The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) (22 page)

“What can you do about that? Must you hire on
watchmen?”

“One for Sundays, yes. The best bet will be to
insure heavily. A few guineas in a local broker’s hand and he will arrange for
a policy to be underwritten at Lloyds in London for a couple of thousands more
than mill and machines together are worth – then if we burn we rebuild better.”

Tom laughed – it made good sense.

“What of your men? If you can’t get local weavers,
what do you do for hands?”

“Youngsters who come in off the farms, mostly. A few
of the Irish, but not too many.”

“I employ only Irishmen at the mine, and they work
like hell for me.”

“Only because you overpay them, Tom!”

“They produce more for being better paid – only in
June I put my wage-bill up by fifty a month by putting a bob a ton into the pot
as a bonus for everybody to share; I got a hundred pounds worth of coal more
this month, fifty quid straight profit. What I’m doing with that is ordering
ten tons of spuds each month – you wouldn’t believe how much of them they eat,
Joe – because I can get them for a farthing a pound, £2 6s 8d the ton. They
will buy them at cost from me, and that’s half the price they pay in town and
they don’t have to carry them three miles home; they appreciate that, but more
importantly, they know that we will
never
run short – to men who’ve
starved and watched their children die, that’s important, knowing that they’re
safe.”

“Maybe – it’s different in coal, of course. I don’t
think I want too many of them in the mill – you can’t really trust a Papist!”

Tom gave up. The argument was pointless because
neither could win it, and he did not really care enough to jeopardise his
relationship with Joseph, who had taken up chapel-going recently.

He visited Mary that night, found her in
contemplative mood, reserved and withdrawn from him, her greeting very subdued.

“Problems, my dear?”

“Yes, Tom.”

She would say no more, poured him tea, asked how his
day had gone, tried to chat lightly.

“Tell me, Mary.”

She sat plump down in her chair at the table,
dropped her head in her hands, would not meet his eyes.

“I am with child, Thomas, I am going to have a
baby.”

It was only to be expected, the surprise was that it
had not happened long before; a nuisance, more for her than him.

“That will be a little difficult for you, Mary, but
there will be money to bring up the child and keep you both, you need have no
fear that you will be turned away.”

“If I have a baby here, where some people know me,
and know that I am not wed, they will point fingers at me and the babe.
‘Nameless’, ‘Love-child’, they will say. The whole neighbourhood will know,
they will make sure of that.”

They would – there was nothing the old tabbies loved
better than to cast the first stone at girls who had sinned and been found out,
and the chance to display their hatred and malice to a bastard child would
never be missed.

“You must go, then. It would not be fair to you to
make you stay here, and it would be worse for the child. Some distance from
here, have you any preference for another town?”

“Do you know Dorset, Tom?”

He was taken by surprise, admitted, defensively,
that he did, not saying that his ear was always cocked for the sound of the
low-pitched Dorset burr on a stranger’s voice. He wondered if she had heard
something, if there was a rumour doing the rounds and where it had come from.

“My mother came from Dorset,” she continued, to his
relief. “She came from Corfe, where the castle is, and her mother still lived
there when I was little. I expect she is dead now, for I remember her as an old
lady then. We visited her three times that I recall, and I always wanted to go
back there, to live there one day because it was beautiful. Was I to put a ring
on my finger, I could be a widow, my husband suddenly dead of the fever,
leaving me in the family way and living respectably on the income he left me.”

She had been brought up to ‘respectability’, the
true god of the new middle classes, and would be able to achieve the status
again as a widow. She would not herself be known, but she might hear word of
her family – there could be other relatives, unknown cousins, who might
befriend her in her need. She had a brother and two sisters, might just get the
occasional word of them.

“What if the old lady is still alive? Your parents
might very well visit her.”

“Then, perhaps, I might just see Mama, at a
distance.”

He had never realised just how lonely she was – but
she had never been more than a convenience to him, it had not occurred to him
that she had emotions. He supposed, when he considered the matter, that he was
lonely, too – but it was less important to a man. He could, if he wished, make
some sort of social life with his peers in trade, he was sure; he wondered
vaguely how he would go about it, and whether it would be worth the effort.

He considered how he would go about settling Mary in
Corfe – he was certainly not going down there himself, that would be foolhardy
in the extreme. Clapperley would do the job, very willingly, but he rather
preferred not to acquaint him with the details of his personal life out of a
general sense of caution. Blackmail and Clapperley seemed natural friends, and
he had no wish to give him what might become a future weapon. He went instead
to the premises of his banker, Martin, where he was granted an immediate
personal interview, as he had expected without really considering the matter –
Andrews and Star commanded the attention of any country banker.

Martin, a quiet, highly intelligent, soberly
dressed, unobtrusive gentleman, stood courteously to greet Tom, ushered him to
a chair and gave him good morning.

“A correspondent in Dorset? Yes, sir, in the town of
Wareham and another in Dorchester, bankers whom I would recommend and who have
performed commissions for me, and I for them, in the past.”

“Good. I wish to purchase a house of some four or
five hundred pounds in or very close to Corfe village, to be put in the name of
Mrs Burley. Payments currently made to Miss Amberley to be increased to two
hundreds a year, for her life, and made in the name of Mrs Burley at her new
address. Staff to be hired on and paid from my account here, separately. The
house currently occupied by Miss Amberley to be put into my name, purchased
from her.”

Martin made a brief note of the instructions, said
they would be put in hand immediately. It was obvious why they were being made,
but it was equally obvious to him that it was none of his business at all to
comment or to query.

“Whilst you are here, Mr Andrews, it occurs to me
that you are holding a larger than normal balance in your account, sir?”

“Yes, Mr Martin – I am putting cash together this
year in anticipation of a speculation in house building I intend to make next
spring. I will put some fifteen thousands into four hundred terraced houses on
a piece of land on the outskirts of Manchester, building their roadways as
well, and then renting them out and selling them as solid investments, income
earners, to folk with a few hundreds saved.”

They discussed the figures for a few minutes, Martin
impressed and approving and eventually suggesting that eight hundred would be
better than four and he would be willing to match Mr Andrews, pound for pound,
at the very reasonable rate of eight and a half per cent interest, the risk
seeming to be very low. Tom was pleased to accept, having budgeted for a
fifteen per cent return.

“For the meanwhile, Mr Andrews, it would be better
to put your money to work; with your permission I would purchase discounted
bills with the spare funds in your account, thus earning three or four per cent
safely.”

The second half of the Eighties was a period of
unprecedented boom, industry expanding massively and families flocking to the
towns of the Midlands and North. The new industrial towns were chronically
short of roofs, whole families living in a single room and thinking themselves
lucky to have any place to lay their heads and house prices rose far above
their cost of construction, to the great profit of the few builders who could
fight the factory owners for land and capital. Mills were built on every stream
that would turn a wheel and the late-comers were forced to the experiment of
putting beam engines into their works; the demand for house and steam coals
rose massively, as did the price. Roberts was inundated with contracts for cast
pillars and roof trusses and built a fourth and then a fifth furnace and worked
night and day, unstopping. The steel shop added new crucibles as the demand for
machine parts grew every day.

Joseph presided over two hundred looms, most of them
worked by Irishmen, despite his prejudices, and he doubled the size of his spinning
mill and looked about him for new opportunities.

Frederick Mason married Miss Roberts and she
produced a son within the year – he might, indeed, have been a fraction
premature if one was very strict about counting the months since the wedding,
however none would wish to be so intrusive of the privacy of so respected a
couple, not, at least, to the lengths of commenting publicly. He continued to
work for Roberts, taking increasing responsibility for the steel shop and its
contracts with steam.

Mary had left Tom’s life; he intentionally severed
all contact with her after he was made aware of her safe delivery of a boy – if
she was to be respectable then she did not need his presence in her background
– his money would suffice. Mrs Morris supplied a somewhat more commercially
minded young lady to take Mary’s place, and she was good fun for a year before
growing bored with the reclusive life; another had taken her place and a third
after that – good girls all, happy and honest and not attempting to demand
extra presents or a cut of the housekeeping. They made no demand on Tom’s
emotions, and very little, relatively speaking, on his purse, and they kept him
physically content.

Chapter Eight

In 1794, aged thirty-two, rich and increasingly
unsettled, Tom sat in Martin’s office briefly dealing with business, signing as
directed on a series of unread documents; he had long since decided that either
he could trust his banker or he could not, and if he couldn’t then he had no
business dealing with him. He became much more alert when Martin started a
discussion of the state of the world. They were at war with France, again, but
that was a fairly regular occurrence and one the navy would deal with in its
normal fashion; the main effect on the business community so far had been a few
taxes, which could be avoided or evaded, and a lot of government contracts for
those who wished to pay the bribes. Tom had not moved Roberts into armaments,
expecting the war to last no more than a couple of years, and consequently was
little affected; he was in fact much more interested in steam and the general
expansion of the economy.

“Canals, Mr Martin, that’s where the money seems to
be at the moment – I was thinking of venturing twenty or thirty thousand in one
of these ditches.”

Martin, older, greyer, as unobtrusive as ever,
raised his voice emphatically, a rare event.

“No, Mr Andrews, definitely not, sir! The best are
all gone – London is connected to Bristol, to Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and
Manchester. All of the lowlands, the Midlands and the bulk of the industrial
North Country are interlinked now – so what is left? Have you seen the latest
great proposal, sir? To link Glasgow, of all places, with Leeds! Have you seen
any of that country, sir?”

“I have, in fact – I took the coach from Glasgow to
Carlisle to St Helens a few years ago, coming here from New York.” Tom rebuked
himself, that was an unnecessary piece of information to let slip, even to a
man as discreet as Martin. “Where there are no hills there are moors and
mountains instead – they would need hundreds of locks, chain after chain in
places.”

“They would, Mr Andrews, there will be a rise of at
least a thousand feet to contend with and leaving aside their cost, think how
it would slow travelling. Better far to use the coasters, except perhaps in
winter when the Irish Sea is an unfriendly sort of place.”

“What cost do they envisage, Mr Martin?”

“The prospectus is seeking to raise two millions.”

“Can they hope to do so? It is a vast sum – add up
the cost of every canal built last year and it would amount to less than that
in total.”

“No – it is
too
great a sum for the market to
bear; I do not believe it is possible with government offering a safe four and
a half per cent in Consols and creaming the bulk of funds off of the Exchange
to pay for the war.”

“So, they may get acceptances for one half, say, and
make a start and then run out of cash and go down, leaving men and suppliers
unpaid.”

“I am quite certain that that is exactly what will
happen, Mr Andrews. This bubble is overdue for its bust; we have been in a
boom, one of the biggest ever, for ten years now and it is
impossible
that it can continue much longer – history is against it! Have you heard of the
South Sea Bubble, Mr Andrews?”

Tom had not, listened in growing horror as Martin
outlined the events of seventy years before and drew the obvious parallels.

“Paper money from country banks will lose its value
as the banks close their doors, so banknotes are no way to save money. Goods
will be unsellable. The wise man, Mr Martin, will sell out of everything this
year, except his food stocks, I suspect, and turn all of his wealth into gold
coins.”

“I agree, sir, and strongly advise you to do so. I
am not able to follow my own advice, because I cannot call in time loans, but
everything that is at short notice is coming back in already, and I am making
no new loans at all, all of my investments are in Consols, not even discounted
Bills. I will still be vulnerable if there is a run on the bank, but will
survive anything less than a full national panic.”

Tom persuaded Joseph, in the end used his authority
as senior partner to order him to follow his example, and sold everything he
could, offering no trade credit and allowing no customer any leeway. By
mid-June of 1795 they had nearly one hundred and fifty thousands in coin,
locked away in a strong room they had cobbled together at Roberts, two men at a
time with fowling pieces on guard, Tom’s pistol belt at his desk.

He sold every house except those at the mine, and
then he had a brainwave and sold the mine itself to a consortium of speculative
investors, men who had no interest in running the concern and were happy to
leave everything to the managers in place, intending to take one year’s income
and then sell it on at a gain. They were willing to pay a boom price because
they saw no reason to expect the boom ever to end – it had lasted for ten
years, why should it not last for another decade? A week after he added the
twenty-five thousand to his cash pile the bubble burst.

To their surprise, the first intimation of disaster
came from the Midlands, not from the north but from Redditch where a small
canal was in construction, linking the town to Birmingham and the network of
waterways; being short and cheap the principals had cut some corners,
especially in their initial planning of the route; the diggings met an un-surveyed
stretch of clays and slowed abruptly and the contractor called for an extra
couple of thousands from the owners. Just one of them did not have the cash to
hand and went to his bank for the loan of a mere five hundreds; the banker
demanded that he should deposit some security, ideally in the form of share
certificates, but he could not for already having done so elsewhere. More than
a little disturbed, the banker made enquiry amongst his peers and competitors
in the local banks; they discovered that between them they had lent every penny
of the canal’s cost – where each had thought he was in for a small percentage,
in fact the remainder, offered as assets, had been borrowed from a competitor;
even worse, they found that the securities that had been accepted, in the form
of shares in other canals, were all part unpaid – they had lent money as a result
of false pretences. They refused to lend a penny more and demanded that all of
the unlawfully acquired loans be instantly paid back, under pains of
prosecution for fraud as well as civil action for recovery. The nimblest of the
canal projectors left everything, fled the country with whatever they had to
hand; the greedy tried to grab enough cash to make it worthwhile, and they
ended up in prison; the stupid, the innocent sheep, found themselves asking
what was happening as the bailiffs descended. It took just two days to discover
that the canal proprietors had no cash money to hand and that the banks could
not recover their loans – their only asset was the canal, and that was
unfinished. A day later and the banks’ problems were public knowledge and the
first depositors came queuing to withdraw their cash and the weakest bank
closed its doors - broken. There was an instant run on the other banks in town
and those that did not close their doors that day did not open them in the
morning.

The news spread rapidly, first amongst the banking
community itself, then to the general public. The banks everywhere called in
their loans for fear of a run, creating more panic in process, and very
nervously begged to inspect the books of their own canals – more than half of
the canals in the country were discovered to have been acting fraudulently –
borrowing from one bank, then from a second to repay the first, then using the
proof that they had repaid their first loan on time to borrow greater sums from
a third and fourth bank; as long as there was another banker willing to lend
the daisy-chain could continue until eventually the canal was finished and
could then be sold, repaying everybody and returning a profit. The closure of
just
one
line of credit meant that every other fell as soon as the
inevitable questions went unanswered.

The news reached the mass of depositors in London
and Liverpool and Bristol overnight and the smallest town banks broke that day,
triggering a mass panic over all of the rest of England and Wales; Scotland,
its system different and separate to an extent, followed more slowly but it
took a very bare week for the whole country to freeze and for confidence to be
destroyed. The country banks had almost all issued their own banknotes which
became instantly valueless when the bank failed, as more than half did. The
banks tried to call in every loan they could, but their customers had no money.

Martin in common with every other banker opened his
doors to a long queue of depositors begging to withdraw the whole of their
accounts in gold and silver, as they had every legal right to do. He responded
as every other banker had by counting out the cash very slowly, coin by coin
and each cashier checked by a second, while he begged his own creditors to pay
everything they could, knowing that they would not be able to and aware that he
could not turn to other parts of the country to beg for help, as was normal
practice. The meanwhile the depositors grew increasingly panic-stricken – few
had more than a hundred in their accounts, but that was often their whole
nest-egg, a lifetime’s thrift, their last bulwark against starvation, and they
could see the workhouse threatening.

The word reached Tom at ten o’clock, George Mason
galloping into the office to tell him that there was a run on Martin’s and they
needed to get there quickly to try to save the firm’s groats.

“Harness up the dray and four, George. Send Richard
to Mr Star’s mill, put him on the cob, to get there as quickly as possible.
Warn the men we have named to be ready. Quickly now!”

“Time to make a deposit at Martin’s, Joe?”

Martin had been quite open in his assessment of his
prospects – he had made longer term loans to safe firms, keeping out of the
short run, high risk, high rates loans, and knew that they would not be
repayable in a hurry. The firms had used his money to build mills and furnaces
and open mines and quarries, all of which would pay in time, none of which
could be sold off, turned into cash overnight. He had estimated that he would
be short by some thirty thousands if it came to a national panic in which he
could not borrow from untouched banks in another part of the country.

“What do you reckon, Joe – keep back twenty thou’
for running money if worst comes to worst and there’s civil war and the Frogs
invade?”

Both had accepted that there would be some rioting
when the banks failed and they could envisage an unlikely set of events turning
that unrest into full-fledged revolution – it had happened in France and before
that in America, so it was not impossible.

Joseph nodded agreement and they turned to loading
the dray – one hundred and fifty strong canvas sacks, each weighing the better
part of thirty pounds and containing one thousand guineas. It was amazing just
how little space they took up. The pair of guards sat on the pile, shotguns in
their hands; Joseph swung his legs over the tailgate, horse pistols on either
side of him; Tom lounged next to the driver, pistol belt strapped on, six butts
showing prominently.

“Six pistols, Master? Are they loaded?” George Mason
enquired.

Joseph laughed, “they’re no use if they’re not,
George – and it won’t be the first time, by a long way, either!”

“Stupid of me to ask that question, Mr Star! I have
often wondered how Mr Andrews came by that scar – the war in America?”

“We both did our share there, George.”

Twenty-four men from the foundry, the biggest and
hardest-looking, lined up, a dozen on each side, all carrying cudgels or the
iron bars they used for breaking out the castings. They set off into town, Tom
wishing that he had been able to hire a band – fife and drum would have been
appropriate he felt as they marched on the dirt road of the village and then
into the silent streets of the town, their own feet and hooves on the granite
setts the only noise.

There was an anxious crowd outside Martin’s bank,
quiet as yet and unmoving, just waiting; the small square was full of people
watching the single door that was open and the snail’s pace queue on the steps.
Tom stood as the dray came to a halt.

“Let us through, please! If you want your money, let
us get it inside!”

The people turned, still silently, and stared and
pointed at the armed men. The brightest amongst them realised the significance
of the escort, of so many guns and bludgeons, and started to tell the people on
either side of them.

“Gold. That must be gold!”

Tom picked up on the mutters and bellowed at the top
of his voice.

“It’s gold guineas! Martin’s gold! There’s enough
here to pay every manjack twice over. Your money is safe. Martin’s is safe!”

The first enthusiast began to cheer as Martin came
out and opened both flaps of his main doors and then quietly asked the men at
the front of the queue to step aside to allow the gold to come in. He
apologised for the delay in its arrival, explained that they had not wished to
take the risk of transporting it at night. The word quickly spread and made
obvious sense – no one in his right mind moved gold on the roads at night.