Cissie Burns’s assault by Albert Pinnegar and her forced removal to Hatter’s Hall turn a promise of care into an instrument of confinement. Her pregnancy is treated not as a reason to protect her and her child, but as an occasion to silence her and take her away; the episode also gives Sunday Small evidence of the workhouse’s abuse that she later brings before Lady Lavinia Huntley.

Institutional Background

At the workhouse, residents’ lives were organized by gender and labor. Women and girls worked in the sewing room, kitchens, or laundry, while men and boys were assigned other tasks; inmates rarely came together except at church on Sundays. Sunday had already seen how this enforced separation could devastate families. In that setting, a girl’s dependence on workhouse officials for shelter and decisions about her future left her especially exposed to the people who controlled her daily life.

Cissie first confides her pregnancy to Sunday in private. She believes she is expecting Albert Pinnegar’s child and has been told that she will go to a pleasant place in the countryside, where she and the baby will be looked after. She imagines that the child will be someone of her own to love. That hope makes the deception at her departure especially stark: the promised refuge is not where the carriage is taking her.

The Removal to Hatter’s Hall

The next morning, while Sunday is working in the laundry, a horse and carriage enters through the workhouse’s back gates. Cissie emerges with Miss Frost carrying her belongings. Recognizing the carriage as the one used to take people to Hatter’s Hall asylum, she understands that she is being sent away rather than placed somewhere to care for her baby. She is openly distressed and appeals to the officials to honor what she had been promised.

Cissie names Albert Pinnegar as the man who made her pregnant and calls for him, believing he will prevent her removal. Miss Frost instead seizes her, shakes her, and rebukes her for accusing him. She claims that Cissie had been intimate with multiple male inmates and might not even know who fathered the child. As Cissie’s bundle falls and her things scatter, the officials’ response makes clear that her accusation will not be investigated in this moment; she is physically restrained and taken away.

Sunday’s Testimony

Later, Sunday tells Lady Lavinia Huntley what happened. When asked whether Pinnegar was a kind master, she describes his interest in Cissie, his invitations for her to work in his office, and the pregnancy that followed. Sunday says that Pinnegar forced himself on Cissie and that Miss Frost’s promised destination became the asylum carriage. She remembers Cissie fighting against being taken and says she never heard from her again.

Sunday also challenges the workhouse’s explanation that one of the male inmates had interfered with Cissie. She explains that men and girls were separated by a high wire fence during their limited contact in the yard, and that they otherwise saw one another at church. In her account, that arrangement makes the official implication of an unknown male assailant implausible and directs suspicion toward Pinnegar, who, she says, took an interest in girls as they grew older. She also discloses that he had tried to touch her sexually. Her testimony therefore links Cissie’s pregnancy to a broader pattern of Pinnegar’s conduct rather than presenting it as an isolated misfortune.

Sunday urges Lady Lavinia Huntley to visit Hatter’s Hall and ask for Cissie, who, she believes, will remain there because no one is coming to secure her release. The possibility of lifelong confinement gives the removal its force: Cissie is not simply sent away from the workhouse, but cut off from her child and from the ordinary means of returning to her former life. Lady Huntley thanks Sunday for speaking honestly and vows to work for change; Sunday’s immediate concern, however, remains what will happen to Cissie.

Consequences and Significance

The episode exposes the gap between official assurances and the treatment residents actually receive. Later, Sunday tells Lady Huntley that workhouse meals were usually dry grey bread, greasy porridge, and thin soup, despite the guardians’ provision for adequate food. She also describes the punishment cellar, where she once spent three days without food or drink and was so weak afterward that she needed the sickbay. These disclosures place Cissie’s removal within a wider system in which institutional authority could deprive vulnerable residents of both protection and a credible voice.

Lady Huntley’s intervention begins with listening to Sunday and taking her allegations seriously. In a later report, Verity Lockett says conditions at the workhouse have improved: the meals are better, the atmosphere less fearful, and the new matron has snapped Miss Frost’s split cane and thrown it away. The narrative does not reduce Cissie’s fate to a completed reform, but the contrast between the asylum carriage and these later changes shows how testimony can make hidden abuses visible. Cissie’s separation remains the personal cost at the center of the episode; Sunday’s account turns that loss into evidence against the system that permitted it.