Quicklinks:
|
Great Writing - Home > Extended > Scoundrel or Saint - Chapter 2
| READING ROOM | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| COMMUNITY | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
| ABOUT GREAT WRITING | ||
|---|---|---|
|
| WORK AWAITING REVIEW |
|---|
|
| GW IS... |
|---|
|
Great Writing creative writing community is designed to prompt ideas
and provide inspiration and motivation within aspiring and amateur
authors. Whatever your topic; from love poetry to Doctor Who or Harry
Potter fan fiction, Great Writing's online writing group is where you
can make new friends and improve your creative writing. |
| WHO'S ONLINE |
|---|
| We have 1334 guests online and 6 members online |
Extended Work
| print friendly version | |
| Scoundrel or Saint - Chapter 2 | |
| By jean.day | ||||||||||||||||||
| 29 November 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||
|
For those of you who read the first chapter, I have now rewritten it somewhat based on information I found from the book, The Shrigley Abduction by Abby Ashby and Audrey Jones. They have researched the subject much more thoroughly than I could ever do. So the bits of information from Edward Gibbon Wakefield in this chapter are in his own words, as taken from letters he wrote to his stepmother and grandmother. If you don't want to reread the first chapter, the only thing that you need to know is that the initial contact came from Mr. Forbes, who found a ring on the ground near his scattered pies, after the scuffle outside the Ram's Head in Disley where the magistrates session took place. He identified the ring as belonging to Edward and sent it to him at the prison. Then Mr. Wakefield wrote to thank him, giving him £5 and asking him for any information he might glean about Ellen in the future. I am now going to spend a large amount of time searching the new Manchester Guardian on line site - with all of the newspapers from the early part of the 19th century available to be read and copied (for a small fee.) This is a very exciting resource for somebody like me who spends most of my writing time on historical subjects. August 10, 1862 It’s now been a month or more since I started this project. My indisposition has improved, so I am back at work, and only have time now to write on Sundays. I know that one is not supposed to work on Sundays, but I don’t really consider writing work - and no one else is to know that I am writing a book. Reading back what I wrote before, I realise that I haven’t even mentioned who I am - not that it matters - but I best put down all the information and then when I get the book to the publishers, they can decide what to put in and what to leave out. So for the sake of clarity, my name is Margaret Forbes and I was born in 1825, so I was a very young child when the abduction took place. I am now 38 and have never been married, and not likely to be so now. I also realise that I was trying too hard to sound erudite when I started writing. We never called our Pa anything other than “Our Pa” - so all that business of calling him Father sounds very artificial to me. And we called our Mother, Ma. I wonder if she knew about all these letters Pa got and sent. I wonder if she helped him write them. She seemed more of a literary person than he did, and was always very keen for me to get the best education possible. I don’t remember ever seeing Pa sitting down to write a letter - but then he might well have done it after I was abed. Checking the dates on the letters I have here, they were not all that frequent - with many months’ gap between. But writing a book has proven to be far harder than I imagined it would be. I was first of the mind to put down the letters as they were, and that would be it, but I soon realised that they are only half of the story. To make it make sense, I need to imagine what Pa would have said in his letters to Mr. Wakefield. I need to know more about how things worked in those days. For instance, I know, being a postal worker myself, that the post office didn’t get properly going until 1839, and up until then there was a service, which, although quite efficient, would not have been nearly as good as it is today. So I asked my employer, Mr. Balshaw, about it. He said that in those days letters had to go to one of the main offices in the country to be stamped - and that was London, or Edinburgh. He said the postmark was called a Bishop Mark and contained the day and month of the posting, and was to be proof that the delivery person was not overlong in delivering the letter. He said a single sheet letter would have cost tuppence in those days - more than today. Since in Disley we had daily coaches to Manchester which would then have interchanged with others going to Lancaster, the chief city of Lancaster. I expect that Pa’s letters would have gone to Mr. Wakefield quite quickly - within a few days anyway. But the next letter I have here from Mr. Wakefield is dated July and at that time he is in Lancaster Castle Prison. I need to find out what Pa would have written to him before that, because the whole purpose was for Pa to tell him how Ellen, the girl he abducted was getting on. I asked Mr. Balshaw about it, and he said that there would have been stories in the newspapers at that time all about it, as it was national news. But how do I go about getting ahold of a paper from all that time ago? He also suggested, and I think this is more sensible, that I might write to the post office in Pott Shrigley, and ask them to send me names of people who might have been around at that time, who might have known what was going on. So I will do that. And then I will be able to imagine more about what Pa’s letters would have been like. Here is the next one from Mr. Wakefield. Since I am thinking about it, I may as well put it down here in my own writing in my book. I’ll leave a couple of pages in my notebook free for adding in what I think Pa must have said. “22 July, 1826 Lancaster Castle Prison Dear Mr. Forbes, I am so pleased that you have agreed to continue to correspond with me. You ask about my accommodation at this prison. Being a gentleman and not without means, I am not too badly placed, although it is very difficult to have lost my freedom temporarily. All around the castle are high barriers of masonry so we feel completely shut in from the world, as if we were at the bottom of a great well. However, I have been told that the regime here is relaxed in comparison with other gaols, in fact several of my fellow inmates have confessed that they prefer being here to being in a workhouse. The gaol holds 574 prisoners, 115, like my brother and me who are awaiting trial, 66 for rioting and it is so overcrowded that some prisoners are sleeping in the debtors’ wing and in the infirmary. I personally care little for personal luxuries. Air, exercise, water, privacy and books are all sufficient for a man of common sense and courage. I have a cell to myself, measuring 24 feet square, and I have an adjoining yard, 50 feet long. In the cell is a fire, a table, two chairs and plenty of water. Every morning my cell is opened at 6 a.m., with breakfast at half past eight. We all have to attend chapel for half an hour, (I sit on my own in the condemned cell with boards up to prevent the others from staring at me) and then work until noon. Dinner is followed by exercise and then more work until supper. Every evening I am locked in again at 7 o’clock but am provided with candles. I have a cat with one kitten living with me, and a root of grass which grows in a hole in the wall which I watch and nurse as if it were a cutting from the Tree of Life. I try to do all I can to help the plight of my fellow inmates - many who are unjustly accused. Such is the case of a stout Wigan engineer, unfairly confined for three years and I have great sympathy for the pathetic Irishman, Patrick Blake, who expects to be hanged for highway robbery. My trial (and that of my step-mother and brother) is due to take place at the beginning of August so I spend much of my time preparing my defense. I am hopeful that things will not go too badly for us. We are well represented. I know you are curious as to my side of the story, but my solicitor is most firm that I must not write to anyone of the details before the trial. You say you know little of Ellen, who I still consider to be my wife, but it is good to know that she is well and soon, no doubt, I shall be seeing her again at my trial. Yours faithfully, Edward Gibbon Wakefield”
Only registered users can rate and write comments. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
||||||||||||||||||
Next item
|
|---|