Lead Review (The Sixpenny Orphan)
- Book: The Sixpenny Orphan
- Location: Ryhope
- Author: Glenda Young
As the novel opens, Poppy and Rose, aged 10 and 9 respectively, are orphans under the care of Nellie Harper. They live in her barn in the mining village of Ryhope. The young girls are not cherished by this calculating and cruel woman, they are, however, of use to her, they wake her, so that she can carry out her job of “knocker-upper” (that is, waking the miners who are due to go on shift by rapping on their windows). They have to alternate their days of school attendance, as they only have one pair of shoes between them. They are under-nourished and permanently hungry.
Unbeknownst to the girls, Nellie has put an advertisement in the Sunderland Echo. She is selling them and a taker is a man of means, but he imposes a vicious condition: he will spin a coin to determine which of the siblings he will take. He will not take both and it is Rose who accompanies the stranger, leaving her sister behind, forlorn and alone.
Down the line, Poppy is married with bairns and can only assume that Rose has died, as there has been no contact for many a year. And then a letter arrives….
The author has conjured up a sense of time and place, creating a heartfelt story that exposes the terrible hardships of the era.
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