Lyddie, Chapter 11, The Admirable Choice: Church, Pew Rent and Paying to Read

Lowell National Historical Park's Books to Parks series pairs chapters of Katherine Paterson's novel Lyddie with the real history of the Lowell textile mills. In chapter 11, a book changes how Lyddie gets through her days.

Title page of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (London: R. Bentley, 1840). Public domain, from HathiTrust.

The chapter

Back at work, Lyddie finds the noise of the looms and the dust in the air bother her less, because she is looking forward to hearing more of Oliver Twist in the evening. She has not grown used to the mill, but the story gives her a way to escape it.

Betsy reads to her every evening until they finish the book. When summer comes and work at the mills slows, Lyddie's roommates go home to help their families. Alone, Lyddie goes to the bookstore and buys her own copy of Oliver Twist. To improve her limited reading, she copies out pages and takes them into the mill, reading between tending the machines.

Near the end of July, the boardinghouse keeper reminds the girls that they are expected at church. Lyddie goes, but takes a copied page to read during the sermon. Walking back, she sees a couple and calls out to the woman, thinking she is Diana. The woman does not answer and turns away, and Lyddie decides she must have been mistaken, since Diana would have spoken to her.

Fact check: did mill workers skip church?

The mill regulations required church, yet Lyddie rarely went. Was that unusual?

Most mill workers did attend church, but some did not go regularly. Church could be expensive. Some workers stayed away because they lacked suitable clothes, or because they could not pay for a seat — the pew rent. Others were simply too tired after a long week, and devotion was not a priority for them.

The rule itself was plain. The Boott Cotton Mills' regulations read:

"A regular attendance on public worship on the Sabbath is necessary for the preservation of good order. The Company will not employ anyone who is habitually absent."

Sarah Hodgdon wrote to her mother, probably around 1830, that she could not go to any meetings — church services — unless she hired a seat, and so had to stay home.

In 1846 Sarah G. Bagley, writing in the Voice of Industry, pointed to another cost: time. A factory worker washed and ironed all her own clothes except her mill dress, and to appear at church and an evening lecture she had to wash her handkerchief, collars and stockings nearly every week. She wrote:

"How many operatives stay away from church, on account of want of time, to keep their clothes in suitable order to appear at church. Then add to this, the number who stay away on account of fatigue, and then add to these, those who stay away to perform some little job of sewing that they have not found time to do, during the week, and the number would not be small."

If church mattered for the workers' spiritual growth, she asked, were the city's clergy doing their part to remove what kept them away?

St. Anne's Church, Lowell, 1840. It was the first church built in Lowell, and was built expressly for the mill workers. Church attendance was required by the corporations' regulations, but may not have been strictly enforced.

Fact check: did people pay to use libraries?

Lyddie gives Betsy money to rent Oliver Twist. Did reading really cost money?

Often, yes. Books were expensive and prized. A typical household might own a family Bible and some schoolbooks, and perhaps take a newspaper. Lending libraries, like the one Lyddie and Betsy use, were common across Europe and North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and gave readers access to far more.

• Subscription libraries: members paid a yearly fee to borrow; less often, readers paid by the week for a single book, as Betsy does. Most served men — the well-off and those hoping to rise — though some were open to women.
• Public libraries: in the mid-nineteenth century many towns began opening libraries funded by government, like the ones most towns have today. Many still charged a yearly membership fee at first, and some limited access by age, gender or race.

Lowell opened its public library in 1844, very close to the time Lyddie takes place.

Catalogue of the City School Library, Lowell, Mass., established May 20, 1844 (Lowell: S. N. Merrill, 1858).

Booksellers advertised to the workers too. The Lowell Offering — written, edited and published by women working in the mills — carried notices such as B. F. Watson's Exchange Book Store on Merrimack Street, which kept a circulating library, and A. Watson's bookstore and circulating library on Central Street.

Book advertisements in the Lowell Offering (1840–41). Public domain, digitised by Google.

Merrill & Heywood, booksellers. Lowell had many booksellers, serving new mill workers who had money to spend on themselves for the first time.

For more on the novels mill workers read, see the series' "Voices from the Field" essay, "Novels", by Dr. Bridget M. Marshall of the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Visit

In downtown Lowell you can walk through some of Lyddie's Lowell: Merrimack Street, where many of the shops the mill workers used once stood, and St. Anne's Church, which still serves the community.

Questions for readers

• How would Lyddie describe what Oliver Twist did for her life? How did the book change or inspire her? Give examples from the text.
• Why could some mill workers not attend the church services the mills required?
• If you were Lyddie, what book would you buy with your hard-earned money, and why?

Sources

• National Park Service, Lowell National Historical Park, "Lyddie: Chapter 11 - The Admirable Choice", from the Books to Parks series. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/lyddie-chapter-11-the-admirable-choice.htm
• The page quotes "Regulations to be observed by persons in the Boott Cotton Mills" (Massachusetts Historical Society) and Sarah G. Bagley, "The Ten Hour System", Voice of Industry, vol. 1, no. 34, February 6, 1846, and paraphrases Sarah Hodgdon's letter "Dear mother" (1830?, New Hampshire Historical Society, Hodgdon Family Letters).
• The source page's portrait of Dr. Marshall is not reproduced.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.