The Seamstress; or, The White Slave of England — page 95: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

rn - SS a I a a a a ere ee 88 transparent. Yet was it not shrunken in the ugly meaning of the term: it was delicate—very delicate —even as her form had become too slender and too | indignant virtue imparts such power. THE SEAMSTRESS. | Procure a new gown or ensure a Sunday’s dinner, | She silenced them with one of those looks to which Or if she delicate to bear any association with the idea of were jeered and taunted on account of her steadi- health. Sweetly—deeply—touchingly interesting the maiden still was,—invested with a spirit-like beauty that appeared unable to resist the eold atmosphere of this world,—a charming flower whose loveliness increased proportionately with the languor that made it droop in death’s slow and gradual decline. We have said that her apparel was scanty: but it was neat as the most scrupulous tidiness could make it. The poor girl’s hair, too—that superb luxuriant covering which might have made the envy of a queen, and the glorious gloss upon which ten thousand times outvied the lustre of all the gems that ever sparkled in a royal crown,—her ir, we say, was arranged with evident attention : but this arose from no sentiment of coquetry just heaven! she had neither inclination nor leisure for idle vanities!—but it was in accordance with the habit of personal neatness and propriety which no distress nor suffering could ever subdue on her part. And the expression of her countenance P— Oh! this is sad, with a settled melancholy—but not a cynic gloom: it is a profound mournfulness attempered by holy resignation—the martyrised look of a saint who amidst the tortures of earth obtains glimpses of heaven ! Her lips are thin and have lost their roseate freshness: but the teeth which they reveal, as they remain slightly parted in deep pensiveness, are still beauteous as strings of pearls—and the breath that passes between them is fragrant as when she was wont to inhale the breezes of the park in com- pany with her lover. Oh! to recall the roses to ness and chastity—as was sometimes the case—she would turn aside and heed not the scoffers. | Thus, although poyerty was dragging the poor - girl through a vista of dead and sickening experi- ences, and exposing her to many temptations, it succeeded not in plunging her into error. Amidst all her misery she could walk with head erect ;— and although want and famine made her cheeks marble white, they were never tinged with the blush of shame. Such was Virginia Mordaunt! ¢ But how did she earn her scanty subsistence ? that same district where she dwelt—the crowded quarter of Aldgate and the Minories— stands the splendid establishment of Messxs.Aaron and Sons. This palatial emporium is a colossal proof of the grinding tyranny which capital wields over labour, and the influence which it exercises over wages. wrath send the plagues of darkness, locusts, and murrain: but over modern Europe has Satan dif- Upon ancient Egypt did God in his. fused the far more awful pestilence of competition... And it is this accursed system which makes the emporium of Messrs. Aaron and Sons flourish for the benefit of its proprietors; while the vapours of demoralization, despair, famine, sickness, and death, emanate from its portals and infect the atmosphere that is breathed by a large portion of the com- munity. The towering edifice, so grand without and so superb within,—showing in the vastness of ‘its extent and in the minutest details of its deco- ‘rations, the lavish profusion that marked its erec- tion,—with its magnificent windows, its plate glass, and its brilliant illuminations,—this costly struc- those pale cheeks and bring back the elasticity of | ture, we say, is a mighty monument which capital lodging of one in Virginia’s friendless, SORrOWaGs | - condition. youthful vigour to that drooping form !—but no— | has raised in honour of the Genius of Competition. it may not be—at least not yet—even if it shall | But to view it morally, its aspect is hideous in the ever be done again! | extreme. Its foundations are built with the bones Poverty allows but little choice in respect to the | of the white slaves of England, male and female: the skeletons of journeymen tailors and poor seam- To dwell in a respectable neighbour- | stresses, all starved to death, constitute the door- hood a respectable rent must be paid; and that posts and the window-frames ;—the walls are made was a price which the poor seamstress could not of skulls—the architectural devices are cross-bones afford. She was therefore compelled to occupy the ,—and the whole is cemented firmly and solidly by attic wherein we find her now, and for which she the blood, pith, and marrow of the miserable paid eighteen-pence a week. But then she enjoyed “wretches who are forced to sell themselves in the the use of the furniture—that furniture which we have already described in a few words, and for the whole of which the most liberal-minded broker in London would not have given half-a-crown ! Yes—poverty had driven the unhappy maiden into a house situate in a low neighbourhood and in a pestilential atmosphere,—a house filled from cellar to roof with beings as poor and wretched as herself, but whose wretchedness often drove them into dissipation and debauchery—whereas, the wider became our heroine’s experience of the world and its woes, the stronger were the defences that her innate rectitude was enabled to throw up around her virtue. Dwelling as it were in the midst of contamination, she remained pure and chaste: exposed to constant temptation, she never even lost the presence of mind that strengthened her in resisting it, When the din of drunken orgies reached the ears from below, she shuddered and prayed: and when the young women into whose companionship she was necessarily thrown at times, ventured to hint how easily she might she could call her night! ‘eighteen hours she earned precisely siapence three- ‘Slave-Market of British Labour. ! And it was for this emporium that Virginia Mordaunt worked—that is to say, worked indi- , rectly. For she was not employed directly by the ‘house itself, but by the middle-women who farmed the work which the establishment required to be done. In fact, it was the old system of Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Pembroke, and Madame Duplessy, all over again,—with the substitution of other names and lower wages. In fact, poor Virginia was now engaged in making slop-shirts at two- pence farthing a-piece! Yes, shirts at two-pence farthing each; and by dint of toiling from six in the morning twelve at night, she was enabled to make thr a day. Ah! but a day of eighteen hours—leavine the poor girl only six hours which And during those farthings—out,of which she had to purchase the thread! Every &hirt had seven button-holes—three to the bosom, yee the collar, and one to each wristband; and th gewnig must be neatly done, or * XS GOMIGDOO <S (€(0) im