Creative Writing: Finding Inspiration in Shropshire Archives
As a B.A (Hons) English undergraduate at University Centre
Shrewsbury, I was assigned to study Literature and Place. Part of this module
involved a tour of Shropshire Archives, which included a viewing of the Mary
Webb Collection. This tour inspired further independent research on other areas
of the archive and gave rise to an extraordinary creative non-fiction
narrative. My narrative, 'A Mother's Wont', was inspired by the discovery of a
register from the Shrewsbury and Atcham workhouse.
Source:
Shropshire County Archives, Poor Law Union Records:
• PL1/8/1/1,
• PL1/12
• PL1/8/3/1
This record had been archived, yet never viewed.
Map showing the Shrewsbury and Atcham Workhouse
source: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Atcham/
Read the following extract from my creative piece to
discover how I take the reader on a literary journey based on the brief archive
record. I recreate how Anne Richards and her remaining children strive to get
'home' after she suffers the desertion of her husband, John Richards, who tears
his daughter Marie-Ann from her mother's side to start a new life prospecting
for gold in California.
A
Mother’s Wont
A place for
everything, and everything in its place. And every noise. A noise out of place,
like laughing at a funeral, or a baby screaming in the dead of night in a
freight yard is always cause for alarm.
Ann tried desperately to placate the
screaming hungry baby in her arms with her breast, yet his cries rang out like
the hiss of a steam whistle. As the train ground to a halt, the clatter
of uncoupling wagons and shouts of well-ordered routine came ever-closer to Ann
and her boys. The scared stow-aways, stashed amongst sacks of flax, roused from
their makeshift cold comfort. Inside Ann’s wagon, shards of light from the
station platform lit the faces of her three older boys through the planks. In
the dark since dusk they looked furtively at their mother with blinking fear-
struck faces. Solomon, the oldest peered out to the platform.
‘They’re coming, Ma!’
As the words
left his lips the metal latch and the sliding door of the wagon made a violent
thwack as it was thrown back. The guardsman stood with his lantern in one hand
grabbing Solomon in the other.
‘Get
from there, lad! You canna be in there!’ he exclaimed, grabbing Solomon,
simultaneously pulling John, his mute brother out too, who was tied to
him with a linen strap.
‘Daze my ouns there’s more of
youz ’’ said the guardsman, shining his lantern into the goods wagon revealing
Ann, the baby and the three boys. Ann stood, pulling the boys behind her.
‘Please!’
she sobbed. A sharp intake of breath surged into her lungs with shock, wracking
her body with involuntary shudders. She uttered a hushed and strange, ‘Please.
I need to get them South.’ The guardsman stood, lantern in one hand whistle in
the other, rain dripping from his peaked cap. ‘You canna stay here, Mrs’.
His perplexed expression showed the anguish in her need. ‘You’ze in Shoozebree.
Train stops ‘ere…’
In the station master’s office the bleak group semi-circled the hearth
of a pot-bellied stove, steam rising supernaturally from their damp clothing.
On top of the stove the same height as seven- year-old John was a huge
enamelled teapot – as big as his head. He stared at it quizzically as the
station master poured out mugs of tea into chipped enamelled mugs. He took a
soggy paper cork from a milk bottle and handed it to Ann saying ‘For the
littlun, dunna let it suckle before me’’. Ann blushed, doing up her dress. He
then reached for a battered tin observing how greedily the boys were slurping
their hot tea, grimacing as the hot liquid scalded their mouths. As he took the
lid off the tin, light reflected in the lid making the seed cake inside appear
like manna truly from heaven. He gave each boy a chunk
‘Youm clemmed. Best ‘ave a bit of bait’
The younger
boys crammed their cake into their mouths immediately. Solomon broke his in
half giving the other to his mother. Done with such routine automation, this
act was telling of how much they had endured.
‘Dunna do that, there’s more, there’s
enough!’ Cried the man, his face contorted with confusion and pity.
‘Daze my ouns you’ve ‘ad it bad.
Canna believes it. A man’s got responsibilities. Deserted! With young uns!
Terrible, terrible.’ The door opened. A tall, portly man with a scowling
expression entered. The station master bristled at his arrival.
‘Reverend Dana.’ he addressed the man
with an upward almost accusative tone, but didn't look at him, showing
irreverent disregard. The Reverend acknowledged him with a grunt and stared
coldly at Ann and the boys, his eyes lingering over Solomon. He approached the
boy with an unpleasant smile.
‘Speak,
woman.’ Ann, tied the baby to her with
her shawl tried to speak yet no words would come. Seizing the boy’s face, but
speaking to Ann he said menacingly:
‘Where is your husband? You wear a wedding ring yet I fear this is an
elaborate ruse for your true position. You claim desertion ‘eh! So having
fallen to the common fund of this parish, you will be taken to Atcham
Workhouse. As for you’’ he kicked Solomon’s rear, ‘you’ll work until such time as diligent enquiry can be made
to verify that your mother is not a whore and you are not bastards. We don’t
take kindly to bastards. You, woman, will show your rags to prove you are not
with child.’
Ann blushed with fury at the Reverend’s
inference, but knew she was powerless against his rhetoric.
Back in
Yorkshire, where John, her husband had deserted her and taken their eldest
daughter Mary-Ann, she had spoken out. It nearly cost her baby's life. John
Richards was a big man, a copper miner by trade. The mines had all played out,
so he took the family from Penzance to Yorkshire to mine coal. This was not to
be. He didn’t get along with the union men, and in the tavern had been told a
tale of land in the Americas for free: a right to mine and make a claim
for twenty acres of pure gold… John knew his family was a burden. A wife, a
daughter and four sons, one a baby and one a mute idiot. He couldn’t take them
all, but he could take Mary-Ann... So he did. The girl did not leave her mother
willingly, and so it was that John Richards held the baby over the fire to the
screams and cries of them all.
‘Stop,
Pa!’ Mary-Ann wailed. ‘I’ll do your bidding, but I’ll never speak again. I
won’t Ma! I’ll be as mute as John!’ And they left, leaving Ann destitute and
bereft of the benefits of a good daughter.
Solomon begged his father to take him instead, but a head-strong boy
can’t housekeep or satisfy a man’s need… to be continued.
The Shrewsbury and Atcham
Workhouse Seal in red sealing wax
This story in its entirety will be published in October. My remaining
year at University Centre Shrewsbury will be dedicated to developing the story
further as part of the Writing Project under the supervision of Professors
Deborah Wynne and Alan Wall. Within the project the stories of Mary-Ann, her parents,
brothers and the Reverend Dana will eventually form a novel, drawn from
research carried out in the lesser known parts of the archive where few people have
explored.
Andrea Wolff MacDonald, English student at UCS
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