Then, one winter's morning in early 1819, Sarah went to pick Bridget up from her cradle and found her little body cold and lifeless. She held the baby in her arms and was about to cry, when she realized it was for the better. It was no life for a sick baby, in Manchester. The little tot had suffered long enough. She decided not to go to work that day, even though she would lose a day's pay and her master wouldn't be happy. She held her emotions together while she got the boys off to work. Henry had already gone out to collect yarn from a factory. Emily and Catherine were resting on their bed. Quietly, she picked the baby up again and carried it round the house a while and prayed. Then she took it back upstairs, kissed it and laid it ever so gently in its cradle. She sat on the side of her bed and stared at the tiny figure, lying there so peacefully.

Sarah wondered what her youngest daughter would have been like as she grew up, whether she would have got over her illnesses, if she would have faced the same hardships her siblings currently suffered, and if she would have married and had a family of her own and afforded to feed them more than potatoes and oatmeal and perhaps moved back to the country one day. Now Sarah would never know any of these things.

As she sat there going over what might have been, she thought how unfair things were. She felt it was her baby's right to have lived. Poverty and misery weren't the baby's fault. She knew if only they had more money and everything wasn't so expensive they could afford more food. And if they had more time to go to the country to fetch plants, they could make up more medicine. The children wouldn't get so sick and Baby mightn't have died.

Later that morning, when Henry got home, he guessed as soon as he saw her what had happened. All he had to say was 'Baby?'

She nodded. They embraced silently for several minutes. He stroked her hair back off her forehead. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

'We must be strong,' she said to him at last. 'Heaven's a better place than this.'

'I'll pray for her every night.'

'Henry, I'm going to the next strike meeting, and help them in their quest for reform.'

He stared at her a moment. She had never shown any interest in reform, always believing things would get better by themselves. 'It's dangerous these days, Sarah. The magistrates send spies who often provoke the workers and the meetings turn into a riot.'

'We owe it to the next generation,' she said.

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