Emma moves in with Laura and takes work at Thompson’s mill

Emma Harte’s move to Armley to share Laura Spencer’s home and work at Thompson’s mill turns a practical offer of help into a demanding new stage of her independence. With Laura’s support, Emma Harte leaves the tailoring workshop where she had thrived and enters a harsher industrial workplace; pregnant and dependent on her own earnings, she learns a different trade through persistence. The move brings security in the form of companionship, but not ease: at the mill, discipline, danger, long hours, and physical exhaustion test the resolve that had already made her a quick and capable worker.

A decision shaped by work and mutual support

At the time, Emma Harte was working in Abraham Kallinski’s tailoring workshop and had quickly learned its trade. Laura Spencer saw that she had taken to tailoring and suggested she would also be able to learn weaving. When Laura explained that Thompson’s mill was looking for girls to train, Emma Harte immediately asked whether she could get a job there. Laura had already spoken to the foreman; a place was available, and Emma Harte could begin on the looms as a learner.

The offer made a shared household possible as well as a change of work. Emma Harte asked Laura Spencer if she could live with her, promising to pay her way and cause no trouble. Laura welcomed her, explaining that she could not easily afford to maintain the house alone and did not want to give it up. She also valued Emma Harte’s company and believed she would be better off there with the baby due in two months. Laura Spencer offered to look after her, and Blackie O’Neill supported the arrangement. His practical involvement helped turn Emma Harte’s request into an agreed plan: he declared that he would bring her to the house the following Saturday.

The arrangement preserved Emma Harte’s dignity as well as providing care. When she was not earning, Laura Spencer refused to accept the full rent Emma Harte had offered and proposed that she pay two shillings instead. Emma Harte reluctantly accepted this compromise rather than offend her friend, while remaining determined to contribute more from her savings. Their agreement was not simply shelter offered to someone in need: Laura Spencer made room for Emma Harte while respecting her wish not to depend entirely on charity.

Leaving the workshop

Before the move, Emma Harte had earned enough at Abraham Kallinski’s workshop to cover her needs without drawing on her savings. The shop’s work was organized as piecework for larger clothiers. Rather than producing complete suits, its workers made assigned sections—such as sleeves, jacket fronts and lapels, backs, or trousers—which larger factories assembled. The method divided production among different workplaces, making it cheaper and faster for the manufacturers. Emma Harte had entered this unfamiliar trade with questions and learned its processes quickly.

The workshop’s everyday culture made it a place she enjoyed. Abraham Kallinski ran it efficiently but did not impose strict rules about clocking in, conversation, or the length of tea and lunch breaks. Workers were paid by the piece, and he expected them to make a living wage while meeting his obligations to the clothiers. The predominantly Gentile women and Jewish men worked amid friendly banter over the treadle sewing machines. Emma Harte’s cultivated way of speaking drew teasing from the girls, but her good-humoured response helped her become accepted among them.

Her departure was therefore a real parting, not merely a change of address. On the Friday before the move, Emma Harte said farewell to the workshop workers and the Kallinski family after Sabbath dinner, which Janessa Kallinski had insisted she attend. Janessa asked her to come for help if she needed it, and David Kallinski expected their paths to cross again, securing a promise that Emma Harte would write once she had settled. Gertrude Daniel, her landlady, also had tears in her eyes as Emma Harte left. The farewells show how much human support she had found in Leeds even as the needs of work and pregnancy took her elsewhere.

Learning weaving at Thompson’s mill

Laura Spencer took Emma Harte to Thompson’s mill on Monday morning. Its atmosphere was the opposite of the workshop she had left. There was no comparable camaraderie: rigid discipline governed the floor, and harsh overseers walked between the looms. Emma Harte disliked the oily raw-wool smell and the relentless rattle of the shuttles. On her third day, a shuttle flew off a loom and struck a girl in the face, leaving a scar. The accident was not unusual, making the machinery’s danger part of the ordinary conditions of work.

Weaving also demanded a different skill. Laura Spencer taught Emma Harte patiently and explicitly, but Emma Harte struggled with the process and feared causing a trap, when roughly a hundred threads broke on a loom. Repairing one could take hours; the weaver then had to work furiously to recover the lost time. Emma Harte never caused a trap during her employment there, but the possibility sharpened the pressure of learning: a mistake could cost valuable working hours and force a punishing effort to catch up.

Emma Harte persevered because she had no alternative but to establish herself as a competent weaver and earn a living. Her quick mind and nimble fingers helped her master the craft within a month, as Laura Spencer had predicted. Growing expertise increased her confidence, though it did not make her like the mill’s cheerless, tightly controlled environment. Her success is thus distinct from a simple conversion to factory life: she acquired the skill she needed while continuing to dislike the conditions under which she used it.

The cost and significance of the move

The working day began at six in the morning and ended at six at night. As Emma Harte’s pregnancy advanced, standing for so long left her increasingly tired; her legs swelled, and she worried that the baby might be born on the mill floor. Laura Spencer’s patience at work and steadfast support at home helped her endure the strain. The move gave Emma Harte a companion willing to teach and care for her, but it did not remove the bodily cost of earning a living while pregnant.

Near the end of March, Emma Harte knew the baby was coming, and Laura Spencer took her to St Mary’s Hospital at Hill Top. After ten hours in labour, Emma Harte gave birth to a daughter exactly one month before her seventeenth birthday. In retrospect, the move had joined work, friendship, and impending motherhood in a single practical arrangement. Emma Harte left a comparatively humane workshop for a hazardous mill, mastered a new trade under pressure, and relied on Laura Spencer’s companionship through pregnancy and childbirth. The episode makes her independence neither solitary nor effortless: it is built through work, resourcefulness, and relationships that allow her to keep going.