Pasley’s story as presented in the letter from Elizabeth Gaskell to Charles Dickens is both tragic and dramatic, but there are so many gaps in it that I had to do further research to fill them in. And some of them couldn’t be filled in directly so I had to make educated guesses about such questions as:
- What was Pasley’s life like in the orphanage?
- With the woman who employed her and ‘connived at her seduction’?
- In prison?
- With the woman who had entered the Penitentiary ‘solely to decoy girls into her mode of life?’
- What was this mode of life?
- Why did her employer call a doctor when she fell ill? Doctors cost money after all.
- Why was Pasley so distressed when she saw the doctor in prison?
- Was there a pregnancy?
- If so, what happened to the baby?
- What was Pasley like?
- Had she ever loved anyone?
- What did she think about Elizabeth Gaskell?
And most of all, what did she think about the solution Elizabeth came up with – which was to send her to South Africa?
Since I couldn’t find any further information about Pasley, I researched Victorian Manchester, working women in Victorian England, the prison system, single mothers, orphanages and workhouses.
I also researched Elizabeth Gaskell, of course and will talk about her in my next post.
