The next line had been vigorously scored through, so that it was almost impossible to read it, but Michael, tilting the paper closer to the window’s light, made out the word skinflint. He read on.
It is normally the business of my herdsman to make milk and egg deliveries to customers, but on that morning I took the Salamander House order myself. You may well ask why I should do such a thing, being so busy with the farm, but I am compiling evidence against Breadspear. It’s my firm belief that he half-starves his apprentices, works them every hour God sends, and gives not a jot of care to their safety. They labour for hours on end in the firing rooms, and constantly suffer burns and blisters. Their eyes are often affected by the constant heat of the kilns, and their lungs become dry and scorched. In extreme cases I believe there can be permanent impairment to their sight, and that damage to the lungs is often permanent, as well. If any of those wretched creatures survive much beyond thirty years of age I should regard it as a miracle.
I make no secret of my suspicions regarding Augustus Breadspear, so you may write all this down fair and true, George Buckle, and I shall look at it very sharply before I put my name to it, to be sure it is exactly as I have said. Nor I shan’t listen to any nonsense about knowing my place and respecting my betters, for I farm my own land and Willow Bank came to me fair and square by inheritance and an entail. In short, I am as good as you – in fact I am as good as any man and a sight better than most. I pay my dues and I owe no man a brass farthing, which is more than can be said for a great many folk hereabouts. As well as that, I know my rights, because I have read Magna Carta, which I’ll wager is a sight more than you have.
On the morning of 22nd October I had resolved to see the firing rooms for myself while they were in full working operation. I wanted to catch Breadspear and his overseers at their cruel ways, which would give me evidence for a formal charge. The laws are disgracefully weak when it comes to the treatment of young people in manufactories (Magna Carta did not provide for every eventuality), but I am resolved to fight for what is right and kind. If it means a change in the law, then that is what I will fight to achieve. No, I am not an anarchist. If I am anything, I am a reformer.
I took the dray along the lanes and across Watery Toft, and delivered the eggs, milk and butter to the kitchen door of Breadspear’s private house. I dislike that house. I do know what happened there a couple of years ago – even as a relative newcomer to the area I have heard about it – but I take no notice of the tales spun by the credulous and the spiteful. It is simply an ugly, mean-looking house, in which a bad and tragic thing once happened.
It is nonsense for Breadspear to say I slunk into the manufactory and crept through the corridors like a homing tomcat. I unlatched the gate in that wall and walked openly across the courtyard, entering the manufactory through the main doors.
It was a little before eight o’clock, but even at that early hour there was a thrum of machinery and a clatter of steel and metal. I followed these sounds, opening several doors, but finding only store rooms or packing bays. Trays of glass ornaments were set out, ready for packing, and in Breadspear’s favour I will say he has a thriving manufactory and the trinkets and goblets and decanters he makes are of a beautiful quality. That, however, does not excuse his treatment of his workers.