Cissie Burns’s confinement at Hatter’s Hall

Cissie Burns’s confinement at Hatter’s Hall is the concealed outcome of a workhouse promise of care: instead of being sent somewhere she could raise her baby, she is taken away to an asylum against her will. Her removal shows how institutional authority can turn an unmarried mother’s vulnerability into a justification for coercion, while Sunday Small’s failed attempt to stop it makes Cissie’s fate a defining cause in their friendship.

Background and vulnerability

Cissie is pregnant after Albert Pinnegar, a workhouse official, has forced himself upon her. In the workhouse, women and girls are separated from male inmates, and Sunday knows that inmates rarely come together except on Sundays, when they may attend church. This segregation underlines the injustice of Cissie being blamed for a pregnancy resulting from Pinnegar’s abuse: the institution restricts her contact with men, yet its staff treat her as though she is responsible for what happened.

The women and girls are assigned demanding work, including sewing, kitchen duties, cleaning, and laundry. On the morning Cissie is taken away, Sunday is working with the laundry women, a place in the institution’s daily labor routine rather than any setting where Cissie can freely seek help. Cissie has been told that she will go somewhere pleasant where she and her baby can be looked after. The promise makes the carriage’s arrival a betrayal, not a misunderstanding: she expects care and recognizes that she is being sent to an asylum instead.

The removal to Hatter’s Hall

Cissie recognizes the carriage from previous removals of older inmates. She tries to make the workhouse staff acknowledge that Pinnegar is responsible for her pregnancy and protests that she had been promised a place where she could care for her child. Miss Frost does not investigate the accusation. Instead, she rebukes Cissie and discredits her, treating the young woman’s pregnancy as evidence against her rather than considering her account of abuse.

Two men sent to take Cissie restrain her and bring out a straitjacket when she resists. Sunday intervenes, but the staff overpower her too. Cissie is carried into the asylum carriage, which leaves the workhouse yard; there is no indication that she is permitted to take her baby with her or that her promised future has been reconsidered. Her removal is thus both physical confinement and separation from the life she had hoped to make with her child.

Sunday’s resistance and punishment

Sunday’s response turns the removal into an open confrontation. She attacks one of the men trying to restrain Cissie and pulls at another’s hair as staff members rush in. The intervention cannot prevent the carriage from leaving, but it refuses the workhouse’s demand that everyone accept the decision without protest. Once Cissie is gone, Miss Frost orders Sunday taken to the punishment room and denies her food and water until further notice.

Sunday remains there for three days. The cell has no bed or blanket, and later she tells Lavinia Huntley that she was left without food or drink. She is weak when Verity Lockett eventually finds her, and has to spend the night in the sick bay. The punishment therefore extends the consequences of Cissie’s removal: the institution disciplines the witness who tried to resist, as well as the young woman it has sent away. Sunday’s distress is not only fear for herself. She grieves for Cissie and for the future that has been taken out of her hands.

Rumours, testimony, and the promise of rescue

The workhouse girls have little reliable knowledge of what happens inside Hatter’s Hall. Sunday understands that people sent there are rarely seen again, while rumours about the institution intensify her fear for Cissie. She has heard that newborns are taken from their mothers and given up for adoption. Cissie had looked forward to having her baby despite the circumstances of the pregnancy; the possibility that she may be separated from the child makes the promised refuge seem especially cruel. These reports shape Sunday’s understanding of what Cissie may face, but they do not establish what ultimately happens to either mother or baby.

When Sunday later tells Verity Lockett what happened, her anger centres on the future awaiting Cissie, not simply the deceit of the workhouse staff. She vows that she, Daisy Branning, and Tommy Branning will one day escape and get Cissie out. The vow transforms helpless grief into a shared objective: leaving the institution is imagined not only as personal freedom, but also as the means to return for a friend who has been made unreachable.

Later, Lavinia Huntley asks Sunday about conditions at the workhouse and records her account. Sunday describes the poor meals, the punishment cell, and Pinnegar’s conduct toward Cissie, including the false assurance that Cissie would be cared for before the Hatter’s Hall carriage arrived. This testimony gives Sunday’s memory a wider audience, although it does not itself resolve Cissie’s confinement. Lavinia’s visit to an asylum offers a further glimpse of institutional power: she encounters a large, intimidating establishment where staff describe the inmates’ daily procedures as treatments, while the sounds and atmosphere leave her deeply unsettled. The scene does not reveal Cissie’s individual circumstances there, but it reinforces the gulf between the language of care and the experience of people confined without a meaningful choice.

Institutional meaning and aftermath

Cissie’s confinement is part of a broader pattern in which workhouse discipline, social stigma, and the authority to remove people intersect. Staff control residents’ labor and daily routines, while the separation of male and female inmates does not protect Cissie from Pinnegar or secure her a hearing after she accuses him. Instead, Miss Frost’s authority enables the workhouse to recast Cissie as blameworthy and to send her away under a promise that conceals the destination.

The later improvement in workhouse conditions offers a limited contrast to the earlier regime. Verity reports that meals have improved, fear and bullying have receded, and a new matron has broken Miss Frost’s cane; she also supports replacing inadequate bedding. These changes show that institutional practices can be challenged, but they do not erase the consequences of Cissie’s removal or confirm her fate at Hatter’s Hall. In the story, her confinement remains an unresolved absence that gives Sunday’s loyalty a concrete purpose and exposes how easily an institution’s claim to provide care can conceal the loss of a person’s freedom.