Fagin's Girl Page 3
PART 2
Australia
1988
CHAPTER 10
Then and now
Lauren tapped her foot nervously under the school desk. It would be her turn to get up and talk soon.
She looked at the banner pinned up at the front of the class: “Celebrating Australia’s Bicentennial 1788–1988!”
All over Australia there were big events happening this year – 1988. Especially here in Sydney, because it was where the First Fleet of eleven convict ships arrived from England two hundred years ago.
Lauren’s teacher, Miss Jenner, had set the students a project to mark the celebrations. They each had to recite a speech in front of the class about what made Australia great.
Lauren’s friend Kenny went first. He spoke about all the animals that were native to Australia. Animals they didn’t have anywhere else in the world, like kangaroos and koalas and dingos. Kenny was really nervous about his speech but did OK till he tried to say “duck-billed platypus”. He said “buck-dilled flatty-puss” instead and everyone burst out laughing.
It was Bindi’s turn after that. No one laughed when Bindi spoke because she was kind of angry. She said it was ridiculous to say Australia “began” when a bunch of prisoners set foot in the country after being sent here on a boat. Aboriginal people had been in Australia for thousands and thousands of years by that time.
Lauren liked Bindi a lot, and she knew it was hard for Bindi’s family being Aboriginal Australians when everyone was going on and on about the anniversary of the English arriving.
But it made Lauren nervous about doing her own presentation …
“Lauren?” said Miss Jenner. “Come on up!”
Lauren gulped. She grabbed a piece of paper from her desk and shuffled up to the front of the class. All eyes were on her.
Could she do this? Then Lauren looked down at the sheet of paper in her shaking hands. She saw Ettie Shaw’s handwriting and reminded herself of the hard lives her relatives of long ago had lived. It made her braver.
Lauren lifted her chin up and began …
“Joe Shaw was my great-great-great-great grandfather!” said Lauren, hoping she’d got that right. “He got sent to Australia on a convict ship in 1836, for pickpocketing. He was the same age as us – twelve.”
Lauren heard everyone gasp. She bet that her classmates pictured those criminals sent on the ships as grown men. Scary men, probably. Not young boys.
“Stealing is wrong,” Lauren carried on. “But Joe and his little sister Ettie were homeless orphans. They must have been desperate for money. Lots of poor children lived on the streets in Victorian times in the UK. Joe was taken to Australia, leaving Ettie behind all on her own. She was just ten.”
The boys and girls and even Miss Jenner were wide-eyed as they listened to Lauren.
“I know lots of people have relatives who were convicts,” said Lauren. “But most people don’t know much about them.” She held up her sheet of paper. “My family is lucky – we’ve still got letters that Ettie sent to Joe when they were adults. This is a photocopy of one of them cos the real letters are so delicate. And I can’t read it cos the handwriting is so fancy and complicated!”
Her classmates leaned forward to see the swirly, looping words on the copy of the letter.
“But here’s what happened to them,” said Lauren. “Joe was in prison for seven years for his crime. He worked with the prison guards’ horses. When his time was up, he went to work on a cattle ranch.”
“Like a cowboy!” Kenny shouted out.
“Yes, I think so,” said Lauren. “Joe married the rancher’s daughter and ended up having his own ranch in New South Wales. He lived till he was nearly eighty and had four children.”
“What about his little sister? What happened to Ettie?” asked Bindi.
“There was some kind of fight when Joe got arrested, and Ettie was hurt,” said Lauren. “It happened outside a shop that sold umbrellas.”
A few children giggled. A shop that just sold umbrellas sounded sort of funny, especially in a country like Australia where it was so hot most of the year.
“Ettie was badly injured and the shopkeeper took her inside,” Lauren carried on. “She stayed there in a room where the shop girls slept. When Ettie felt better, she told them she was good at sewing and they offered her a job making umbrellas and parasols and things.”
“I’m so glad Ettie was safe,” said Miss Jenner. “Did she work there all her life?”
“No,” said Lauren with a shake of her head. “Ettie left when she got married. Her husband was a servant, but they moved to the country and opened their own shop. Their daughter became a headteacher, and their son was the mayor of his town!”
“Did Ettie and Joe ever visit each other?” Bindi asked.
“No, they never did,” Lauren said. “It was too far and cost too much money in those days. But Ettie always ended her letters in a really nice way …”
Lauren clutched the sheet tighter in her hand and told them the last line, which she knew by heart.
“Aren’t we lucky, Joe? Till next time, your adoring sister Ettie.”
“Well,” said Miss Jenner. “That is very special, Lauren! What an amazing way to remember your heritage.”
“And I have one more way, Miss,” said Lauren with a smile. “My middle name!”
“Of course!” said Miss Jenner, clapping her hands together. “Well, thank you for your speech, Lauren Ettie Shaw! Can everyone give Lauren a round of applause?”
Lauren went back to her seat, and the sound of clapping rang in her ears.
She liked to think the applause was also for Ettie and Joe, who found their own way in the world and their own luck too …
The facts behind the story …
An important part of writing a book is doing the research, especially when it’s a historical book. So I thought it would be fun to let readers know about the facts behind each chapter of the story. Maybe you’re interested in doing your own research about the lives of Victorian children like Ettie and Joe!
CHAPTER 1
Mothers and children from poorer families often worked at home doing “piecework” while fathers went out to work. Examples of piecework included making fake flowers for bonnets and hats, putting matchboxes together, covering top hats in silk and stitching sacks. The hours were very long, and the wages were very low.
CHAPTER 2
Diseases like cholera, measles, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, whooping cough, mumps and diphtheria were common in Victorian times and could easily kill. Babies and young children often died. Being rich didn’t protect you against these diseases, but diseases spread faster in overcrowded, poorer areas of cities. Today, modern medicine and vaccination mean these illnesses are very rare in Britain, thankfully.
CHAPTER 3
Ettie’s mother was killed by being slowly poisoned by arsenic, because she used it in her work. Arsenic powder made the emerald-green colour used in Victorian clothing, like the leaves in the fabric flowers. It was only later in the nineteenth century that people realised how dangerous arsenic was.
CHAPTER 4
Poor children sometimes tried begging or street-sweeping to earn money. But some attempted to entertain others for money! They might turn somersaults, tell jokes or sing songs for people passing by.
CHAPTER 5
There were no special clothes for rich people or poor people. The poor just wore clothes that had been worn by wealthy people and mended and resold many times over. Some tailors specialised in “translating” clothes, which meant doing things like pulling apart an old jacket and making caps out of the fabric. Recycling was huge in Victorian times!
CHAPTER 6
I borrowed the character of Mr Fagin and his young gang of boys from the famous Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist. But it’s believed that Charles Dickens used a real-life criminal called Ikey Solomons as the inspiration for Fagin. Solomons was written about in Victorian newspapers.
In Oliver Twist there is a young pickpocket called the Artful Dodger. It’s likely that he was based on a real boy Dickens had read about called Samuel Holmes. Samuel was part of a child gang and was caught stealing some meat. He was transported to Australia at the age of thirteen and was imprisoned for fourteen years for his crime.
CHAPTER 7
Lots of children ended up living on the streets of cities, trying to survive. A slang word for these children was “guttersnipes”. At the time of Ettie and Joe’s story, the government was only just starting to consider laws that would protect children’s well-being. It took decades for things to improve. In the meantime, street children were often scared of going to a workhouse as they had a bad reputation, working people very hard, with terrible food and conditions. Workhouses also split families up, with mothers and fathers, boys and girls all living separately. But for some children who lived alone, the workhouse could be their way out of poverty – the workhouse could train them so they could be employed as apprentices or servants when they were old enough.
CHAPTER 8
The well-being of animals was not considered important in Victorian times. But it was at this point that it became fashionable for people to keep pets. Poor people might keep a songbird in a cage at their window. Other popular pets were dogs, rabbits, parrots and monkeys – like the chained monkey dancing on the organ in this chapter. Cats were not a popular pet as people still thought of them as “working” animals, only kept for getting rid of mice and rats in shops and buildings.
In this chapter there’s a mention of asparagus and watercress being sold from handcarts. To us nowadays they’re not the most common of vegetables, but asparagus (known as “sparrow-grass” in Victorian times) and watercress were easily grown around London and were what poorer people would buy more often than potatoes and carrots!
CHAPTER 9
The fancy umbrella shop in the West End of London really existed and is still going strong today! You can search for James Smith & Sons online to see images of how very Victorian it looks – and you can picture Ettie and Joe outside.
CHAPTER 10
It was a difficult time for Aboriginal people when Australia celebrated its 200-year anniversary in 1988. These native Australians could trace their heritage back thousands of years – long before 1788. It’s been common for many years to say that a country was “founded” when European settlers arrived in it. But these kinds of attitudes are changing, and the history and rights of native people around the world are being recognised more and more.
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Copyright
First published in 2022 in Great Britain by
Barrington Stoke Ltd
18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP
This ebook edition first published in 2022
www.barringtonstoke.co.uk
Text © 2022 Karen McCombie
Illustrations © 2022 Anneli Bray
The moral right of Karen McCombie and Anneli Bray to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library upon request
eISBN: 978–1–80090–118–6
Karen McCombie, Fagin's Girl
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