Death, Community and the rhythm of Working-Class life

This post will be using a short story by D. H. Lawrence, 'Odour of Chrysanthemums', to discuss some of the fundamental aspects of late Victorian working-class life.


Here is a link to an online version of the story:
http://shortstoryclassics.50megs.com/lawrencechrysanthemums.html

Lawrence himself, born in 1885, grew up in the Nottinghamshire town of Eastwood, a community almost completely dominated by mining. His father was a miner, but his mother was a former schoolmistress. Class is a very problematic set of categories and Lawrence, with his mixed background and subsequent success, is too complex to simply label working-class. Much of his work did deal with working-class themes and life however, especially one of his earliest works Odour of Chrysanthemums, which was published in English Review in 1911.

Odour deals with a mother, Elizabeth Bates, and her children waiting for the return of the father, Walter, from the pit, the mother first speculating on his flaws and the problems within their marriage, and then her emotional response to the return of his dead body, covered in coal dust, from a pit accident.

Julie Marie Strange has already explored the themes of death and dying in her work so its not my intention to cover that here. Instead we'll examine Lawrence's short story to see what it can tell us about life in an Edwardian mining community as well as keeping an eye out for some of the dangers in using fiction in historical work.

What struck me first was the arrival of the woman's father on the steam engine. Geographical mobility was often limited in mining communities, leading to at least one child growing up in a Welsh mining town in the Edwardian period recalling to the historian Max Arthur that a social reformer had come to their house to urge their mother to move her children out of the valley to prevent inbreeding. Whilst fears of inbreeding were probably unfounded, census work shows that many working-class families did live in close proximity to their extended family. The father in Odours appologises for not coming to visit on the Sunday, implying he lives close by. It is difficult to tell how true to life this is however, as the family of railway workers could often suffer disruption and upheval caused by the demands of running engines across the country at all hours. What is left in Lawrence's work is a profound sense of isolation on the part of Elizabeth.

Her husband, she suspects, is down at the pub. The Prince of Wales seems an unwelcoming place to Elizabeth and the audience despite its warm and bright windows. 'No, you didn't like [to go in to find Walter] - it's not very nice' agrees Mrs Rigley, the woman who Elizabeth turns to for help in finding her husband. The public house in Lawrence's work appears to have been a male dominated domain. To what extent this was true amongst working-class communities is hard to say, as information on working-class culture is often slim. Middle-class reformers certainly dissaproved, yet the staunchly pro-temperace Seebohm Rowntree, investigating poverty in York in 1899, pointed out that the 'fact of their social attractiveness struck..[me]...very forcibely'. The pull for many working-class men and women, with few other spaces available for social interaction, must have been greater still. The public house was Walter's venue of choice, and whilst there is a tangible sense of suspense as the family wait for his return, there is also a tired resignation born out of familiarity with this behaviour.

Finally, there is a palpable sense of rhythm in the working-class world Lawrence portrays. It is one inhabited by miners tramping back from work, and then later from home to the pub, and of trains thundering past to and from the colliery. This sense of repetition is, I think, an important part of working-class life in the Edwardian age, and one which extended beyond the mining towns of the age. The social commentator Thomas Wright, writing in the 1860s, recalled how he would wake early and freezing on a winter's morning to join the steady trudge down his London street to the factory. Yet this simple schema of work and rest is not the only rhythm present in Lawrence's work; Walter's death, whilst jarring, feeds into a wider pattern of life and death which underlies the unnamed mining community. In the story's final lines Lawrence speaks of the inevitability of death:

'She knew she submitted to life, which was her immedeate master.

But from death, her ultimate master, she winced in fear and shame.'

Lawrence's work has been fundamental in fostering a picture of the bleak and inescapable toil of mining communities that was built upon in Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier. I wonder to what extent the majority of those living in such communities shared these opinions, and whether they felt their lives were dominated by an inexorable pattern of toil followed by death. This is one of the fundamental problems of using literature in history, it is sometimes impossible to know whether the author's views were shared by wider society, especially those which, like working-class communities, leave few sources behind.

The Working-Class Lodger

Hello and welcome back. Deadlines and re-writes have taken up a lot of my recent time, but with apologies we now resume our schedule with a look at the elusive figure of the lodger in late Victorian Britain.

Dudley Street in Seven Dials by Gustav Dore

During the course of my research into the working-class home the lodger/boarder has always been a mysterious figure, evading an easy definition. They would have been a common sight in nineteenth-century cities however. 'Going on the Tramp' or 'Tramping' looking for work was an accepted part of many trades, even the engineer turned social-commentator Thomas Wright admitted unashamedly that he had travelled across the country seeking employment in his youth. Although the seasonal pattern of working on the harvest in the summer and returning to the city for labouring work during the winter was dying out by the late Victorian era, it remained a crucial aspect of the lives of many poorer groups such as newly-arrived Irish immigrants.

These groups found accommodation ranging from the Casual Ward of the Workhouse to common flop houses to sleeping rough. This post will concentrate on trying to look at those we can trace through sources - those taking up private lodgings in working-class homes. In attempting to examine them we will use three cases from the Old Bailey Online resource: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

To access the cases simply enter into the 'Reference No.' section on the right the following numbers:

t18800112-116 (which should lead to George Barrett - Breaking the Peace - Wounding)

t18900623-520 (Edward Clowes)

t18931016-912 (Thomas Greenwood)

Lets start with the earliest case - that of George Barrett. Seemingly Barrett was obsessed with his former landlady Eliza Alabaster and when his advances were turned down became violent. Sliding up behind her he asked 'when may I know you?' having wanted 'improper intercourse' with her for some time Eliza claimed in her statement. Edward Bagely, brought to the scene by one of Barrett's daughters found Eliza dazed and bleeding after Barrett had shot at her. On his way to the Police station Barrett was heard to bemoan the fact that Eliza's two new male lodgers meant she no longer wanted him.

Whilst Barrett was clearly unhinged, two points of the case raise interesting questions about the nature of lodgers in the home. Barrett claimed in his statement that he had been driven to despair after Eliza had 'refused to renew' her intimacy with him. If they had indeed been in a relationship before he moved from the house, then Barrett's concern over Eliza's new lodgers seems more understandable. Also of interest is how Barrett obtained the gun - his workmate and employer's son had given it to him broken and apparently un-fixable, yet Barrett, out of sight of any of his employers/friends/family/fellow lodgers etc had managed to fix the gun to a reasonable standard, an impressive feat given how overcrowded and overlooked Victorian dwellings could be.

The second example demonstrates that violence was a two-way street for many lodgers. Edward Clowes, found guilty of stabbing his landlord George Crouchman with a fork, claimed that Crouchman himself was a violent man who had struck the first blow, coming into his room and attacking him (see Clowes' final statement in italics before the verdict). In countering this Crouchman emphasised (see the re-examination) that he had come up to see what all the shouting was about, and Clowes had just given his wife 'two black eyes' before he turned on him. Lodgers were obviously a disruptive influence in some homes - Crouchman had attempted to break up the domestic dispute because the noise was disturbing both his family and other lodgers in the house. Lodgers could obviously be a disruptive and potentially dangerous presence in the working-class home.

The third case, however, mentioning lodgers only peripherally, shows the positive benefits they could bring. Accused of neglecting his child, Thomas Greenwood claimed that he could not afford food as he was out of work and relying on the income from a lodger, who had yet to pay this week's rent. Greenwood's case demonstrates just how crucial a lodger could be to staying afloat as a family.

One thing to remember when using Old Bailey accounts is that these are Criminal records. The lodgers who appear in them, if not causes of crime themselves, can sometimes become tainted in our minds with their unpalatable surroundings. Whilst Greenwood's lodger may or may not have let him down, many other families relied on the income provided by lodgers to stay above the poverty line. For those interested in family history or the history of child-care there is a considerable amount of peripheral information on the census about lodgers. One interesting one, which I think challenges our pre-conceived notions of what a lodger is, is the position of 'child nurse' noted down as an occupation for children with different surnames (or sometimes nephews/nieces of the head-of-house) on the census. These were children taken into working-class homes to help around the house and with smaller children. In return they received food and accommodation, and sometimes a chance to go to school.

Further Reading:

Raphael Samuel - Comers and Goers in The Victorian City by Jim Dyos and Michael Woolf.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MCiyGu3VBYQC&pg=PA123&dq=comers+and+goers&hl=en&ei=63woTMi0G4mTsAaop4nEBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Samuel's article is one of the few that tackles the question of itinerant workers in the Victorian City.

Tom Crook - 'Accommodating the Outcast: Common Lodging Houses and the limits of urban governance in Victorian and Edwardian London' Urban History 35:3 for those interested in the lodging house aspect.