After his funeral, the new superindendent thought I'd be safer in the laundry until he "lost his fobwatch" down my cleavage, and accidentally fell into the mangle while I was turning it.
His replacement tried me in the kitchen. With my appetite? They should have known better! Well, they probably did, but they were running out of places to put me. Anyway, my arrival in the kitchen coincided with a fact-finding visit from the Prussian Embassy, sent by Bismarck to learn about British social measures for dealing with the poor. I was proud to serve them a sample dish of boiled beef and cabbage which within hours had them retching into their Pickelhauben (those spiky helmet things they wore). Naturally, the Prussian government was furious and the matter was placed in the personal hands of Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who thought he'd be clever and try the same dish just to rule out anything the workhouse might have done. War was averted less through diplomatic means, than through the Commissioner blowing chunks cascading into his trashcan, which disproved the typhoid theory, let any poisoners off the hook, and demonstrated the unwisdom of wicker trashcans in the office. With the cause identified, the Commissioner sent the Workhouse Superintendent a glowing testimony to my culinary abilities and a promise of a long stay at Her Majesty's expense unless I was quietly found alternative employment - fast. And with that, Sir Charles returned to simpler matters, such as trying to catch Jack the Ripper.
The Superintendant was equally prostrated, although I don't know whether that was from my cooking or through dread at his immediate prospects. While he was lying in his sickbed weakly contemplating his fate, a young jeweller with a reputation for prim-madness came in, seeking a shopgirl to model his wares. I think his exact words were, "I can't sell anything looking like a big girl's blouse on the posing stand," but it was difficult to hear clearly through the wall. The Superintendent, interviewing Mr Whybrow from his sick bed, had no trouble recommending someone who was smart, well-behaved and eager to learn a trade. But that girl was still in the infirmary courtesy of my boiled beef, so I removed my ear from the wall, marched in, and asked the Superintendant what he had planned for me now that the kitchen was out of bounds. When some colour had returned to his face, he immediately realised my suitability, and sent me on my way with his blessing. Actually, it sounded rather like, "Just get her out of here and lock the bloody gates behind her," but he may have been retching again. Meanwhile the jeweller, a lean young man with untidy blond hair, was surveying the wrenched-off door and looking me up and down with an approving nod which suggested that he knew exactly what he was getting.
The Superintendent helped Mr Whybrow settle any uncertainties by instructing the Bursar to hand him fifty guineas on condition that I promised never to return, and that was that. End of one life, start of a new one.
The moments that followed will linger forever - a merry tangle of moments melanging into a kaleidoscopic whirl - as Mr Whybrow said, simply, "She'll do," the superintendent kissed the (mortified) matron's hands while uttering fervent thanks for deliverence, and the horde of grimy awestruck faces pressed to the window as I signed my name to the release with a flowing script - rather than the scruffy "X" that would normally have been the case. Neither will I forget following Mr Whybrow out into Gray's Inn Road, leaving behind a communal sigh of relief that hung over the workhouse like a circus tent collapsing, or how fresh and invigorating the air smelt - although that could just have been because it was too early for anyone to have swept up after the horses.
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