An engrossing Victorian Scotland Saga (Silver Sampler Series Book 2)
Is self-supporting success enough for Margaret Law or will her future also include an adoring husband and children? She might secretly yearn for that though how can she avoid a repeat of relationship deceptions that disenchanted her so much during her teenage years?
Employment as a lady’s maid, and then as a private tutor in Liverpool in the 1860s bring thrilling opportunities Margaret could never have envisaged. Though when those posts end, her educational aspirations must be shelved again. Reliance on her sewing skills is paramount for survival when she returns to Dundee.
Meeting Sandy Watson means love, marriage and starting a family - though not necessarily in that order – are a striking development though it entails a move north to Peterhead. Yet, how can Margaret shed her fear of commitment and her independence and take the plunge?
Jessie, her sister-at-heart, is settled in Glasgow. Frequent letters are a life-line between them but when it all goes horribly wrong, the contents of Margaret’s correspondence don’t necessarily mirror her awful day-to-day realities.
The world of work is a narrow one…for Margaret Law.
Mid-1800s, Scotland.
My sixteen-year-old character Margaret, at the beginning of Tailored Truths, finds herself with no job and nowhere to stay. The live-in-post she had as a private tutor to a little disabled girl in Edinburgh – which lasted about four years – is now over. Margaret’s mother is dead, her father is ‘out there somewhere doing his own thing’ but is unreachable, so Margaret must find work to survive on her own. Many girls of her age are in similar situations, some of them eking out a mere existence but Margaret is an indomitable character. She’s determined to do a lot better than living her life in the gutter.
When writing the second novel in the Silver Sampler Series, I researched which jobs might be suitable for someone like my resourceful Margaret. What were typical jobs for a sixteen-year-old in a Scottish city?
Margaret is in Dundee at the beginning of the novel, staying in a lodging house and sharing a room with her best friend Jessie – who also had to leave the house in Edinburgh where they were both employed. Jessie manages to get herself a live-in position in Dundee as a lady’s maid, a huge step-up since Jessie started working life as a kitchen skivvy. A post as a lady’s maid means doing very basic tasks, like caring for her mistress’ clothing or perhaps assisting her mistress to dress (underclothing and fastenings often requiring a second person due to the style involved). A lady’s maid might style hair, or be used in the role of a companion if propriety requires a chaperon. This type of post means 24 hour availability to the mistress but comes with bed and board – extremely important if the job seeker is an orphan. Even if a lady’s maid needs to share a room with another servant, it’s a better job than many girls have. Margaret is delighted that Jessie has managed to get herself a secure job, even if the role is still a subservient one.
My character Margaret is better educated than most working-class girls of her age, her parents having allowed her to stay on at school till she was twelve, but her childhood dream of becoming a teacher still seems impossible. Even though she’s tutored for years, the educational establishments in Dundee that Margaret applies to for a teaching job won’t entertain her, since she’s not certificated. Had she stayed on at school after she was twelve, she would have gone through the process of being a pupil teacher during the ensuing four, or so, years – the usual route for a boy (rarely a girl) to take the examinations to become a certificated teacher.
The schools she’s applied to don’t believe she can teach more than one pupil at a time. Advertising herself in newspapers as a tutor has been an expensive process and crushingly it has produced no positive replies. This type of post would normally be held by a man, so Margaret knows there’s an element of prejudice involved in rejecting her skills. Had her savings been extensive she might have tried to advertise in other newssheets, but to her disgust she has to abandon the exercise.
She finds she can’t even get a post at a ‘Dame’ school in Dundee. These schools teach mainly domestic subjects to young girls, to prepare them for being married and running their own household. Reading and writing skills are taught in a ‘Dame’ school but extend to little more than a girl learning to sign her name, read recipes and tot up a basic household budget. Margaret’s sewing skills are plentiful but she’s not skilled at cooking, or – heaven forbid – doing laundry! Being rejected by ‘Dame’ schools is quite a blow. Yet in some ways it’s a relief, since the wage is low, and a successful candidate needs to find a place to live and a way to feed herself.
Margaret’s lodging house doesn’t provide a mini-kitchen in her rented room, so she’s reliant on her landlady providing meals, at a price. She considers renting a private room in a Dundee tenement block, which might be cheaper than her lodging house, but the room would be empty. She’d have to buy furnishings and cook for herself but how could she do that in a room that might not even have a fireplace? Being completely independent, Margaret works out, just isn’t possible for her yet.
So, what else can a well-educated girl do? Margaret’s a quick learner but there are no lady’s maid, or shop jobs to be had either. Dressmakers and milliners don’t pay much even if the seamstress is completing very intricate lace and working with delicate silk products, but although she has extensive sewing skills no-one wants to employ her.
Desperation is seeping in but Margaret refuses to wallow in misery.
Almost as a last resort…sliding down the ladder of skilled employment into the less so…there are plenty of linen and jute mills in Dundee which employ women in repetitive, and often dangerous situations. Paying a woman a much lower wage than a man, Margaret reluctantly acknowledges, is commonplace in Dundee. It grates badly that paying women a pittance is what contributes to the financial success of some Dundee mill owners.
Yet, when faced with destitution, her savings having dwindled rapidly, Margaret pragmatically takes a job in a sack-sewing room at a Dundee mill. She is barely surviving on the wage but determination makes her plough on, confident that something better will turn up. She isn’t giving up on a future in teaching but she grasps that menial life can get in the way of dreams.
Experience teaches Margaret that a married woman is still employable in a Dundee mill but it generally means the poor soul has to struggle through a pregnancy, often working on to the latest stages before giving birth. The idea of then having to look after a family while working twelve hour shifts is anathema to Margaret and she vows to do her utmost to avoid that fate. Being the nurturer might be in Margaret’s nature, but shouldering all of the responsibilities –because a husband can only occasionally find day-labouring jobs – definitely doesn’t inspire her. Her own upbringing and work experience has been fraught with drama. The unreliable adults around her in dysfunctional households have made her extremely wary of encouraging any long-term romantic commitments, though her long-lasting sisterly-friendship with Jessie is sound as a bell.
Worse than the drudgery of mill work, or being a wee-slavey in a demanding domestic post, is the prostitution fate of many girls that Margaret sees around the streets of Dundee. She is of a mind to do everything possible to steer clear of that profession.
So…does Margaret see her work-life as always being in the sack-sewing room of the mill in Dundee? Absolutely not! Though, if you want to find out more…Tailored Truths has the answers!
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
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Thank you so much for organising such a brilliant blog tour! It's exciting to be visiting lots of lovely blog hosts.
ReplyDeleteYou're most welcome, Nancy. Thank you for such an insightful post about your protagonist, Margaret. She sounds like a girl who knows where she's going... x
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