Sunday Small—Cissie Burns

Sunday Small—Cissie Burns is a friendship forged among the children of the workhouse and tested by the institution’s power to isolate and silence them. When Cissie is removed to Hatter’s Hall after Albert Pinnegar assaults her, Sunday keeps her story alive, tells Lady Lavinia Huntley what happened, and helps make Cissie’s release possible. Their reunion restores a personal connection that confinement had tried to erase, though it cannot undo Cissie’s separation from her son or the years of trauma she has endured.

Friendship in the workhouse

Sunday Small and Cissie Burns are friends among children whose daily lives are governed by rigid divisions. The workhouse separates women, boys, girls, and men into different sections, and inmates rarely come together except on Sundays, when they are permitted to attend church. Sunday has seen how devastating such enforced separation can be for families. Her friendship with Cissie is therefore formed inside a system that makes connection difficult and leaves children dependent on the adults who control their movements and daily conditions.

That setting also shapes what Sunday understands about Cissie’s vulnerability. The girls are subject to Miss Frost’s authority, while Albert Pinnegar can use his position to summon girls to work in his office. In the account Sunday later gives Lady Lavinia Huntley, she describes Cissie as hating Pinnegar but being too afraid to refuse his attention. When Cissie becomes sick and suspects she is pregnant, she tells Sunday that Pinnegar forced himself on her. Sunday’s loyalty is not abstract: she knows the friend whose account is being discredited, and she recognizes the coercion behind the workhouse’s version of events.

Removal and separation

The rupture in their friendship becomes visible when Cissie is sent away. Sunday is assigned to the laundry for the day, where the steam, soda crystals, and heavy mangle make the work exhausting. While she is sorting washing, a horse and carriage enters the back yard. Sunday and another girl hurry to the door in time to see Cissie emerge with Miss Frost. Cissie recognizes the carriage as the one used to take people to the asylum and understands that the promised destination where she and her baby would be cared for is a deception.

Cissie is terrified and calls for Pinnegar, saying that he caused her pregnancy and would not let her be sent away. Miss Frost instead seizes her, condemns her accusation, and blames her for supposedly being sexually available to male inmates. The workhouse’s divisions make that accusation especially consequential: Sunday later points out that the girls saw the men only on Sundays or during their daily airing, when a high wire fence separated them. The institution’s public explanation places blame on the men collectively, while protecting the authority figure whom Cissie identifies as her assailant.

Cissie’s removal means more than the loss of her freedom. Sunday explains that the asylum’s patients might never be released, especially when no one outside came to claim them. For Cissie, confinement is followed by the loss of her baby son. Her separation from Sunday and her child turns the workhouse’s promise of care into a double abandonment, leaving her friend with no news of her and no direct way to reach her.

Sunday’s testimony and Cissie’s rescue

After leaving the workhouse, Sunday is questioned by Lady Lavinia Huntley about the conditions there. Lavinia has brought a notebook and asks whether the children were as well fed as the guardians’ funding should have ensured. Sunday decides to tell the truth, hoping her account may improve life for those still inside. She describes the poor meals and the punishment cellar, where she had once been held for three days without food or drink and emerged so weak that she needed the sick bay overnight. She also shows the scars left by Miss Frost’s cane.

When Lavinia asks whether Pinnegar was kind, Sunday briefly feels panic, but thinking of Cissie brings the story pouring out. She recounts how Pinnegar drew Cissie into his office, how Cissie became ill and believed herself pregnant by him, and how the asylum carriage arrived instead of the promised safe placement. Sunday insists that she believes Cissie and explains why the workhouse’s account of male inmates interfering with her does not fit the girls’ restricted contact with them. She also discloses that Pinnegar tried to do the same kind of thing to her. Her testimony thus exposes both Cissie’s abuse and the continuing danger to other girls, while asking Lavinia to look for Cissie at Hatter’s Hall.

Lavinia acts on what Sunday has told her. When she visits Cissie, the girl initially believes no one can help; learning that Sunday remembered her and never stopped worrying gives her a reason to respond. Lavinia offers her a position in the laundry at her house, creating a practical route out of confinement. Sunday does not carry out the rescue herself, but her insistence on Cissie’s story supplies the personal knowledge and urgency that make the intervention possible.

Recognition and care after confinement

When Sunday and Cissie meet again, Cissie is so changed by her confinement that she first stares blankly at her friend. Sunday identifies herself, and recognition gradually returns. Cissie speaks hoarsely and tells Sunday that her baby has been taken away; she then falls into Sunday’s arms and sobs. Sunday holds her until the sobs subside into quieter, broken whimpers, wipes the damp hair from her brow, and reassures her that the ordeal is over. The physical embrace answers the forced separation with a form of care neither institution had given Cissie.

The reunion does not make Cissie well at once. She has become painfully thin, with her bones prominent beneath her skin, and her voice suggests a long period without speaking freely. After her hair is washed and combed and she is given time to rest, she begins to look more like herself, though nightmares continue. Cissie is eager to return to work, but the housekeeper insists that she rest for another week. Her recovery is therefore gradual: safety and friendship offer support, while the effects of Hatter’s Hall remain present.

Before Sunday leaves, Cissie thanks her for telling Lady Lavinia Huntley about her and getting her out. She says that she had lost hope after her son was taken and fears that she would have become like the people in the asylum had she remained there. Sunday urges her to try to put the experience behind her and continue with her life. Cissie knows the advice is sound, but doubts she will ever forget those years. Their exchange holds both the strength and the limit of their bond: Sunday can accompany Cissie back into life, but cannot return her child or erase what happened.

Significance of the relationship

The friendship makes testimony a form of continued attachment. Although confinement removes Cissie from Sunday’s sight, Sunday remembers her, speaks for her when an official account has condemned her, and gives Lavinia a reason to seek her out. Cissie’s question about whether Sunday remembered her reveals how much that remembrance matters after prolonged isolation. Their reunion confirms that the relationship survived the separation even when Cissie had lost hope of being found.

Their bond also contrasts care with the workhouse’s treatment of vulnerable girls. Miss Frost uses authority to shame and silence Cissie; Sunday uses what she knows to affirm her account and draw help toward her. The distinction is not that friendship can repair every harm: Cissie remains bereaved of her son and troubled by nightmares. Rather, the relationship provides recognition where the institution imposed stigma, and companionship where confinement produced abandonment. Later reports that fear and bullying have left the workhouse after Miss Frost’s cane is broken show a broader change in conditions, but Sunday and Cissie’s story gives that change a human measure: a girl once carried away in terror is again able to recognize her friend and imagine continuing her life.