08 April 2021

The Desertion of Sarah Blay

 

London, July 1808

Sarah Blay was halfway from where she lived in Crispin Street, Spitalfields, to the poorhouse on Kingsland Road. On a good day, the walk took about thirty minutes. This was not a good day. The rain started before she’d balanced her crying ten-month-old son William on her hip, closed the door of the first floor rented apartment, and took four-year-old James’s hand.

Sarah couldn’t see the tears streaming down the baby’s face through the downpour she’d stepped into, but she could see the snot running out of his nose and into his mouth.

James had his head down struggling to keep the water out of his eyes, but it ran down his hair and into the front of his jacket. His little feet, protected by a pair of boots his father had made but now too small, shuffled along the path.

By the time Sarah, trying to balance William’s weight on her hip as she walked, led James in to Brushfield Street ten minutes from home, their clothes were sodden.

The dirt around the hem of Sarah’s skirt morphed into mud as she trudged up Bishops Square. Her few belongings in the valise a neighbour lent her, hanging over her right shoulder, did not include another dress.

‘Mama, I’m cold.’ James looked up at his mother, eyes squinting against the rain.

‘We are nearly there,’ Sarah lied.

As Sarah and her children walked left on to Worship Street, she felt James’s hand shivering in hers. Looking around for shelter, she led the child into the portico of a two-storey house. She sat William down on the cobbled entrance where his crying turned into suffocating sobs and knelt to look at her eldest. ‘We will be warm and dry soon.’

‘My coat is all wet,’ her son said, wiping his frozen hand under his nose.

‘I know. James. It’s not long now.’

‘Can we wait here out of the rain, Mama?’

Sarah shook her head, picked up the baby, again balanced him on her hip, pulled his cap down further over his ears, reached for James, and stepped out into the London weather. ‘Thank God he didn’t leave me in winter.’

 

 

 

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