Immigration Journal

1901

FEBRUARY 11TH

I can’t believe Queen Victoria’s dead.

A letter just arrived from my mother, dated the twenty-second of January:

My dearest Moira,

Today I am tearful to tell you that our great Queen Victoria has passed on. The cause has yet to reach my ears but I do know that Edward VII will be next on the throne.

I hope that this news has not been too hard on you, but if it is as least you have Ewan like I have your father.

How are you and Ewan managing? I hope that you two are doing well and I know you’ve found each other. Please tell Ewan that his family are happy and lodging with us back in Scotland and for him not to worry his little head about them.

Hoping to hear very soon of a possible engagement.

Your mother,

Margaret Beagan Skye

It’s a sad thing to hear of the death of our queen who so loved Scotland, but my mother’s complete faith in Ewan and I is even sadder. I don’t think that I can stand to send her back a postcard to tell her that Ewan is far away and that the streets are not paved with gold in America, so I don’t. But there’s no time to write the reply or cry about the news, I have to get ready for work.

Before I can leave my tenement I have to enlist the help of one of my roommates to get my corset on; with their boot-clad foot pressed on my back they yank as hard as they can on the lacing of my corset so that my middle’s sucked in so much that I can hardly breath and tie the lace in a double-knot, then they hook and eye up the back so the tightness isn’t going anywhere.

Now that that my corset’s on I pull on my very long dress and button up the front myself, then pull on my boots and button them. It takes a while, sure, but it’s worth it when I’m paid – not that much of it’s left for spending after I pay my dues.

Once I’m decent I leave out the door along with the many other girls that share our rented space for work. We work at a shirt making factory, sewing on button after button onto shirt after shirt for eleven odd hours making one penny for every four buttons sewn.

I’ve become quite the master at sewing buttons if I do say so myself, but no matter how good I think I’m getting all the supervisor cares about is if I mess up (and if I do I’m fired faster than one can snap their fingers). So I sit quietly, paying careful attention to my work as the girls seated around me look at where I’m seated.

When I first got here more of them looked at me, there are less of them now but there are still those who look. They look at me like they think I shouldn’t be here; Scottish emigrants have been known to be above this sort of work so I suppose they think that I’m here to make fun of them or something, but I’m really just here because I need the money.

After the job for the day is done and my fingers are bleeding and sore from all the times that I’ve poked them with my needle that day, I walk from the factory to my tenement at six o’clock in the dark. But I’m not going to sleep just yet.

Using the cheap meat, potatoes and dough made for piecrusts that I’d bought at the market on Sunday – the only day of the week that I don’t have to work – and saved in the ice I’d bought from the ice cart very early this morning I made a pasty. I then put the pasty in a woven basket and covered it with a clean handkerchief to keep it warm.

The girls that share my tenement giggled, knowing the similar routine that I repeated everyday no matter what. “Off to see that good lookin’ fella’ of yours eh?” one of the girls asked a bit louder than I would have liked.

This “fella’” she was talking about was the same one who had gotten me out of Ellis Island by pretending to be my brother, we’d decided to keep the game up just encase the paranoid officers from Ellis Island ever came looking to see if we were still siblings. His name’s Calvin Aplington Smithe by the way, it’s a really posh name for someone as Cockney as he is, and he nineteen now.

“As always.” I replied to the girl and they all replied in girlish giggles, going on about how ‘good looking’ they think he is; one girl even gave me her Brownie Camera to take a picture of my pretend brother for her to gaze at adoringly.

So with camera and pasty in tow I left the tenement building and the street it’s on in the direction of the mines, starting off the one-mile walk that I take everyday. It makes every day feel impossibly long, but it does fill one with a sense of purpose at the end of the day.

After I’ve delivered the food, taken the picture and talked a bit with all Calvin and his mining friends my “brother” escorts me back to my tenement on the handlebars of his bike in a very unladylike fashion. The time is now nine-thirty pm, so he has to smuggle me past the guards that enforce the curfew that I’ve missed by a long shot.

Then it starts all over again the next day. Joy.