrow entry leading to the pearl button works.

'You'll be all right, Biddy, darlin"," Mammy had said as she spoonfed John, because, although he was seven, his arms and legs were not in his control. 'Do your very best for Miss Fletcher and you'll get on well.' Of course she was going to do her best. She was Mammy and Da's hope now that Maura was gone. Tears filled her eyes at the thought of her beloved elder sister, whose warmth she had cuddled up to in the bed all her life until now.

Biddy had been to the factory once before. The girls who worked there looked all right, though they were much older than her. But Miss Fletcher, the gaffer, was another matter.

She was a tall, thin woman in a severe blue dress, light brown hair scraped back from her gaunt face. Her brown eyes fixed their attention on you in a way which frightened the life out of Biddy.

'So, you can start on Monday, she had said. 'We'll see if you take to the work.'

Biddy crossed the yard, speckled with gleaming shell fragments like stars, and stepped into the downstairs storeroom.