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Sisters of Gold

Annie Murray
Chapters (64)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Dedication page
  4. A Week’s Work in Birmingham
  5. I
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. II
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. III
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Forty-Nine
  57. Fifty
  58. Fifty-One
  59. Fifty-Two
  60. Fifty-Three
  61. Acknowledgements
  62. Further Reading
  63. About the Author
  64. By the Same Author

Cover

images

Title page

ANNIE MURRAY

Sisters of Gold

MACMILLAN

Dedication page

For my sister, Julia

A Week’s Work in Birmingham

A Week’s Work in Birmingham

A week’s work in Birmingham in its aggregate results is something wonderful. It comprises the fabrication of fourteen millions of pens, six thousand bedsteads, seven thousand guns, three hundred million of cut nails, one hundred million of buttons, one thousand saddles, five millions of copper or bronze coins, twenty thousand pairs of spectacles, six tons of papier-mâché ware, £30,000 worth of jewellery, four thousand miles of iron and steel wire, two tons of pins, five tons of hairpins, hooks and eyes and eyelets, one hundred and thirty thousand gross of wood screws, five hundred tons of nuts, screw bolts, spikes and rivets, fifty tons of wrought-iron hinges, three hundred and fifty miles length of wax for vestas, forty tons of refined metal, forty tons of German silver, one thousand dozen offenders, three thousand five hundred bellows, a thousand roasting jacks, one hundred and fifty sewing machines, eight hundred tons of brass and copper wares, besides an almost endless multitude of miscellaneous articles of which no statistics can be given, but which, like those enumerated, find employment for hundreds and thousands of busy hands, and are destined to supply the manifold wants of humanity from China to Peru.

Birmingham Weekly Post, 9 July 1892

‘All that is needed for a workman to start as a master is a peculiarly shaped bench (known as a Peg) and a leather apron, one or two pounds’ worth of tools (including a blow-pipe) and for material, a few sovereigns and some ounces of copper and zinc. His shop may be the top room of his house, or a small building over the wash house at a rent of 2s or 2s 6d a week and the indispensable gas jet . . .’

J. S. Wright, 1866, member of the Local Industries Committee of the British Association at Birmingham

‘The pursuit of technique for itself leads to mere mechanism, but being tempered by an artistic idea, it is humanized and becomes beautiful.’

R. Catterson-Smith, 1901, Headmaster of the Birmingham School of Jewellery and Silversmithing, 84 Vittoria Street

I

I

One

One

Birmingham, 1904

Jack Sidwell arranged himself beneath a Bovril advertisement on the platform at Snow Hill station and waited, fidgeting and fretting about his hat.

On a dandyish whim brought on by the sweltering August weather, he had treated himself to a second-hand straw boater. The speckled mirror in the wardrobe dealer’s cramped room, where he tried it on, had flattered his boyish features into looking their full twenty-six years. Even with his neat blond moustache, Jack never looked his age. He paid his one and six and set off along the street with a swagger.