The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale Read Free Book Online Page B

in 1880, they moved from Liverpool to East London, where much of the National Line’s business was being transferred, and where he briefly ran his father’s greengrocery business. Robert, their first son , was born in Mile End Old Town on 6 January 1882 and Nathaniel in Limehouse on 20 February 1883. The family spent a year in Liverpool in 1890 and on their return to London rented a house at 24 Liddon Road, Plaistow, before moving half a mile north-east in 1892 to Cave Road. The people of East London were in constant flux, observed the social reformer Charles Booth: they shifted from one part of it to another ‘like fish in a river’.
    Coombes served chiefly on the National Line vessels
England
and
France , both of them iron-hulled steamships built in the 1860s, with single funnels (white with a black band circling the top) and three masts. Though the company’s steamers were large, they were neither as luxurious nor as fast as the Cunard or White Star liners. A National ship took a fortnight to reach New York from London, whereas rivals could make the crossing in six or seven days. By 1895 the company had abandoned the passenger trade and converted all of its ships to carry cattle. It was cheaper to transport live animals than to slaughter them first and keep the meat chilled on the crossing.
    As a chief steward , Coombes drew on his experience as a butcher and a greengrocer. He bought the provisions for a voyage before setting sail and was in charge of the stores and the kitchen while at sea. Each crew member was apportioned rations of coffee, tea, water, sugar, bread, beef, pork and peas. They were prepared and served, under Coombes’s supervision, by a baker, a butcher, one or two cooks and a couple of assistant stewards. On a passenger liner, the steward could be a grand figure with dozens of staff, like the manager of a large hotel; on the cattle ships, he had a lowlier role. The sailors tended to look down on him and his men as ‘flunkeys’.
    Coombes was paid a basic £7 for each five- or six-week round trip, which was supplemented by about £2 in tips and overtime – this was considerably more than most of the seamen, who received £4 per trip, though less than the master, the engineers and the ship’s mates. He undertook about seven voyages a year, giving him a total salary of about £65. According to a measure of affluence devised by Charles Booth in his massive survey
Inquiry into Life and Labour in London
(1889–1903), this placed Coombes above the poverty line, in category ‘E’, ‘fairly comfortable’. He and his wife aspired to the respectable, relatively well-to-do life to which they had been raised – with good clothes for churchgoing, musical instruments for the children, literary magazines, an exotic bird in a cage – but they did not own property and employ servants as their parents had done. Their income was stretched to the limit: when Coombes was at sea Emily sometimes wrote to ask him to send home extra funds, and she occasionally pawned their possessions. The family’s gold and silver watches, bracelets and rings were symbols of status but also insurance against an uncertain future, objects that could be easily pledged or sold.
    Because he was a bankrupt, Coombes could not build up his own business as his father had done, and his job was not secure. A ship’s crew was discharged after each voyage and although he had so far been regularly re-employed by the company, there was no guarantee of work. The National Line was barely in profit: the market for American beef was declining, and the company’s difficulties had been exacerbated by the loss of two uninsured ships in 1889 and 1890. Five further ships were scrapped or abandoned in 1894 and early 1895, leaving just six in the fleet. There was talk of winding up the company altogether, or at least selling off the rest of the older vessels, which included both