Sunday’s transfer to Whittleford Lodge

Sunday Small’s transfer from the workhouse to a position in Biddy Spooner’s household is both a departure from a life governed by institutional discipline and the beginning of her new life outside it. Lady Lavinia Huntley makes the arrangement and leads Sunday away; the journey offers her unfamiliar surroundings, clothes beyond the workhouse uniform, and, after she has left, the chance to describe conditions the institution had kept out of view.

Life Inside the Workhouse

The institution organized its residents by sex and divided their labour accordingly. Able-bodied men and stronger boys picked oakum from old hemp ropes or crushed bones delivered from the local slaughterhouse; some worked in the gardens, growing produce for meals. Women and girls sewed uniforms, repaired clothing, cooked, cleaned, or laboured in the laundry. Residents seldom came together except on Sundays, when they could attend church. Sunday had witnessed the damage this separation could do to families.

Daily life also meant close supervision and unequal provision. Miss Frost inspected the girls’ beds each morning and assigned their duties after breakfast. Sunday sometimes washed dishes in the warm kitchen, though her hands were already sore from scrubbing floors; she particularly valued the occasional chance to work with the babies in the nursery. At meals, the children received grey bread, porridge, and watered-down milk, while staff ate bacon and eggs. Sunday endured the contrast by imagining that one day her mother might come for her and she might share a better breakfast.

Departure and a New Household

Lady Huntley tells Sunday that the necessary forms have been signed and asks whether she is ready to go. Miss Frost sees them to the door. Sunday leaves with dignity, though the workhouse has been her only home and the departure follows a frightening encounter with Albert Pinnegar. At the threshold she pauses, hardly able to believe her escape, then tells Lady Huntley she is ready to begin her new life.

The journey makes the change tangible. Sunday has never travelled beyond the church in Coton or the marketplace, and the places passing outside the carriage seem to open a world she has not known. She is still wearing the workhouse uniform and carries a brown-paper bundle, but Lady Huntley offers her a portmanteau of clothes she no longer wears, noting that Sunday can alter them with the sewing skills she has learned. Sunday’s excitement at the prospect of wearing something different exists alongside her nerves and delayed shock. Leaving the institution is not an effortless transformation: she arrives at Biddy Spooner’s residence still trembling after Pinnegar’s attempted rape.

What Sunday Reveals After Leaving

At Biddy Spooner’s home, Lady Huntley asks Sunday about the food, explaining that the guardians contribute money intended to feed the residents well. No longer living under the institution’s authority, Sunday chooses to tell the truth. She describes dry grey bread, thick porridge, watery vegetable soup, and meat served only occasionally and too gristly to chew. Her account sets the official provision of funds against what children actually received.

She also describes the punishment cell in the cellar: a bucket, no bed or blanket, cold and damp, and complete darkness once the door closed. Sunday had been kept there for three days without food or drink; Verity Lockett eventually found her so weak that she needed to spend the night in the sickbay. Sunday recalls two little girls who disappeared after being locked there. Miss Frost said they had died of influenza, and Sunday remembers no proper funeral being mentioned. These details turn her departure into more than a personal escape: from outside, she can give testimony about the consequences of the workhouse’s punishments and neglect.

Asked whether Albert Pinnegar was a kind master, Sunday first shows panic, then speaks because she remembers Cissie Burns. She recounts how Pinnegar drew Cissie into work in his office, forced himself on her, and left her pregnant. Miss Frost had promised that Cissie and her baby would be cared for somewhere pleasant, but an asylum carriage arrived instead. Cissie recognized it, feared she would never be released, and was taken away despite protesting that Pinnegar had made her pregnant. Sunday’s grief breaks through as she tells the story; her new freedom gives her room to report not only her own experience but the betrayal of her friend.

Consequences and Significance

The transfer changes Sunday’s position from a child subject to the workhouse’s rules into someone able to speak to an outside listener about its operation. Her account includes not just individual cruelty but the institutional arrangements around it: segregated residents, assigned labour, inadequate food, and confinement without basic comforts. The distinction between money intended for residents and their actual meals gives her testimony particular force.

Later, conditions at the workhouse are reported to have improved: meals are better, fear and bullying have receded, and the new matron has snapped Miss Frost’s split cane and thrown it away. New bedding is also proposed. The account does not establish that Sunday’s testimony alone brought about these changes, but it places her disclosures beside a later description of a less punitive institution. Her departure thus marks both an ending—the loss of the only home she has known—and a shift in what she can do: leave, remember, and make the workhouse’s hidden conditions known.