The Bier

Thomas lived in Gauger's Croft, Haworth, with his family of six children and they all slept in the same room. By day his wife looked after the children, feeding them salt beef when they could afford it, while he went to work as a cooper making barrels for the brewery that supplied the Black Bull. So far none of his family had caught tuberculosis. Thomas worked hard during the day, taking a short break with the other men to eat the rations their wives had packed for them as they sat on the hard wooden settle.

As a sideline the men were asked to build a series of biers. They were mostly small ones, a wooden structure not much more complex than a chair, with two handles at each end and legs for stability, then three pieces of wood slotted through the middle. These last were designed to hold the children's coffins.

They blamed the miasma. The stench of human excrement was everywhere in Haworth. Great piles of it swarmed with flies at the end of every lane. Worst of all, the villagers drank from a spring at the bottom of the alley where sewage drained into the spring waters. Every day the men were building more of these biers and fewer of the barrels.

Then one night Thomas went home and was met by his anxious wife standing outside. He knew what she was going to say before she said it. "Alice be passed awair." He held his wife Annie tightly as they cried together. Then he released her gently as she led him to the single room they all shared. Alice's body was propped up in a small coffin on one of the very same biers he had been building in the workshop with the coopers just a few days ago. He recognised his own handiwork on the mortise and tenon joints on either side.

A tear ran slowly down his face then fell on the cold stone floor, mingling with the ashes from the fire. They were running short of firewood too. There were so many mouths to feed. The odds were becoming stacked against them.

Thomas knelt down on the dirty floor in his grubby workman's clothes and kissed his daughter gently on the forehead. She was cold and her skin was pale. He did not know what she'd died from. Everyone blamed the miasma. The air itself was putrid.

They kept Alice's doll as a memory of her after she was buried with the thousands of other souls in Haworth churchyard.

Thomas and his wife walked slowly home, arm in arm. They wore their Sunday best to the funeral, little more than rags, but Thomas made sure his shoes were polished and Annie wore her best hat. The Vicar stood over the graves solemnly leading the prayers.

Alice and Thomas had dinner with their remaining children and said more prayers for Alice. They were tired and went to sleep, emotionally and physically drained. In the middle of the night the eldest daughter woke and shook her mother by the shoulder.

"Mama, it's t' doll, don't thee see? It's movin'!"

Annie looked at Lydia and said, "Thee are imaginin' it! Thaa be nowt movin', nah gur back t' sleep. Thee 'ave a busy dair in t' mill tomorrah."

"Aye, Mama."

Lydia tried to sleep but she stared at the ceiling. Sleep evaded her. In the early hours of the morning, she saw the doll move again. It just turned slightly, to look in her direction, and the small glass eyes looked sadly at her.

The next day the children bathed in the tin tubs outside in the street. It felt good to be clean while the foul smelling air was all around them. Annie scrubbed her children with charcoal soap until the water was as grey as the smoky sky where the wind was blowing factory fumes from chimneys of the mills. Sometimes the East wind blew the smoke all the way from Manchester and then it was hard to breathe.

In the evening the family huddled together to sleep. It was the best way in winter, they could warm each other with their bodies. Thomas had procured a heavy horse blanket from someone in the coopers' yard. Annie noticed the doll was no longer in the alcove so she put it back. One of the girls must have been playing with it.