Vox Meditantis

17th September 1891

Another day spent amongst the grey-faced multitude, and still my soul thirsts for what it cannot have. The streets of this city are naught but a great bazaar where thoughts are peddled like rotten fruit – some bright and tempting to the eye, others already turned black with the soot of men’s ambitions. I hear the costermongers of learning cry their wares from the steps of the Mechanics’ Institute, but their coin is not meant for such as I.

Mrs. Hastngs had her ladies to tea today, and how they did chatter about the troubles in the docks again, their voices painted in delicate rose and gold whilst mine remains the colour of ash-water. They speak of the Irish question as though it were a parlour game, these women whose hands know naught but silk and ivory. Meanwhile, I scrub their chambers and think upon the books that line their walls – volumes thick with the crimson blood of knowledge that shall never flow through my veins.

The marketplace of minds, that is what this world has become. In the servants’ hall we trade whispers like pennies – news of strikes in the northern mills, of troubles brewing beyond the seas where our boys march under the Queen’s colours. But what marketplace is this, where some may feast upon wisdom whilst others must content themselves with the crumbs of gossip?

You ask how we celebrate our holy days? What bitter jest is that! When Christmas comes, do I rest by the hearth with plum pudding? Nay, I rise before dawn to prepare the feast for those whose celebration is my labour. When Easter bells ring out their golden peals, I am bent over the washing copper, my hands stained purple-brown with the lye that makes their linens white as the Resurrection itself. The Sabbath? Even the Lord’s day brings no respite when the gentry must have their Sunday roast.

Our holidays are marked not in joy but in the doubling of our toil. We celebrate as the Hebrew children celebrated in Egypt – with bricks still upon our backs. Yet still, in the dark corners of my heart, there burns a small flame the colour of autumn leaves, whispering that knowledge might yet find a way, though all the world conspire against it.

The Almighty watches, they say, and shall reward the faithful. But I fear He has forgotten the colour of a working woman’s prayers.

The late Victorian era, in which this diary is set, was marked by deep class divisions, industrial unrest, and the expansion of education and empire. In 1891, Britain was experiencing economic depression, with widespread labour disputes such as the London Dock Strike of 1889 still shaping workers’ demands for fairer wages and conditions. While literacy rates had risen, access to books and learning remained largely the privilege of the middle and upper classes, leaving servants and labourers excluded from intellectual life. These inequalities laid foundations for the growth of trade unions, working-class political movements, and later reforms in education and labour rights.

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