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London's Underworld

by Thomas Holmes

August, 1998  [Etext #1420]


Project Gutenberg Etext of London's Underworld, by Thomas Holmes
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LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

by Thomas Holmes
(Secretary of the Howard Association)

(1912)

*

PREFACE

I am hopeful that some of the experiences given in the following
chapters may throw a little light upon some curious but very
serious social problems.  Corporate humanity always has had, and
always will have, serious problems to consider.

The more civilised we become the more complex and serious will be
our problems--unless sensible and merciful yet thorough methods
are adopted for dealing with the evils.  I think that my pages
will show that the methods now in use for coping with some of our
great evils do not lessen, but considerably increase the evils
they seek to cure.

With great diffidence I venture to point out what I conceive to
be reasons for failure, and also to offer some suggestions that,
if adopted, will, I believe, greatly minimise, if not remove,
certain evils.

I make no claim to prophetic wisdom; I know no royal road to
social salvation, nor of any specific to cure all human sorrow
and smart.

But I have had a lengthened and unique experience.  I have
closely observed, and I have deeply pondered.  I have seen,
therefore I ask that the experiences narrated, the statements
made, and the views expressed in this book may receive earnest
consideration, not only from those who have the temerity to read
it, but serious consideration also from our Statesmen and local
authorities, from our Churches and philanthropists, from our men
of business and from men of the world.

For truly we are all deeply concerned in the various matters
which are dealt with in "London's Underworld."
                                                 THOMAS HOLMES.
12, Bedford Road,
Tottenham, N.

*

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I     MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES
II    LONDON'S UNDERWORLD
III   THE NOMADS.
IV    LODGING-HOUSES
V     FURNISHED APARTMENTS
VI    THE DISABLED
VII   WOMEN IN THE UNDERWORLD
VIII  MARRIAGE IN THE UNDERWORLD
IX    BRAINS IN THE UNDERWORLD
X     PLAY IN THE UNDERWORLD
XI    ON THE VERGE OF THE UNDERWORLD
XII   IN PRISONS OFT
XIII  UNEMPLOYED AND UNEMPLOYABLE
XIV   SUGGESTIONS.

*

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD



CHAPTER I

MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES

The odds and ends of humanity, so plentiful in London's great
city, have for many years largely constituted my circle of
friends and acquaintances.

They are strange people, for each of them is, or was, possessed
of some dominating vice, passion, whim or weakness which made him
incapable of fulfilling the ordinary duties of respectable
citizenship.

They had all descended from the Upper World, to live out strange
lives, or die early deaths in the mysterious but all pervading
world below the line.

Some of them I saw, as it were, for a moment only; suddenly out
of the darkness they burst upon me; suddenly the darkness again
received them out of my sight.

But our acquaintance was of sufficient duration to allow me to
acquire some knowledge, and to gain some experience of lives more
than strange, and of characters far removed from the ordinary.

But with others I spent many hours, months, or years as
circumstances warranted, or as opportunities
permitted.  Some of them became my intimates; and though seven
long years have passed since I gave up police-court duties, our
friendship bears the test of time, for they remain my friends and
acquaintances still.

But some have passed away, and others are passing; one by one my
list of friends grows less, and were it not that I, even now,
pick up a new friend or two, I should run the risk of being a
lonely old man.  Let me confess, however, that my friends have
brought me many worries, have caused me much disappointment, have
often made me very angry.  Sometimes, I must own, they have
caused me real sorrow and occasionally feelings of utter despair.
But I have had my compensations, we have had our happy times, we
have even known our merry moments.

Though pathos has permeated all our intercourse, humour and
comedy have never been far away; though sometimes tragedy has
been in waiting.

But over one and all of my friends hung a great mystery, a
mystery that always puzzled and sometimes paralysed me, a mystery
that always set me to thinking.

Now many of my friends were decent and good-hearted fellows; yet
they were outcasts.  Others were intelligent, clever and even
industrious, quite capable of holding their own with respectable
men, still they were helpless.

Others were fastidiously honest in some things, yet they were
persistent rogues who could not see the wrong or folly of
dishonesty; many of them were clear-headed in ninety-nine
directions, but in the hundredth they were muddled if not
mentally blind.

Others had known and appreciated the comforts of refined life,
yet they were happy and content amidst the horror and dirt of a
common lodging-house!  Why was it that these fellows failed, and
were content to fail in life?

What is that little undiscovered something that determines their
lives and drives them from respectable society?

What compensations do they get for all the suffering and
privations they undergo?  I don't know!  I wish that I did!  but
these things I have never been able to discover.

Many times I have put the questions to myself; many times I have
put the questions to my friends, who appear to know about as much
and just as little upon the matter as myself.

They do not realise that in reality they do differ from ordinary
citizens; I realise the difference, but can find no reason for
it.

No!  it is not drink, although a few of them were dipsomaniacs,
for generally they were sober men.

I will own my ignorance, and say that I do not know what that
little something is that makes a man into a criminal instead of
constituting him into a hero.  This I do know:  that but for the
possession of a little something, many of my friends, now
homeless save when they are in prison, would be performing life's
duties in settled and comfortable homes, and would be quite as
estimable citizens as ordinary people.

Probably they would prove better citizens than the majority of
people, for while they possess some inherent weakness, they also
possess in a great degree many estimable qualities which are of
little use in their present life.

These friends of mine not only visit my office and invade my
home, but they turn up at all sorts of inconvenient times and
places.--There is my friend the dipsomaniac, the pocket Hercules,
the man of brain and iron constitution.

Year after year he holds on to his own strange course, neither
poverty nor prison, delirium tremens nor physical injuries serve
to alter him.  He occupies a front seat at a men's meeting on
Sunday afternoon when the bills announce my name.  But he comes
half drunk and in a talkative mood, sometimes in a contradictory
mood, but generally good tempered.  He punctuates my speech with
a loud and emphatic "Hear!  hear!"  and often informs the
audience that "what Mr. Holmes says is quite true!"  The
attendants cannot keep him silent, he tells them that he is my
friend; he makes some claim to being my patron.

Poor fellow!  I speak to him kindly, but incontinently give him
the slip, for I retire by a back way, leaving him to argue my
disappearance in no friendly spirit with the attendants.  Yet I
have spent many happy hours with him when, as sometimes happened,
he was "in his right mind."

I, would like to dwell on the wonders of this man's strange and
fearsome life, but I hasten on to tell of a contrast, for my
friends present many contrasts.

I was hurrying down crowded Bishopsgate at lunch time, lost in
thought, when I felt my hand grasped and a well-known voice say,
"Why!  Mr. Holmes, don't you know me?"

Know him!  I should think I do know him; I am proud to know him,
for I venerate him.  He is only a french polisher and by no means
handsome, his face is furrowed and seamed by care and sorrow, his
hands and clothing are stained with varnish.  Truly he is not
much to look at, but if any one wants an embodiment of pluck and
devotion, of never-failing patience and magnificent love, in my
friend you shall find it!

Born in the slums, he sold matches at seven years of age; at
eight he was in an industrial school; his father was dead, his
mother a drunkard; home he had none!

Leaving school at sixteen he became first a gardener's assistant,
then a gentleman's servant; in this occupation he saved some
money with which he apprenticed himself to french polishing.
From apprentice to journeyman, from journeyman to business on his
own account, were successive steps; he married, and that brought
him among my many acquaintances.

He had a nice home, and two beautiful children, and then that
great destroyer of home life, drink!  had to be reckoned with.
So he came to consult me.  She was a beautiful and cultured woman
and full of remorse.

The stained hands of the french polisher trembled as he signed a
document by which he agreed to pay L1 per week for his wife's
maintenance in an inebriate home for twelve months where she
might have her babe with her.  Bravely he did his part, and at
the end of the year he brought her back to a new and better home,
where the neighbours knew nothing of her past.

For twelve months there was joy in the home, and then a new life
came into it; but with the babe came a relapse; the varnish-
stained man was again at his wits' end.  Once more she entered a
home, for another year he worked and toiled to pay the charges,
and again he provided a new home.  And she came back to a house
that he had bought for her in a new neighbourhood; they now lived
close to me, and my house was open to them.  The story of the
following years cannot be told, for she almost ruined him.  Night
after night after putting the children to bed, he searched the
streets and public-houses for her; sometimes I went with him.
She pawned his clothes, the children's clothing, and even the
boy's fiddle.  He cleaned the house, he cooked the food, he cared
for the children, he even washed and ironed their clothing on
Saturday evening for the coming Sunday.  He marked all the
clothing, he warned all the pawnbrokers.  At length he obtained a
separation order, but tearing it up he again took her home with
him.  She went from bad to worse; even down to the deepest depths
and thence to a rescue home.  He fetched her out, and they
disappeared from my neighbourhood.

So I lost them and often wondered what the end had been.  To-day
he was smiling; he had with him a youth of twenty, a scholarship
boy, the violinist.  He said, "I am just going to pay for his
passage to Canada; he is going to be the pioneer, and perhaps we
shall all join him, she will do better in a new country!"  On
further inquiry I found that she was trying hard, and doing
better than when I lost them.

Thinking she needed greater interest in life, he had bought a
small business for her, but "Mr. Holmes, she broke down!"

Alas!  I knew what "breaking down" meant to the poor fellow, the
heroic fellow I ought to have said.  And so for her he will leave
his kindred, home and friends; he will forsake the business that
he has so slowly and laboriously built up, he will sacrifice
anything in the hope that the air of Canada "will do her good."
let us hope that it may, for her good is all he lives for, and
her good is his religion.

Twenty years of heartbreaking misery have not killed his love or
withered his hope.  Surely love like his cannot fail of its
reward.  And maybe in the new world he will have the happiness
that has been denied him in the old world, and in the evening of
his life he may have the peaceful calm that has hitherto been
denied him.  For this he is seeking a place in the new world
where the partner of his life and the desire of his eyes may not
find it easy to yield to her besetting temptation, where the air
and his steadfast love will "do her good."

But all my acquaintances are not heroes, for I am sorry to say
that my old friend Downy has served his term of penal servitude,
and is at liberty once more to beg or steal.  He is not ashamed
to beg, but I know that he prefers stealing, for he richly enjoys
anything obtained "on the cross," and cares little for the fruits
of honest labour.

Downy therefore never crosses my doorstep, and when I hold
communication with him he stands on the doorstep where I bar his
entrance.

Yet I like the vagabond, for he is a humorous rascal, and though
I know that I ought to be severe with him, I fail dismally when I
try to exhort him.  "Now, look here, old man," he will say, "stop
preaching; what are you going to do to help a fellow; do you
think I live this life for fun" and his eyes twinkle!  When I
tell him that I am sure of it, he roars.  Yes, I am certain of
it, Downy is a thief for the fun of it; he is the worst and
cleverest sneak I have the privilege of knowing; and yet there is
such audacity about him and his actions that even his most
reprehensible deeds do not disgust me.

He is of the spare and lean kind, but were he fatter he might
well pose as a modern Jack Falstaff, for his one idea is summed
up in Falstaff's words:  "Where shall we take a purse to-night?"
Downy, of course, obtained full remission of his sentence; he did
all that was required of him in prison, and so reduced his five
years' sentence by fifteen months.  But I feel certain that he
did nor spend three years and nine months in a convict
establishment without robbing a good many, and the more difficult
he found the task, the more he would enjoy it.

I expect his education is now complete, so I have to beware of
Downy, for he would glory in the very thought of "besting" me, so
I laugh and joke with the rascal, but keep him at arm's length.
We discuss matters on the doorstep; if he looks ill I have pity
on him, and subsidise him.  Sometimes his merry look changes to a
half-pathetic look, and he goes away to his "doss house,"
realising that after all his "besting" he might have done
better.

Some of my friends have crossed the river, but as I think of them
they come back and bid me tell their stories.  Here is my old
friend the famous chess-player, whose books are the poetry of
chess, but whose life was more than a tragedy.  I need not say
where I met him; his face was bruised and swollen, his jawbone
was fractured, he was in trouble, so we became friends.  He was a
strange fellow, and though he visited my house many times, he
would neither eat nor drink with us.  He wore no overcoat even in
the most bitter weather, he carried no umbrella, neither would he
walk under one, though the rains descended and the floods came!

He was a fatalist pure and simple, and took whatever came to him
in a thoroughly fatalist spirit.  "My dear Holmes," he would say,
"why do you break your heart about me?  Let me alone, let us be
friends; you are what you are because you can't help it; you
can't be anything else even if you tried.  I am what I am for the
same reason.  You get your happiness, I get mine.  Do me a good
turn when you can, but don't reason with me; let us enjoy each
other's company and take things as they are."

I took him on his own terms; I saw much of him, and when he was
in difficulties I helped him out.

For a time I became his keeper, and when he had chess engagements
to fulfil I used to deliver him carriage paid to his destination
wherever it might be.  He always and most punctiliously repaid
any monetary obligation I had conferred upon him, for in that
respect I found him the soul of honour, poor though he was!  As I
think of him I see him dancing and yelling in the street,
surrounded by a crowd of admiring East Enders, I see him bruised
and torn hurried off to the police station, I see him standing
before the magistrate awaiting judgment.  What compensation
dipsomania gave him I know not, but that he did get some kind of
wild joy I am quite sure.  For I see him feverish from one
debauch, but equally feverish with the expectation of another.

With his wife it was another story, and I can see her now full of
anxiety and dread, with no relief and no hope, except, dreadful
as it may seem, his death!  For then, to use her own expression,
"she would know the worst."  Poor fellow!  the last time I saw
him he was nearing the end.  In an underground room I sat by his
bedside, and a poor bed it was!

As he lay propped up by pillows he was working away at his
beloved chess, writing chess notes, and solving and explaining
problems for very miserable payments,

I knew the poverty of that underground room; and was made
acquainted with the intense disappointment of both husband and
wife when letters were received that did not contain the much-
desired postal orders.  And so passed a genius; but a
dipsomaniac!  A man of brilliant parts and a fellow of infinite
jest, who never did justice to his great powers, but who crowded
a continuous succession of tragedies into a short life.  I am
glad to think that I did my best for him, even though I failed.
He has gone!  but he still has a place in my affections and
occupies a niche in the hall of my memory.

I very much doubt whether I am able to forget any one of the
pieces of broken humanity that have companied with me.  I do not
want to forget them, for truth to tell they have been more
interesting to me than merely respectable people, and infinitely
more interesting than some good people.

But I am afraid that my tastes are bad, and my ideals low, for I
am always happier among the very poor or the outcasts than I am
with the decent and well behaved.

A fellow named Reid has been calling on me repeatedly; an
Australian by birth, he outraged the law so often that he got a
succession of sentences, some of them being lengthy.  He tried
South Africa with a like result; South Africa soon had enough of
him, and after two sentences he was deported to England, where he
looked me up.

He carries with him in a nice little case a certified and
attested copy of all his convictions, more than twenty in number.
He produces this without the least shame, almost with pride, and
with the utmost confidence that it would prove a ready passport
to my affection.

I talk to him; he tells me of his life, of Australia and South
Africa; he almost hypnotises me, for he knows so much.  We get on
well together till he produces the "attested copy," and then the
spell is broken, and the humour of it is too much for me, so I
laugh.

He declares that he wants work, honest work, and he considers
that his "certificate" vouches for his bona fides.  This is
undoubtedly true, but nevertheless I expect that it will be
chiefly responsible for his free passage back to Australia after
he has sampled the quality of English prisons.

My friends and acquaintances meet me or rather I meet them, in
undesirable places; I never visit a prison without coming across
one or more of them, and they embarrass me greatly.

A few Sundays ago I was addressing a large congregation of men in
a London prison.  As I stood before them I was dismayed to see
right in the front rank an old and persistent acquaintance whom I
thoroughly and absolutely disliked, and he knew it, for on more
than one occasion I had good reason for expressing a decided
opinion about him.  A smile of gleeful but somewhat mischievous
satisfaction spread over his face; he folded his arms across his
breast, he looked up at me and quite held me with his glittering
eye.

I realised his presence, I felt that his eye was upon me, I saw
that he followed every word.  He quite unnerved me till I
stumbled and tripped.  Then he smiled in his evil way.

I could not get rid of his eyes, and sometimes I half appealed to
him with a pitiful look to take them off me.  But it was no use,
he still gazed at me and through me.  So thinking of him and
looking at him I grew more and more confused.

The clock fingers would not move fast enough for me.  I had
elected to speak on sympathy, brotherhood and mutual help.  And
this fellow to whom I had refused help again and again knew my
feelings, and made the most of his opportunity.

But my friend will come and see me when he is once more out of
prison.  He will want to discuss my address of that particular
Sunday afternoon.  He will quote my words, he will remind me
about sympathy and mutual help, he will hope to leave me
rejoicing in the possession of a few shillings.

But that will be the hour of my triumph; for then I will rejoice
in the contemplation of his disappointment as my door closes upon
him.  But if I understand him aright his personal failure will
not lead him to despair, for he will appear again and again and
sometimes by deputy, and he will put others as cunning as himself
on my track.

Some time ago I was tormented with a succession of visitors of
this description; my door was hardly free of one when another
appeared.  They all told the same tale:  "they had been advised
to come to me, for I was kind to men who had been in prison."

They got no practical kindness from me, but rather some wholesome
advice.  I found afterwards from a lodging-house habitue that
this man had been taking his revenge by distributing written
copies of my name and address to all the lodging-house inmates,
and advising them to call on me.  And I have not the slightest
doubt that the rascal watched them come to my door, enjoyed their
disappointment, and gloried in my irritation.

Yes, I have made the acquaintance of many undesirable fellows.
and our introduction to each other has sometimes been brought
about in a very strange manner.  Sometimes they have forced
themselves upon me and insisted upon my seeing much of them, and
"knowing all about them" they would tell me of their struggles
and endeavours to "go straight" and would put their difficulties
and hopes before me.  Specious clever rascals many of them were,
far too clever for me, as I sometimes found out to my cost.  One
young fellow who has served a well-earned and richly merited
sentence of five years' penal servitude, quite overpowered me
with his good intentions and professions of rectitude.  "No more
prison for me," he would say; he brought his wife and children to
see me, feeling sure that they would form a passport to my
sympathy and pocket.

He was not far wrong, for I substantially and regularly helped
the wife.  I had strong misgivings about the fellow, consequently
what help I gave I took care went direct to his wife.

Sometimes he would call at my office, and with tears would thank
me for the help given to his wife and children.  I noticed a
continual improvement in his clothing and appearance till he
became quite a swell.  I felt a bit uneasy, for I knew that he
was not at work.  I soon discovered, or rather the police
discovered that he had stolen a lot of my office note-paper of
which he had made free use, and when arrested on another charge
several blank cheques which had been abstracted from my cheque
book were found upon him.  He had made himself so well known to
and familiar with the caretaker of the chambers, that one night
when he appeared with a bag of tools to put "Mr. Holmes' desk
right," no questions were asked, and he coolly and quite
deliberately, with the office door open, operated in his own
sweet way.  Fortunately, when trying the dodge in another set of
chambers, he was arrested in the act, and my blank cheques among
many others were found upon him.

Another term of penal servitude has stopped his career and put an
end to, I will not say a friendship but an acquaintance, that I
am not at any rate anxious to renew.

They come a long way to see me do some of my friends, and put
themselves to some trouble in the matter, and not a little
expense if they are to be believed.  Why they do so I cannot
imagine, for sometimes after a long and close questioning I fail
to find any satisfactory reason for their doing so.  I have
listened to many strange stories, and have received not a few
startling confessions!  Some of my friends have gone comforted
away when they had made a clean breast and circumstantially given
me the details of some great crime or evil that they had
committed.  I never experienced any difficulty, or felt the least
compunction in granting them plenary absolution; I never betrayed
them to the police, for I knew that of the crime confessed they
were as guiltless as myself.  Of course there is a good deal of
pathos about their actions, but I always felt a glow of pleasure
when I could send poor deluded people away comforted; and I am
sure that they really believed me when I told them that under no
circumstances would I betray their confidence, or acquaint the
police without first consulting them.  I never had any difficulty
in keeping my promise, though sometimes my friends would, after a
long absence, remind me of it.

But occasionally one of my friends has compelled me to seek the
advice of an astute detective, for very clever rogues, real and
dangerous criminals, have been my companions and have boasted of
my friendship, whilst pursuing a deplorably criminal course.  But
I never had the slightest compunction with regard to them when I
knew beyond doubt what they were at.  Friends and associates of
criminals have more than once waited on me for the purpose of
enlisting my sympathy and help for one of their colleagues who
was about to be released from prison, and the vagabonds have
actually informed detectives that "Mr. Holmes was going to take
him in hand."  What they really meant was, that they had taken
Mr. Holmes in hand for the purpose of lulling the just
suspicions of the police.  One day not long ago a woman,
expensively dressed and possessed of a whole mass of flaxen hair,
burst into my office.  She was very excited, spoke good English
with an altogether exaggerated French accent, and her action was
altogether grotesque and stereotyped.  She informed me that she
had that morning come from Paris to consult me.  When I inquired
what she knew about me and how she got my address, she said that
a well-known journalist and a member of Parliament whom she had
met in Paris had advised her to consult with me about the future
of a man shortly to be discharged from prison.  As during the
whole of my life I had not met or corresponded with the brilliant
gentleman she referred to, I felt doubtful, but kept silent.  So
on she went with her story, first, however, offering me a sum of
money for the benefit of as consummate a villain as ever
inhabited a prison cell.

I declined the money and refused to have anything to do with the
matter till I had had further information.  Briefly her story was
as follows:  The man in whom she and others were interested was
serving a term of three years for burglary.  He was an educated
man, married, and father of two children.  His wife loved him
dearly, and his two children were "pretty, oh, so pretty!"  They
were afraid that his wife would receive him back again with open
arms, and that other children might result.  They were anxious
that this should be prevented, for they felt, she was sorry to
say, that he might again revert to crime, that other
imprisonments might ensue, and that "the poor, poor little
thing," meaning the wife, might be exposed to more and worse
suffering than she had already undergone.

Would I receive a sum of money on his account and arrange for him
to leave England?  They felt that to be the wisest course, for
"he is so clever, and can soon build up a home for her when he is
away from his companions."  Of his ability I had subsequently
plenty of proof, and I have no reason to doubt her statement that
he could soon "build up a home."  He could very quickly--and a
luxurious home, too!

The wife was not to be considered at all in the matter, but money
would be sent to me from time to time to help the "poor little
thing and her children!"  I was interested, but I said to myself,
"This is much too good," and the ready journey from Paris rather
staggered me.  I put a few simple questions, she pledged me to
secrecy.  I told her that I would ask the prison authorities to
send him to me on his discharge.

"I so please, I now go back to Paris; I come again and I bring
you money," she said, as she shook her furs and took herself and
her flaxen hair to somewhere else than Paris, so I felt
persuaded.

Two days before the prisoner's discharge she burst in again,
huffy head, furs and gesticulation as before.  "I come from Paris
this morning, I bring you money."  I was not present, but I had
previously warned my assistant not to receive any money.  The gay
Parisian was informed that no money could be received, but she
promptly put two sovereigns on the desk and disappeared---but not
to Paris!

He stood before me at last, a little fellow, smart looking,
erect, self-satisfied and self-reliant.  I told him of the two
sovereigns and the fluffy hair, of the good intentions of his
Parisian friend.  I spoke hopefully of a new life in a new
country and of the future of his wife and children; he never
blanched.  He was quite sure he knew no French lady with fluffy
hair; he had no friends, no accomplices; he wanted work, honest
work; he intended to make amends for the past; he "would build up
a home" for his wife and children.

I saw much of him; we lunched together and we smoked together,
and he talked a good deal.  His wife fell ill owing to very hard
work, and I befriended her.  He accepted the two pounds and asked
for more!  He was a citizen of the world, and spoke more than one
language.  Our companionship continued for some months, and then
my friend and myself had to sever our connection.

He was one of a gang of very clever thieves, who operated on a
large scale, and who for cool audacity and originality were, I
think, almost unequalled!

They engaged expensive suites of rooms or flats, furnished them
most expensively on credit or the hire system, insured the goods
against burglary, promptly burgled themselves, sold the goods,
realised the insurance, and then vanished to repeat their
proceedings elsewhere.

So clever were they at the business that costly but portable
goods were freely submitted to their tender mercies.  They
invariably engaged rooms that possessed a "skylight."  It was my
friend's business to do the burgling, and this he did by
carefully removing the glass from the skylight, being careful not
to break it; needless to say, he removed the glass from the
inside and carefully deposited it on the roof, the valuables
making their exit through the room door and down the staircase in
broad daylight.

My friend, who spoke Dutch fluently and accurately, has, I
understood, sold to English merchants whose probity was beyond
dispute the proceeds of some of his "firm's" operations.  This
game went on for a time, the Parisian lady with the false hair
being one of the confederates.  He disappeared, however, and I am
glad to think that for some considerable time society will be
safeguarded from the woman with the flaxen hair, and the
operations of a clever scoundrel.

I am glad to say that the number of my friends and acquaintances
who have seriously tried to "best" me form but a small proportion
of the whole.  Generally they have, I believe, been animated with
good intentions, though the failure to carry them out has
frequently been manifest and deplorable.

I am persuaded that weakness is more disastrous to the world than
absolute wickedness, for nothing in the whole of my life's
experience has taken more out of me, and given me so much
heartbreaking disappointment as my continued efforts on behalf of
really well-intentioned individuals, who could not stand alone
owing to their lack of grit and moral backbone.  For redemptive
purposes I would rather, a hundred times rather, have to deal
with a big sinner than with a human jellyfish, a flabby man who
does no great wrong, but on the other hand does not the slightest
good.

But, as I have already said, though all my friends and
acquaintances were dwellers in a dark land, not all of them were
"known to the police"; indeed, many of them ought to be
classified as "known to the angels," for their real goodness has
again and again rebuked and inspired me.

Oh the patience, fortitude and real heroism I have met with in my
acquaintances among the poor.  Strength in time of trial, virtue
amidst obscenity, suffering long drawn out and perpetual self-
denial are characteristics that abound in many of my poorest
friends, and in some of the chapters that are to follow I shall
tell more fully of them, but just now I am amongst neither
sinners nor saints, but with my friends "in motley."  I mean the
men and women who have occupied so much of my time and
endeavours, but whose position I knew was hopeless.

How they interested me, those demented friends of mine!  they
were a perpetual wonder to me, and I am glad to remember that I
never passed hard judgment upon them, or gave them hard words.
And I owe much to them, a hundred times more than the whole of
them are indebted to me; for I found that I could not take an
interest in any one of them, nor make any fruitless, any perhaps
foolish effort to truly help them, without doing myself more good
than I could possibly have done to them.  Fifteen years I stood
by, and stood up for demented Jane Cakebread, and we became
inseparably connected.  She abused me right royally, and her
power of invective was superb.  When she was not in prison she
haunted my house and annoyed my neighbours.  She patronised me
most graciously when she accepted a change of clothing from me;
she lived in comparative luxury when I provided lodgings for her;
she slept out of doors when I did not.

She bestowed her affections on me and made me heir to her non-
existent fortune; she proposed marriage to me, although she
frequently met and admired my good wife.  All this and more, year
after year!

Poor old Jane!  I owe much to her, and I am quite willing, nay,
anxious, to say that in a great measure Jane Cakebread was the
making of Thomas Holmes.

Years have passed since we laid Jane gently to rest, but she
comes back to me and dominates me whenever I mentally call my old
friends together.  Her voice is the loudest, her speech the most
voluble, and her manner the most assertive of all my motley
friends.  They are all gathering around me as I write.  My friend
who teaches music by colour is here, my friend with his secret
invention that will dispense with steam and electricity is here
too; "Little Ebbs" the would-be policeman is here too; the prima
donna whose life was more than a tragedy, the architect with his
wonderful but never accepted designs, the broken artist with his
pictures, the educated but non-sober lady who could convert
plaster models into marble statuary are all with me.  The
unspeakably degraded parson smoking cigarettes, his absence of
shirt hidden by a rusty cassock, lolls in my easy-chair; my
burglar friend who had "done" forty years and was still asking
for more, they are all around me!  And my dipsomaniac friends
have come too!  I hear them talking and arguing, when a strident
voice calls out, "No arguing!  no arguing!  argument spoils
everything!"  and Jane stops the talk of others by occupying the
platform herself and recites a chapter from the book of Job.  I
am living it all over again!

And now troop in my suffering friends.  Here is the paralysed
woman of thirty-five who has for twenty years lain in bed the
whiles her sister has worked incessantly to maintain her!  Here
is my widow friend who after working fifteen hours daily for
years was dragged from the Lea.  As she sits and listens her
hands are making matchboxes and throwing them over her shoulder,
one, two, three, four!  right, left!  they go to the imaginary
heaps upon the imaginary beds.  While blighted children are
crawling upon the floor looking up at me with big eyes.  Here is
my patient old friend who makes "white flowers" although she is
eighty years of age, and still keeps at it, though, thank God,
she gets the old-age pension.

Now come in the young men and maidens, the blighted blossoms of
humanity who wither and die before the time of fruition, for that
fell disease consumption has laid its deadly hand upon them.

Oh!  the mystery of it all, the sorrow and madness of it all!  I
open my door and they file out.  Some back to the unseen world,
some back to the lower depths of this world!  Surely they are a
motley lot, are my friends and acquaintances; they are as varied
as humanity itself.  So they represent to me all the moods and
tenses of humanity, all its personal, social and industrial
problems.  I have a pitiful heart; I try to keep a philosophic
mind; I am cheery with them; I am doubtful, I am hopeful!

I never give help feeling sure that I have done wisely, I never
refuse the worst and feel sure that I have done well.  I live
near the heart of humanity, I count its heart-beats, I hear its
throbs.

I realise some of the difficulties that beset us, I see some of
the heights and depths to which humanity can ascend or descend.
I have learned that the greatest factors in life are kindly
sympathy, brotherly love, a willingness to believe the best of
the worst, and to have an infinite faith in the ultimate triumph
of good!



CHAPTER II

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

London's great underworld to many may be an undiscovered country.
To me it is almost as familiar as my own fireside; twenty-five
years of my life have been spent amongst its inhabitants, and
their lives and circumstances have been my deep concern.

Sad and weary many of those years have been, but always full of
absorbing interest.  Yet I have found much that gave me pleasure,
and it is no exaggeration when I say that some of my happiest
hours have been spent among the poorest inhabitants of the great
underworld.

But whether happy or sorrowful, I was always interested, for the
strange contrasts and the ever-varying characteristics and lives
of the inhabitants always compelled attention, interest and
thought.  There is much in this underworld to terrorise, but
there is also much to inspire.

Horrible speech and strange tongues are heard in it, accents of
sorrow and bursts of angry sound prevail in it.

Drunkenness, debauchery, crime and ignorance are never absent;
and in it men and women grown old in sin and crime spend their
last evil days.  The whining voice of the professional mendicant
is ever heard in its streets, for its poverty-stricken
inhabitants readily respond to every appeal for help.

So it is full of contrasts; for everlasting toil goes on, and the
hum of industry ever resounds.  Magnificent self-reliance is
continually exhibited, and self-denial of no mean order is the
rule.

The prattle of little children and the voice of maternal love
make sweet music in its doleful streets, and glorious devotion
dignifies and illumines the poorest homes.

But out of the purlieus of this netherworld strange beings issue
when the shades of evening fall.

Men whose hands are against every man come forth to deeds of
crime, like beasts to seek their prey!  Women, fearsome
creatures, whose steps lead down to hell, to seek their male
companions.

Let us stand and watch!

Here comes a poor, smitten, wretched old man; see how he hugs the
rags of his respectability; his old frayed frock-coat is buttoned
tightly around him, and his outstretched hands tell that he is
eager for the least boon that pity can bestow.  He has found that
the way of the transgressor is hard; he has kissed the bloom of
pleasure's painted lips, he has found them pale as death!

But others follow, and hurry by.  And a motley lot they are;
figure and speech, complexion and dress all combine to create
dismay; but they have all one common characteristic.  They want
money!  and are not particular about the means of getting it.
Now issue forth an innumerable band who during the day have been
sleeping off the effects of last night's debauch.  With eager
steps, droughty throats and keen desire they seek the wine cup
yet again.

Now come fellows, young and middle-aged, who dare not be seen by
day, for whom the police hold "warrants," for they have absconded
from wives and children, leaving them chargeable to the parish.

Here are men who have robbed their employers, here young people
of both sexes who have drained Circe's cup and broken their
parents' hearts.

Surely it is a strange and heterogeneous procession that issues
evening by evening from the caves and dens of London's
underworld.  But notice there is also a returning procession!
For as the sun sinks to rest, sad-faced men seek some cover where
they may lie down and rest their weary bones; where perchance
they may sleep and regain some degree of passive courage that
will enable them, at the first streak of morning light, to rise
and begin again a disheartening round of tramp, tramp, searching
for work that is everlastingly denied them.  Hungry and footsore,
their souls fainting within them, they seek the homes where wives
and children await their return with patient but hopeless
resignation.

Take notice if you will of the places they enter, for surely the
beautiful word "home" is desecrated if applied to most of their
habitations.  Horrid places within and without, back to back and
face to face they stand.

At their doorway death stands ready to strike.  In the murky
light of little rooms filled with thick air child-life has
struggled into existence; up and down their narrow stairs patient
endurance and passive hopelessness ever pass and repass.

Small wonder that the filthy waters of a neighbouring canal woo
and receive so many broken hearts and emaciated bodies.

But the procession now changes its sex, for weary widowed women
are returning to children who for many hours have been lacking a
mother's care, for mothers in the underworld must work if
children must eat.

So the weary widows have been at the wash-tubs all day long, and
are coming home with two shillings hardly earned.  They call in
at the dirty general shop, where margarine, cheese, bread, tinned
meat and firewood are closely commingled in the dank air.

A loaf, a pennyworth of margarine, a pennyworth of tea, a bundle
of firewood, half a pound of sugar, a pint of lamp-oil exhaust
their list of purchases, for the major part of their earnings is
required for the rent.

So they climb their stairs, they feed the children, put them
unwashed to bed, do some necessary household work, and then
settle down themselves in some shape, without change of attire,
that they may rest and be ready for the duties of the ensuing
day.  Perhaps sweet oblivion will come even to them.  "Blessings
on the man who invented sleep," cried Sancho Panza, and there is
a world of truth in his ecstatic exclamation, "it wraps him round
like a garment."

Aye, that it does, for what would the poor weary women and men of
London's underworld do without it?  What would the sick and
suffering be without it?  In tiny rooms where darkness is made
visible by penny-worths of oil burned in cheap and nasty lamps,
there is no lack of pain and suffering, and no lack of patient
endurance and passive heroism.

As night closes in and semi-darkness reigns around, when the
streets are comparatively silent, when children's voices are no
longer heard, come with me and explore!

It is one o'clock a.m., and we go down six steps into what is
facetiously termed a "breakfast parlour"; here we find a man and
woman about sixty years of age.  The woman is seated at a small
table on which stands a small, evil-smelling lamp, and the man is
seated at another small table, but gets no assistance from the
lamp; he works in comparative gloom, for he is almost blind; he
works by touch.

For fifty years they have been makers of artificial flowers; both
are clever artists, and the shops of the West End have fairly
blazed with the glory of their roses.  Winsome lassie's and
serene ladies have made themselves gay with their flowers.

There they sit, as they have sat together for thirty years.
Neither can read or write, but what can be done in flowers they
can do.  Long hours and dark rooms have made the man almost
blind.

He suffers also from heart disease and dropsy.  He cannot do
much, but he can sit, and sit, while his wife works and works,
for in the underworld married women must work if dying husbands
are to be cared for.

So for fifteen hours daily and nightly they sit at their roses!
Then they lie down on the bed we see in the corner, but sleep
does not come, for asthma troubles him, and he must be attended
and nursed.

Shall we pay another visit to that underworld room?  Come, then.
Two months have passed away, the evil-smelling lamp is still
burning, the woman still sits at the table, but no rose-leaves
are before her; she is making black tulips.  On the bed lies a
still form with limbs decently smoothed and composed; the poor
blind eyes are closed for ever.  He is awaiting the day of
burial, and day after day the partner of his life and death is
sitting, and working, for in this underworld bereaved wives must
work if husbands are to be decently buried.  The black tulips she
will wear as mourning for him; she will accompany his poor body
to the cemetery, and then return to live alone and to finish her
work alone.

But let us continue our midnight explorations, heedless of the
men and women now returning from their nightly prowl who jostle
us as they pass.

We enter another room where the air is thick and makes us sick
and faint.  We stand at the entrance and look around; we see
again the evil-smelling lamp, and again a woman at work at a
small table, and she too is a widow!

She is making cardboard boxes, and pretty things they are.  Two
beds are in the room, and one contains three, and the other two
children.  On the beds lie scores of dainty boxes.  The outside
parts lie on one bed, and the insides on the other.  They are
drying while the children sleep; by and by they will be put
together, tied in dozens, and next morning taken to the factory.
But of their future history we dare not inquire.

The widow speaks to us, but her hands never rest; we notice the
celerity of her movements, the dreadful automatic certainty of
her touch is almost maddening; we wait and watch, but all in
vain, for some false movement that shall tell us she is a human
and not a machine.  But no, over her shoulder to the bed on the
left side, or over her shoulder to the bed on her right side, the
boxes fly, and minute by minute and hour by hour the boxes will
continue to grow till her task is completed.  Then she will put
them together, tie them in dozens, and lay herself down on that
bed that contains the two children.

Need we continue?  I think not, but it may give wings to
imagination when I say that in London's underworld there are at
least 50,000 women whose earnings do not exceed three halfpence
per hour, and who live under conditions similar to those
described.  Working, working, day and night, when they have work
to do, practically starving when work is scarce.

The people of the underworld are not squeamish, they talk freely,
and as a matter of course about life and death.  Their children
are at an early age made acquainted with both mysteries; a dead
child and one newly born sometimes occupy a room with other
children.

People tell me of the idleness of the underworld and there is
plenty of it; but what astonishes me is the wonderful, the
persistent, but almost unrewarded toil that is unceasingly going
on, in which even infants share.

Come again with me in the day-time, climb with me six dark and
greasy flights of stairs, for the underworld folk are sometimes
located near the sky.

In this Bastille the passages are very narrow, and our shoulders
sometimes rub the slimy moisture from the walls.  On every
landing in the semi-darkness we perceive galleries running to
right and to left.  On the little balconies, one on every floor,
children born in this Bastille are gasping for air through iron
bars.

There are three hundred suites of box rooms in this Bastille,
which means that three hundred families live like ants in it.
Let us enter No. 250.  Time:  3.30 p.m.  Here lives a blind
matchbox-maker and his wife with their seven children.  The
father has gone to take seven gross of boxes to the factory, for
the mother cannot easily climb up and down the stone stairs of
the Bastille.  So she sits everlastingly at the boxes, the beds
are covered with them, the floor is covered with them, and the
air is thick with unpleasant moisture.

One, two, three, four, there they go over her shoulder to the bed
or floor; on the other side of the table sits a child of four,
who, with all the apathy of an adult if not with equal celerity,
gums or pastes the labels for his mother.  The work must be "got
in," and the child has been kept at home to take his share in the
family toil.

In this Bastille the children of the underworld live and die, for
death reaps here his richest harvest.  Never mind!  the funeral
of one child is only a pageant for others.  Here women work and
starve, and here childhood, glorious childhood, is withered and
stricken; but here, too, the wicked, the vile, the outcast and
the thief find sanctuary.

The strange mixture of it all bewilders me, fascinates me,
horrifies me, and yet sometimes it encourages me and almost
inspires me.  For I see that suffering humanity possesses in no
mean degree those three great qualities, patience, fortitude and
endurance.

For perchance these three qualities will feel and grope for a
brighter life and bring about a better day.

Though in all conscience funerals are numerous enough in this bit
of the underworld, and though the conditions are bad enough to
destroy its inhabitants, yet the people live on and on, for even
death itself sometimes seems reluctant to befriend them.

Surely there is nothing in the underworld so extraordinary as the
defiance flung in the face of death by its poor, feeble, ill-
nourished, suffering humanity.

According to every well-known rule they ought to die, and not to
linger upon the order of their dying.  But linger they do, and in
their lingering exhibit qualities which ought to regenerate the
whole race.  It is wonderful upon what a small amount of
nourishment humanity can exist, and still more wonderful under
what conditions it can survive.

Shall we look in at a house that I know only too well?  Come
again, then!

Here sits an aged widow of sixty-four at work on infants' shoes,
a daughter about twenty-six is at work on infants' socks.
Another daughter two years older is lying on her back in an
invalid's chair, and her deft fingers are busily working, for
although paralysis has taken legs, the upper part of her body has
been spared.  The three live together and pool their earnings;
they occupy two very small rooms, for which they pay five
shillings weekly.

After paying twopence each to avoid parish funerals, they have
five shillings left weekly for food, firing, clothing and
charity.  Question them, and you will learn how they expend those
five shillings.  "How much butter do you allow yourselves during
the week?"  The widow answers:  "Two ounces of shilling butter
once a week."  "Yes, mother," says the invalid, "on a Saturday."
She knew the day of the week and the hour too, when her eyes
brightened at the sight of three-halfpenny worth of butter.
Truly they fared sumptuously on the Sabbath, for they tasted
"shilling butter."

But they refuse to die, and I have not yet discovered the point
at which life ebbs out for lack of food, for when underworld folk
die of starvation we are comforted by the assurance that they
died "from natural causes."

I suppose that if the four children all over eight years of age,
belonging to a widow machinist well known to me, had died, their
death would have been attributed to "natural causes."  She had
dined them upon one pennyworth of stewed tapioca without either
sugar or milk.  Sometimes the children had returned to school
without even that insult to their craving stomachs.  But "natural
causes" is the euphonious name given by intelligent juries to
starvation, when inquests are held in the underworld.  Herein is
a mystery:  in the land of plenty, whose granaries, depots,
warehouses are full to repletion, and whose countless ships are
traversing every ocean, bringing the food and fruits of the earth
to its shores, starvation is held to be a natural cause of death.

Here let me say, and at once, that the two widows referred to are
but specimens of a very large company, and that from among my own
acquaintances I can with a very short notice assemble one
thousand women whose lives are as pitiful, whose food is as
limited, whose burdens are as heavy, but whose hearts are as
brave as those I have mentioned.

The more I know of these women and their circumstances, the more
and still more I am amazed.  How they manage to live at all is a
puzzle, but they do live, and hang on to life like grim death
itself.  I believe I should long for death were I placed under
similar conditions to those my underworld friends sustain without
much complaining.

They have, of course, some interests in life, especially when the
children are young, but for themselves they are largely content
to be, to do, and to suffer.

Very simple and very limited are their ambitions; they are
expressed in the wish that their children may rise somehow or
other from the world below to the world above, where food is more
plentiful and labour more remunerative.  But my admiration and
love for the honest workers below the line are leading me to
forget the inhabitants that are far removed from honesty, and to
whom industry is a meaningless word.

There are many of them, and a mixed lot they are.  The deformed,
the crippled and the half-witted abound.  Rogues and rascals,
brutes in human form, and human forms that are harking back to
the brute abound also.  With some we may sound the lowest depths,
with others we may ascend to glorious heights.  This is the
wonder of underworld.  Some of its inhabitants have come down,
and are going lower still.  Others are struggling with slippery
feet to ascend the inclined plane that leads to the world above.
Some in their misery are feebly hoping for a hand that will
restore them to the world they have for ever lost!

And there are others who find their joy in this netherworld!  For
here every restraint may be abandoned and every decency may be
outraged.  Here are men and women whose presence casts a blight
upon everything fresh and virtuous that comes near them.

Here the children grow old before their time, for like little
cubs they lie huddled upon each other when the time for sleep
comes.  Not for them the pretty cot, the sweet pillow and clean
sheets!  but the small close room, the bed or nest on the floor,
the dirty walls and the thick air.  Born into it, breathing it as
soon as their little lungs begin to operate, thick, dirty air
dominates their existence or terminates their lives.

"Glorious childhood" has no place here, to sweet girlhood it is
fatal, and brave boyhood stands but little chance.

Though here and there one and another rise superior to
environment and conditions, the great mass are robbed of the full
stature of their bodies, of their health, their brain power and
their moral life.

But their loss is not the nation's gain, for the nation loses
too!  For the nation erects huge buildings falsely called
workhouses, tremendous institutions called prisons.  Asylums in
ever-increasing numbers are required to restrain their feeble
bodies, and still feebler minds!

Let us look at the contrasts!  Their houses are so miserably
supplied with household goods that even a rash and optimistic man
would hesitate before offering a sovereign for an entire home,
yet pawnshops flourish exceedingly, although the people possess
nothing worth pawning.  Children are half fed, for the earnings
of parents are too meagre to allow a sufficient quantity of
nourishing food; but public-houses do a roaring trade on the
ready-money principle, while the chandler supplies scraps of food
and half-ounces of tea on very long credit.

Money, too, is scarce, very scarce, yet harpies grow rich by
lending the inhabitants small sums from a shilling up to a pound
at a rate of interest that would stagger and paralyse the
commercial world.  Doctors must needs to content with a miserable
remuneration for their skilled and devoted services, when paid at
all!  but burial societies accumulate millions from a weekly
collection of ill-spared coppers.  Strangest of all, undertakers
thrive exceedingly, but the butcher and baker find it hard work
to live.

Yes, the underworld of London is full of strange anomalies and
queer contradictions.  When I survey it I become a victim to
strange and conflicting emotions.

Sometimes I am disgusted with the dirt and helplessness of the
people.  Sometimes I burn with indignation at their wrongs.  But
when I enter their houses I feel that I would like to be an
incendiary on a wholesale scale.  Look again!  I found the boot-
machinist widow that I have mentioned, in Bethnal Green; she was
ill in bed, lying in a small room; ill though she was, and
miniature as the room was, two girls aged twelve and fourteen
slept with her and shared her bed, while a youth and a boy slept
in a coal-hole beneath the stairs.  Nourishment and rest somewhat
restored the woman, and to give her and the children a chance I
took for them a larger house.  I sent them bedding and furniture,
the house being repaired and repainted, for the previous tenant
had allowed it to take fire, but the fire had not been successful
enough!  I called on the family at midday, and as I stood in the
room, bugs dropped from the ceiling upon me.  The widow's work
was covered with them; night and day the pests worried the
family, there was no escaping them; I had to fly, and again
remove the family.  How can the poor be clean and self-respecting
under such conditions!

For be it known this is the normal condition of thousands of
human habitations in London's great underworld.  How can
cleanliness and self-respect survive?  Yet sometimes they do
survive, but at a terrible cost, for more and still more of the
weekly income must go in rent, which means less and still less
for food and clothing.  Sometimes the grossness and impurity, the
ignorance and downright wickedness of the underworld appal and
frighten me.

But over this I must draw a veil, for I dare not give
particulars; I think, and think, and ask myself again and again
what is to be the end of it all!  Are we to have two distinct
races!  those below and those above?  Is Wells' prophecy to come
true; will the one race become uncanny, loathsome abortions with
clammy touch and eyes that cannot face the light?  Will the other
become pretty human butterflies?  I hope not, nay, I am sure that
Wells is wrong!  For there is too much real goodness in the upper
world and too much heroism and endurance in the underworld to
permit such an evolution to come about.

But it is high time that such a possibility was seriously
considered.  It is high time, too, that the lives and
necessities, the wrongs and the rights of even the gross poor in
the underworld were considered.

For the whole social and industrial system is against them.
Though many of them are parasites, preying upon society or upon
each other, yet even they become themselves the prey of other
parasites, who drain their blood night and day.

So I ask in all seriousness, is it not high time that the
exploitation of the poor, because they are poor, should cease.
See how it operates:  a decent married woman loses her husband;
his death leaves her dependent upon her own labour.  She has
children who hitherto have been provided with home life, food and
clothing; in fact the family had lived a little above the poverty
line, though not far removed from it.

She had lived in the upper world, but because her husband dies,
she is precipitated into the lower world, to seek a new home and
some occupation whereby she and her children may live.

Because she is a widow, and poor and helpless, she becomes the
prey of the sweater.  Henceforth she must work interminable hours
for a starvation wage.  Because she is a mother, poor and
helpless, she becomes the prey of the house farmer.  Henceforward
half her earnings must go in rent, though her house and its
concomitants are detestable beyond words.

But though she is poor, her children must be fed, and though she
is a widowed mother, she, even she, must eat sometimes.
Henceforward she must buy food of a poor quality, in minute
quantities, of doubtful weight, at the highest price.  She is
afraid that death may enter her home and find her unprepared for
a funeral, so she pays one penny weekly for each of her children
and twopence for herself to some collection society.

All through this procedure her very extremities provide
opportunities to others for spoliation, and so her continued life
in the underworld is assured.  But her children are ill-
nourished, ill-clothed, ill-lodged and ill-bathed, and the gutter
is their playground.  They do not develop properly in mind or
body, when of age they are very poor assets considered
financially or industrially.  They become permanent residents of
the underworld and produce after their kind.

So the underworld is kept populated from many sources.  Widows
with their children are promptly kicked into it, others descend
into it by a slow process of social and industrial gravitation.
Some descend by the downward path of moral delinquency, and some
leap into it as if to commit moral and social death.

And surely 'tis a mad world!  How can it be otherwise with all
this varied and perplexed humanity seething it, with all these
social and industrial wrongs operating upon it.  But I see the
dawn of a brighter day!  when helpless widow mothers will no
longer be the spoil of the sweater and the house "farmer."  The
dawn has broke!  before these words are printed thousands of
toiling women in London's underworld will rejoice!  for the wages
of cardboard box-makers will be doubled.  The sun is rising!  for
one by one all the terrible industries in which the women of the
underworld are engaged will of a certainty come within the
operations of a law that will stay the hand of the oppressors.
And there will be less toil for the widows and more food for the
children in the days that are to be.

But before that day fully comes, let me implore the women of the
upper world to be just if not generous to the women below.  Let
me ask them not to exact all their labours, nor to allow the
extremities of their sisters to be a reason for under-payment
when useful service is rendered.  Again I say, and I say it with
respect and sorrow, that many women are thoughtless if not unjust
in their business dealings with other women.

I am more concerned for the industrial and social rights of women
than I am for their political rights; votes they may have if you
please.  But by all that is merciful let us give them justice!
For the oppression of women, whether by women or men, means a
perpetuation of the underworld with all its sorrows and horrors;
and the under-payment of women has a curse that smites us all the
way round.

And if a word of mine can reach the toiling sisters in the
netherworld, I would say to them:  Be hopeful!  Patient I know
you to be!  enduring you certainly are!  brave beyond expression
I have found you.  Now add to your virtues, hope!

For you have need of it, and you have cause for it.  I rejoice
that so many of you are personally known to me!  You and I, my
sisters, have had much communion, and many happy times together;
for sometimes we have had surcease from toil and a breath of
God's fresh air together.

Be hopeful!  endure a little longer; for a new spirit walks this
old world to bless it, and to right your long-continued wrongs.

Oh!  how you have suffered, sisters mine!  and while I have been
writing this chapter you have all been around me.  But you are
the salt of the underworld; you are much better than the ten just
men that were not found in Sodom.  And when for the underworld
the day of redemption arrives, it will be you, my sisters, the
simple, the suffering, enduring women that will have hastened it!

So I dwell upon the good that is in the netherworld, in the sure
and certain hope, whether my feeble words and life help forward
the time or not, that the day is not far distant when the dead
shall rise!  When justice, light and sweetness will prevail, and
in prevailing will purify the unexplored depths of the sad
underworld.

I offer no apology for inserting the following selections from
London County Council proceedings.  Neither do I make any
comment, other than to say that the statements made present
matters in a much too favourable light.

"LONDON'S CHILD SLAVES

"OVERWORK AND BAD NUTRITION

"Disclosures in L.C.C. Report.

(From the Daily Press, December 1911)

"The comments passed by members of the L.C.C. at the Education
Committee meeting upon the annual report of the medical officer
of that committee made it clear that many very interesting
contents of the report had not been made public.

"The actual report, which we have now seen, contains much more
that deserves the serious attention of all who are interested in
the problem of the London school child.

"There is, for example, a moving page on child life in a north-
west poverty area, where, among other conditions, it is not
uncommon to find girls of ten doing a hard day's work outside
their school work; they are the slaves of their mothers and
grandmothers.

"The great amount of anaemia and malnutrition among the children
in this area (says the report) is due to poverty, with its
resultant evils of dirt, ill-feeding and under-feeding, neglect
and female labour.

"Cheap food.--The necessity for buying cheap food results in the
purchasing of foodstuffs which are deficient in nutrient
properties.  The main articles of diet are indifferent bread and
butter, the fag ends of coarse meat, the outside leaves of green
vegetables, and tea, and an occasional pennyworth of fried fish
and potatoes.  Children who are supplied with milk at school, or
who are given breakfast and dinner, respond at once to the better
feeding, and show distinct improvement in their class work.  The
unemployment among the men obliges the women to seek for work
outside the home, and the under-payment of female labour has its
effect upon the nutrition of the family.

"'Investigation in the senior departments of one school showed
that 144 children were being supported by their mothers only, 57
were living on their sisters, 68 upon the joint earnings of elder
brothers and sisters, while another 130 had mothers who went out
to work in order to supplement the earnings of the father.

"'Approximately one-third of the children in this neighbourhood
are supported by female labour.  With the mother at work the
children rapidly become neglected, the boys get out of control,
they play truant, they learn to sleep out, and become known to
the police while they are still in the junior mixed department.'

"The Girl Housewife.--The maintenance of the home, the cooking
and catering, is done by an elderly girl who sometimes may not be
more than ten years of age.  The mother's earnings provide bread
and tea for the family and pay the rent, but leave nothing over
for clothing or boots.

"Many of the boys obtain employment out of school hours, for
which they are paid and for which they may receive food; others
learn to hang about the gasworks and similar places, and get
scraps of food and halfpence from the workmen.  In consequence
they may appear to be better nourished than the girls 'who work
beyond their strength at domestic work, step cleaning, baby
minding, or carrying laundry bundles and running errands.' For
this labour they receive no remuneration, since it is done for
the family.

"A remarkable paragraph of the report roundly declares--

"'The provision generally at cost price of school meals for all
who choose to pay for them would be a national economy, which
would do much to improve the status of the feeding centres and
the standard of feeding.  This principle is applied most
successfully in schools of a higher grade, and might well be
considered in connection with the ordinary elementary schools of
the Council.  Such a provision would probably be of the greatest
benefit to the respectable but very poor, who are too proud to
apply for charity meals, and whose children are often penalised
by want, and the various avoidable defects or ailments that come
in its train.'

"Feeding wanted.--Of the children of a Bethnal Green school, the
school doctor is quoted as reporting that 'it was not hospital
treatment but feeding that was wanted.'

"Among curious oddments of information contained in the report,
it is mentioned that the children of widows generally show
superior physique.

"The teeth are often better in children from the poorer homes,
'perhaps from use on rougher food materials which leaves less
DEBRIS to undergo fermentation.'

"'Children of poorer homes also often have the advantage of the
fresh air of the streets, whilst the better-off child is kept
indoors and becomes flabby and less resistant to minor ailments.
The statistics of infantile mortality suggest that the children
of the poorer schools have also gone through a more severe
selection; disease weeding out by natural selection, and the less
fit having succumbed before school age, the residue are of
sturdier type than in schools or classes where such selection has
been less intense.'"



CHAPTER III

THE NOMADS

A considerable portion of the inhabitants of the world below the
line are wanderers, without home, property, work or any visible
means of existence.  For twenty years it has been the fashion to
speak of them as the "submerged," and a notable philanthropist
taught the public to believe that they formed one-tenth of our
population.

It was currently reported in the Press that the philanthropist I
have referred to offered to take over and salve this mass of
human wreckage for the sum of one million pounds.  His offer was
liberally responded to; whether he received the million or not
does not matter, for he has at any rate been able to call to his
assistance thousands of men and women, and to set them to work in
his own peculiar way to save the "submerged."

From a not unfriendly book just published, written by one who was
for more than twenty years intimately associated with him, and
one of the chief directors of his salvage work, we learn that the
result has largely been a failure.

To some of us this failure had been apparent for many years, and
though we hoped much from the movement, we could not close our
eyes to facts, and reluctantly had to admit that the number of
the "submerged" did not appreciably lessen.

True, shelters, depots, bridges, homes and labour homes were
opened with astonishing celerity.  Wood was chopped and paper
sorted in immense quantities, but shipwrecked humanity passed
over bridges that did not lead to any promised land, and abject
humanity ascended with the elevators that promptly lowered them
to depths on the other side.

Stimulated by the apparent success or popularity of the Salvation
Army, the Church Army sprang into existence, and disputed with
the former the claim to public patronage, and the right to save!
It adopted similar means, it is certain with similar results, for
the "submerged" are still with us.

I say that both these organisations pursued the same methods and
worked practically on the same lines, for both called into their
service a number of enthusiastic young persons, clothed them in
uniforms, horribly underpaid them, and set them to work to save
humanity and solve social and industrial problems, problems for
which wiser and more experienced people fail to find a solution.
It would be interesting to discover what has become of the tens
of thousands of enthusiastic men and women who have borne the
uniform of these organisations for periods longer or shorter, and
who have disappeared from the ranks.

How many of them are "submerged" I cannot say, but I know that
some have been perilously near it.

I am persuaded that this is a dangerous procedure, very dangerous
procedure, and the subscribing public has some right to ask what
has become of all the "officers" who, drawn from useful work to
these organisations, have disappeared.

But as a continual recruiting keeps up the strength, the
subscribing public does not care to ask, for the public is quite
willing to part with its vested interests in human wreckage.  All
this leads me to say once more that the "submerged" are still
with us.  Do you doubt it?  Then come with me; let us take a
midnight walk on the Thames Embankment; any night will do, wet or
dry, winter or summer!

Big Ben is striking the hour as we commence our walk at
Blackfriars; we have with us a sack of food and a number of
second-hand overcoats.  The night is cold, gusty and wet, and we
think of our warm and comfortable beds and almost relinquish our
expedition.  The lights on Blackfriars Bridge reveal the murky
waters beneath, and we see that the tide is running out.

We pass in succession huge buildings devoted to commerce,
education, religion and law; we pass beautiful gardens, and
quickly we arrive at the Temple.  The lamps along the roadway
give sufficient light for our purpose, for they enable us to see
that here and there on the seats and in the recesses of the
Embankment are strange beings of both sexes.

Yonder are two men, unkempt and unshaven, their heads bent
forward and their hands thrust deep into their trousers pockets
and, to all appearance, asleep.

Standing in a sheltered corner of the Temple Station we see
several other men, who are smoking short pipes which they
replenish from time to time with bits of cigars and cigarettes
that they have gathered during the day from the streets of
London.

I know something of the comedy and tragedy of cigar ends, for
times and again I have seen a race and almost a struggle for a
"fat end" when some thriving merchant has thrown one into the
street or gutter.  Suddenly emerging from obscurity and showing
unexpected activity, two half-naked fellows have made for it; I
have seen the satisfaction of the fellow who secured it, and I
have heard the curse of the disappointed; but there!  at any
time, on any day, near the Bank, or the Mansion House, in
Threadneedle Street, or in Cheapside such sights may be seen by
those who have eyes to see.

These two fellows have been successful, for they are assuaging
the pangs of hunger by smoking their odds and ends.  They look at
us as we pass to continue our investigation.  Here on a seat we
find several men of motley appearance; one is old and bent, his
white beard covers his chest, he has a massive head, he is a
picturesque figure, and would stand well for a representation of
Old Father Thames, for the wet streams from his hair, his beard
and his ample moustache.  Beside him sits a younger man, weak and
ill.  His worn clothing tells us of better days, and we
instinctively realise that not much longer will he sit out the
midnight hours on the cold Embankment.

Before we distribute our clothes and food, we continue our
observation.  What strikes us most is the silence, for no one
speaks to us, no hand is held out for a gift, no requests are
made for help.

They look at us unconcernedly as we pass; they appear to bear
their privations with indifference or philosophy.  Yonder is a
woman leaning over the parapet looking into the mud and water
below; we speak to her, and she turns about and faces us.  Then
we realise that Hood's poem comes into our mind; we offer her a
ticket for a "shelter," which she declines; we offer her food,
but she will have none of it; she asks us to leave her, and we
pass on.

Here is a family group, father and mother with two children;
their attire and appearance tell us that they are tramps; the
mother has a babe close to her breast, and round it she has wrapt
her old shawl; a boy of five sits next to her, and the father is
close up.

The parents evidently have been bred in vagrancy, and the
children, and, unless the law intervenes, their children are
destined to continue the species.  The whining voice of the woman
and the outstretched hands of the boy let us know that they are
eager and ready for any gift that pity can bestow.

But we give nothing, and let me say that after years of
experience, I absolutely harden my heart and close my pocket
against the tramping beggar that exploits little children.  And
to those who drag children, droning out hymns through our quiet
streets on Sunday, my sympathies extend to a horsewhip.

We leave the tramps, and come upon a poor shivering wretch of
about thirty-five years; his face presents unmistakable signs of
disease more loathsome than leprosy; he is not fit to live, he is
not fit to die; he is an outcast from friends, kindred and home.
He carries his desolation with him, and the infirmary or the
river will be the end of him.

Here are two stalwart fellows, big enough and strong enough to do
useful work in the world.  But they are fresh from prison, and
will be back in prison before long; they know us, for it is not
the first time we have made their acquaintance.

They are by no means backward in speaking and telling us that
they want "just ten shillings to buy stock in Houndsditch which
they can sell in Cheapside."  As we move away they beg
insistently for "just a few shillings; they don't want to get
back to prison."

Now we come to a youth of eighteen; he seems afraid, and looks at
us with suspicious eyes; what is he doing here?  We are
interested in him, so young, yet alone on the Embankment.  We
open our bag and offer him food, which he accepts and eats; as we
watch him our pity increases: he is thinly clad, and the night
air is damp and cold; we select an old coat, which he puts on.
Then we question him, and he tells us that his mother is dead,
his father remarried; that his stepmother did not like him, and
in consequence his father turned him out; that he cannot get
work.  And so on; a common story, no originality about it, and
not much truth!

We suddenly put the question, "How long have you lived in
lodging-houses?"  "About three years, sir."   "What did you work
at?"  "Selling papers in the streets."  "Anything else?"  "No,
sir."  "You had not got any lodging money to-night.?"  "No."
"Ever been in prison?"  "Only twice."  "What for?"  "Gambling in
the streets," and we leave him, conscious that he is neither
industrious, honest nor truthful.

We come at length to Waterloo Bridge, and here in the corners and
recesses of the steps we find still more of the submerged, and a
pitiful lot they are.

We look closely at them, and we see that some are getting back to
primeval life, and that some are little more than human
vegetables.  We know that their chief requirements are food,
sleep and open air; and that given these their lives are ideal,
to themselves!  But we distribute our food amongst them, we part
with our last old coat, we give tickets for free shelters, but we
get no thanks, and we know well enough that the shelter tickets
will not be used, for it is much easier for philosophic
vagabondage to remain curled up where it is than to struggle on
to a shelter.

So we leave them, and with a feeling of hopelessness hurry home
to our beds.

But let us revisit the Embankment by day at 11 a.m.  We take our
stand right close to Cleopatra's Needle; we see that numbers of
wretched people, male and female, are already there, and are
forming themselves into a queue three deep, the males taking the
Westminster side of the Needle, the females the City side.

While this regiment of a very dolorous army is gathering
together, and forming silently and passively into the long queue,
we look at the ancient obelisk, and our mind is carried backward
to the days of old, when the old stone stood in the pride of its
early life, and with its clear-cut hieroglyphics spoke to the
wonderful people who comprised the great nation of antiquity.

We almost appeal to it, and feel that we would like to question
it, as it stands pointing heavenwards beside our great river.
Surely the ancient stone has seen some strange sights, and heard
strange sounds in days gone by.

Involuntarily we ask whether it has seen stranger sights, and
heard more doleful sounds than the sights to be seen under its
shadow to-day, and the sounds to be heard around it by night.
Could it speak, doubtless it would tell of the misery, suffering,
slavery endured by the poor in Egypt thousands of years ago.
Maybe it would tell us that the great empire of old had the same
difficulties to face and the same problems to solve that Great
Britain is called upon to face and to solve to-day.

For the poor cried for bread in the days of the Pharaohs, and
they were crowded into unclean places, but even then great and
gorgeous palaces were built.

"Can you tell us, Ancient Stone, has there been an onward march
of good since that day?  Are we much better, wiser, happier and
stronger than the dusky generations that have passed away?"  But
we get no response from the ancient stone, as grim and silent it
stands looking down upon us.  So we turn to the assembled crowd.
See how it has grown whilst we have been speculating.  Silently,
ceaselessly over the various bridges, or through the various
streets leading from the Strand they have come, and are still
coming.

There is no firm footstep heard amongst them as they shufflingly
take their places.  No eager expectation is seen on any face, but
quietly, indifferently, without crushing, elbowing, they join the
tail-end of the procession and stand silently waiting for the
signal that tells them to move.

Let us walk up and down to count them, for it is nearly twelve
o'clock, and at twelve o'clock the slow march begins.  So we
count them by threes, and find five hundred men to the right and
one hundred women to the left, all waiting, silently waiting!
Stalwart policemen are there to keep order, but their services
are not required.

In the distance the whirl of London's traffic raises its mighty
voice; nearer still, the passing tramcars thunder along, and the
silence of the waiting crowd is made more apparent by these
contrasts.

Big Ben booms the hour!  it is twelve o'clock!  and the slow
march begins; three by three they slowly approach the Needle, and
each one is promptly served with a small roll of bread and a cup
of soup; as each one receives the bread and soup he steps out of
the ranks, promptly and silently drinks his soup, and returns the
cup.  Rank follows rank till every one is served, then silently
and mysteriously the crowd melts away and disappears.  The police
go to other duties, the soup barrows are removed; the grim
ancient stone stands once more alone.

But a few hours later, even as Big Ben is booming six, the
"Miserables" will be again waiting, silently waiting for the
rolls of bread and the cups of soup, and having received them
will again mysteriously disappear, to go through the same routine
at twelve o'clock on the morrow.  Aye!  and to return on every
morrow when soup and rolls are to be had.

It looks very pitiful, this mass of misery.  It seems very
comforting to know that they are fed twice a day with rolls and
soup, but after all the matter wants looking at very carefully,
and certain questions must be asked.

Who are these miserables?  How comes it that they are so ready to
receive as a matter of course the doles of food provided for
them?  Are they really helped, and is their position really
improved by this kind of charity?  I venture to say no!  I go
farther, and I say very decidedly that so long as the bulk of
these people can get food twice a day, and secure some kind of
shelter at night, they will remain content to be as they are.  I
will go still farther and say, that if this provision becomes
permanent the number of the miserables will increase, and the Old
Needle will continue to look down on an ever-growing volume of
poverty and wretchedness.

For after receiving the soup and bread, these nomads disappear
into the streets and by-ways of London, there by hook or crook,
by begging or other means, to secure a few coppers, to pick up
scraps of food, and to return to the Embankment.

I have walked up and down the Embankment, I have looked
searchingly at the people assembled.  Some of them I have
recognised as old acquaintances; many of them, I know, have no
desire to be other than what they are.  To eat, to sleep, to have
no responsibility, to be free to live an uncontrolled life, are
their ambitions; they have no other.  Some of them are young men,
only twenty years of age, who have seen the inside of prison
again and again.  Some of them are older, who have tramped the
country in the summer time and have been drawn to London by the
attraction of an easy feeding in the winter.  Search their ranks!
and you will find very little genuine, unfortunate, self-
respecting poverty.  They are what they are, and unless other
means are adopted they will, remain what they are!

And so they will eat the bread and drink the soup; they will come
at twelve o'clock noon; they will come at six o'cIock in the
evening.  They will sleep where they can, and to-morrow will be
as to-day; and the next day as to-morrow, unless some compulsion
is applied to them.

All this is very sad, but I venture to say it is true, and it
seems to be one of the evils almost inseparable from our present
life.  Probably in every clime and every age such women and men
have existed.  The savage lives in all of us, and the simple life
has its attractions.  To be free of responsibility is, no doubt,
a natural aspiration.  But when I see how easy it is for this
class of people to obtain food, when I see how easy it is for
them to obtain shelter, when I see and know how thousands of the
poor are unceasingly at work in order to provide a modicum of
food and the semblance of a shelter, then it occurs to me, and I
am sure it will to any one who thinks seriously upon the matter,
that these men and women, who are harking back to the life of the
idle savage, are treated better in Christian England than the
industrious, self-respecting but unfortunate poor.  But come with
me to see another sight!  It is again afternoon, and we take our
stand at 3.30 p.m.  outside a shelter for women which every night
receives, for fourpence each, some hundreds of submerged women.

The doors will not be opened till six o'clock, so we are in time
to watch them as they arrive to take their places in the waiting
queue.  A policeman is present to preserve order and keep the
pavement clear; but his service is not required, for the women
are very orderly, and allow plenty of room for passers-by.

As the time for opening approaches, the number of waiting women
increases until there is a waiting silent crowd.  No photograph
could give the slightest idea of their appearance, for dirt and
misery are not revealed by photography.

Let us look at them, for the human eye sees most!  What do we
see?  Squalor, vice, misery, dementia, feeble minds and feeble
bodies.  Old women on the verge of the grave eating scraps of
food gathered from the City dustbins.  Dirty and repulsive food,
dirty and repulsive women!  who have begged during the day enough
coppers to pay for their lodging by night.  Girls of twenty,
whose conduct in their homes has been outrageous, and whose life
in London must be left to imagination.  Middle-aged women,
outcasts, whose day has past, but who have still capabilities for
begging and stealing.  The whole company presents an altogether
terrible picture, and we are conscious that few of the women have
either the ability or the desire to render decent service to the
community, or to live womanly lives.

At length the door opens, and we watch them pass silently in, to
sleep during the night in the boxes arranged on the floors, their
bodies unwashed, and their clothing unchanged.  Happy are such
women when some trumpery theft lands them in prison, for there at
any rate a change of clothing is provided, and a bath is
compulsory.

If we stand outside a men's shelter, we see a similar state of
things, a waiting crowd.  A passive, content, strange mixed lot
of humans.  Some of them who have been well educated, but are now
reaping the harvest that follows the sowing of wild oats.  The
submerged males are, on the whole, less repulsive than the women;
dirt is less in evidence, and they exhibit a better standard of
health.  But many of them are harking back to nature, and remind
us of the pictures we have seen of primeval man.

I want to say a few words about the submerged that congregate on
the Thames Embankment, and the humanity we have seen enter the
cheap shelters.

My experience has shown me that they constitute the lowest grade
and the least hopeful class of the submerged.  Amongst them there
are very few decent and helpable men and women who are capable of
rising to a higher life.  Say what we will, be as pitiful as we
may, those of us who have much experience of life know perfectly
well that there exists a large class of persons who are utterly
incapable of fulfilling the duties of decent citizenship.  It may
be that they are wicked, and it is certain that they are weak,
but whether wicked or weak, they have descended by the law of
moral gravitation and have found their level in the lowest depths
of civilised life.

And they come from unexpected quarters, for some who have known
comfort and refinement are now quite content with their present
conditions.  Whether born of refined parents, or of rude and
ignorant parents, whether coming from a tramping stock, or from
settled home life, they have one thing in common.  It is this--
the life they live has a powerful attraction for them; they could
not if they would, and would not if they could, live lives that
demand decency, discipline and industry.  Nothing but compulsion
will ever induce them to submit themselves to disciplined life.
But let it be clearly understood that I am now speaking only of
the lowest class of the submerged.  While my experience has
taught me that they, humanly speaking, are a hopeless lot, I have
learned that they have their qualities.  They can endure if they
cannot work; they can suffer if they cannot strive.  After all I
am persuaded that they get a fair amount of happiness.  Simple
pleasures are the greatest, perhaps the only real pleasures.  We
all like to be free of responsibilities.  There is no rent-day
coming round with dread certainty and irritating monotony to the
nomads.  No rate collector irritates them with his imperious
"demand note."  No school-board officer rouses them to a sense of
duty by his everlasting efforts to force their children to
school.  No butcher, no baker, no milkman duns them for payment
of bills long overdue!  They escape the danger of  furniture on
the "hire system."  For them no automatic gas meter grudgingly
doles out its niggardly pennyworths of gas.  They are not
implored to burden themselves with the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA.

They are free from the seductions of standard bread; paper-bag
cookery causes them no anxious thought.  Even "sweet peas" do
not enter into their simple calculations.  Finally no life
assurance agent marks them for his prey, and no income-tax
tempts them to lie!  From all these things they are free, and I
would like to know who would not wish to be free of them and a
thousand other worries I would escape them if I could, but alas I
cannot.

Decidedly there is much to be said for the life of a nomad, but
whether or not I should place him among the inhabitants of the
underworld I am not sure; for he toils not, neither does he spin,
and his bitterest enemies cannot accuse him of taking thought for
the morrow.  I had almost forgotten one great advantage he
possesses: he need not wash; and when this distasteful operation
becomes, for sanitary reasons, absoluteIy necessary, why then he
can take a month in one of our great sanatoria, either prison or
workhouse will do, and be thoroughly cleansed!

The idea of such free and easy folk being saved by a shelter and
wood-chopping is very funny.

But we are all tramps, more or less; it is only a question of
degree!  Who would not like to tramp with George Borrow through
Spain or Wales I would like the chance!  Who does not feel and
hear the "call of the wild"?  Most certainly all Britons thrill
with it.  Who does not like to feel the "wind on the heath" beat
on his face and fill his nostrils!  Who does not love the
sweetness of country lanes, or the solitude of mountains, or the
whispering mystery of the wood, or the terrors of the sea, or the
silence of midnight?

All these things are ingrained in us, part and parcel of our very
selves; we cannot get away from them if we would, and woe betide
us if we did!  For this is a grand quality in itself, one that
has made our nation and our empire.  But couple it with idleness,
inertia, feebleness, weak minds, and weaker bodies; why, then you
get the complete article, the vegetable human!  the guinea-pig
man; if you will, the "submerged," or at any rate  a portion of
them.

Originally I have no doubt the human family were nomads, and many
of our good old instincts still survive, but civilisation has
killed others.  In every cross-bred species of animals or plants
there are "reverts" or "throwbacks," and the human family
produces plenty of them.  Every civilised country has its
"throwbacks," and the more monotonous civilisation becomes, the
more cast-iron its rules, and the more scientific and educated
its people, the more onerous and difficult become the
responsibilities and duties of citizenship; and the greater the
likelihood of in increased number of reverts to undisciplined and
wild life.  In this direction the sea and our colonies are the
safeguard of England.  But to-day we pay in meal or malt for our
civilisation, for many brave lads, with thews and muscles, are
chafing, fretting and wearing out their hearts in dull London
offices or stores, where they feel choked, hampered, cabined and
confined, for civilisation chains them to their desks.

But I am wandering too!  I will hark back.  Another cause, and a
fruitful cause, of nomadic life is to be found in the ever-
increasing number of young incapables that our present-day life
produces.  Characterless, backboneless, negative kind of fellows
with neither wisdom nor stature abound.  Up to eighteen years
they pass muster, but after that age they are useless; in reality
they need caring for all their lives.  They possess no
initiative, no self-reliance, and little capability for honest
work, unless it be simple work done under close supervision.  Our
industrial life is too strenuous for these young men; they are
laggards in life's race, they quickly fall behind, and ultimately
become disqualified altogether.

Many of their parents refuse them shelter, the streets become
their home; absolute idleness supervenes; their day is past.
Henceforward they are lodging-house habitues, or wanderers on the
face of the earth.

More pitiable still is the case of those that may be classed as
feeble-minded, and who are just responsible enough to be quite
irresponsible.  Idiots and imbeciles have largely disappeared
from country villages and small towns.  They are well taken care
of, for our large asylums are full of them; they have good
quarters, good food, every attention, so they live long in the
land.

But the case is very different with the half imbeciles or the
half mad.  Short terms of imprisonment with short periods of
hopeless, useless liberty and an occasional spell in the
workhouse constitute the circle of their lives; and a vicious
circle it is.  Can any life be more pitiable?  Sane enough to
know that they are not quite sane, insane enough to have no wish
to control their animal or vicious instincts.  Possessing no
education, strength or skill, of no possible use in industrial
life, with no taste for decency or social life; sleeping by day
in our parks,and by night upon the Embankment.  But they mate;
and as like meets with like the result may be imagined!  Here
again we are paying for our neglect of many serious matters.  Bad
housing, overcrowding, incessant work by the mothers whilst
bearing children, drinking habits among the parents, insufficient
food for the children, endless anxieties and worries.  All these
things and more amongst that portion of the nation which produces
the largest families; what wonder that many incapable bodies and
minds result!

But if civilisation allows all this, civilisation must pay the
penalty, which is not a light one, and continue to have the
miserables upon the Embankment.

Have we no pity!  no thought for the next generation, no concern
for ourselves!  No!  I do not recommend a lethal chamber, but I
do strongly advise permanent detention and segregation for these
low types of unfortunate humanity.  Nothing less will avail, and
expensive though it might be for a time, it would pay in the near
future, and would be at once an act of mercy and justice.

Yes, on the Thames Embankment extremes meet, the ages are bridged
over, for the products of our up-to-date civilisation stand side
by side with the products of primeval habits and nomadic life.



CHAPTER IV

LODGING-HOUSES

The inmates of the underworld lodging-houses are a queer and
heterogeneous lot; but they are much to be preferred to the
sleepers out; because rascally though many of them are, there is
a good deal of self-reliance and not a little enterprise amongst
them.  By hook and crook, and, it is to be feared, mostly by
crook, they obtain sufficient money for food and lodging, and to
this extent they are an improvement upon the sleepers out.  They
have, too, some pluck, perseverance and talents that, rightly
applied, might be of considerable benefit to the community.  But
having got habituated to the liberty of common lodging-houses,
and to the excitement of getting day by day just enough for each
day's need, though sometimes fasting and sometimes feasting, the
desire for settled home life and for the duties of citizenship
has vanished.  For with the money to pay night by night for their
lodgings, responsibility to rent and tax collector ends.

I must allow some exceptions, for once every year there comes
upon thousands of them the burden of finding five shillings to
pay for the hawker's licence that provides them with the
semblance of a living, or an excuse for begging.  After much
experience of this class, including many visits to common
lodging-houses, and some friendships with the inmates, I am sure
that the desire to be untrammelled with social and municipal
obligation leads a great percentage of the occupants to prefer
the life to any other.  They represent to some extent in this
modern and industrial age the descendants of Jonadab, the son of
Rechab, with this exception, they are by no means averse to the
wine-cup.  It is to be feared that there is a growth in this
portion of our community, for every scheme for providing decent
lodgings for casually homeless men is eagerly taken advantage of
by men who might and who ought to live in homes of their own, and
so fulfil the duties of decent citizenship.  In this respect even
Lord Rowton's estimable lodging-houses, and those, too, of our
municipal authorities prove no exception, for they attract
numbers of men who ought not to be there, but who might, with
just a little more self-reliance and self-respect, live
comfortably outside.

But I pass on to the common lodging-houses that accommodate a
lower class than is found in municipal or Rowton houses.
Probably none, or at any rate very few, of my readers have had a
practical experience of common lodging-houses.  I have, so
therefore I ask them to accompany me to one of them.

In a dingy slum stand a number of grimy houses that have been
converted into one big house.  The various doorways have been
blocked and one enlarged entrance serves.

As we enter, the money-taker in his office demands our business.
We tell him that we are anxious to have a look round, and he
tells us that he will send for the deputy.  The deputy is the
autocrat that governs with undisputable sway in this domain of
semi-darkness and dirt.  We stand aside in the half-lit passage,
taking good care that we have no contact with the walls; the air
we breathe is thick with unpleasant odours, and we realise at
once, and to our complete satisfaction, the smell and flavour of
a common lodging-house.  We know instinctively that we have made
its acquaintance before, it seems familiar to us, but we are
puzzled about it until we remember we have had a foretaste of it
given to us by some lodging-house habitues that we met.  The
aroma of a common lodging-house cannot be concealed, it is not to
be mistaken.  The hour is six o'clock p.m., the days are short,
for it is November.  The lodgers are arriving, so we stand and
watch them as they pass the little office and pay their
sixpences.  Down goes the money, promptly a numbered ticket takes
its place; few words are exchanged, and away go the ticket-
holders to the general kitchen.

Presently the deputy comes to interview us, and he does not put
us at our ease; he is a forbidding fellow, one that evidently
will stand no nonsense.  Observe, if you please, that he has lost
his right hand, and that a formidable iron hook replaces it.
Many a time has that hook been serviceable; if it could speak,
many tales would it tell of victories won, of rows quelled, and
of blood spilled.

We have seen the fellow previously, and more than once, at the
local police-court.  Sometimes he came as prosecutor, sometimes
as prisoner, and at other times as witness.  When the police had
been required to supplement the power of his iron hand in
quelling the many free fights, he appeared sometimes in the dual
capacity of prisoner and prosecutor.

We know that he retains his position because of his strength and
the unscrupulous way in which he uses it.  He knows us too, but
he is not well pleased to see us!  Nevertheless, he accedes to
our request for "just a look round."  So through a large passage
we pass, and he ushers us into the lodging-house kitchen.  As the
door opens a babel of many voices greets us, a rush of warm air
comes at us, and the evidence of our noses proclaims that
bloaters and bacon, liver and onions, sausages and fresh fish are
being cooked.  We look and see, we see and taste!  Strange eyes
are turned upon us just for a moment, but we are not "'tecs," so
the eyes are turned back to the different frying-pans or
roasting-forks, as the case may be.  See how they crowd round the
huge and open fire, for there is no cooking range.  See how they
elbow each other as they want space for this pan or that fork.
See how the bloaters curl and twist as if trying to escape from
the forks and the fire.  See how the sausages burst and splutter
in their different pans.  See how stolidly the tough steaks
brown, refusing either to splutter, yield fat, or find gravy to
assist in their own undoing.

Listen to the sizzling that pervades the place, acting as an
orchestral accompaniment to the chorus of human voices.  Listen
to it all, breathe it all, let your noses and your ears take it
all in.  Then let your eyes and your imagination have their turn
before the pungency of rank tobacco adds to the difficulty of
seeing and breathing.  And so we look, and we find there are
sixty human beings of both sexes and various ages in that
kitchen.  Some of them we know, for have we not seen them in
Cheapside, St. Paul's Churchyard, or elsewhere acting as gutter
merchants.  Yonder sit an old couple that we have seen selling
matches or laces for many years past!  It is not a race day, and
there being no "test match" or exciting football match, a youth
of sixteen who earns a precarious living by selling papers in the
streets sits beside them.  To-day papers are at a discount, so he
has given up business for the day and sought warmth and company
in his favourite lodging-house.

Ah!  there is our old friend, the street ventriloquist!  You see
the back of his hand is painted in vivid colours to resemble the
face of an old woman.  We know that he has a bundle that contains
caps and bonnets, dresses and skirts that will convert his hand
and arm into a quaint human figure.  Many a droll story can he
tell, for he has "padded the hoof" from one end of England to the
other; he knows every lodging-house from Newcastle-on-Tyne to
Plymouth.  He is a graceless dog, fond of a joke, a laugh and a
story; he is honest enough and intelligent enough for anything.
But of regular life, discipline and work he will have none.  By
and by, after the cooking is all done, he will want to give a
performance and take up a collection.

There are a couple, male and female, who tramp the country lanes;
the farm haystacks or outbuildings have been their resting-places
during the summer, but approaching winter has sent them back to
London.

You see that they have got a tattered copy of Moody and Sankey's
hymns, which is their stock-in-trade.  They have at different
lodging-house "services" picked up some slight knowledge of a
limited number of tunes, now they are trying to commit the words
to memory.

To-morrow they will in quiet streets be whining out "Oh, where is
my boy to-night?"  or "Will you meet me at the Fountain?"

Look again--here is a shabby-genteel man who lives by his wits.
He is fairly educated and can write a plausible letter.  He is
dangerous; his stock-in-trade comprises local directories, WHO'S
WHO, annual reports of charitable societies, clergymen's lists,
etc.  He is a begging-letter writer, and moves from lodging-house
to lodging-house; he writes letters for any of the inmates who
have some particular tale of woe to unfold, or some urgent appeal
to make, and he receives the major part of the resultant charity.

He is drunken and bestial, he is a parasite of the worst
description, for he preys alike on the benevolent and upon the
poor wretches whose cause he espouses.

He assumes many names, he changes his addresses adroitly, and
ticks off very carefully the names and addresses of people he has
defrauded.  In fact, he is so clever and slippery that the police
and the Charity Organisation Society cannot locate him.  So he
thrives, a type of many, for every one of London's common
lodging-houses can provide us with one or more such cunning
rogues.

Yonder sits a "wandering boy" about twenty-eight years of age.
He is not thriving, and he must needs be content with simple
bread and cheese.  A roll of cheap "pirated" music lies on his
knee and proclaims his method of living.  His life has its
dangers, for he has great difficulty in providing five shillings
for his pedlar's licence, and he runs great risk of having his
stock seized by the police, and being committed to prison for a
fine he cannot pay.

He has brought sorrow and disgrace upon his parents, no eye
brightens at the mention of his name.  Alas!  he is a specimen of
the "homeless boy" of whom his neighbours the minstrels will sing
to-morrow.  He is silent and moody, for he is not in funds.  Are
there none among the company whom sheer misfortune has brought
down into this underworld?  we ask.  Aye, there are, for in this
kitchen there are representatives of all sorts and conditions.
See that man in the corner by himself, speaking to no one,
cooking nothing, eating nothing; he is thinking, thinking!  This
is his first night in a common lodging-house; it is all new to
him, he thinks it all so terrible and disgusting.

He seems inclined to run and spend his night in the streets, and
perhaps it will be well for him to do so.  He looks decent,
bewildered and sorrowful; we know at a glance that some
misfortune has tripped him up, we see that self-respect is not
dead within him.  We know that if he stays the night, breathing
the foul air, listening to the horrid talk, seeing much and
realising more, feeling himself attacked on every side by the
ordinary pests of common lodging-houses, we know that tomorrow
morning his self-respect will be lessened, his moral power
weakened, and his hope of social recovery almost gone.  Let him
stay a few weeks, then the lodging-house will become his home and
his joy.  So we feel inclined to cry out and warn him to escape
with his life.  This is the great evil and danger of common
lodging-houses; needful as they undoubtedly are for the homeless
and the outcast, they place the unfortunate on an inclined plane
down which they slide to complete demoralisation.

I am told that there are four hundred large common lodging-houses
in London, many of them capable of holding several hundred
lodgers, and which night after night are filled with a weird
collection of humanity.  And they cast a fatal spell upon all who
get accustomed to them.  Few, very few who have become
acclimatised ever go back to settled home life.  For the
decencies, amenities and restraints of citizenship become
distasteful.  And truly there is much excitement in the life for
excitement, at any rate, abounds in common lodging-houses.

Nothing happens in them but the unexpected, and that brings its
joys and terrors, its laughter and its tears.  Here a great deal
of unrestrained human nature is given free play, and the results
are exciting if not edifying.  Let us spend an evening, but not a
night--that is too much to ask-with the habitues.

We sit apart and listen to the babel of voices, but we listen in
vain for the lodging-house slang of which we are told so much.
They speak very much like other people, and speak on subjects
upon which other people speak.  They get as excited as ordinary
people, too.

Yonder is a lewd fellow shouting obscenities to a female, who, in
an equally loud voice and quite as unmistakable language, returns
him a Roland for every Oliver.

Here are a couple of wordy excitable fellows who are arguing the
pros and cons of Free Trade and Tariff Reform.  They will keep at
it till the lights are put out, for both are supplied with a
plentiful supply of contradictory literature.  Both have fluent
tongues, equally bitter, and, having their audience, they, like
other people, must contend for mastery.  Not that they care for
the rights or wrongs of either question, for both are prepared,
as occasion serves, to take either side.  Religion, too, is
excitedly discussed, for an animated couple are discussing
Christian Evidences, while the ventriloquist gives parsons
generally and bishops in particular a very warm time; even the
Pope and General Booth do not escape his scurrilous but witty
indictments.

Meanwhile the street singers are practising songs, sacred and
secular, and our friend the street minstrel produces an old flute
and plays an obbligato, whilst the quivering voice of his poor
old wife again wants to know the whereabouts of her wandering
boy.

There will be a touching scene when they do meet--may I be there!
but I hope they will not meet in a common lodging-house.  Another
street minstrel is practising new tunes upon a mouth-organ,
wherewith to soften the hearts of a too obdurate public.

What a babel it all makes; now groups of card-players are getting
quarrelsome, for luck has been against some, or cheating has been
discovered; blows are exchanged, and blood flows!  As the night
advances, men and women under the influence of drink arrive.
Some are merry, others are quarrelsome, some are moody and
lachrymose.  The latter become the butt of the former, the noise
increases, confusion itself becomes confounded, and we leave to
avoid the general MELEE, and to breathe the night air, which we
find grateful and reviving.  Phew!  but it was hot and thick, we
don't want to breathe it again.  It is astonishing that people
get used to it, and like it too!  But it leaves its taint upon
them, for it permeates their clothing; they carry it about with
them, and any one who gets a whiff of it gets some idea of the
breath of a common lodging-house.  And its moral breath has its
effect, too!  Woe to all that is fresh and fair, young and
hopeful, that comes within its withering influence.  Farewell!  a
long farewell to honour, truth and self-respect, for the hot
breath of a common lodging-house will blast those and every other
good quality in young people of either sex that inhale it.  Its
breath comes upon them, and lo!  they become foul without and
vile within, carrying their moral and physical contagion with
them wherever they go.

A moral sepulchre, or rather crematorium, is the common lodging-
house, for when its work is done, nothing is left but ashes.  For
the old habitues I am not much concerned, and though generally I
hold a brief for old sinners, criminals and convicts, I hold no
brief for the old and middle-aged habitues of a common lodging-
house.

Can any one call the dead to life?  Can any one convert cold
flesh into warm pulsing life?  Nay, nay!  Talk about being turned
into a pillar of salt!  the common lodging-house can do more and
worse than that!  It can turn men and women into pillars of moral
death, for even the influence of a long term of penal servitude,
withering as it is, cannot for one moment be compared with the
corrupting effect of common lodging-house life.

So the old minstrels may go seeking their wandering boy!  and the
begging-letter writers may go hang!

The human vultures that prey upon the simple and good-natured
may, if middle-aged, continue in their evil ways.  But what of
the young people of whom there ought to be hope?  What of them?
how long are these "lazar houses" to stand with open door waiting
to receive, swallow, transform and eject young humanity?  But
there is money in them, of course there is; there always is money
to be made out of sin and misery if the community permits.

Human wreckage pays, and furnishes a bigger profit than more
humdrum investments.  I am told by an old habitue with whom I
have had endless talks and who has taught me much, although he is
a graceless rascal, that one man owns eight of these large
establishments, and that he and his family live in respectability
and wealth.

I have no reason to doubt his statement, for these places are
mines of wealth, but the owners take precious good care not to
live in them.  And infinite care that their families do not
inhabit them.  Some day when we are wise--but wisdom comes so
slowly--these things will not be left to private enterprise, for
municipalities will provide and own them at no loss to the
ratepayers either.

Then decency, though homeless, will have a chance of survival,
and moral and physical cleanliness some chance to live, even in a
common lodging-house.

Sadly we need a modern St.George who will face and destroy this
monstrous dragon with the fiery breath.

Let it not be said that I am unduly hard upon them who from
choice or misfortune inhabit these places.  From my heart I pity
them, but one cannot be blind to the general consequences.  And
these things must be taken into consideration when efforts are
made, as undoubtedly efforts will some day be made, to tackle
this question in a reasonable way.

It is high time, too, that the public understood the difficulties
that attend any effort to lift lodging-house habitues to a higher
form of existence.

I am bold enough to hazard the statement that the number of these
people increases year by year, and that no redemptive effort has
had the slightest effect in checking the continual increase.  As
Secretary of the Howard Association, it is my business year by
year to make myself acquainted with the criminal statistics, and
all matters connected with our prisons.  These statistics more
than confirm my statement, for they tell us that while
drunkenness, brutality, crimes of violence show a steady
decrease, vagabondage, sleeping out, begging, etc., show a
continual increase as years roll by.

Of course many of them appear again and again in the prison
statistics, nevertheless they form a great and terrible army,
whose increase bodes ill for dear and fair old England.

Like birds they are migratory, but they pour no sweetness on the
morning or evening air.  Like locusts they leave a blight behind.

Like famished wolves when winter draws near they seek the
habitations of men.  Food they must have!  There is corn in
Egypt!

When gentle spring returns, then heigho!  for the country lanes,
villages and provincial towns, and as they move from place to
place they leave their trail behind them.

And what a trail it is!  ask the governors of our local prisons,
ask the guardians of any country districts, ask the farmers, aye,
and ask the timid women and pretty children, and, my word for it,
they will be able to tell you much of these strange beings that
returning summer brings unfailingly before them.  Their lodging
is sometimes the cold hard ground, or the haystack, or perchance,
if in luck, an outbuilding.

The prisons are their sanatoria, the workhouses their homes of
rest, and the casual ward their temporary conveniences.  But
always before them is one objective, for a common lodging-house
is open to them, and its hypnotism draws them on and on.

So on they go, procreating as they go.  Carrying desolation with
them, leaving desolation behind them.  The endurance of these
people--I suppose they must be called people--is marvellous and
their rate of progression is sometimes astonishing; weary and
footsore, maimed, halt or blind they get over the ground at a
good uniform pace.

Look at that strange being that has just passed us as we sat on
the bank of a country lane; he goes along with slouching gait and
halting steps; he has no boots worthy of the name, his tattered
trousers, much too long, give us glimpses of his flesh.  He wears
an old frock-coat that hangs almost to his heels, and a cloth
cap, greasy and worn, upon his head.  His beard is wild and
abundant, and his hair falls upon his shoulders in a way worthy
of an artist or poet.

Follow him, but not too closely, and you will find it hard to
keep up with him, he knows what he is making for.  Neither George
Borrow nor Runciman would hold him for a week, for George would
want to stop and talk, but this fellow is silent and grim.  A
lazar house draws him on, and he needs must reach it, weak and
ill-fed though he is!  And he will reach others too, for he is on
a circular tour.  But next winter will find him in a Westminster
lodging-house if he has luck, on the Embankment if he has not.

He has an easy philosophy:  "All the things in the world belong
to all the men in the world," is his outspoken creed, so he
steals when he can, and begs when he cannot steal.

But think of this life when women share it, and children are born
into it, and lads and lassies are on the tramp.  Dare we think of
it?  We dare not!  If we did, it would not be tolerated for a
day.  Neither dare I write about it, for there are many things
that cannot be written.  So I leave imagination to supply what
words must not convey.

But it is all so pitiful, it is too much for me, for sometimes I
feel that I am living with them, tramping with them, sleeping
with them, eating with them; I am become as one of them.  I feel
the horror, yet I do not realise the charms.

I am an Englishman!  I love liberty!  I must be free, or die!  I
want to order my own life, to control my own actions, to run on
my own lines; I would that all men should have similar rights.
But, alas!  it cannot be--civilisation claims and enchains us; we
have to submit to its discipline, and it is well that it should
be so.  We do not, cannot live to ourselves, and for ourselves.
Those days have long passed, and for ever.  Orderly life and
regular duties are good for us, and necessary for the well-being
of the nation.

A strong robust:  nation demands and requires a large amount of
freedom, and this it must have, or perish!  The individual man,
too, requires a fair amount if he is to be a man.  But we may,
and we do in some things extend freedom beyond the legitimate
bounds.  For in a country of limited area where the bulk of the
people live onerous lives, and manfully perform their duties, we
allow a host of parasites to thrive and swarm.

The more this host increases, the weaker the nation becomes, and
its existence may ultimately become not a sign of freedom but a
proof of national decay.  For parasites thrive on weakly life, be
it individual or national.  So while we have a profound pity for
the nomads, let us express it with a strong hand.  They cannot
care for themselves in any decent way.  Let us care for them, and
detain them in places that will allow permanent detention and
segregation.  And the results will be surprising, for prisons
will be less numerous, workhouses, casual wards and asylums less
necessary, lazar houses with their pestilential breath will pass
away, and England will be happier, sweeter and more free!



CHAPTER V

FURNISHED APARTMENTS

What fell power decreed that certain streets in London should be
devoted to the purpose of providing "furnished apartments" for
the submerged I do not know.  But I do know that some streets are
entirely devoted to this purpose, and that a considerable amount
of money is made out of such houses.

I ask my readers to accompany me for a visit to one of these
streets, and make some acquaintance with the houses, the
furniture and the inhabitants.

The particular streets we select run at a right-angle from a main
thoroughfare, a railway divides them from a beautiful park, and
on this railway City merchants pass daily to and from their
suburban homes.

I question whether in the whole of London more misery, vice and
poverty can be found located in one limited area than in the
streets we are about to visit.  I know them, and I have every
reason for knowing them.  We make our visit in summer time, when
poverty is supposed to be less acute.  As we enter the street we
notice at once that a commodious public-house stands and thrives
at the entrance.  We also notice that there are in the street
several "general" shops, where tea and margarine, firewood,
pickles, paraffin oil and cheese, boiled ham and vinegar, corned
beef and Spanish onions, bread and matches are to be obtained.

We stand in the middle of the roadway, in the midst of dirt and
refuse, and look up and down the street.  Innumerable children
are playing in the gutter or on the pavements, and the whole
place teems with life.  We observe that the houses are all alike,
the shops excepted.  They stand three-storey high; there are nine
rooms in each house.  We look in vain for bright windows and for
clean and decent curtains.

Every room seems occupied, for there is no card in any window
announcing "furnished apartments."  The street is too well known
to require advertisement, consequently the "furnished apartments"
are seldom without tenants.

The street is a cave of Adullam to which submerged married
couples resort when their own homes, happy or otherwise, are
broken up.

We notice that it is many days since the doors and window-frames
of the different houses made acquaintance with the painter.  We
notice that all doors stand open, for it is nobody's business to
answer a knock, friendly or otherwise.  We look in the various
doorways and see in each case the same sort of staircase and the
same unclean desolation.

Who would believe that Adullam Street is a veritable Tom
Tiddler's Ground?  Would any one believe that a colony of the
submerged could prove a source of wealth?

Let us count the houses on both sides of the street.  Forty-five
houses!  Leave out the two "general" shops, the greengrocer's and
the "off licence"; leave out also the one where the agent and
collector lives, that leaves us forty-one houses of nine rooms
let out as furnished apartments.

If let to married couples that means a population of seven
hundred and thirty-eight, if all the rooms are occupied, and
supposing that no couple occupies more than one room.  As for the
children--but we dare not think of them--we realise the advantage
of the open street of which we freely grant them the freehold.
But we make the acquaintance of a tenant and ask some questions.
We find that she has two children, that they have but one
furnished room, for which they pay seven shillings and sixpence
weekly in advance!  Always in advance!

She further tells us that their room is one of the best and
largest; it faces the street, and is on the first floor.  She
says that some rooms are let at six shillings, others at six
shillings and sixpence, and some at seven shillings.  We ask her
why she lives in Adullam Street, and she tells us that her own
furniture was obtained on the "hire system," and when it was
seized they came to Adullam Street, and they do not know how they
are to get out of it.

That sets us thinking and calculating; three hundred and sixty-
nine rooms, rent always payable in advance-- from the submerged,
too!--average six shillings and sixpence per week per room, why,
that is L120 per week, or L6,240 annually from forty-one houses,
if they are regularly occupied.  Truly furnished apartments
specially provided for the submerged are extra specially adapted
to the purpose of keeping them submerged.

As no deputy disputes our entrance, we enter and proceed to gain
some knowledge of the tenants, and take some stock of their rooms
and furniture.

The rooms are simply but by no means sweetly furnished!  Here is
an inventory and a mental picture of one room.  A commodious bed
with dirty appointments that makes us shudder!  A dirty table on
which are some odds and ends of unclean crockery, a couple of
cheap Windsor chairs, a forbidding-looking chest of drawers, a
rusty frying-pan, a tin kettle, a teapot and a common quart jug.
He would be a bold man that bid ten shillings for the lot, unless
he bought them as a going concern.  A cheap and nasty paper
covers the wall, excepting where pieces have been torn away, and
the broken walls are made of lath and plaster, to provide
splendid cover for innumerable insects which remain in undisputed
possession.

One floor much resembles another, but the basement and the top
storey rooms are the worst of all.  We look through the window of
a second floor back room, and see the out premises, but one look
is sufficient.

We want to know something of the tenants, so we enter into
conversation with them, and find them by no means reserved.

Room 1.  Husband and wife about thirty-five years of age, no
children; husband has been ill for some months, during which the
rent got behind.  When he was taken to the infirmary they lost
their home altogether; she did washing and charing for a time,
but ultimately got into the "House."

When her husband got better, and was discharged from the
infirmary, his old mates collected ten shillings for him, he took
the room in which they now lived, and of course she joined him.

How did they live?  Well, it was hardly living; her husband
looked round every day and managed to "pick up something," and
she got a day or two days' work every week--their rent was always
paid in advance.  What happened when her husband did not "pick up
something" she did not say, but semi-starvation seemed the only
alternative.

No. 2.  Husband, wife and a girl of seven engaged in making
coarse paper flowers of lurid hue.  They had been in that room
for six months; they sold the paper flowers in the streets, but
being summer time they did not sell many.  At Christmas time
people bought them for decorations; sometimes people gave the
girl coppers, but did not take the flowers from her.  The police
watched them very closely, as they required a licence for
selling, and if they took the girl out in the wet or dark the
police charged them.

It was very difficult to live at all, owing to police
interference.  The girl did not go to school, but they had been
warned that she must go; they did not know what they should do
when she could not help them.

Room 3.  A strong man about thirty, his wife and two young
children.  The remains of a meal upon the table, a jug of beer
and a smell of tobacco.  The man looks at us, and a flash of
recognition is exchanged.  He had been released from prison at
8.30 that morning after serving a sentence of nine months for
shop robbery.

We asked how much gratuity he had earned.  Eight shillings, he
told us.  His wife and children had met him at the prison gate;
they had come straight to that room, for which the wife had
previously arranged; they had paid a week in advance.  "What was
he going to do?" "He did not know!"  He did not appear to care,
but he supposed he "must look round, he would get the rent
somehow."  We felt that he spoke the truth, and that he would
"get the rent somehow" till the police again prevented him.

We know that prison will again welcome him, and that the
workhouse gates will open to receive his wife and children, the
number of which will increase during his next detention in
prison.

Room 4.  Two females under thirty.  No signs of occupation; they
are not communicative, neither are they rude, so we learn nothing
from them except that they were not Londoners.

Room 5.  A family group, father, mother and four children; they
had come to Adullam Street because they had been ejected from
their own home.  Their goods and chattels had been put on the
street pavement, whence the parish had removed them to the dust
destructor, probably the best thing to do with them.

The family were all unhealthy and unclean.  The parents did not
seem to have either strength, grit or intelligence to fit them
for any useful life.  But they could creep forth and beg, the
woman could stand in the gutter with a little bit of mortality
wrapped in her old shawl, for tender-hearted passers-by to see
its wizened face, and the father could stand not far away from
her with a few bootlaces or matches exposed, as if for sale.
They managed to live somehow.

Room 6.  An elderly couple who had possessed no home of their own
for years past, but who know London well, for the furnished
lodgings of the east, west, north and south are familiar to them.

He sells groundsel, she sells water-cress, at least they tell us
so, and point to baskets as evidence.  But we know that groundsel
business of old.  We have seen him standing in a busy
thoroughfare with his pennyworth of groundsel, and we know that
though he receives many pennies his stock remains intact, and we
know also that pennyworths of water-cress in the dirty hands of
an old woman serve only the same purpose.

Room 7.  Here we find a younger but not more hopeful couple; she
is fairly well dressed, and he is rather flashy.  They have both
food and drink.  We know that when the shades of night fall she
will be perambulating the streets, and he like a beast of prey
will be watching not far away.  So we might go through the whole
of the colony.  There is a strange assortment of humanity in
Adullam Street.  Vice and misery, suffering and poverty, idleness
and dishonesty, feeble-mindedness and idiocy are all blended, but
no set-off in virtue and industry is to be found.

The strong rogue lives next to the weak and the unfortunate, the
hardened old sinner next door to some who are beginning to
qualify for a like old age.  The place is coated with dirt and
permeated with sickening odours.  And to Adullam Street come
young couples who have decided to unite their lives and fortunes
without any marriage ceremony; for in Adullam Street such unions
abound.

Young fellows of nineteen earning as much as twelve shillings a
week couple with girls of less age earning ten shillings weekly.
It looks so easy to live on twenty-two shillings a week and no
furniture to buy, and no parson to pay.

So a cheap ring is slipped on, and hand in hand the doomed couple
go to Adullam Street, which receives them with open arms, and
hugs them so long as six shillings and sixpence weekly is
forthcoming in advance.  Their progress is very rapid; when the
first child arrives, the woman's earnings cease, and Adullam
Street knows them no more.

Ticket-of-leave men, ex-convicts, heroes of many convictions,
come to Adullam Street and bring their female counterparts with
them.  They flourish for a time, and then the sudden but not
unexpected disappearance of the male leads to the disappearance
of the female.  She returns to her former life; Adullam Street is
but an incident in her life.

So there is a continual procession through Adullam Street; very
little good enters it, and it is certain that less good passes
out.

Where do its temporary inhabitants go?  To prisons, to
workhouses, to hospitals, to common lodging-houses, to shelters,
to the Embankment and to death.

Although those who seek sanctuary in Adullam Street are already
inhabitants of the underworld, a brief sojourn in it dooms them
to lower depths.  I suppose there must be places of temporary
residence for the sort of people that inhabit it, for they must
have shelter somewhere.  But I commend this kind of property to
the searching eyes of the local authorities and the police.

But furnished apartments can tell another tale when they are not
situated in Adullam Street.  For sometimes a struggling widow, or
wife with a sick husband, or a young married couple seek to let
furnished apartments as a legitimate means of income.  When they
do so, let them beware of the underworld folk who happen to be
better clothed and more specious than their fellows, or they will
bitterly rue it.

Very little payment will they get.  Couples apparently married
and apparently respectable, but who are neither, are common
enough, who are continually on the look-out for fresh places of
abode, where they may continue their depredation.

They are ready enough with a deposit, but that is all the money
they mean to part with, and that has probably been raised by
robbing their last landlady.  They can give references if
required, and show receipts, too, from their last lodgings, for
they carry rent-books made out by themselves and fully paid up
for the purpose.  They are adepts at obtaining entrance, and,
once in, they remain till they have secured another place and
marked another prey.

Meanwhile their poor victims suffer in kind and money, and are
brought nearer destitution.  I have frequently known a week's
rent paid with the part proceeds of articles stolen from either
the furnished apartments, or some other part of the house just
entered.

I could tell some sad stories of suffering and distress brought
to struggling and decent people by these pests, of whom a great
number are known to the police.

And so the merry game goes on, for while vampires are sucking the
impure blood of the wretched dwellers in Adullam Street lodgings,
the dwellers in Adullam Street in their turn prey on the
community at large.

Meanwhile the honest and unfortunate poor can scarcely find
cover, and when they do, why, then their thin blood is drained,
for they have to pay exorbitantly.

It is apparently easy to transmute wretched humanity into gold.
But who is going to call order out of this horrid chaos?  No one,
I am thinking, for no one seems to dare attempt in any thorough
way to solve the question of housing the very poor, and that
question lies at the root of this matter.

Let any one attempt it, and a thousand formidable vested
interests rise up and confront him, against which he will dash
himself in vain.  As to housing the inhabitants of the underworld
at a reasonable rental, no one seems to have entertained the
idea.

Lease holders and sub-lease holders, landlords and ground
landlords, corporations and churches, philanthropists and
clergymen have all got vested interests in house property where
wretchedness and dirt are conspicuous.  "But," said a notable
clergyman in regard to some horrid slum, "I cannot help it, I
have only a life-interest in it," as if, forsooth, he could have
more; did he wish to carry his interests beyond the grave?  I
would give life-interest in rotten house property short shrift by
burning the festering places.  But such places are not burned,
though sometimes they are closed by the order of the local
authorities.  But oftener still they are purchased by local
authorities at great public cost, or by philanthropic trusts.
Then the human rabbits are driven from their warrens to burrow
elsewhere and so leave room for respectability.

Better-looking and brighter buildings are erected where suites of
rooms are to let at very high prices.  Then a tax is placed upon
children, and a premium is offered to sterility.  Glowing
accounts appear in the Press, and royalty goes to inspect the new
gold mine!  We rub our hands with complacent satisfaction and
say, "Ah!  at last something is being done for housing the very
poor!"  But what of the rabbits!  have they ascended to the
seventh heaven of the new paradise?  Not a bit; they cannot offer
the required credentials, or pay the exorbitant rent!  not for
them seven flights of stone stairs night and morning; it is so
much easier for rabbits to burrow underground, or live in the
open.  So away they scuttle!  Some to dustheaps, some back to
Adullam Street, some to nomadic life.  But most of them to other
warrens, to share quarters with other rabbits till those warrens
in their turn are converted into "dwellings," when again they
must needs scuttle and burrow elsewhere.

Can it be wondered at that these people are dirty and idle; and
that many of them ultimately prefer the settled conditions of
prison or workhouse life, or take to vagrancy?

I cannot find a royal specific for this evil; humanity will,
under any conditions, have its problems and difficulties.
Vagrants have always existed, and probably will continue to exist
while the human race endures.  But we need not manufacture them!
Human rookeries and rabbit warrens must go; England, little
England, cannot afford them, and ought not to tolerate them.  But
before we dispossess the rooks and the rabbits, let us see to it
that, somewhere and somehow, cleaner nests and sweeter holes are
provided for them.  The more I think upon this question the more
I am convinced that it is the great question of the day, and upon
its solution the future of our country depends.

See what is happening!  Thousands of children born to this kind
of humanity become chargeable to the guardians or find entrance
to the many children's homes organised by philanthropy.  One
course is taken the bright and healthy, the sound in body and
mind, are emigrated; but the smitten, the afflicted, the feeble
and the worthless are kept at home to go through the same life,
to endure the same conditions as their parents, and in their turn
to produce a progeny that will burrow in warrens or scuttle out
of them even as their parents did before them.

But the feebler the life, the greater the progeny; this we cannot
escape, for Nature will take care of herself.  We, may drive out
the rabbits, we may imprison and punish them, we may compel them
to live in Adullam Street or in lazar houses, we may harry them
and drive them hither and thither, we may give them doles of food
on the Embankment or elsewhere.  We may give them chopping wood
for a day, we may lodge them for a time in labour homes; all this
we may do, but we cannot uplift them by these methods.  We cannot
exterminate them.  But by ignoring them we certainly give them an
easy chance of multiplying to such a degree that they will
constitute a national danger.



CHAPTER VI

THE DISABLED

In this chapter I want to speak of those who suffer from physical
disabilities, either from birth, the result of accident, or
disease.  If this great army of homeless afflicted humanity were
made to pass in procession before us, it would, I venture to say,
so touch our hearts that we should not want the procession
repeated.

Nothing gives us more pleasure than the sight of a number of
people who, suffering from some one or other physical
deprivation, are being taught some handicraft by which they will
be able to earn a modest living.

Probably nothing causes us greater sadness than the sight of
deformed and crippled men and women who are utterly unable to
render any useful service to the community, and who consequently
have to depend upon their wits for a miserable living.  It is a
very remarkable thing that an accident which deprives a man of a
leg, of an arm, or of eyesight, not only deprives him of his
living, but also frequently produces a psychological change.  And
unless some counterbalancing conditions serve to influence in an
opposite direction he may become dangerous.  It was not without
reason that our older novelists made dwarfs and hunchbacks to be
inhuman fiends.  Neither was it without reason that Dickens, our
great student of human nature, made of Quilp a twisted dwarf, and
Stagg a blind man his most dangerous characters.  Some years ago
I was well acquainted with a very decent man, a printer; he had
lived for years beyond reproach; he was both a good workman,
husband and father.  But he lost his right arm, the result of an
accident at his work, and his character changed from that day.
He became morose, violent and cruel, and obsessed with altogether
false ideas.  He could not reason as other men, and he became
dangerous and explosive.  Time after time I have seen him
committed to prison, until he became a hopeless prison habitue.
My experience has also shown me that physical deprivations are
equally likely to lead to sharpened wits and perverted moral
sense as to explosive and cruel violence.  Probably this is
natural, for nature provides some compensation to those who
suffer loss.

This is what makes the army of the physically handicapped so
dangerous.  The disabled must needs live, and their perverted
moral sense and sharpened wits enable them to live at the expense
of the public.

Very clever, indeed, many of these men are; they know how to
provoke pity, and they know how to tell a plausible tale.  Many
of them can get money without even asking for it.  They know full
well the perils that environ the man who begs.  I am not ashamed
to say that I have been frequently duped by such fellows, and
have learned by sad experience that my wits cannot cope with
theirs, and that my safety lies in hasty retreat when they call
upon me, for I have always found that conversation with them
leads to my own undoing.

Witness the following.  One winter night my eldest son, who lives
about a mile away, went out to post a letter at midnight.  After
dropping his letter in the pillar-box, he was surprised to hear a
voice say, "Will you kindly show me the way to Bridlington?"
"Bridlington!  why, it is more than two hundred miles away."  The
request made my son gasp, for, as I have said, it was winter and
midnight.

The audacity of the request, however, arrested his attention, and
that doubtless was the end to be secured.  So a conversation
followed.  The inquirer was a Scotchman about thirty years of
age; he wore dark glasses and was decently clad; he had been
discharged from St. Bartholomew's Hospital.  He was a seaman, but
owing to a boiler explosion on board he had been treated in the
hospital.  Now he must walk to Bridlington, where an uncle lived
who would give him a home.  He produced a letter from his uncle,
but he had either lost or torn up the envelope.  All this and
more he told my son with such candour and sincerity, that he was
soon the poorer by half-a-crown.  Then, to improve the fellow's
chance of getting to Bridlington, he brought him to me.  I was
enjoying my beauty sleep when that ill-fated knock aroused me.
Donning a warm dressing-gown and slippers, I went down to the
front door, and very soon the three of us were shivering round
the remains of a fire in my dining-room.

Very lucidly and modestly Angus repeated the above story, not
once did he falter or trip.  He showed me the letter from his
uncle, he pointed out the condition of his eyes and the scars on
his face; with some demur he accepted my half-crown, saying that
he did not ask for anything, and that all he wanted was to get to
Bridlington.

In my pyjamas and dressing-gown I explored the larder and
provided him with food, after which my son escorted him to the
last tramcar, saw him safely on his way to the Seamen's Institute
with a note to the manager guaranteeing the expense of his bed
and board for a few days.

Next day my son visited the Seamen's Institute, but alas!  Angus
was not there, he had not been there.  Nevertheless the manager
knew something of him, for three separate gentlemen had sent
Angus to the institute.  One had found him in the wilds of
Finchley looking for Bridlington!  Another had found him pursuing
the same quest at Highgate, while still another had come on him,
with his dark glasses, bundle and stick, looking for Bridlington
on the road to Southgate.

I do not know whether the poor fellow ever arrived at
Bridlington, but this I do know, that he has found his way
northwards, and that he is now groping and inquiring for Dawlish
in Devonshire.

The Manchester Guardian tells us that one silent evening hour
poor Angus was discovered in several different places in the
vicinity of Manchester.  The same paper of the next day's date
stated that eleven out of the twelve who met poor Angus were so
overcome by the poignancy of his narrative and the stupendous
character of his task, that they promptly gave him financial
assistance.  I am strongly of the opinion that the twelfth man
was entirely without money at the time he met Angus, or I feel
that he would have proved no exception to the rule.  In my heart
I was glad to find that the hard-headed citizens of Manchester
are just as kind-hearted and likely to be imposed upon as we are
in London.

But Angus has been playing his fame for six years at least, for
one gentleman who gave him explicit directions more than five
years ago writes to the Manchester Guardian saying, "I am afraid
he took a wrong turning."

It is evident that Angus has done fairly well at his business,
and yet it would appear that he never asked for a single penny
since he first started on his endless search.  He always accepts
money reluctantly, and I much question whether the police have
right to arrest him, or the gulled public any ground to complain.

But if Angus should ever get to his kind uncle at Bridlington,
and that respected gentleman should return the five shillings we
gave to help his unfortunate nephew, I will promise to be more
careful in pressing money upon strangers in future.  But whether
the money comes to hand or not I have made myself a promise, and
it is this:  never more to get out of a warm bed on a cold night
to open the house and entertain a half-blind man that speaks with
a rich Scotch accent.

But how clever it all is!  Why, its very audacity ensures its
success, and Angus, for aught I know, has many fellow-craftsmen.
Certainly if he is alone he must be almost ubiquitous.  But Angus
and such-like are not to be wondered at, for Nature herself
endows all living things with the powers to adapt themselves to
circumstances and obtain the means of defence and offence from
their conditions.  So Nature deals with the human family, in whom
the struggle for existence develops varied, powerful and maybe
dangerous characteristics.

At present it is nobody's business to see that the maimed, the
halt, the blind are taught and trained to be of some service, and
made able in some way to earn a subsistence.  Philanthropy, it is
true, does something, and also those blessed institutions, the
schools for the blind, and training homes for the crippled.  I
never see such institutions without experiencing great gladness,
for I know how much evil they avert.  But the great body of the
physically afflicted are without the walls and scope of these
institutions, consequently tens of thousands of men and women,
because of their afflictions, are enabled to prey upon the
community with a cunning that other people cannot emulate.

We hear daily of accidents.  We learn of men and women losing
arms, legs and hands; our hearts are touched for a brief moment,
then we remember the particulars no more.  The ultimate
consequences are unseen, but they are not to be avoided, for
every cripple left uncared for may become a criminal of dangerous
type.

Their elemental needs and passions still exist, notwithstanding
their physical deprivations.  They claim the right to eat and
drink, they claim the right of perpetuating their kind.

Some day perhaps the community will realise what the exercise of
the latter right means.  Some day, and Heaven send that day soon,
we shall be horrified at the thought that a vast number of
unfortunates exist among us who, demanding our pity and our care,
are going down to the grave without that care to which their
physical disabilities entitle them.

As we look at these unfortunates, feelings of pity, disgust or
amusement may be aroused, but one moment's reflection would
convince us that these afflicted homeless creatures manage to
exist and extort an expensive living from the community.

I have said that every disabled man is a potential criminal, and
that unless he receives some compensation giving him the means of
earning honestly his living, he is certain to be a danger or a
parasite.  This is but natural, for in the first place his
physical nature has received a shock, has sustained an outrage,
Nature strikes back, and some one has to suffer.  The loss of a
limb means severed muscles, bones and nerves.  Nature never
forgets that they ought to be there, but as they are not there
she does without them; but none the less she feels for them
instinctively, and becomes disappointed and bitter because she is
refused the use of them.

Add to this the anxiety, the sufferings the amputated man feels
when he is also deprived of his means of livelihood, as well as
his limb, and from comfort comes down to penury.  Perhaps he has
been able hitherto to keep his wife and children with a fair
amount of comfort; now he is helpless and has to depend upon
them.

He may be of proud spirit, but he has to endure mortification by
seeing his wife labour and slave for him.  He becomes moody, then
passionate, a little drink maddens him, then comes the danger.
He does something, then the police are required, and prison
awaits him.  There he thinks and broods over his wrong, with
bitterness and revengeful spirit.  Perhaps his wife has been
compelled to give evidence against him; he remembers that, he
scores it up, and henceforth there is no peace for either of
them!

Frequent convictions follow, ultimately the wife has to claim the
protection of the law, and gets a separation order on account of
his cruelty.  Henceforward he is an outcast, his children and
friends cast him off, for they are afraid of him.  But he lives
on, and many have to suffer because he has lost a limb.

We read a great deal about the development of character through
suffering, and well I know the purifying effects suffering has
upon our race; but it is well sometimes to look at the reverse
side, and consider what evil follows in the wake of suffering.

Blind men, the deaf and the dumb and the physically disabled need
our pitiful consideration.  Some of the sweetest, cleverest,
bravest men I know suffer from great physical disabilities, but
they have pleasures and compensations, they live useful lives,
their compensations have produced light and sweetness, they are
not useless in a busy world, they are not mere cumberers of the
ground.  They were trained for usefulness whilst they were young.

But a far different case is presented with the disabled among the
very poor.  What chance in life is there for a youth of twenty
who loses an arm or leg?  He has no friends whose loving care and
whose financial means can soften his affliction and keep him in
comfort while training for service.  Who in this rich, industrial
England wants such service as he can render?  Very few!  and
those who do make use of him naturally feel that his service is
not worth much.

Numbers of my acquaintances like Angus half lose their sight!
Who requires their service?  No one!  But these men live on, and
they mean to live on, and Nature furnishes them with the means by
giving them extra cunning.  Many of these fellows, poor disabled
fellows, inhabit the dark places of the underworld.  Let us call
them out of their dark places and number them, classify them,
note their disabilities!

Truly they came down to the underworld through great afflictions.
They form the disabled army of civilisation's industrial world
who have been wounded and crippled in the battle.  All sorts of
accidents have happened to them:  explosions have blinded them,
steam has scalded them, buffers have crushed them, coal has
buried them, trains have run over them, circular saws have torn
them asunder.  They are bent and they are twisted, they are
terrible to look at; as we gaze at them we are fascinated.
March!  now see them move!  Did you ever see anything like this
march of disabled men from the gloom of the underworld?

How they shuffle and drag along; what strange, twisted and jerky
movements they have; what sufferings they must endure, and what
pain they must have had.  All these thoughts come to us as we
look at the march of the disabled as they twist and writhe past
us.

The procession is endless, for it is continually augmented by men
and women from the upperworld, who as conscripts are sent to the
army below, because they have sustained injuries in the service
of the world above.

So they pass!  But the upperworld has not done with them; it does
not get rid of its natural obligations so easily.  It suffers
with them, and pays dearly for its neglect of them.  The disabled
live on, they will not die to please us, and they extract a
pretty expensive living from the world above.  The worst of it is
that these unfortunates prey also upon those who have least to
spare, the respectable poor just above the line.  They do not
always sit at the gates of the rich asking for crumbs, for the
eloquence of their afflictions and the pity of their woes strike
home to the hearts and pockets of the industrious poor who have
so little to spare.  But it is always much easier to rob the
poor!

It is our boast that Englishmen love justice, and it is a true
boast!  But when we read of accidents and of surgical operations,
does our imagination lead us to ask:  What about the future of
the sufferers?  Very rarely, I expect.

The fact is, we have got so used to this sight of maimed manhood
that it causes us but little anxious thought, though it may cause
some feelings of revulsion.

But there is the Employers' Liability Act!  Yes, I admit it, and
a blessed Act it is.  But the financial consideration given for a
lost limb or a ruined body is not a fortune; it soon evaporates,
then heigho!  for the underworld, for bitterness and craft.

But all accidents do not come within the scope of that Act, not
by any means.  If a married woman about to become a mother falls
or rolls down the stairs, when climbing to her home in the
seventh heaven of Block-land, if she sustains long injuries, who
compensates her?  If the child is born a monstrosity, though not
an idiot, who compensates for that?  If the poor must be located
near the sky, how is it that "lifts" cannot be provided for them?
Who can tell the amount of maimed child, middle-aged and elderly
life that has resulted from the greasy stairs and dark landings
of London dwellings.  Industrial life, commercial life and social
life take a rare toll of flesh and blood from the poor.  For this
civilisation makes no provision excepting temporary sustentation
in hospitals, workhouses or prisons.  Even our prison
commissioners tell us that "our prisons are largely filled with
the very poor, the ignorant, the feeble, the incapable and the
incapacitated."

It would appear that if we can make no other provision for the
disabled, we can make them fast in prison for a time.  But that
time soon passes, and their poor life is again resumed.  But the
disabled are not the only suffering unfortunates in the
netherworld who, needing our pity, receive the tender mercies of
prison.  For there epileptics abide or roam in all the horror of
their lives "oft-times in water and oft-times in the fire," a
burden to themselves, a danger to others.  Shut out from
industrial life and shut out from social life.  Refused lodgings
here and refused lodgings there.  Sometimes anticipating fits,
sometimes recovering from fits; sometimes in a semi-conscious
state, sometimes in a state of madness.  Never knowing what may
happen to them, never knowing what they may do to others.  Always
suffering, always hopeless!  Treated as criminals till their
deeds are fatal, then certified to be "criminal lunatics."  Such
is the life of the underworld epileptic.  Life, did I call it?--
let me withdraw that word; it is the awful, protracted agony of
a living death, in which sanity struggles with madness, rending
and wounding a poor human frame.  Happy are they when they die
young!  but even epileptics live on and on; but while they live
we consign them to the underworld, where their pitiful cry of
"Woe!  woe!" resounds.

Do not say this is an exaggeration, for it is less than truth,
not beyond it.  Poe himself, with all his imagination and power,
could not do full justice to this matter.

Mendicity societies in their report tell of cunning rascals who
impose on the public by simulating "fits"; they tell of the "king
of fits," the "soap fits king," and others.  They point with some
satisfaction to the convictions of these clever rogues, and claim
some credit in detecting them.

Their statements are true!  But why are they true?  Because real
epileptics are so common in the underworld, and their sufferings
so palpable and striking, that parasites, even though afflicted
themselves, nay, because of their own disabilities, can and do
simulate the weird sufferings of epileptics.  Will mendicity
societies, when they tell us about, enumerate for us, and convict
for us the hoary impostors, also tell us about and enumerate for
us the stricken men and women who are not impostors, and whose
fits are unfortunately genuine?

If some society will do this, they will do a great public
service; but at present no one does it, so this world of
suffering, mystery and danger remains unexplored.

I do not wonder that the ancients thought that epileptics
suffered from demoniacal possessions; perhaps they do, perhaps we
believe so still.  At any rate we deal with them in pretty much
the same way as in days of old.  The ancients bound them with
chains; we are not greatly different--we put them in prison.  The
ancients did allow their epileptics to live in the tombs, but we
allow them no place but prison, unless their friends have money!

But let me end the subject by stating that the non-provision for
epileptics is a national disgrace and a national danger.  That
incarceration of epileptics in prison and their conviction as
criminals is unjust and cruel.  That it is utterly impossible for
philanthropy to restrain, detain and care for epileptics.  That
the State itself must see to the matter!

But just another word:  epileptics marry!  Imagine if you can the
life of a woman married to an epileptic.

Epileptics have children of a sort!  Can you imagine what they
are likely to be?  You cannot!  Well, then, I will tell you.
Irresponsible beings, with abnormal passions, but with little
sense of truth and honour, with no desire for continuous labour,
but possessed of great cunning.  The girls probably immoral, the
boys feckless and drunken.

We have to pay for our neglect; we have no pity  upon epileptics.
He and his children have no pity for us!



CHAPTER VII

WOMEN IN THE UNDERWORLD

The women of the underworld may be divided into three great
classes.  Those who by reason of their habits or mental
peculiarities prefer to live homeless lives.  Secondly, those
whom misfortune has deprived of settled home life.  Thirdly,
those who, having settled homes, live at starvation point.

In London there is a great number of each class.  With class one
I shall deal briefly, for they do not form a pleasant theme.  The
best place to study these wild homeless women is Holloway Prison,
for here you will find them by the hundreds any day you please.
In Holloway Prison during one year 933 women who had been in that
gaol more than ten times were again received into it.

I am privileged sometimes to address them.  As I write I see them
sitting before me.  After one of my addresses I was speaking to
one of the wardresses about their repeated convictions, when the
wardress said--

"Oh, sir, we are glad to see them come back again, for we know
that they are far better off with us than they are at liberty.
They go out clean and tidy with very much better health than they
came in.  It seems cruel to let them out, to live again in dirt
and misery, and though we have an unpleasant duty to perform in
cleansing them when they return, we feel some comfort in the
thought that for a short time they will be cared for.  Why, sir,
it is prison and prison alone that keeps them alive."

Now this army of women is a dolorous army in all truth, for their
faces, their figures are alike strange and repulsive, and many of
them seem to be clothed with the cerements of moral and spiritual
death.  They are frequently charged with drunkenness, stealing,
begging, or sleeping out.

Their names appear on the "Black List," for the law says they are
"habitual inebriates," yet drink has little or nothing to do with
their actual condition.

Let any one look them in the face as I have looked them in the
face, study their photographs as I have studied them, and I
venture to affirm that they will say with me, "These women are
not responsible beings."  For years I have been drumming this
fact into the ears of the public, and at length the authorities
acknowledged it, for in 1907 the Home Office Inspector issued a
report on inebriate reformatories, and gave the following account
of those who had been in such institutions:  2,277 had been
treated in reformatories; of these he says 51 were insane and
sent to lunatic asylums, 315 others were pronounced defectives or
imbeciles.  Altogether he tells us that 62 out of every hundred
were irresponsible women and unfit for social and industrial
life.

My many years' experience of London's underworld confirms the
testimony of the Home Office, for I am persuaded that a very
large proportion of homeless women on our streets are homeless
because they are quite unfitted for, and have no desire for
decent social life.

Should I be asked about the birth and parentage of these women, I
reply that they come from all classes.  Born of tramps and of
decent citizens, born in the slums and sometimes in villas,
almost every rank and station contributes its quota to this class
of wild, hopeless women.

But I pass on to the second class, those who by misfortune have
become submerged.  This, too, is a large class, and a class more
worthy of sympathy and consideration than the others, for amongst
them, in spite of misfortune and poverty, there is a great deal
of womanliness and self-respect.  Misfortune, ill-health, sorrow,
loss of money, position or friends, circumstances over which they
have had but little or no control have condemned them to live in
the underworld.  Such women present a pitiful sight and a
difficult problem.  They cling to the relics of their
respectability with a passionate devotion, and they wait, hope,
starve and despair.

Often misfortune has come upon them when the days of youth were
passed, and they found themselves in middle age faced with the
grim necessity of earning a living.  I have seen many of them
struggle with difficulty, and exhibit rare courage and patience;
I have watched them grow older and feebler.  Sometimes I have
provided glasses that their old eyes might be strengthened for a
little needlework, but I have always known that it was only
helping to defer the evil day, when they would no longer be able
to pay the rent for a little room in a very poor neighbourhood.
My mind is charged with the memory of women who have passed
through this experience, who from comfortable homes have
descended to the underworld to wander with tired feet, weary
bodies and hopeless hearts till they lie down somewhere and their
wanderings cease for ever.

But before we consider these women, let us take a peep at the
lower depths.  Come, then!  Now we are in a charnel house, for we
are down among the drunken women, the dissolute women that stew
and writhe in the underworld, for whom there is no balm in Gilead
and no physician.  Now we realise what moral death means.

Like the horde of Comus they lie prone, and wallow in their
impurity.  Hot as the atmosphere is, feverish though their
defiled bodies be, they call for no friendly hand to give them
water to cool their parched throats.  The very suggestion of
water makes them sick and faint.

But a great cry smites us:  "Give us drink!  and we will forget
our misery; give us drink, and we will sing and dance before you!
give us drink, and you may have us body and soul!  Drink!
drink!" A passionate, yearning, importunate cry everlastingly
comes from them for drink.

Now with Dante we are walking in Hell; see, there is a form, half
human and half animal, creeping towards us with lewd look and
suggestion.  Yonder is an old hag fearful to look upon.  Here a
group of cast-off wives, whom the law has allowed outraged
husbands to consign to this perdition; but who, when sober
enough, come back to the upperworld and drag others down to share
their fate.

Does any one want to know what becomes of the wives who, having
developed a love of drink, have been separated from their
husbands, and cast homeless into the streets?  Here in this
circle of Hell you may find them, consigned to a moral death from
which there is no resurrection.

And the idle, the vicious, the lustful and the criminal are here
too.  But we leave them, and get back to the everlasting workers,
the sober and virtuous women of whom I have told.  What a
contrast is here presented!  Drunkenness, vice, bestiality and
crime!  Virtue, industry, honesty and self-respect condemned to
live together!  But let us look and listen; we hear a voice
speaking to us--

"Dear Mr. Holmes, I am deeply interested in your work, and feel
one with you in mind and heart in the different troubles of human
life, and of their causes and consequences.  I feel that if only
my health was better, and I was placed in some other sphere of
life, that I would do something to help on your good work.  But,
alas!  I shall never be strong again; the hard grinding for a
miserable pittance gives me no chance to get nourishing food and
recover my strength.  Some people say to me, 'Why don't you go
into the workhouse or the infirmary?'  This I bear in silence,
but it is simply killing me in a slow way.  Oh!  that it should
take so long to kill some of us.  It makes me sad to think that
so many lives are wrecked in this way, that so many are driven
to wrong, that so many others should drift away into lives of
hopelessness.  I have been stripped of all, and I am waiting for
the worst."

Can any language beat that for lucidity and pathos?  My readers
will, I am sure, recognise that those are the words of an
educated woman.  Yes, her education was begun in England and
finished on the Continent.  Were I to mention the name of the
writer's mother, hearts would leap, for that name lives in story
and song.

But her parents died and left no competence, her health failed,
and teaching became impossible.  All she now requires is an out-
patient's ticket for a chest hospital.

She is a "trouser finisher," and earns one penny per hour;
sometimes she lies on her bed while at work.  But by and by she
will not be able to earn her penny per hour; then there will be
"homelessness," but not the workhouse for her.

But the voice speaks again:  "Dear Mr. Holmes, please excuse me
not thanking you sooner for offering me a hospital letter.  I
shall, indeed, be very grateful for one when able to get about,
for I shall need something to set me up a bit.

"At present I am very sadly indeed; my foot seems very much
better, yet not right, the sister thinks.  To make matters worse,
I have a very bad gathered finger, and this week I have not been
able to do a stitch of work; indeed, it is very little that I
have been able to do this last ten weeks.  Oh, the cruel
oppression of taking advantage and putting extra work for less
pay, because I cannot get out to fetch it myself!

"The most I get is a penny per hour; it is generally less.
Sister Grace was so vexed by the rude message he sent to-day
while she was here, because I could not do the work, that she
sent a letter to him telling him the fact of my suffering.  She
thinks I am in a very bad state through insufficient food, and,
Mr. Holmes, it is true!  for no one but God and myself really
know how I have existed.  I rarely know what it is to get a
proper meal, for often I do not expend a sixpence on food in a
week when I pay my way, and thank God I have been able to do this
up to the present somehow or other; but all my treasures are
gone, and I look round and wonder what next!

"My eyes rest on my dear old violin, which is a memory of the
past, although long silent.  It has been a great grief to me the
parting with one thing after another, but I go on hoping for
better days that I may regain them; alas!  many are now beyond
recall.

"The parish doctor has been suggested again, but I feel I would
rather die than submit, after all this long struggle and holding
out, especially, as I have been able to keep things a little near
the mark; when they get beyond me, rather than debt I must give
in!

"Still, I hope for better days, and trust things will brighten
for me and others, for God knows there are many silent sufferers
ebbing their lives away, plodding and struggling with life's
battle.  My heart bleeds for them, yet I am powerless to help
them or myself."

Time and space do not avail, or I could tell story after story of
such lives, for in the underworld they are numerous enough.  Who
can wonder that some of them "are made bitter by misfortune"?
Who can wonder that others "are driven to wrong"?  Who can be
surprised that "many drift into lives of hopeless uselessness"?
Surely our friend knew what she was talking about, in the
underworld though she be.  She sees that there are deeps below
the depths, that she herself is in.  Though ill, starving and
hopeless about her own future, she is troubled for others, for
she adds, "since I have known the horror of this life, my heart
goes out to others that are enduring it."

Now this class of woman is not much in evidence till the final
catastrophe comes, when the doors of a one-roomed home are closed
against them.  Even then they do not obtrude themselves on our
observation, for they hide themselves away till the river or
canal gives up its dead.

But it is not every woman that maintains such a high tone, for
once in the underworld the difficulty of personal cleanliness
confronts them, and dirt kills self-respect.  Poverty makes them
acquainted with both physical and moral dirt, and the effect of
one night in a shelter or lodging-house is often sufficient to
destroy self-respect and personal cleanliness for life.

I am quite sure that I am voicing the opinion of all who have
knowledge of the underworld in which such women are compelled to
live, when I say that the great want in London and in all our
large towns is suitable and well-managed lodging-houses under
municipal control and inspection, where absolute cleanliness and
decency can be assured.  Lodging-houses to which women in their
hour of sore need may turn with the certainty that their self-
respect will not be destroyed.  But under the present conditions
decent women have no chance of retaining their decency or
recovering their standing in social life.

Listen again!  a widowed tooth-brush maker speaks to us:  "Dear
Mr. Holmes, I feel that I must thank you for still allowing me a
pension, and I do thank you so much in increasing it.  When I
received it my heart was so full of joy that I could not speak.
My little boys are growing, and they require more than when my
husband died six years ago.  I am sure it has been a great
struggle, but I have found such a great help in you, I do not
know how to thank you for all that you have done for me and many
poor workers.

"I do hope that God will still give you health and strength to
carry on the good work which you are doing for us.  When I last
spoke to you I thought my little boys were much better, but I am
sorry to say that when I took them to Great Ormond Street
Hospital, they said they were both suffering from heart disease,
and I was to keep them from school for a time; and they also
suffer from rheumatics.  They are to get out all they can.  I
have been taking them to the hospital for over two years, and
sometimes I feel downhearted, as I had hoped they would have
improved before this.

"The eldest boy does not have fits now, and this I am thankful
for.  But I feel that I am wasting a lot of your time reading
this letter, so I must thank you very much for all your great
goodness to me."

But one of the boys is now dead, to the other "fits" have
returned, and the widow still sits, sits and sits at her tooth-
brushes in poverty and hunger.

Listen to an old maid's story; she is a shoe machinist:  "Yes,
sir, I have kept them for six years, and I hope to keep them till
they can keep themselves, and then perhaps they will help to keep
me."

The speaker was a worn and feeble woman of fifty-five years, at
least that was the age she gave me, and most certainly she did
not look less.  We were talking about her two boys, her nephews,
whose respective ages were eleven and thirteen.

"Both their parents died six years ago; their father was my only
brother, and their mother had neither brothers nor sisters!  Of
course I took them; what else could I do?  What!  Send them to
the workhouse?  Not while I can work for them.  Ah, sir!  you
were only joking!"  In this she was partly right, for I had
merely offered the suggestion in order to draw her out.

"So after the double funeral they came to live with you?"  "Yes."
"Did their parents leave any money?"  "Money, no!  How can poor
people leave any money?  their club money paid for the funeral
and the doctor's bill."  "So they owed nothing?"  "Not a penny;
if they had, I should have paid it somehow."

And doubtless she would, though how, it passes my wit to
conceive.  But there, it would have meant only a few more hours'
work daily for the brave old spinster, but not for the boys, for
they would have been fed while she fasted, they would have slept
while she worked.

"Yes," she continued, "I am a boot machinist, and it is pretty
hard work; we had a tough time when I had to pay two shillings
weekly for that machine, but we managed, and now you see it is
paid for, it is my own; but really, times are harder for us.  The
boys are growing and want more food and clothing; they go to
school, and must have boots; it's the boots that floor me, they
cost a lot of money."

I called the boys to me and examined their boots; their old aunt
looked as if she was going to prevent me, but presently she said,
"I had no work last week, or I should have got him a pair."
"Him" was the younger boy, whose boots, or the remains of them,
presented a deplorable appearance; and, truth to tell, the elder
boy's were not much better.  So I said to the brave old soul,
"Look here, I will give these boys a good new pair of boots each
on one condition!"  "What is that."  "That you allow me to buy
you a pair."  Again there was a look of resentment, but I
continued, "I am quite sure that you require boots as badly as
your boys, and I cannot think of them having nice boots and you
going without, so I want you to all start equal; kindly put out
your foot and let me look."  In a shamefaced sort of a way she
put her left foot forward; a strange, misshapen, dilapidated
apology of a boot covered the left foot.  "Now the right,"  I
said.  "Never mind looking at the other, it does not matter, does
it?"  she said.  "Yes, it does," so the right foot was presented;
one glance was enough!  "That will do; come along for three pairs
of boots."

They returned home, the boys rejoicing in their new boots, and
their feeble old aunt tolerating hers for the sake of her boys.
Dear, brave, self-denying, indomitable old maid.  She had visited
the fatherless in their afflictions, she had toiled unceasingly
for six long years, she had taken willingly upon her weak
shoulders a heavy burden; a burden that, alas!  many strong men
are only too willing to cast upon others.  She had well earned
her pair of boots, and sincerely do I hope that when her poor
feet get accustomed to their circumscribed area, and the pressure
of well-made boots has become comforting, that she will derive
pleasure from them, even though they represent "the first charity
that I have ever received."

But is it not wonderful, this marvellous self-denial of the very
poor!  Other spheres of life doubtless produce many noble lives
and heroic characters, but was ever a braver deed done than this
feeble and weary old maid did?

And it was all so natural, so commonplace, so very matter-of-
fact, for when I spoke warmly of her deed she said very simply,
"Well, what else could I do!"

And in the underworld, amidst the dirt and squalor, the poverty,
the high rents, and the poor, poor earnings of poor, poor women,
there are plenty like her.

God grant that when the lads can work they will lighten her
burdens and cheer her heart by working for her who had worked so
hard for them.

Listen also to the story of the blouse-makers disclosed to the
upper world by the Press.

"A pathetic story of poverty was told to the Hackney coroner, who
held an inquiry into the death of Emily Langes, 59, a blouse-
maker of Graham Road, Dalston.  Death was due to starvation.

"Annie Marie, an aged sister, said they had both been in great
poverty for a very long time.  They had worked at blouse-making
as long as they could, but that work had fallen off so much that
really all they had got to live on was by selling off their home.

They had not enough to live on, and had to pay four shillings and
sixpence rent.

"The coroner:  'Selling your home will soon come to an end.  You
had best apply in the proper direction for help; the parish must
bury her.  Don't go on ruining yourself by selling off things.'

"Mr. Ingham, relieving officer for the No. 7 ward at Hackney,
said that he knew the old couple.  He remembered giving relief to
both sisters about two months ago, but had had no application
since.  He offered the 'House' to the living sister.

"A juror:  'Are questions put which might upset a proud
respectable old couple when they ask for relief?'

"Witness:  'Of course we have to inquire into their means pretty
closely.'

"The coroner:  'It seems pretty clear that the old couple were
too proud to ask for help.'

"The jury returned a verdict that Emily Langes died from
exhaustion caused by want of food."

But listen again!  as we stand in the land of crushed womanhood
and starving childhood.  We hear a gentle voice, "Mother, it is
nearly one o'clock, the men have gone by from the public-house;
you go to bed, dear, and I will finish the work."  A feeble
woman, with every nerve broken, rises from her machine, shakes
her dress and lies down on her bed, but her daughter sits on and
on.

Oh the sighs and groans and accents of sorrow that come upon our
listening ears!  Oh the weariness, the utter weariness of this
land below the line!

Midnight!  and thousands of women are working!  One o'clock, and
thousands are still at it!  Two o'clock, the widows are still at
work!  Thank God the children are asleep.  Three o'clock a.m.,
the machines cease to rattle, and in the land of crushed
womanhood there is silence if not peace.  But who is to pay?
Shall we ultimately evolve a people that require no sleep, that
cannot sleep if they would?  Is crushed womanhood to produce
human automatic machines?  Or is civilisation generally to pay
the penalty for all this grinding of human flesh and blood?  Let
me tell the story of an old machinist!  I have told part of it
before, but the sequel must be told.  I had made the acquaintance
and friendship of three old women in Bethnal Green who lived
together, and collaborated in their work.  They made trousers for
export trade; one machined, one finished, and one pressed, brave
old women all!  They all worked in the machinist's room, for this
saved gas and coal, and prevented loss of time.  At night they
separated, each going to her own room.  The machinist was a
widow, and her machine had been bought out of her husband's club
and insurance money when he died twenty-one years before.  I had
often seen it, heard its rattle, and witnessed its whims.

She once told me that it required a new shuttle, and I offered to
pay for one; but she said, "I cannot part with it; it will last
my time, for I want a new shuttle too!"

Six months after she was found dead in her bed by her partners
when they came to resume work.

Her words had come true!  The old machine stood silent under the
little window; its old shuttle no longer whirred and rattled with
uncertain movements.  It was motionless and cold.  On a little
bed the poor old brave woman lay cold and motionless too!  for
the shuttle of her life had stopped, never to move again.

The heroic partnership of the old women was broken, never in this
world to be resumed, and so two old hearts sorrowed and two
troubled minds wondered how they would be able to live without
her.

I knew her well; it was my privilege to give her some happiness
and some change from grime and gloom, to take her away sometimes
from the wayward shuttle and rattling machine.  I knew that she
would have selected such a death could she have chosen, for she
dreaded the parish.  I think, too, that she would have wished for
her old machine to be buried with her, and for its silent shuttle
to be beside her in her coffin.  To her it was a companion, and
for it her husband died.  Twenty-one years the machine and
herself had lived with each other and for each other.  Sharing
with each other's toil, if not each other's hopes and fears!
Working!  working!  unceasingly through life--in death and rest
they were not divided.

It was a blessed thing that her machine partner required no food,
or life would have been even more serious than it was.  But it
had its whims and its moods, sometimes it resented everlasting
work at three-half-pence per hour for the pair of them, and it
"jibbed."  But a little oil and a soothing word, and, it must be
feared, sometimes with a threat, and the old thing went again.

Surely it will be sacrilege for any one else to sit upon that old
chair and try to renew the life and motion of the old machine!

It is strange that this oppression of women which is the cause of
my greatest sorrow should also be the cause of my keenest joy.
But it is so!  And why?  Because I number two thousand of these
underworld women slaves among my personal friends, and I am proud
of it!  The letters I have given are a few out of hundreds that I
have received.  I know these women as few know them.  I know
their sufferings and their virtues, their great content and their
little requirements.  I know that they have the same capabilities
for happiness as other people, and I know that they get precious
little chance of exercising those capabilities.  Strange again, I
get no begging letters from them, though I do from others who are
better placed.  I declare it to be wonderful!  This endurance and
patience of London's miserably paid women.  I tell you that I am
the happiest man alive!  Why?  Because during the present year a
thousand of my poor friends from the underworld came up for a
time and had a fortnight, a whole fortnight's rest each with food
and comfort in a beautiful rest home by the sea.  For kind
friends have enabled me to build one for them and for them alone!

And I was there sometimes to see, and it was good for me.  So
Mrs. Holmes and myself make frequent visits to the rest home, and
every time we visit it we become more and more convinced that not
only is it a "Palace Beautiful," but that it is also a joy to the
slave women who have the good fortune to spend a holiday (all too
short) in it.

Gloom cannot enter "Singholm" or, if it does enter, it promptly
and absolutely disappears.  Ill-temper cannot live there, the
very flowers smile it away.  The atmosphere itself acts like
"laughing gas."  So the house fairly rings with merry laughter
from elderly staid women equally as from the younger ones, whose
contact with serious and saddening life has not been so
paralysing to joyous emotions.

It did us good to hear such jolly laughter from throats and
organs that, but for Singholm, must have rusted and decayed.

One of our trustees was with us, it being his first visit to the
home.  I know that he was surprised at the size, the beauty, the
comfort and refinement of the whole place.  The garden filled him
with delight, the skill of the architect in planning the
building, together with the style, gave him increased pleasure.

The great drawing-room and the equally large dining-room rather
astonished him.  The little bedrooms he declared perfect.  But
what astonished him most of all was the unaffected happiness of
the women; for this I do not think he was prepared.  Well, as I
have said, gloom cannot live in Singholm, and this I have found
out by personal experience, for if I am quite cross and grumpy in
London, I cannot resist the exhilaration that prevails at
Singholm among London's underworld women.

I think I may say that our trustee was surprised at something
else!  But then he is a bachelor, and so of course does not
understand the infinite resources of femininity.

"How nice they look," he said.  "How well they dress"; and, once
again, "How clean and tidy they are; how well their colours
blend!"

Thank God for this!  we hold no truce with dirt at Singholm; we
bid dowdyism begone!  avaunt!  I will tell you a secret!
Singholm demands respect for itself and self-respect for its
inmates.

Our trustee's testimony is true; the women belonging to our
association do look nice; when they are at Walton they rise to
the occasion as if they were to the manner born.

When, with their cheap white or blue blouses, they sit under the
palms in our drawing-room, all, even the oldest and poorest,
neat--nay, smart if you will--they present a picture that can
only be appreciated by those who know their lives.  Some people
might find fault, but to me the colour and tone of the picture is
perfect.

As there were seventy of them, there was room for variety, and
they gave it!  Look at them!  There they sit as the shades of
night are falling.  They have been out all day long, and have
come in tired.  Are they peevish?  Not a bit!  Are they
downhearted?  No!

There is my friend who makes no secret about it, and tells us
that she is forty-six years of age; this is the first time she
has ever seen the sea, and she laughs at the thought.  The sun
has browned, reddened and roughened her face, and when I say,
"How delicate you look," she bursts again into merry laughter,
and the whole party join her.  Mrs. Holmes and myself join in,
and our worthy trustee, bachelor and Quaker though he be, laughs
merriest of all.

Aye!  but this laughter was sweet music, but somehow it brought
tears to my eyes.

Now just look at my friend over there beside one of the palms,
her feet resting so naturally on the Turkey carpet!  You observe
she sits majestically in a commodious chair; she needs one!  For
she is five feet eleven inches in height, and weighs sixteen
stone.  I call her "The Queen," for when she stands up she is
erect and queenly with a noble head and pleasing countenance.

She makes no secret about her age; "I am sixty, and I have been
here four times, and, please God, I'll come forty-four more
times," and she looks like it.  But what if there had been no
Singholm to look forward to year by year?  Why, then she would
have been heavy in heart as well as in body, and her erect form
would have been bent, for she is a hard worker from Bethnal
Green.

The idea of coming forty-four more times to Singholm, and she
sixty-six, was the signal for more laughter, and again Singholm
was tested; but our builder had done his work well.

"Turn on the electric light, matron!"  There is a transformation
scene for you!  Now you see the delicate art colours in the
Turkey carpets, and the subdued colours in the Medici Society's
reproduced pictures.

See how they have ranged their chairs all round by the walls, and
the centre of the room is unoccupied, saving here and there
maidenhair ferns and growing flowers.  Now look at the picture in
its fulness!  and we see poor old bent and feeble bodies bowed
with toil, and faces furrowed by unceasing anxiety; but the sun,
the east wind, the sea air and Singholm have brightened and
browned them.

There is my poor old friend, long past threescore and ten, to
whom Singholm for a time is verily Heaven; but--"Turn on the
gramophone, please, matron."  Thanks to a kind friend, we have a
really good one, with a plentiful supply of records.  The matron,
in the wickedness of her heart, turns on an orchestral
"cakewalk."  The band plays, old bodies begin to move and sway,
and seventy pair of feet begin unconsciously to beat the floor.
Laughter again resounds; our Quaker himself enters into the
spirit of it, so I invite him to lead off with the "Queen" for
his partner, at which he was dismayed, although he is a veritable
son of Anak.

But to my dismay the bent and feeble septuagenarian offered to
lead off with myself as partner, at which I collapsed, for alas,
I cannot dance.  Then our trustee led the roars of laughter that
testified to my discomfiture.

So we had no dancing, only a cakewalk.  But we had more merriment
and music, and then our little evening service.  "What hymn shall
we have?"  Many voices called out, "Sun of my soul," so the
matron went to the piano, and I listened while they sang "Watch
by the sick, enrich the poor," which for me, whenever the poor,
the feeble and aged sing it, has a power and a meaning that I
never realise when the organ leads a well-trained choir and a
respectable church congregation to blend their voices.

Then I read to them a few words from the old, but ever new, Book,
and closed with a few simple, well-known prayers, and then--as
old Pepys has it--"to bed."

We watch them file up the great staircase one by one, watch them
disappear into their sweet little rooms and clean sheets.  To me,
at any rate, the picture was more comforting and suggestive than
Burne Jones's "Golden Stairs."  In fifteen minutes the electric
light was switched off, and Singholm was in darkness and in
peace.  But outside the stars were shining, the flowers still
blooming, the garden was full of the mystery of sweet odours;
close by the sea was singing its soothing lullaby, and God was
over all!

But let us get back to the underworld!

"How long have we lived together, did you ask?  well, ever since
we were born, and she is sixty-seven," pointing to a paralysed
woman, who was sitting in front of the window.  "I am two years
younger," she continued, "and we have never been separated; we
have lived together, worked together, and slept together, and if
ever we did have a holiday, we spent it together.  And now we are
getting old, just think of it!  I am sixty-five, isn't it
terrible?  They always used to call us 'the girls' when mother,
father and my brothers were alive, but they have all gone--not
one of them left.  But we 'girls' are left, and now we are
getting old--sixty-five--isn't it terrible?  We ought to be
ashamed of it, I suppose, but we are not, are we, dear?  For we
are just 'the girls' to each other, and sometimes I feel as
strong and as young as a girl."

"How long have you lived in the top of this four-storey house?"
I asked.  "Sixteen years," came the reply.  "All alone?"  "No,
sir, we have been together."  "And your sister, how long has she
been paralysed?"  "Before we came to this house."  "Does she ever
go out?"  "Of course she does; don't I take her out in the bath-
chair behind you?"  "Can she wash and dress herself, do her hair,
and make herself as clean and tidy as she is?"  "I do it for
her."

"But how do you get her down these interminable stairs?"  I
asked.

"She does that herself, sitting down and going from step to
step," she said, and then added, "but it is hard work for her,
and it takes her a very long time."

"Now tell me," I said, "have you ever had a holiday?"  "Yes, we
have had one since my sister became paralysed, and we went to
Herne Bay."  "Did you take the bath-chair with you?"  "Of course
we did; how could she go without it?"  "And you pushed her about
Herne Bay, and took her on the sands in it?"  I said.  "Of
course," she said quite naturally, as if she was surprised at my
question.  "Now tell me how much rent do you pay for these two
rooms?"  "Seven shillings and sixpence per week; I know it is too
much, but I must have a good window for her, where she can sit
and look out."  "How do you do your washing?"  "I pay the
landlady a shilling a week to do it."  "How long have you worked
at umbrella covering?"  "Ever since we left school, both of us;
we have never done anything else."  "How long have your parents
been dead" "More than forty years," was the answer.

To every one of the replies made by the younger sister, the
paralytic at the window nodded her head in confirmation as though
she would say, "Quite true, quite true!"

"Forgive me asking so many questions, but I want to understand
how you live; you pay seven-and-six rent, and one shilling for
washing every week; that comes to eight shillings and sixpence
before you buy food, coal, and pay for gas; and you must burn a
lot of gas, for I am sure that you work till a very late hour,"
and the elder sister nodded her head.  "Yes, gas is a big item,
but I manage it," and then the elder one spoke.  "Yes, she is a
wonderful manager!  a wonderful manager!  she is better than I
ever was."  "Well, dear, you managed well, you know you did, and
we saved some money then, didn't we!"

"Ah!  we did, but mine is all gone, and I can't work now; but you
are a good manager, better than I ever was."

I looked at the aged and brave couple, and took stock of their
old but still good furniture that told its own story, and said,
"You had two accounts in the Post-Office Savings Bank, and when
you both worked you saved all you could?"  "Yes, sir, we worked
hard, and never wasted anything."  Again the sixty-seven old girl
broke in:  "But mine is all gone, all gone, but she is a
wonderful manager."  "And mine is nearly all gone, too," said the
younger, "but I can work for both of us," and the elder sister
nodded her head as if she would say, "And she can, too!"  I
looked at the dozen umbrellas before me, and said, "What do you
get for covering these?"  "Ah!  that's what's called, vulgarly
speaking, a bit of jam!  they are gents' best umbrellas, and I
shall get three shillings for them.  I got them out yesterday
from the warehouse, after waiting there for two hours.  I shall
work till twelve to-night and finish them by midday to-morrow;
they are my very best work."  Three shillings for a dozen!  her
very best work!  and she finding machine and thread, and waiting
two hours at the factory!

"Come," I said, "tell me what you earned last week, and how many
hours you worked?"  "I earned ten shillings and sixpence; but
don't ask me how many hours I worked, for I don't know; I begin
when it is light, because that saves gas, and I work as long as I
can, for I am strong and have good health."  "But," I said, "you
paid eight shillings and sixpence for rent and washing; that left
you with two shillings.  Does your sister have anything from the
parish?"  I felt sorry that I had put the question, for I got a
proud "No, sir," followed by some tears from the sixty-five-year-
old "girl."  Presently I said, "However do you spend it?"
"Didn't I tell you that I had saved some, and was drawing it?
But I manage, and get a bit of meat, too!"  Again from the window
came the words, "She is a good manager."

"What will you do when you have drawn all your savings?"  "Oh!  I
shall manage, and God is good," was all I could get.

A brave, heroic soul, surely, dwells in that aged girl, for in
her I found no bitterness, no repining; nay, I found a sense of
humour and the capability of a hearty laugh as we talked on and
on, for I was in wonderland.

When I rose to leave, she offered to accompany us--for a friend
was with me--downstairs to the door; I said, "No, don't come
down, we will find our way; stop and earn half-a-crown, and
please remember that you are sixty-five."  "Hush!"  she said,
"the landlady will hear you; don't tell anybody, isn't it awful?
and we were called the girls," and she burst into a merry laugh.
During our conversation the paralysed sister had several times
assured me that she "would like to have a ride in a motor-car."
This I am afraid I cannot promise her, much as I would like to do
so; but the exact object of my visit was to make arrangements for
"the girls" to go to our home of rest for a whole fortnight.

And they went, bath-chair as well.  For sixteen long years they
had not seen the sea or listened to its mighty voice, but for a
whole fortnight they enjoyed its never-ending wonder and inhaled
its glorious breath.  And the younger "girl" pushed the chair,
and the older "girl" sat in it the while they prattled, and
talked and managed, till almost the days of their real girlhood
came back to them.  Dull penury and sordid care were banished for
a whole fortnight and appetite came by eating.  The older "girl"
said, "If I stop here much longer, I know I shall walk," and she
nearly managed it too, for when helped out of her chair, she
first began to stand, and then to progress a little step by step
by holding on to any friendly solid till she almost became a
child again.  But the fortnight ended all too soon, and back to
their upper room, the window and the umbrellas they came, to live
that fortnight over and over again, and to count the days, weeks
and months that are to elapse before once again the two old girls
and an old--so old--bath-chair will revel and joy, eat and rest,
prattle and laugh by the sea.

But they have had their "motor ride," too!  and the girls sat
side by side, and although it was winter time they enjoyed it,
and they have a new theme for prattle.

I have since ascertained that the sum of ten shillings, and ten
shillings only, remained in the Post-Office Savings Bank to the
credit of the managing sister.

But I have also learned something else quite as pitiful--it is
this:  the allowance of coal during the winter months for these
heroic souls was one half-hundredweight per week, fifty-six lb.,
which cost them eightpence-halfpenny.



CHAPTER VIII

MARRIAGE IN THE UNDERWORLD

Young folk marry and are given in marriage at a very early age in
the underworld.  Their own personal poverty and thousands of
warning examples are not sufficient to deter them.  Strange to
say, their own parents encourage them, and, more strange still,
upperworld people of education and experience lend a willing hand
in what is at the best a deplorable business.

Under their conditions it is perhaps difficult to say what other
course can or ought to be taken, for their homes are like
beehives, and "swarming" time inevitably comes.  That oftentimes
comes when young people of either sex are midway in their
"teens."  The cramped little rooms or room that barely sufficed
for the parents and small children are altogether out of the
question when the children become adolescent.  The income of the
family is not sufficient to allow the parents, even if they were
desirous of doing so, taking larger premises with an extra
bedroom.  Very few parents brace themselves to this endeavour,
for it means not only effort but expense.  So the young folks
swarm either to lodgings, or to marriage, and the pretence of
home life.

Private lodgings for girls are dangerous and expensive, while
public lodgings for youths are probably a shade worse.  So
marriage it is, and boys of nineteen unite with girls one or two
years younger.

I have no doubt that the future looks very rosy to the young
couple whose united earnings may amount to as much as thirty
shillings weekly, for it is an axiom of the poor that two can
live cheaper than one.

It is so easy to pay a deposit on a single room, and so easy, so
very easy, to purchase furniture on the hire system.  Does not
the youth give his mother ten shillings weekly?  Why not give it
to a wife?  Does not the girl contribute to her mother's
exchequer?  Why may not she become a wife and spend her own
earnings?  Both are heartily sick of their present home life, any
change must be for the better!  So marriage it is!  But they have
saved nothing, they are practically penniless beyond the current
week's wages.  Never mind, they can get their wedding outfit on
the pay weekly rule, the parson will marry them for nothing.
"Here's a church, let's go in and get married."  Christmas,
Easter or Bank Holiday comes to their aid, and they do it!  and,
heigho!  for life's romance.

The happy bride continues at the factory, and brings her
shillings to make up the thirty.  They pay three shillings and
sixpence weekly for their room, one-and-six weekly for their
household goods, two more shillings weekly are required for their
wedding clothes, that is all!  Have they not twenty-three
shillings left!

They knew that they could manage it!  All goes merrily as a
marriage bell!  Hurrah!  They can afford a night or two a week at
a music-hall; why did they not get married before?  how stupid
they had been!

But something happens, for the bride becomes a mother.  Her wages
cease, and thirty shillings weekly for two is a very different
matter to twenty shillings for three!

They had to engage an old woman for nurse for one week only.  But
that cost seven shillings and sixpence.  A number of other extras
are incurred, all to be paid out of his earnings.  They have not
completed the hire purchase business; they have even added to
that expense by the purchase of a bassinet at one shilling weekly
for thirty weeks.  The bassinet, however, serves one useful
purpose, it saves the expense of a cradle.

In less than a fortnight the girl mother is again knocking at the
factory door.  She wishes to become an "out-worker"; the manager,
knowing her to be a capable machinist, gives her work, and
promises her a constant supply.

Now they are all right again!  Are they?  Why, she has no sewing-
machine!  Stranded again!  not a bit of it.  The hire purchase
again comes to her help.  Eighteenpence deposit is paid, a like
weekly payment promised, signed for and attended to; and lo!  a
sparkling new sewing-machine is deposited in their one room.  Let
us take an inventory of their goods:  one iron bedstead, flock
mattress, two pairs of sheets, two blankets and a common
counterpane, a deal chest of drawers, a deal table, two Windsor
chairs, a bassinet carriage, a sewing-machine, fire-shovel,
fender and poker, some few crocks, a looking-glass, a mouth-organ
and a couple of towels, some knives, forks and spoons, a tea-pot,
tea-kettle, saucepan and frying-pan.  But I have been very
liberal!  They stand close together, do those household goods;
they crowd each other, and if one moves, it jostles the other.
The sewing-machine stands in front of the little window, for it
demands the light.  It took some scheming to arrange this, but
husband and wife ultimately managed it.  The bassinet stands
close to the machine, that the girl mother may push it gently
when baby is cross, and that she may reach the "soother" and
replace it when it falls from baby's mouth.

Now she is settled down!  off she goes!  She starts on a life of
toil, compared to which slavery is light and pleasant.  Oh, the
romance of it; work from morn till late at night.  The babe
practically unwashed, the house becomes grimy, and the bed and
bassinet nasty.  The husband's wages have not risen, though his
expenses have; other children come and some go; they get behind
with their rent; an "ejectment order" is enforced.  The wretched
refuse of the home is put on the street pavement, the door is
locked against them, and the wretched couple with their children
are on the pavement too!  The only thing to survive the wreck is
the sewing-machine.  The only thing that I know among the many
things supplied to the poor on the hire system that is the least
bit likely to stand the wear and tear is the machine.  Doubtless
the poor pay highly for it; still it is comforting to know that
in this one direction the poor are supplied with good articles.
And the poor respect their machines, as the poor always respect
things that are not shoddy.

I have drawn no fancy picture, but one that holds true with
regard to thousands.  Evils that I cannot enumerate and that
imagination cannot exaggerate wait upon and attend these
unfortunate, nay, criminal marriages; which very largely are the
result of that one great all-pervading cause--the housing of the
poor.

But in the underworld there are much worse kinds of married life
than the one I have pictured, for those young people did start
life with some income and some hopes.  But what can be said
about, and what new condemnation can be passed upon, the marriage
of feeble-minded, feeble-bodied, homeless wanderers?  United in
the bonds of holy matrimony by an eager clergy, and approved in
this deplorable step by an all-wise State, thousands of crazy,
curious, wretched, penniless individuals, to whom even the hire
system is impossible, join their hopeless lives.

Half idiots of both sexes in our workhouses look at each other,
and then take their discharge after a mutual understanding.  They
experience no difficulty in finding clergymen ready to marry them
and unite them in the bonds of poverty and the gall of
wretchedness.  The blessing of the Church is pronounced upon this
coupling, and away they go!

Over their lives and means of living I will draw a veil, for
common decency forbids me to speak, as common decency ought to
have forbidden their marriage.

But down in the underworld, and very low down, too, are
numberless couples whose plight is perhaps worse, for they have
at any rate known the refined comfort of good homes, but
remembrance only adds poignancy to suffering and despair.

Read the following story, and after condemnation upon
condemnation has been passed upon the thoughtless or wicked
marriages of the poor, tell me, if you will, what condemnation
shall be passed upon the educated when they, through marriage,
drag down into this inferno innocent, loving and pure women?

It was Boxing Day in a London police-court.  Twenty-five years
have passed, but that day is as fresh in my memory as though it
were yesterday.  The prisoners' rooms were filled, the precincts
of the court were full, and a great crowd of witnesses and
friends, or of the curious public, were congregated in the
street.

Yesterday had been the great Christian festival, the celebration
of the birth of the Prince of Peace, when the bells had rang out
the old story "Peace on earth, good-will to men."  To-day it
looked as though Hell had been holding carnival!

Nearly one hundred prisoners had to come before the magistrate.
I can see them now!  as one by one they passed before him, for
time has not dimmed the vivid picture of that procession.  I
remember their stories, and think still of their cuts and wounds.
Outside the court the day was dull, and inside the light was bad
and the air heavy with the fumes of stale debauch and chloride of
lime.  And yesterday had been Christmas Day in the metropolis of
Christendom.

Hours passed, and the kindly magistrate sat on apportioning
punishment, fitting the sentence as it were by instinct.  At two
o'clock he rose for a short recess, a hasty luncheon, and then
back to his task.

At the end of the long procession came a smitten woman.  Darkness
and fog now enveloped the court as the woman stood in the dock.
Her age was given as twenty-eight; her occupation pickle-making.
First let me picture that woman and then tell her story, for she
represents a number of women into whose forlorn faces I have
looked and of whose hopeless hearts I have an intimate knowledge.

Some men have conquered evil habits, helped by the love of a pure
woman, without which they would have vainly struggled or have
readily succumbed.  But while I know this, I think of the women
who have fastened the tendrils of their heart's affection round
unworthy men, and have married them, hoping, trusting and
believing that their love and influence would be powerful enough
to win the men to sobriety and virtue.  Alas!  how mistaken they
have been!  What they have endured!  Of such was this woman!
There she stood, the embodiment of woe.  A tall, refined woman,
her clothing poor and sparse, her head enveloped in surgical
bandages.

In the darkness of the Christmas night she had leaped from the
wall of a canal bridge into the murky gloom, her head had struck
the bank, and she rolled into the thick, black water.

It was near the basin of the Surrey Canal, and a watchman on duty
had pulled her out; she had been taken to a hospital and attended
to.  Late in the afternoon the policeman brought her to the
court, where a charge of attempted suicide was brought against
her.  But little evidence was taken, and the magistrate ordered a
week's remand.  In the cells I had a few moments' conversation
with her, but all I could get from her was the pitiful moan, "Why
didn't they let me die?  why didn't they let me die?"

In a week's time I saw her again; surgical bandages were gone,
medical attention and a week's food and rest had done something
for her, but still she was the personification of misery.

I offered to take charge of her, and as she quietly promised not
to repeat the attempt, the magistrate kindly committed her to my
care.  So we went to her room:  it was a poor place, and many
steps we climbed before we entered it.  High up as the room was,
and small as were its dimensions, she, out of the nine shillings
she earned at the pickle factory paid three and sixpence weekly
for it.  I had gathered from what she had told me that she was in
poverty and distress.  So on our way I brought a few provisions;
leaving these and a little money with her, I left her promising
to see her again after a few days.  But before leaving she
briefly told me her story, a sad, sad story, but a story to be
read and pondered.

She was the only daughter of a City merchant, and had one
brother.  While she was quite a child her mother died, and at an
early age she managed her father's household.  She made the
acquaintance of a clever and accomplished man who was an
accountant.  He was older than she, and of dissipated habits.
Her father had introduced him to his home and daughter, little
thinking of the consequences that ensued.  She had no mother to
guide her, she was often lonely, for her father was immersed in
his business.

In a very short time she had fixed her heart on to the man, and
when too late her father expostulated, and finally forbade the
man the house.  This only intensified her love and led to
quarrels with her father.  Ultimately they married, and had a
good home and two servants.  In a little over three years two
children added to her joys and sorrows.  Still her husband's
faults were not amended, but his dissipation increased.  Monetary
difficulties followed, and to avoid disgrace her father was
called upon to provide a large sum of money.

This did not add to his sympathy, but it estranged the father and
child.

Then difficulties followed, and soon her husband stood in the
dock charged with embezzlement.  Eighteen months' imprisonment
was awarded him, but the greater punishment fell upon the
suffering wife.  Her father refused to see her, so with her two
little ones she was left to face the future.  Parting with most
of her furniture, jewellery, servant, she gave up her house, took
two small rooms, and waited wearily for the eighteen months to
pass.

They passed, and her husband came back to her.  But his character
was gone, the difficulty of finding employment stared him in the
face.

He joined the ranks of the shabby-genteel to live somehow by bits
of honest work, mixed with a great deal of dishonest work.  Four
years of this life, two more children for the mother, increasing
drunkenness, degenerating into brutality on her husband's part.
Her father's death and some little money left to her gave
momentary respite.  But the money soon went.  Her brother had
taken the greater portion and had gone into a far country.  This
was the condition of affairs when her husband was again arrested;
this time for forgery.  There was no doubt about his guilt, and a
sentence of five years' penal servitude followed.  Again she
parted with most of her home, reducing it to one room.

With her four children round her she tried to eke out an
existence.  She soon became penniless, and ultimately with her
children took refuge in a London workhouse.  After a time the
guardians sent the four children to their country school and
nursing home, when she was free to leave the workhouse and get
her own living.

She came out with a letter of introduction to the pickle factory,
and obtained employment at nine shillings a week.  The weeks and
months passed, her daily task and common round being a mile walk
to the factory, ten hours' work, and then the return journey.
One week-end on her homeward journey she was attracted and
excited by a fire; when she resumed her journey she was
penniless, her week's wages had been stolen from her.  Her only
warm jacket and decent pair of boots then had to be pawned, for
the rent must be paid.  Monday found her again at the monotonous
round, but with added hardships.

She missed the jacket and the boots, and deprived herself of food
that she might save enough money wherewith to take them out of
pawn.  Christmas Eve came, and she had not recovered them.  She
sat in her room lonely and with a sad heart, but there was mirth
and noise below her, for even among the poor Bacchus must be
worshipped at Christmas time.

One of the women thought of the poor lone creature up at the top
of the house, and fetched her down.  They had their bottles of
cheap spirits, for which they had paid into the publican's
Christmas club.  She drank, and forgot her misery.  Next morning,
when the bells of a neighbouring church were ringing out, they
awoke her as she lay fully dressed on her little bed.  She felt
ill and dazed, and by and by the consciousness came to her of
fast night's drinking.  Christmas Day she spent alone, ill,
miserable and ashamed.  "I must have been drunk!"  she kept
repeating to herself, and on Christmas night she sought her
death.

I wrote to kind friends, and interested some ladies in her
welfare.  Plenty of clothing was sent for her; a better room, not
quite so near the sky, was procured for her.  Her daily walk to
the factory was stopped, for more profitable work was given to
her.  Finally I left her in the hands of kind friends that I knew
would care for her.

Two years passed, and on Christmas Eve I called with a present
and a note sent her by a friend.  She was gone--her husband had
been released on ticket-of-leave, had found her and joined her,
and for a time she kept him as well as herself.  He was more
brutal than before, and in his fury, either drunk or sober, he
frequently beat her, so that the people of the house had to send
them away.  Where they had moved to, I failed to find out, but
they had vanished!

Fourteen months passed, and one bitterly cold day in February at
the end of a long row of prisoners, waiting their turn to appear
before the magistrate, stood the woman wretched and ill, with a
puling bit of mortality in her arms.

She was a "day charge," having been arrested for stealing a pot
of condensed milk.  At length she stood before the magistrate,
and the evidence was given that she was seen to take the milk and
hurry away.  She was arrested with the milk on her.

It was believed that she had taken milk from the same place at
other times.  When asked what she had to say in extenuation, she
held her child up and said, "I did not take it for myself, I took
it for this!"  She did not call it her child.  The magistrate
looked, shuddered, and sentenced her to one day.

So once again I stood face to face with her, and face to face
with a big man who had been waiting for her, who insolently asked
me what I wanted with his wife.  I turned from him to the woman,
and asked if she would leave him, for if so I would provide for
her.

Mournfully she shook her head; leave him, no!--to the bitter end
she stood by him.

So they passed from my view, the educated brute and the
despairing, battered, faithful drudge of a woman, to migrate from
lodging-house to lodging-house, to suffer and to die!

If all the girls of England could see what I have seen, if they
could take, as I have taken, some measure of the keen anguish and
sorrow that comes from such a step, they would never try the
dangerous experiment of marrying a man in the hope of reforming
him.  Should, perchance, young women read this story, let me tell
them it is true in every particular, but not the whole truth, for
there are some things that cannot be told.

Again and again I have heard poor stricken women cry:  "How can
you!  how can you!"  More than once my manhood has been roused,
and I have struck a blow in their defence.

If there is one piece of advice that, in the light of my
experience, I would like to burn into the very consciousness of
young women, it is this:  if they have fastened their heart's
love about a man, and find that thorough respect does not go with
that love, then, at whatever cost, let them crush that love as
they would crush a serpent's egg.

And the same holds good with men:  I have known men in moments of
passion marry young women, trusting that a good home and an
assured income would restore them to decency and womanhood--but
in vain!  I saw a foul-looking woman far from old sent again to
prison, where she had been more than a hundred times.  She had
also served two years in an inebriate reformatory.  Fifteen years
ago, when I first met her, she was a fair-looking young woman.
Needless to say, I met her in the police-court.  A short time
afterwards she came to tell me that she was married.  She had a
good home, her husband was in good circumstances, and knew of her
life.  A few years of home life, two little children to call her
mother; then back to her sensual ways.  Prisons, rescue homes,
workhouses, inebriate reformatories, all have failed to reclaim
her, and she lives to spread moral corruption.



CHAPTER IX

BRAINS IN THE UNDERWORLD

I hope that, in some of my chapters, I have made it clear that a
large proportion of the underworld people are industrious and
persevering.  I want in this chapter to show that many of them
have also ability and brains, gifts and graces.  This is a
pleasant theme, and I would revel in it, but for the sorrowful
side of it.

It may seem strange that people living under their conditions
should possess these qualities, but in reality there is nothing
strange about it, for Nature laughs at us, and bestows her gifts
upon whom she pleases, though I have no doubt that she works to
law and order if we only understood.

But we do not understand, and therefore she appears whimsical and
capricious.  I rather expect that even when eugenists get their
way and the human race is born to order, that Dame Nature, the
mother of us all, will not consent to be left out of the
reckoning.  Be that as it may, it is certain she bestows her
personal gifts among the very poor equally with the rich.  She is
a true socialist, and, like Santa Claus, she visits the homes of
the very poor and bestows gifts upon their children.

Some of the most perfect ladies I have ever met have been
uneducated women living in poverty and gloom.  I do not say the
most beautiful, for suffering and poverty are never beautiful.
Neither can rings of care beneath the eyes, and countless furrows
upon the face be considered beautiful.  But, apart from this, I
have found many personal graces and the perfection of behaviour
among some of the poorest.  All this I consider more wonderful
than the possession of brains, though of brains they are by no
means deficient.

Have you ever noticed how pretty the healthy children of the very
poor are?  I am not speaking of unhealthy and feeble children,
who are all too numerous, but of the healthy; for, strange as it
may appear, there are many such, even in the underworld.  Where
do you find such beautiful curly hair as they possess?  in very
few places!  It is perfect in its freedom, texture, colour and
curl. Dame Nature has not forgotten them!  Where do you find
prettier faces, more sparkling eyes and eager expressions?
Nowhere!  And though their faces become prematurely old, and
their eyes become hard, still Dame Nature had not forgotten them
at birth; she, at any rate, had done her best for them.

Search any families, bring out the hundreds of pretty children,
and I will bring hundreds of children from below the line that
will compare with them in beauty of body, face and hair.  But
they must be under four years of age!  No!  no!  the children of
the upperworld have not a monopoly of Dame Nature's gifts.

And it is so with mental gifts and graces; the poor get a good
share of them, but the pity is they get so little chance of
exercising them.  For many splendid qualities wither from disuse
or perish from lack of development.  But some survive, as the
following stories will prove.

It was a hot day in June, and, in company with a friend who
wished to learn something about the lives of the very poor, I was
visiting in the worst quarters of East London.

As we moved from house to house, the thick air within, and the
dirt within and without were almost too much for us.  The box-
like rooms, the horrible backyards, the grime of the men, women
and children, combined with the filth in the streets and gutters,
made us sick and faint.  We asked ourselves whether it was
possible that anything decent, virtuous or intelligent could live
under such conditions?

The "place" was dignified by the name of a street, although in
reality it was a blind alley, for a high wall closed one end of
it.  It was very narrow, and while infants played in the unclean
gutters, frowsy women discussed domestic or more exciting matters
with women on the opposite side.

They discussed us too as we passed, and audibly commented, though
not favourably, on our business.  I had visited the street scores
of times, and consequently I was well known.  Unfortunately my
address was also well known, for every little act of kindness
that I ventured to do in that street had been followed by a
number of letters from jealous non-recipients.

I venture to say that from every house save one I had received
begging or unpleasant letters, for jealousy of each other's
benefits was a marked characteristic of that unclean street.  As
we entered the house from which no letter had been received, we
heard a woman call to her neighbour, "They are going to see the
old shoemaker."  She was correct in her surmise, and right glad
we were to make the old man's acquaintance; not that he was very
old, but then fifty-nine in a London slum may be considered old
age.  He sat in a Windsor arm-chair in a very small kitchen; a
window at his back revealed that abomination of desolation, a
Bethnal Green backyard.  He sat as he had sat for years, bent and
doubled up, for some kind of paralysis had overtaken him.

He had a fine head and a pointed beard, his thin and weak neck
seemed hardly able to bear its heavy burden.  He was not
overclean, and his clothes were, to say the least, shabby.  But
there he sat, his wife at work to maintain him.  We stood, for
there was no sitting room for us.  Grime, misery and poverty were
in evidence.

He told us that his forefathers were Huguenots, who fled from
France and settled as silk weavers in Spitalfields.  He had been
apprenticed to boot- and shoe-making, his particular branch of
work having been boots and shoes for actresses and operatic
singers.  That formerly he had earned good money, but the trade
declined as he had grown older, and now for some years he had
been crippled and unable to work, and dependent upon his wife,
who was a machinist.

There did not seem much room for imagination and poetry in his
home and life, but the following conversation took place--

"It is a very hard life for you sitting month after month on that
chair, unable to do anything!"  "It is hard, I do not know what I
should do if I could not think."  "Oh, you think, do you well,
thinking is hard work."  "Not to me, it is my pleasure and
occupation."  "What do you think about?"  "All sorts of things,
what I have read mostly."  "What have you read"  "Everything that
I could get hold of, novelists, poetry, history and travel."
"What novelist do you like best" The answer came prompt and
decisive:  "Dickens," "Why?"  "He loved the poor, he shows a
greater belief in humanity than Thackeray."  "How do you prove
that?"  "Well, take Thackeray's VANITY FAIR, it is clever and
satirical, but there is only one good character, and he was a
fool; but in Dickens you come across character after character
that you can't help loving."

"Which of his books do you like best?"  "A TALE OF TWO CITIES."
"Why?"  "Well, because the French Revolution always appeals to
me, and secondly because I think the best bit of writing in all
his books is the description of Sydney Carton's ride on the
tumbrel to the guillotine."  "Have you ever read Carlyle's FRENCH
REVOLUTION?"  "No" "I will lend it to you."  "If you do, I will
read it."

"How about poetry, what poets do you like?"  "The minor poets of
two hundred years ago, Herrick, Churchill, Shenstone and others."
"Why do you like them?"  "They are so pretty, so easy to
understand, you know what they mean; they speak of beauty, and
flowers and love, their language is tuneful and sweet."  Thus the
grimy old shoemaker spoke, but I continued:  "What about the
present-day poets?"  Swift came the reply, "We have got none."
This was a staggerer, but I suggested:  "What about Kipling?"
"Too slangy and Coarse!"  "Austin?"  "Don't ask me."  "What of
Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning?"  "Well, Wordsworth is too
prosy, you have to read such a lot to get a little; Tennyson is a
bit sickly and too sentimental, I mean with washy sentiment;
Browning I cannot understand, he is too hard for me."

"Now let us talk:  about dramatists; you have read Shakespeare?"
"Yes, every play again and again."  "Which do you like best?"  "I
like them all, the historical and the imaginative; I have never
seen one acted, but to me King Lear is his masterpiece."

So we left him doubled up in his chair, in his grime and poverty,
lighting up his poor one room with great creations, bearing his
heavy burdens, never repining, thinking great thoughts and
re-enacting great events, for his mind to him was a kingdom.

The next day my friend sent a dozen well-selected books, but the
old shoemaker never sought or looked for any assistance.

Only a few doors away we happened on a slum tragedy.  We stood in
a queer little house of one room up and one down stairs.  Let me
picture the scene!  A widow was seated at her machine sewing
white buckskin children's boots.  Time, five o'clock in the
afternoon; she had sat there for many hours, and would continue
to sit till night was far advanced.

Suddenly a girl of twelve burst in and threw herself into her
mother's arms, crying, "Oh, mother, mother, I have lost the
scholarship!  Oh, mother, the French was too hard for me!"  To
our surprise the mother seemed intensely relieved, and said,
"Thank God for that!"

But the girl wept!  After a time we inquired, and found that the
girl, having passed the seventh standard at an elementary school,
had been attending a higher grade school, where she had been
entered for a competitive examination at a good class secondary
school.  If she obtained it, the widow would have been compelled
to sign an agreement for the girl to remain at school for at
least three years.  But the widow was practically starving,
although working fourteen hours daily.  Verily, the conflict of
duties forms the tragedy of everyday life.  The widow was saved
by the advanced French; poor mother and poor girl!

By and by the girl was comforted as we held the prospective of a
bright future before her, and got her to talk of her studies; she
recited for us a scene from AS YOU LIKE IT, and also Portia's
speech, "The quality of mercy is not strained."

Standing near was a boy of not more than ten years, who looked as
if he would like to recite for us, and I asked him what standard
he was in.  "The sixth, sir."  "And do you like English
Literature?"  He did not answer the question exactly, but said,
"I know the 'Deserted Village,' by Oliver Goldsmith."

"Where was the 'Deserted Village'?"  "Sweet Auburn was supposed
to be in Ireland, but it is thought that some of the scenes are
taken from English villages."

"Can you give us the 'Village Schoolmaster'?"  And he did, with
point and emphasis.  "Now for the 'Village Parson.'" His memory
did not fail or trip, and the widow sat there machining; so we
turned to her for more information, and found that she was a
Leicester woman, and her parents Scots; she had been a boot
machinist from her youth.

Her husband was a "clicker" from Stafford; he had been dead eight
years.  She was left with four children.  She had another
daughter of fourteen who had done brilliantly at school, having
obtained many distinctions, and at twelve years had passed her
"Oxford Local."  This girl had picked up typewriting herself, and
as she was good at figures and a splendid writer, she obtained a
junior clerk's place in the City at seven shillings and sixpence
per week.  Every day this girl walked to and from her business,
and every day the poor widow managed to find her fourpence that
the girl might have a lunch in London City.

I felt interested in this girl, so I wrote asking her to come to
lunch with me on a certain day.  She came with a book in her
hand, one of George Eliot's, one of her many prizes.  A fourpenny
lunch may be conducive to high thinking, may even lead to an
appreciation of great novels:  it certainly leaves plenty of time
for the improvement of the mind, though it does not do much for
nourishing the body.  I found her exceedingly interesting and
intelligent, with some knowledge of "political economy," well up
in advanced arithmetic, and quite capable of discussing the books
she had read.  Yet the family had been born in an apology of a
house, they had graduated in the slums, but not in the gutter.
Their widowed mother had worked interminable hours and starved as
she worked, but no attendance officer had ever been required to
compel her children to school.  It would have taken force to keep
them away. But what of their future?  Who can say?  But of one
thing I am very sure, and it is this:  that, given fair
opportunity, the whole family will adorn any station of life that
they may be called to fill.

But will they have that opportunity?  Well, the friend that was
with me says they will, and he has commissioned me to act for
him, promising me that if I am taken first and he is left, the
cultured family of the slums shall not go uncared for.  And
amidst the sordid life of our mean streets, there are numbers of
brilliant children whose God-given talents not only run to waste,
but are actually turned into evil for lack of opportunity.

Here and there one and another rise superior to their
environment, and with splendid perseverance fight their way to
higher and better life.  And some of them rise to eminence, for
genius is not rare even in Slumdom.

One of our greatest artists, lately dead, whose work all
civilisation delights to honour, played in a slum gutter, and
climbed a lamp-post that he might get a furtive look into a
school of art.

All honour and good wishes to the rising young, but all glory to
the half-starved widows who shape their characters and form their
tastes.  To the old shoemaker good wishes; may the small pension
that a friend of mine has settled on him add to his comfort and
his health, may his beloved minor poets with Dickens and
Shakespeare long be dear to him, and may his poor little home
long continue to be peopled with bright creations that defy the
almost omnipotent power of the underworld.

If any who may read these words would like to do a kind action
that will not be void of good results and sure reward, I would
say lend a helping hand to some poor family where, in spite of
their poverty and surroundings, the children are clean and
intelligent, and have made progress at school.  For they are just
needing a hand, it may be to help with their education, or it may
be to give them a suitable start in life.  If the mother happens
to be a widow, you cannot do wrong.

If one half of the money that is spent trying to help unhelpable
people was spent in helping the kind of families I refer to in
the manner I describe, the results would be surprising.

If there is any difficulty in finding such families, I would say
apply to the head mistress or master of a big school in a poor
neighbourhood, they can find them for you.  If they cannot, why
then I will from among my self-supporting widow friends.

But do not, I beseech you, apply to the clergyman of the parish,
for he will naturally select some poor family to whom he has
charitably acted the part of relieving officer.  Remember it is
brains and grit that you are in search of, and not poor people
only.

If in every neighbourhood a few people would band themselves
together for this purpose and spend money for this one charitable
purpose, it would of itself, and in reasonable time, effect
mighty results.  Believe me, there is plenty of brain power and
grit in the underworld that never gets a chance of developing in
a useful direction.  Boys and girls possessing such talents are
doomed, unless a miracle happens, for they have to start in life
anyhow and anywhere.

Nothing is of more importance than a correct start in life for
any boy or girl; but a false start, a bad beginning for the
children of the very poor who happen to possess brain power is
fatal.  Their talents get no chance, for they are never used,
consequently they atrophy, or, worse still, are used in a wrong
direction and possibly for evil.  Good is changed into evil,
bright and useful life is frustrated, and the State loses the
useful power and influence that should result from brains and
grit.

How can my widow friends, who are unceasingly at work, have
either the time, opportunity or knowledge to find proper openings
for their children?  The few shillings that a boy or girl can
earn at anything, or anyhow that is honest, are a great
temptation. The commencement dominates the future!  Prospective
advantage must needs give place to present requirements.

So we all lose!  The upperworld loses the children's gifts,
character and service.  The underworld retains their poor service
for life.

"It is better," said Milton, "to kill a man than a book."  Which
may be true, but probably the truth depends upon the quality of
the man and the book.  But what about killing mind, soul, heart,
aspirations and every quality that goes to make up a man?  "Their
angels do always behold the face of my Father"; yes, but we
compel them to withdraw that gaze, and look contentedly into the
face of evil.

I am now pleading for the gifted boys and girls of the
underworld, not the weaklings, for of them I speak elsewhere.
But I will say, that while the weaklings are the more hopeless,
it is the talented that are the most dangerous.  Let us see to it
that their powers have some chance of developing in a right
direction.  When by some extraordinary concurrence of
circumstances a Council School boy passes on to a university and
takes a good degree, it is chronicled all over the world; the
school, the teacher, the boy and his parents are all held up for
show and admiration.  I declare it makes me ill!  Why?  Because I
know that in the underworld thousands of men are grubbing,
burrowing and grovelling who, as boys, possessed phenomenal
abilities, but whose parents were poor, so poor that their gifted
children had no chance of developing the talent that was in them.
Let us give them a chance!  Sometimes here and there one and
another bursts his bonds, and, rejoicing in his freedom, does
brilliant things.  But in spite of Samuel Smiles and his self-
help they are but few, though, if the centuries are searched, the
catalogue will be impressive enough.

Of course there must be self-help.  But there must be opportunity
also.  There is a great deal of talk about the children of the
poor being "over-educated," and the delinquencies of the youthful
poor are attributed to this bogy.  It is because they are under-
educated, not over-educated, that the children of the very poor
so often go wrong.

But the attempt to cast them all in the same mould is disastrous;
there is an over-education going on in this direction.  Not all
the children of the poor can be great scholars, but some of them
can!  Let us give them a chance.  Not all of them can be
scientists and engineers, etc., but some of them have talents for
such things!  Give them a chance!  A good many of them have
unmistakably artistic gifts!  Why not give them a chance too!
And the mechanically inclined should have a chance!  Why can we
not differentiate according to their tastes and gifts?

For even then we shall have enough left to be our hewers of wood
and carriers of water; an abundance will remain to do all the
work that requires neither brains nor gifts.

But let us stop at once and for ever trying to cram thick heads
and poor brains with stuff that cannot possibly be appreciated or
understood.  Let us teach their mechanical fingers to do
something useful, and give them, even the degenerates, some
chance!

And we must stop our blind alley occupation for growing lads, for
at the end of the alley stands an open door to the netherworld,
and through it youthful life passes with little prospect of
return.



CHAPTER X

PLAY IN THE UNDERWORLD

It may seem a strange thing, but children do play in the
underworld.  They have their own games and their times and
seasons too!

Yet no one can watch them as they play without experiencing
feelings more or less pathetic.  There is something incongruous
about it that may cause a smile, but there is also something that
will probably cause a tear.

For their playgrounds are the gutters or the pavements.  Happy
are the children when they can procure a spacious pavement, for
in the underworld wide pavements are scarce; still narrow
pavements and gutters are always to hand.

It is summer time, the holidays have come!  No longer the hum,
babble and shouts of children are heard in and around those huge
buildings, the County Council schools.

The sun pours its rays into the unclean streets, the thermometer
registers eighty in the shade.  Down from the top storey and
other storeys of the blocks the children come, happy in the
consciousness that for one month at least they will be free from
school, without dodging the school attendance officer.

"Hop-scotch" season has commenced, and as if by magic the
pavements of the narrow streets are covered with chalked lines,
geometrical figures and numerals, and the mysterious word "tod"
confronts you, stares at you, and puzzles you.

Who can understand the intricacies of "hop-scotch" or the
fascination of "tod"?  None but the girls of the underworld.
Simple pleasures please them--a level pavement, a piece of chalk,
a "pitcher," the sun overhead, dirt around, a few companions and
non-troublesome babies, are their chief requirements; for few of
these girls come out to play without the eternal baby.

Notice first, if you will, how deftly these foster-mothers handle
the babies; their very method tells of long-continued practice.
What slaves these girls are!  But they have brought the baby's
feeding-bottle, and also that other fearsome indispensable of
underworld infant life, "the comforter."

They are going to make a day of it, a mad and merry day, for they
have with them some pieces of bread and margarine to sustain them
in the toil of nursing and the exhaustion of "hop-scotch."

The "pitcher" is produced, and we notice how punctiliously each
girl takes her proper turn and starts from the correct place; we
notice also the dilapidated condition of their boots, that act as
golf clubs and propel the "pitcher."  We wonder how with such
boots, curled and twisted to every conceivable shape, they can
strike the "pitcher" at all.  There is some skill in "hop-scotch"
played as these girls play it, and with their "boots" too!

A one-legged game is "hop-scotch," for the left foot must be held
clear of the pavement, and the "pitcher" must be propelled with
the right foot as the girl "hops."

If she hops too high and misses it, she is "out"; if she strikes
too hard, and it travels beyond one of the boundaries, she is
"out" too; if she does not propel it far enough, again "out."

Why, of course there is skill and fascination in it, for it
combines the virtues of golf and baseball, and "tod" is quite as
good as a football goal.  And there is good fellowship and self-
denial going on, too; not quite every girl, thank Heaven, is
hampered or blessed with a baby, and we notice how cheerfully
they take their turn in nursing while the foster-mother arrives
at "tod."

The substitute, too, understands the use of the "comforter," for
should it roll in the dirty gutter she promptly returns it to its
proper place, the baby's mouth.  Untidy, slatternly girls, not
over-clean, not over-dressed, and certainly not over-fed, we
leave them to their play and their babies.

Here are a lot of half-naked boys, some standing, some sitting on
the hot pavement; they are playing "cherry hog"; why "hog" I
don't know!  Their requisites are a pocketful of cherry stones
and a small screw, not an expensive outfit, for they save the
"hogs" when they are permitted to eat cherries, as sometimes, by
the indulgence of a kindly fruiterer, they are, for he kindly
throws all his rotten or unsaleable fruit into the gutter.

If these are not to hand, there are plenty of "hogs" to be picked
up.  As to the little screw, well, it is easy to get one or steal
one.

The advantage of a screw is that it possesses a flat end, on
which it will stand erect.  In this position it is delicately
placed so that when struck by a cherry "hog" it falls.  Each boy
in turn throws a certain number of "hogs" at the screw, the
successful thrower gathers in the spoil and goes home with his
pocket bursting with cherry "hogs."

It's an exciting game, but it is gambling nevertheless; why do
not the police interfere?

Here are some boys playing "buttons"--gambling again!  This game
is good practice, too, and a capital introduction to that famous
game of youthful capitalists, "pitch and toss," for it is played
in precisely the same way, only that buttons take the place of
half-pennies.

The road, gutter or pavement will do for "buttons"; a small mark
or "jack" is agreed upon, a line is drawn at a certain distance;
alternately the lads pitch their buttons towards the "jack,"
three buttons each.  When all have "pitched," the boy whose
button is nearest the "jack" has first toss, that is, he collects
all the pitched buttons in his hand and tosses them; as the
buttons lie again on the ground the lads eagerly scan them, for
the buttons that lie with their convex side upwards are the spoil
of the first "tosser."  The remaining buttons are collected by
the second, who tosses, and then collects his spoil, and so on
till the buttons are all lost and won.  The boy whose buttons are
farthest from "jack" of course gets the last and least
opportunity.  When playing for halfpence, "heads or tails" is the
deciding factor.

Why, you say, of course it is a game of skill, just as much as
bowls or quoits; but there are also elements of luck about "pitch
and toss" which gives it an increased attraction.

Sunday in the underworld is the great day for "pitch and toss,"
for many boys have halfpence on that day.  They have been at work
during the week, and, having commenced work, their Sunday-school
days are at an end.  And having a few halfpence they can indulge
their long-continued and fervent hope of discarding "buttons" and
playing the man by using halfpence.

But how they enjoy it!  how intent they are upon it.  Sunday
morning will turn to midday, and midday to evening before they
are tired of it!  Meal times, or the substitute for meal times,
pass, and they remain at it!  always supposing their halfpence
last, and the police do not interfere, the latter being the most
likely.

It takes an interminably long time to dispossess a lad of six
halfpence at this game; fortune is not so fickle as may be
supposed.  The unskilled "pitcher" may have luck in "tossing,"
while the successful "pitcher" may be an unlucky "tosser."  If at
the end of a long day they come off pretty equal, they have had
an ideal day.

But they have had their ups and downs, their alternations of joy
and despair.  Sometimes a boy may win a penny; if so, it is
evident that another boy has lost one, and this is sad, though I
expect they lose more coppers to the police than they do to their
companions, for the police harry them and hunt them.  Special
constables are put on to detect them, and they know the favourite
resorts of the incipient gamblers.  They hunt in couples, too,
and they enter the little unclean street at each end.

Now for the supreme excitement; they are observed by the watchful
eye of a non-player, who is copperless.  There is a rush for the
halfpence, some of which the non-player secures.  There's a
scamper, but there is no escape; the police bag them, and
innocent boys who join in the scamper are bagged too.  The police
search the ground for halfpence, find a few which they carefully
pack in paper, that they may retain some signs of dirt upon them,
for this will be invaluable legal evidence on the morrow.  There
is a procession of police, prisoners and gleeful lads who are not
in custody to the nearest police-station.

On Monday they stand in the dock, when the police with the
halfpence and the dirt still upon them give evidence against
them.

One worthy magistrate will ask them why they were not at home or
school.  Another will sternly admonish them upon the evils of
street gambling.  A third will tell them that it would have paid
them better in health and pocket to have taken a country walk.
But all agree on one point, "that this street gambling must be
put down," and they "put it down," or attempt to do so, by fining
the young ragamuffins five shillings each.

The excitement of the cells then awaits them, to be followed by a
free ride in "Black Maria," unless "muvver" can pawn something
and raise the money, But many mothers cannot do this, others do
not trouble; as to "farver," well, he does not come in at all,
unless it is to give a "licking" to the boy when he comes out of
prison for losing his job and his wages.

Truly, the play of the underworld children is exciting enough:
there is danger attaching to it; perhaps that gives a piquancy to
it.

The fascination of "pitch and toss" is felt not only all over
England, where it holds undisputed sway, for it has no real
rival, but in America too!  Whilst in America last summer I
explored the mean streets of New York, and not far from the
Bowery I found lots of lads at the game.  It was Sunday morning,
too, and having some "nickels," I played several games with them.
I was but a poor pitcher, the coins were too light for me--
perhaps I could do better with solid English pennies--but what I
lost in pitching I gained in tossing, so I was not ruined,
neither did the Bowery lads sustain any loss.

But I found the procedure exactly the same as in England, and I
felt the fascination of it; and some day when I can afford it, I
will have a lot of metal counters made, and I will organise lads
into a club; I will give them "caps," and they shall play where
the police won't interfere.

I will give them trophies to contend for, and Bethnal Green shall
contend with Holloway; a halfpenny "gate" would bring its
thousands, and private gain would give place to club and district
"esprit de corps," for the lads want the game, not the money; the
excitement, not the halfpence.  There is nothing intrinsically
wrong about "pitch and toss," only the fact that ragamuffins play
it.

There is a great deal of nonsense talked about the game by
superior people who pose as authorities upon the delinquencies of
ragamuffin youth, and who declaim upon the demoralisation
attending this popular game of poor lads.

I heard at a meeting of a rich Christian Church, held in a noble
hall in the heart of London's City, one gentleman declare that a
smart ragamuffin youth of his acquaintance possessed a penny with
a "head" on each side for the purpose of enabling him to cheat at
this game.

He did not know what he was talking about, for such pennies would
be as useless for this game as the stones in the streets, for
"heads and tails" are the essence of the game.  The boys of the
underworld must play, and ought to play; if those above them do
not approve of their games, well, it is "up to them," as the
Americans have it, to find them better games than pitch and toss,
and better playing grounds than unclean streets.

Of public parks we have enough; they are very well for sedate and
elderly people.  They are useful to foster-mothers, slave girls
hugging babies about, and a boon for nurses with perambulators.
But what of Tom, Dick and Harry, who have just commenced work;
what of them?  "Boy Scouting," even with royal patronage, is not
for them, for they have no money to buy uniforms, nor time to
scour Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath for a non-existent enemy.

Church Lads' Brigade with bishops for patrons, did I hear some
one say?  Well, blowing a bugle, no matter how discordantly, is
certainly an attraction for a boy; and wearing a military cap set
jauntily on one side of the head is attractive, too, while the
dragging of a make-believe cannon through the streets may perhaps
please others.  But Tom, Dick and Harry from below care for none
of these things, for they are "make-believes," and Tom, Dick and
Harry want something real, even if it is vulgar, something with a
strong competitive element in it, even if it is a little bit
rough or wicked.

Besides Tom, Dick and Harry are not over-clean in person, nor
nice in speech, so they are not wanted.  Boy Scouts and Boys'
Brigades are preached at, but Tom, Dick and Harry do not want to
be preached at by a parson, or coddled by a curate.

They want something real, even though it be punching each other's
head, for that at any rate is real.  Give us play, play, real
play!  is the cry that is everlastingly rising from the
underworld youth.  But the overworld gives them parks and
gardens, which are closed at a respectable hour.  But the lads do
not go to bed at respectable hours, for their mothers are still
at work and their fathers have not arrived home.  So they play in
the streets; then we call them "hooligans," and of course they
must be "put down."

There is a good deal of "putting down" for the underworld, but it
is all of the wrong sort.  For there is no putting down of public
playgrounds for lads of fifteen and upwards open in the evening,
lighted by electricity, and under proper control.  Not one in the
whole underworld.  So they play in the streets, or rather indulge
in what is called  "horse-play."

But there are youths' clubs!  Yes, a few mostly in pokey places,
yet they are useful.  But Tom, Dick and Harry want space, room
and air, for they get precious little of these valuable
commodities at their work, and still less in their homes.  Watch
them if you will, as I have watched them scores of times in the
streets, how foolish, yet how pitiable their conduct is; you will
see that they walk for about two hundred yards and then walk back
again, and then repeat the same walk, till the hours have passed;
they seem to be as circumscribed as caged animals.  They walk
within bounds up and down the "monkey's parade."

How inane and silly their conversation is!  Sometimes a whim
comes upon them, and one runs for a few yards; the whim takes
possession of others, and they do exactly the same.  One seizes
another round the body and wrestles with him.  Immediately the
others begin to wrestle too; their actions are stereotyped, silly
and objectionable, even when they do not quarrel.

They bump against the people, women included, especially young
women.  They push respectable people into the gutters, and
respectable people complain to the police.  An extra force is
told off to keep order, and to put Tom, Dick and Harry down.

Sunday night is the worst night of all!  for now these youths are
out in their thousands; certain streets are given up to them, and
become impassable for others.  Respectable folk are shocked, and
church-going folk are scandalised!  Surely the streets are the
property of respectable people!  and yet they cannot pass through
them without annoyance.

At length the street is cleared and patrolled, for respectability
must be protected, not that there has been either violence or
robbery.  Oh dear, no!  There has only been foolish horse-play by
the Toms, Dicks and Harrys who, having nowhere else to go, and
nothing else to do, having, moreover, been joined by their female
counterparts, have been enjoying themselves in their own way, for
they have been "at play."

It is astonishing how fond of water the unwashed children of the
underworld are!  It has an attraction for them, often a fatal
attraction, even though it be thick with dirt and very
malodorous.  During the summer time the boys' bathing lakes in
Victoria Park are crowded and alive with youngsters, who splash
and flounder and choke, splutter and laugh in them.  They present
a sight worth seeing, and teach a lesson worth remembering.

The canals of Hoxton, Haggerston and Islington, too, dirty and
dangerous as they are, prove seductive to the boys who live close
to them.  Now the police have an anxious time.  Again they must
look after Tom, Dick and Harry, for demure respectability must
not be outraged by a sight of their naked bodies.

So the police keep a sharp outlook for them.  Some one kindly
informs them that a dozen boys are bathing in the canal near a
certain bridge, and quickly enough they find them in the very
act.  There the little savages are!  Some can swim, and some
cannot; those that cannot are standing in the slime near the
side, stirring up its nastiness.  They see the policeman
advancing, and those that can swim get ashore and run for their
little bits of clothing, tied up in a bundle ready for
emergencies.  Into the water again they go for the other side!
But, alas!  another policeman is waiting on the other side at the
place where they expected to land, so they must needs swim till
another landing place offers security.  But even here they find
that escape is hopeless, for yet another policeman awaits them.

Those who cannot swim seize their bundles, and, without waiting
to dress, run naked and unashamed along the canal, side, to the
merriment of the bargees, and the joy of the women and girls who
happen to have no son or brother amongst them, for the underworld
is not so easily shocked as the law and its administrators
imagine.

Ultimately they, too, find a policeman waiting for them, and a
"good bag" results.  But the magistrate is very lenient; with a
twinkle in his eye he reproves them, and fines them one shilling
each, which with great difficulty their "muvvers" pay.

But it has been a good day for the police, for four of them have
helped to convey six shillings from the wretchedly poor to the
coffers of the police-court receiver.  But when the school
holidays come round, that is the time for the dirty canal to tell
its tale, and to give up its dead, too!

Read this from the Daily Press, July 16th, 1911--

"A remarkable record in life-saving was disclosed at a Bethnal
Green inquest to-day on a child of six, named Browning, who was
drowned in the Regent's Canal on Bank Holiday.

"Henry H. Terry, an out-of-work carman, said he was called from
his home near by, and raced down to the canal.  There was a youth
on the bank holding a stick over the water, apparently waiting
for the child to come up to the surface.

"The coroner:  'How old was the youth?' 'Well, he stood five feet
six inches, and might have gone in without getting out of his
depth.  I heard a woman cry, "Why don't you go in!"  I dived in
five or six times, but did not bring up the body.' The witness
added that he and his brother had saved many lives at this spot,
the latter having effected as many as twenty-five rescues in a
year.  Alfred Terry, a silk weaver, described the point at which
the child was drowned as a veritable death-trap, and mentioned
that he had been instrumental during the past twelve years in
saving considerably over one hundred lives at that spot.

"'One hot July afternoon in 1900,' he added,'my mother and I had
five of them in the kitchen at one time with a roaring fire to
bring them round.  That was during the school holidays; they
dropped in like flies.'

"Accidental death was the verdict."

But when the little ones play in the gutter, danger lurks very
near, as witness the extract of the same date--

"At an inquest at the Poplar coroner's court to-day, on a three-
years'-old girl named Bertiola, it was stated that while playing
with other children she was struck on the head with a tin engine.
Three weeks later she was playing with the same children, and one
of them hit her on the head with the wooden horse.

"The coroner: 'Two similar blows in a few days, that is very
strange.'

"Dr. Packer said that death was due to cerebral meningitis, the
result of a blow on the head.

"The coroner:  'I suppose you can't tell which blow caused the
trouble' 'No, sir, I am afraid not.'

"The jury returned a verdict of accidental death."

But sometimes the boys and girls of the underworld collaborate in
their play, for just now (July) "Remember the grotto!  please to
remember the grotto!"  is a popular cry.  Who has not seen the
London grottos he who knows them not, knows nothing of the London
poor.

I was watching some girls play "hop-scotch" when a boy and girl
with oyster shells in their hands came up to me preferring the
usual request, "Please to remember the grotto!"  Holding out
their shells as they spoke.

"Where is your grotto?"  I said.  "There, sir, over there; come
and see it."  Aye!  there is was, sure enough, and a pretty
little thing it was in its way, built up to the wall in a quiet
corner, glistening with its oyster shells, its bits of coloured
china and surmounted with a little flag.

"But where are the candles?"  "Oh, sir, we haven't got any yet;
we shall get candles when we get some money, and light them to-
night; we have only just finished it."  "Where did you get your
shells?"  "From the fish-shops."  "Where did you get the pretty
bits of china from?"  "We saved them from last year."  "Does
grotto time come the same time every year,then"  "Oh yes, sir."
"How is that?"  "'Cos it's the time for it."  "Why do you build
grottos" "To get money."  "Yes, but why do people give you
money; what do grottos commemorate, don't you know?"  "No, sir."

I looked at a poor half-paralysed boy with sharp face and said,
"Well, my boy, you ought to know; do you go to Sunday School?"
"Yes, sir, both of us; St. James the Less."  "Well, I shall not
tell you the whole story to-day, but here is sixpence for you to
buy candles with; and next Sunday ask your teacher to tell you
why boys and girls build grottos; I shall be here this day week,
and if you can tell me I will give you a shilling."

There were at least six grottos in that street when I got there
on the appointed day.  A large crowd of children with oyster
shells were waiting; evidently the given sixpence and the
promised shilling had created some excitement in that corner of
Bethnal Green,

They were soon all round me, and a general chorus arose with
hands outstretched, "Please to remember the grotto!  please to
remember the grotto!  "I called them to silence, and said, "Can
any one tell me why you build grottos?"  There was a general
chorus, "To get money, sir."  That was all they knew, and it
seemed to them a sufficient reason.

Turning to the little cripple, I said, "Did you ask your
teacher?"  "Yes, sir, but she said it was only children's play;
but I bought some candles, and they are lighted now."

I said, "Now, children, listen to me, for I am going to tell you
about the beginning of grottos.

"A good many hundred years ago, when Jesus was on earth, He had
two disciples named James; in after years one was called 'James
the Greater' and the other 'James the Less.' After the death of
Jesus, James the Greater was put to death, and the disciples were
scattered, and wandered into many far countries.  James the Less
wandered into Spain, telling the people about Jesus.  He lived a
good and holy life, helping the poor and the afflicted.

"When he died, the people who loved him and reverenced him made a
great funeral, and built him a costly tomb, but instead of
putting up a monument to him, they built a large and beautiful
grotto over the place where his body lay.  They lined it with
beautiful and costly shells and other rich things, and lit it
with many candles.

"Thousands of people came to see the grotto, and gave money to
buy candles that it might always be lighted.

"Every year, on the anniversary of St. James's death, the people
came by thousands to the grotto.  One year it was said that a
crippled man had been made quite well while praying at the
grotto.  This event was told everywhere, and from that day forth
on St. James's Day people came from many countries, many of them
walking hundreds of miles to the grotto.

"Some of these people were ill and diseased, and others were sick
and blind, and some were cripples.

"It is said that a good many of them were cured of their
afflictions.

"Now all these poor people that walked slowly and painfully to
St. James's tomb carried big oyster shells, in which they made
holes for cords to pass through, and they placed the cords round
their necks.

"When they came near to people they would hold out their shells
and say, 'Please to remember the grotto!'  And people gave them
money to help them on their way and to buy candles for the
grotto, hoping that the poor people would get there safely and
come back cured.

So it came to pass that whenever people saw a man with an oyster
shell, they knew he was going or returning from St. James's tomb
in Spain, and they helped him.  The custom of building grottos on
St. James's Day spread to many countries besides Spain.  In
Russia they build very fine grottos.  At length the custom came
to England, and you boys and girls do what other boys and girls
have done for many years in other countries, and in reality you
celebrate the death of a great and good man."

The children were very silent for a while; the cripple boy looked
at me with tears in his eyes, and I knew what his tears
expressed.  I gave him a shilling, but he did not speak; to all
the other children who had built grottos I gave threepence each,
and there was joy in that corner of Bethnal Green.

There is always something pathetic about play in the underworld.
We feel that there is something wanting in it, perhaps that
something would come into it, if there were more opportunities of
real and competitive play.  Keeping shops, or teaching schools
may do for girls to play at, but a lad, if he is any good, wants
something more robust.

I often find cripple boys playing "tip-cat," another game upon
which the law has its eye, or hurrying along on crutches after
something that serves as a football, and getting there in time,
too, for a puny kick.  But that kick, little as it is, thrills
the poor chap, and he feels that he has been playing.  I am sure
that football is going to play a great part in the physical
salvation of Tom, Dick and Harry, but they must have other places
than the streets in which to learn and practise the game.

We have heard a great deal about the playing-fields of public
schools; we are told that we owe our national safety to them;
perhaps it is correct, but I really do not know.  But this I do
know, that the non-provision of playing-fields, or grounds for
the male youthful poor, is a national danger and a menace to
activity, endurance, health and pluck.

Nothing saves them now but the freehold of the streets.  Rob them
of this without giving them something better, and we shall
speedily have a race of flat-footed, flat-chested, round-
shouldered poor, with no brains for mental work, and no strength
for physical work.  A race exactly qualified for the conditions
to which we so freely submit it in prison.  And above those
conditions that race will have no aspirations.  So give them
play, glorious play, manly strife; let their hearts beat, and
their chests expand that they may breathe from their bottom
lungs, that their limbs may be supple and strong, for it will pay
the nation to give Tom, Dick and Harry healthy play.

And they long for it, do Tom, Dick and Harry!  Did you ever see
hundreds of them on a Sunday morning coming up from their lairs
in Hoxton, Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, to find a
field or open space in the suburbs where they might kick a
football?  I have seen it scores of times.  A miserable but
hopeful sight it is; hopeful because it bears testimony to the
ingrained desire that English lads have for active healthy play.
Miserable because of their appearance, and because of the fact
that no matter what piece of open ground or fields they may
select, they are trespassers, and may be ejected, or remain on
sufferance only.

Happy are they if they can find a piece of land marked for sale,
where the jerry-builder has not yet commenced a suburban slum.
Like a swarm of locusts they are down on it, and quickly every
blade of grass disappears, "kicked off" as if by magic.

Old walking-sticks, pieces of lath or old coats and waistcoats
serve as goal-posts.  Touch-lines they have none, one playing-
ground runs across the other, and a dozen teams are soon hard at
it.  They have no caps to distinguish them, no jerseys or
knickers of bright hues.  There are no "flannelled fools" among
them, but quickly there are plenty of "muddied oafs."  Trousers
much too long are rolled up, coats and vests are dispensed with,
braces are loosed and serve as belts.  There is running to and
fro, mud, and poor old footballs are kicked hither and thither.
They knock, kick and shoulder each other, their bare arms and
faces are coated with mud, they fall over the ball and over each
other.  If they cannot kick their own ball, they kick one that
belongs to another team.  There is much shouting, much laughter
and some bad language!  and so they go at it till presently there
is a great cheer, for Hoxton has got a second goal, and
Haggerston is defeated.  And they keep at it for two long hours,
if they are not interfered with, then back to their lairs and
food.

All this time good people have been in the churches close by, and
the shouting of the Hoxtonians has disturbed them, and the gentle
whisper of the Haggerstonians has annoyed them.  Some of them are
scandalised, and say the police ought to stop such nuisances;
perhaps they are right, for there is much to be said against it.
But there is something to be said on the other side, too; for the
natural instinct of English boys must have an outlet or perish.
If it perish they perish too, and then old England would miss
them.

So let them play, but give them playgrounds!  For playgrounds
will pay better than nice, respectable parks.  The outlay will be
returned in due time in a big interest promptly paid from the
increased vitality, energy, industry and honesty of our Toms,
Dicks and Harrys.  So let them play!

With much pleasure I quote from the Daily Press, November 24th,
the following--

"LEARNING TO PLAY

"ORGANISED GAMES IN HYDE PARK IN SCHOOL HOURS

"It is good news that arrangements are being made by the Office
of Works for the use of a part of Hyde Park for organised games
under the direction of the London County Council.  Hitherto the
only royal parks in which space has been allotted for this
purpose are Regent's Park and Greenwich Park.  But the King, as
is well known, takes a keen interest in all that concerns the
welfare of the children, and has gladly sanctioned the
innovation.

"During the year an increasing number of the elementary schools
in London have taken advantage of the article in the code of
regulations which provides that, under certain conditions,
organised games may, if conducted under competent supervision and
instruction, be played during school hours.  Up to the present
the London County Council has authorised the introduction of
organised games by 580 departments, 295 boys', 225 girls', and 60
mixed.

"The games chiefly played by boys are football, cricket and
rounders, according to the season.  Girls enjoy a greater
variety, and in addition to cricket and rounders, are initiated
into the mysteries of hockey, basket ball, target ball, and other
ball games.

"The advantages of the children being taught to get the best
exercise out of the games, and to become skilful in them, are
obvious.

"Arrangements have been made with the various local athletic
associations and consultative committees whereby in each
metropolitan borough there are hon. district representatives
(masters and mistresses) in connection with organised games.
Pitches are reserved in over thirty of the L.C.C. parks and open
spaces for the use of schools.  The apparatus required is
generally stored at the playing-fields for the common use of all
schools attending, but small articles such as balls, bats, sticks
are supplied to each school.

"The Council has decided that, so far as practicable, the
apparatus for organised games shall be made at the Council's
educational institutes, and, as a result of this decision, much
of it is fashioned at the handicraft centres."

This is all for good.  But I am concerned for adolescent youth
that has left school--the lads whose home conditions absolutely
prevent the evening hours being spent indoors.  Is there to be no
provision for them?



CHAPTER XI

ON THE VERGE OF THE UNDERWORLD

Charles Dickens has somewhere said, "The ties that bind the rich
to their homes may be made on earth, but the ties that bind the
poor to their homes are made of truer metal and bear the stamp of
Heaven."  And he adds that the wealthy may love their home
because of the gold, silver and costly things therein, or because
of the family history.  But that when the poor love their homes,
it is because their household gods are gods of flesh and blood.
Dickens's testimony is surely true, for struggle, cares,
sufferings and anxieties make their poor homes, even though they
be consecrated with pure affection, "serious and solemn places."

To me it has always been evident that the heaviest part of the
burden inseparable from a poor man's home falls upon the wife.

Blessed is that home where the wife is equal to her duties, and
doubly blessed is the home where the husband, being a true
helpmate, is anxious to carry as much of the burden as possible.
For then the home, even though it be small and its floors brick,
becomes in all truth "a sweetly solemn place."  It becomes a good
training ground for men and women that are to be.  But I am
afraid the working men do not sufficiently realise what heavy,
onerous and persistent duties fall upon the wife.  With nerves of
brass they do not appreciate the fact that wives may be, and are,
very differently constituted to themselves.  Many wives are
lonely; but the husbands do not always understand the gloomy
imaginations that pervade the lonely hours.  The physical laws
that govern women's personal health make periods of depression
and excitement not only possible, but certain.

Let us consider for a moment the life of a poor man's wife in
London, where her difficulties are increased by high rent and a
long absence of the husband.  She has the four everlasting walls
to look at, eternal anxieties as to the future, the repeated
weekly difficulties of making ends meet, and too often the same
lack of consideration from the husband.

The week's washing for the family she must do, the mending and
darning for the household is her task, the children must be
washed and clothed and properly cared for by her.  Of her many
duties there is no end.

Sickness in the family converts her into a nurse.  She herself
must bear the pangs and sufferings of motherhood, and for that
time must make preparation.  For death in the family she must
also provide, so the eternities are her concern.  Things present
and things to come leave her little time to contemplate the past.

Ask me the person of many duties, and I point to the wife of a
poor man.

Thank God, the law of compensation rules the universe, and she is
not exempt from its ruling.  She has her compensations doubtless,
but I am seriously afraid not to the extent to which she is
entitled, though, perhaps, they are greater than we imagine.

Her duties are not always pleasant, for when her husband falls
out of work the rent must be paid, or she must mollify a
disappointed landlord.  In many of our London "model" dwellings,
if she is likely to have a fourth child, three being the limit,
she must seek a new home.  And it ought to be known that on this
account there is a great exodus every year from some of our
London "dwellings."

It seems scarcely credible, but it is nevertheless a fact, that
in some dwellings she may not keep a cat, a dog, or even a bird,
neither may she have flowers in pots on her window-sills.  She is
hedged round with prohibitions, but she is expected to be
superior and to abide in staid respectability on an income of
less than thirty shillings per week.  And she does it, though how
she does it is a marvel.

Come with me to visit Mrs. Jones, who lives at 28, White Elephant
Buildings.  Mr. Jones is a painter at work for eight months in
the year, if he has good luck, but out of work always at that
time of the year when housekeeping expenses are highest.  For
every working man's wife will tell you that coal is always dearer
at the time of the year when it is most required.  in White
Elephant Buildings there is no prohibition as to the number of
children, or the Jones family would not be there, for they number
eight all told.  It is dinner time, and the children are all in
from school, and, being winter time, Jones is at home too!  He
has been his wearying round in search of work earlier in the day,
and has just returned to share the midday meal which the mother
serves.  In all conscience the meal is limited enough, but we
notice that Jones gets an undue proportion, and we wonder whether
the supply will go round.

We see that the children are next served in their order, the
elder obtaining just a little more food than the younger, and,
last of all--Mrs. Jones.

It is true that self-denial brings its own reward, for in her
case there is little to reward her in the shape of food.

To me it is still astonishing, although I have known it for
years, that thousands of poor men's wives go through years of
hard work, and frequent times of motherhood on an amount of food
that must be altogether inadequate.

Brave women!  Aye, brave indeed!  for they not only deny
themselves food, but clothing, and all those little personal
adornments that are so dear to the heart of women.  There is no
heroism to equal it.  It only ends when the children have all
passed out of hand, and then it is too late, for in her case
appetite has not been developed with eating, so that when the day
comes that food is more plentiful, the desire for it is lacking.

It is small wonder, then, that Mrs. Jones has a careworn look,
and does not look robust.  She has been married twelve years, so
that every second year she has borne a child.  The dark rings
beneath her eyes tell of protracted hours of work, and the
sewing-machine underneath the window tells us that she
supplements the earnings of her husband by making old clothes
into new, and selling them to her neighbours, either for their
children's wear or their own.  This accounts for the fact that
her own children are so comfortably clothed.  The dinner that we
have seen disappear cost ninepence, for late last evening, just
before the cheap butchers close by shut up for the night, Mrs.
Jones bought one pound and a half of pieces, and, with the aid of
two onions and some potatoes, converted them into a nourishing
stew.

Many times near midnight I have stood outside the cheap butchers'
and watched careful women make their purchases.  It is a pitiful
sight, and when one by one the women have made their bargains, we
notice that the shopboard is depleted of its heap of scrags and
odds and ends.

So day by day Mrs. Jones feeds her family, limiting her
expenditure to her purse.  And, truth to tell, Jones and the
little Joneses look well on it.  But two things in addition to
the rent test her managing powers.  Boots for the children!  and
coal for the winter!  The latter difficulty she gets over by
paying one shilling per week into a coal club all the year
through.  When Jones is in work she buys extra coal, but when the
winter comes she draws upon her reserves at the coal merchant's.

But the boots are more difficult.  To his credit let it be said
that Jones mends the family's boots.  That is, he can "sole and
heel," though he cannot put on a patch or mend the uppers.  But
with everlasting thought for the future, Mrs. Jones makes certain
of boots for the family.  Again a "club" is requisitioned, and by
dint of rigid management two shillings weekly pass into a
shoemaker's hands, and in their turn the family gets boots; the
husband first, the children one by one, herself last--or never!

Week by week she lives with no respite from anxiety, with no
surcease from toil.  By and by the eldest boy is ready for work,
and Mrs. Jones looks forward to the few shillings he will bring
home weekly, and builds great things upon it.  Alas!  it is not
all profit; the boy must have a new suit, he requires more food,
and he must have a little spending money, "like other boys"; and
though he is a good lad, she finds ultimately that there is not
much left of Tom's six shillings.

Never mind!  on she goes, for will he not get a rise soon and
again expectation encourages her.

So the poor woman, hampered as she is with present cares, looks
forward to the time when life will be a bit easier, when the
united earnings of the children will make a substantial family
income.  Oh, brave woman!  it is well for her to live in hope,
and every one who knows her hopes too that disappointment will
not await her, and that her many children will "turn out well."

Mrs. Jones is typical of thousands of working men's wives, and
such women demand our admiration and respect.  What matter though
some of them are a bit frowsy and not over-clean?  they have
precious little time to attend to their personal adornment.  I
ask, who can fulfil all their duties and remain "spick-and-span"?

"Nagging," did I hear some one say?  My friend, put yourself in
her place, and imagine whether you would remain all sweetness and
courtesy.  Again I say, that I cannot for the life of me
understand how she can bear it all, suffering as she does, and
yet remain so patient and so hopeful.

Add to the duties I have enumerated the time when sickness and
death enter the home.  Mrs. Grundy has declared that even poor
people must put on "mourning," and must bury their dead with
excessive expenditure, and Mrs. Grundy must be obeyed.

But what struggles poor wives make to do it!  but a "nice"
funeral is a fascinating sight to the poor.  So thousands of poor
men's wives deny themselves many comforts, and often necessaries,
that they may for certain have a few pounds, should any of their
children die.  Religiously they pay a penny or twopence a week
for each of their children to some industrial insurance company
for this purpose.

A few pounds all at once loom so large that they forget all the
toil, stress and self-denial they have undergone to keep those
pence regularly paid.  Decent "mourning "and "nice funerals" are
greatly admired, for if a working man's wife accepts parish aid
at such time, why then she has fallen low indeed.

And for the time when a new life comes into light, the poor man's
wife must make provision.  At this time anxiety is piled upon
anxiety.  There must be no parish doctor, no parish nurse; out of
her insufficient income she makes weekly payments to a local
dispensary that during sickness the whole household may be kept
free of doctor's bills.  An increased payment for herself secures
her, when her time comes, from similar worry.  But the nurse must
be paid, so during the time of her "trouble" the poor woman
screws, schemes and saves a little money; money that ought in all
truth to have been spent upon herself, that a weekly nurse may
attend her.  But every child is dearer than the last, and the
wonderful love she has for every atom of humanity born to her
repays all her sufferings and self-denial.

So I ask for the poor man's wife not only admiration and
consideration, but, if you will, some degree of pity also.  I
would we could make her burdens easier, her sorrows less, and her
pleasures more numerous.  Most devoutly I hope that the time may
soon arrive when "rent day" will be less dreaded, and when the
collector will be satisfied with a less proportion of the
family's earnings.  For this is a great strain upon the poor
man's wife, a strain that is never absent!  for through times of
poverty and sickness, child birth and child death, persistently
and inexorably that day comes round.  Undergoing constant
sufferings and ceaseless anxieties, it stands to the poor man's
wife's credit that their children fight our battles, people our
colonies, uphold the credit of our nation, and perpetuate the
greatness of the greatest empire the world has ever known.

But Mrs. Jones' eldest girl has a hard time too!  for she acts as
nurse and foster-mother to the younger children.  It was well for
her that Tom was born before her or she would have nursed him.
Perhaps it was well for Tom also that he got the most
nourishment.  As it is the girl has her hands full, and her time
is more than fully occupied.  She goes to school regularly both
Sunday and week-day.  She passes all her standards, although she
is not brilliant.  She washes the younger children, she nurses
the inevitable baby, she clears the "dinner things" away at
midday, and the breakfast and tea-cups in their turn.  She sits
down to the machine sometimes and sews the clothing her mother
has cut out and "basted."  She is still a child, but a woman
before her time, and Mrs. Jones and all the young Joneses will
miss her when she goes "out."

When that time comes, Mrs. Jones will not be so badly put to it
as she was when Tom went "out."  For she has been paying
regularly into a draper's club, and with the proceeds a quantity
of clothing material will be bought.  So Sally's clothing will be
made at home, and Sally and her mother will sit up late at night
to make it.

It is astonishing how "clubs" of all descriptions enter into the
lives of the poor.  There is, of course, the "goose club" for
Christmas, for the poor make sure of one good meal during the
year.  Some of them are extravagant enough to join "holiday
clubs," but this Mrs. Jones cannot afford, so her clubs are
limited to her family's necessities, excepting the money club
held at a neighbour's house into which she pays one shilling
weekly.  This club consists of twenty members, who "draw" for
choice.  Thus once in twenty weeks, sooner or later, Mrs. Jones
is passing rich, for she is in possession of twenty shillings all
at once.

There is some discussion between Sally and her mother as to the
spending of it; Tom's first suit was bought by this means, and
Jones himself is not forgotten; but for Mrs. Jones no thought is
given.

The planning, scheming and contrivance it takes to run a working
man's home, especially when the husband has irregular work, is
almost past conception, and the amount of self-denial is
extraordinary.

But it is the wife who finds the brains and exercises the self-
denial.  Her methods may be laughed at by wiser people, for there
is some wastage.  The friendly club-keeper must have a profit,
and the possession of wealth represented by a whole sovereign
costs something.  But when Mrs. Jones gets an early "draw," she
exchanges her "draw" for a later one, and makes some little
profit.

Oh, the scheming and excitement of it all, for even Mrs. Jones
cannot do without her little "deal."  But what will Sally settle
down to?  Now comes the difficulty and deciding point in her
life, and a critical time it is.

Mrs. Jones has not attended a mother's meeting, she has been too
busy; church has not seen much of her except at the christenings;
district visitors and clergymen have not shown much interest in
her; Jones himself is almost indifferent, and quite complacent.

So Sally and her mother discuss the matter.  The four shillings
weekly to be obtained in a neighbouring factory are tempting, but
the girls are noisy and rude; yet Sally will be at home in the
evenings and have time to help her mother, and that is tempting
too!  A neighbouring blouse-maker takes girls to teach them the
trade, and Sally can machine already, so she will soon pick up
the business; that looks nice too, but she would earn nothing for
the first three months, so that is ruled out.  Domestic service
is thought of, but Sally is small for her age, and only fourteen;
she does not want to be a nurse girl; she has had enough nursing-
-she has been a drudge long enough.

So to the factory she goes, though Mrs. Jones has her misgivings,
and gives her strong injunctions to come straight home, which of
course Sally readily promises, though whether that promise will
be strictly kept is uncertain.  But her four shillings are useful
in the family exchequer; they are the deciding factor in Sally's
life!

So on through all the succeeding years of the developing family
life comes the recurring anxiety of getting her children "out."
These anxieties may be considered very small, but they are as
real, as important, and as grave as the anxieties that well-to-do
people experience in choosing callings or professions for sons
and daughters to whom they cannot leave a competency.

And all this time the family are near, so very near to the
underworld.  The death of Jones, half-timer as he is, would
plunge them into it; and the breakdown or death of Mrs. Jones
would plunge them deeper still.

What an exciting and anxious life it really is!  Small wonder
that many descend to the underworld when accident overtakes them.
But for character, grit, patience and self-denial commend me to
such women.  All honour to them!  may their boys do well!  may
their girls in days to come have less anxieties and duties than
fall to the lot of working men's wives of to-day.



CHAPTER XII

IN PRISONS OFT

If every chapter in this book is ignored, I hope that this one
will be read thoughtfully.  For I want to show that a great
national wrong, a stupidly cruel wrong, exists.

Probably all injustice is stupid, but this wrong is so foolish,
that any man who thinks for one moment upon it will wonder how it
came into existence.

I have written and spoken about it so often that I am almost
ashamed of returning to the subject.  Yet all our penal
authorities, from the Home Secretary downwards, know all there is
to be known about it.

I am going, then, to reiterate a serious charge!  It is this:  no
boy from eight years of age up to sixteen, unless sound in mind
and body, can find entrance into any reformatory or industrial
school!  No matter how often he falls into the hands of the
police, or what charges may be brought against him, not even if
he is friendless and homeless.  Again, no youthful prisoner under
twenty-one years of age, no matter how bad his record, is allowed
the benefit of Borstal training unless he, too, be sound in mind
and body.  This is not only an enormity, but it is also a great
absurdity; for it ultimately fills our prisons with weaklings,
and assures the nation a continuous prison population.

It seems very extraordinary that prison and prison alone should
be considered the one and only place suitable for the afflicted
children of the poor when they break any law, but so it is.

The moral hump is tolerated, even patronised in reformative
institutions, but the physical hump, never!

Cunning, dishonesty and rascality generally may be tolerated, but
feebleness of mind or infirmity of body never!  All through our
penal administration and prison discipline this principle
prevails, and is strictly acted upon.

Let me put it briefly; prison, and prison only, is the one and
only place for afflicted youth when it happens to break one or
the other of our laws.

We have numerous institutions, half penal and half educative,
that exist absolutely for the purpose of receiving homeless,
wayward or criminally inclined youthful delinquents.

These institutions, I say, although kept going from public funds,
refuse, absolutely refuse, to give training to any youthful
delinquent who suffers from physical infirmity or mental
weakness.

Think of it again!  all youthful delinquents suffering from any
infirmity of body or mind, are refused reformative treatment or
training in all publicly supported institutions established for
delinquent youth.

He may be a thief, but if he is a hunchback they will have none
of him.  He may be a danger to other children, if he has fits he
will not be received.  He may rob the tills of small shopkeepers,
but if he is lame, half-blind, has heart disease, or if his brain
is not sound and his body strong, if he has lost a hand, got a
wooden leg, if he suffers from any disease or deprivation,
prison, and prison only, is the place for him.  So to prison the
afflicted one goes if over fourteen; if under fourteen back to
his home, to graduate in due time for prison.

This is no exaggeration, it is a true picture, and this procedure
has gone on till our prisons have become filled with broken and
hopeless humanity.

Could any one ever suggest a more disastrous course than this?
Why, decency, pity, or just a grain of common sense ought to
teach us, and would teach us if we thought for a moment, that it
is not only wrong but supremely foolish.

For there is a very close connection between neglected infirmity,
mental or physical, and crime, a connection that ought to be
considered, and few questions demand more instant attention.  Yet
no question is more persistently avoided and shelved by
responsible authorities, for no means of dealing with the
defective in mind or body when they commit offences against the
law, other than by short terms of useless imprisonment, have at
present been attempted or suggested.  It seems strange that in
Christianised, scientised England such procedure should continue
even for a day, but continue it does, and to-day it seems as
little likely to be altered as it was twenty years ago.  Let me
then charge it upon our authorities that they are responsible for
perpetuating this great and cruel wrong.  They are not in
ignorance, for the highest authorities know perfectly well that
every year many hundreds of helpless and hopeless degenerates or
defectives are committed to prison and tabulated as habitual
criminals.  Our authorities even keep a list on which is placed
the names of these unfortunates who, after prolonged experience
and careful medical examinations, are found to be "unfit for
prison discipline."

This list is of portentous length, and to it four hundred more
names are added every year.  This is of itself an acknowledgment
by the State that every year four hundred unfortunate human
beings who cannot appreciate the nature and quality of the acts
they have committed, are treated, punished and graded as
criminals.  Now the State knows perfectly well that these
unfortunates need pity, not punishment; the doctor, not the
warder; and some place where mild, sensible treatment and
permanent restraint can take the place of continual rounds of
short imprisonment alternated with equally senseless short spells
of freedom.

No!  not freedom, but a choice between starvation, prison or
workhouse.  Now this list grows, and will continue to grow just
so long as the present disastrous methods are persisted in!

Why does this list grow?  Because magistrates have no power to
order the detention of afflicted youthful offenders in any place
other than prison; they cannot commit to reformatory schools only
on sufferance and with the approval of the school managers, who
demand healthy boys.

So ultimately to prison the weaklings go, and an interminable
round of small sentences begins.  But even in prison they are
again punished because of their afflictions, for only the sound
in mind and body are given the benefit of healthy life and
sensible training.

Consequently in prison they learn little that can be of service
to them; they only graduate in idleness, and prison having
comforts but no terrors, they quickly join the ranks of the
habitues.  When it is too late they are "listed" as not suitable
for prison treatment.  Year by year in a country of presumably
sane people this deplorable condition of things continues, and I
am bold enough to say that there will be no reduction in the
number of our prison population till proper treatment, training,
and, if need be, detention, is provided in places other than
prison for our afflicted youthful population when they become
offenders against the law.

But reformatory and industrial schools have not only power to
refuse youthful delinquents who are unsound in mind or body; they
have also the power to discharge as "unfit for training" any who
have managed to pass the doctor's examination, whose defects
become apparent when under detention.

From the last Official Report of Reformatory Schools in England
and Wales I take the following figures--

During the years 1906-7-8 14 imbeciles (males) were discharged on
licence from reformatory schools; and during the same three years
no less than 93 (males) were discharged by the Home Secretary's
permission as "unfit for physical training."  The 14 imbeciles in
the Official Report are classified as dead, and the 93 physically
unfit are included among them "not in regular employment."

For the same period of years I find that 28 (girls) were
discharged from English reformatory schools as being physically
unfit.

The Official Report of Industrial Schools includes England, Wales
and Scotland, and for the same three years I find that 13 (males)
were discharged from industrial schools as being imbeciles, and
116 (males) as being "unfit for physical training."

Strange to say, in the Annual Report the physically unfit are
included among those "in casual employment," and the imbeciles
are included among the "dead."

From the same Official Report we have the statement that in one
year, 1909, in England and Scotland 991 (males) and 20 (females)
who had been discharged from reformatory schools were re-
convicted and committed to prison.

How many of them were mentally or physically defective we have no
means of knowing, for no information is given upon this point;
but there is not the slightest doubt that a large number of them
were weak-minded, though not sufficiently so to allow them being
classified as imbeciles.

The terrible consequence of this procedure may also be gathered
from the Report of the Prison Commissioners for England and Wales
1910, from which it appears that during the year 157 persons were
certified insane among the prisoners in the local and convict
prisons, Borstal institutions and of State reformatories, during
the year ending March 31, 1910.

In addition to the above there were 290 (213 males and 77
females) cases of insanity in remanded and other unconvicted
prisoners dealt with during the year, including 14 males and 2
females found "insane on arraignment," and 173 males and 65
females found insane on remand from police or petty sessional
courts.  There were 30 (20 males and 10 females) prisoners found
"guilty" but "insane" at their trial.

But the most illuminating report comes from the medical officer
at Parkhurst Convict Prison; these are his words--

Weak-minded convicts and others whose mental state is doubtful
continue to be collected here.  The special rules for their
management are adhered to.  The number classified as weak-minded
at the end of the year was 117, but in addition there were 34
convicts attached to the parties of weak-minded for further
mental observation.

"The conduct and tractability of these prisoners naturally vary
with the individual; a careful consideration of the history of
each of the 117 classified weak-minded convicts indicates that
about 64 are fairly easily managed, the remainder difficult to
deal with, and a few are dangerous characters.

CLASSIFICATION OF WEAK-MINDED CONVICTS:--

(a) Congenital deficiency :-
    1. With epilepsy    .   .   .   .   .   .     9
    2. Without epilepsy .   .   .   .   .   .    46
(b) Imperfectly developed stage of insanity      18
(c) Mental debility after attack of insanity      8
(d) Senility            .   .   .   .   .   .     2
(e) Alcohol             .   .   .   .   .   .     6
(f) Undefined           .   .   .   .   .   .    28
                                               -----
                                                117
                                               =====

"The following is a list of the crimes of the classified weak-
minded for which they are undergoing their present sentences of
penal servitude, and the number convicted for each type of crime
--

False pretences      .   .   .   .   .   .   .    3
Receiving stolen property    .   .   .   .   .    3
Larceny              .   .   .   .   .   .   .   18
Burglary             .   .   .   .   .   .   .    7
Shop-breaking, house-breaking, etc.  .   .   .   19
Uttering counterfeit coins   .   .   .   .   .    1
Threatening letters      .   .   .   .   .   .    4
Threatening violence to superior officer .   .    1
Robbery with violence    .   .   .   .   .   .    3
Manslaughter         .   .   .   .   .   .   .    6
Wounding with intent .   .   .   .   .   .   .    8
Grievous bodily harm .   .   .   .   .   .   .    2
Attempted murder     .   .   .   .   .   .   .    1
Wilful murder    .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    7
Rape         .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    5
Carnal knowledge of little girls .   .   .   .    8
Arson        .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   15
Cattle maiming   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    1
Placing obstruction on railway   .   .   .   .    2
Unnatural offences   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    3

"During the year 35 convicts were certified insane; of these 27
were removed to the criminal asylum at Parkhurst, 2 to Broadmoor
asylum, 3 to county or borough asylums, and 3 remained in the
prison infirmary at the end of the year.

"The average length of the last sentences for which these
unfortunates were committed was seven years' penal servitude
each.  That their mental condition was not temporary but
permanent may be gathered from their educational attainments, for
12 had no education at all, 18 were only in Standard I, 29 in
Standard II, 15 in Standard III, and 12 others were of poor
education."

The statement that the average length of the last sentences of
these unfortunates was seven years' penal servitude is appalling.
It ought to astound us!  But no one seems to care.  Penal
servitude is good enough for them.  Perhaps it is!  But it ought
to be called by another name, and legally signify the inmates to
be "patients," not criminals.  Let us visit a prison where we
shall find a sufficient number of prisoners to enable us to form
an idea as to their physical and mental condition.

Come, then, on Sunday morning into a famous prison that long
stood as a model to the world.  We are going to morning service,
when we shall have an opportunity of seeing face to face eight
hundred male prisoners.  But before we enter the chapel, let us
walk round the hospital and see those who are on the sick list.

One look as we enter the ward convinced us that some are lying
there whose only chance of freedom is through the gates of death.

In yonder corner lies a young man of twenty-one years; the
governor tells us that he is friendless, homeless, and a hopeless
consumptive.  He says, "We would have sent him out, but he has
nowhere to go, for he does not know his parish, so he must lie
here till he dies, unless his sentence expires first."

We speak to the young man a few kindly words, but he turns his
face from us, and of his history we learn nothing.

On another bed we find an old man whose days also will be short;
of his history we learn much, for he has spent a great deal of
his life in prison, and now, aged, feeble and broken, there is
nothing before him but death or continued imprisonment.  We pass
by other beds on which prisoners not so hopeless in health are
lying.  We see what is the matter with most of them:  they are
not strong enough for ordinary prison work, or indeed for any
kind of vigorous labour.  So they remain in prison well tended in
the hospital.  But some of them pass into freedom without the
slightest ability or chance of getting a living otherwise than by
begging or stealing.

What strikes us most about the inmates of the prison hospital is
the certainty that many of the prisoners have not sufficient
health and strength to enable them to be useful citizens.

So we pass through the hospital into the chapel, and find eight
hundred prisoners before us.  The organ plays, the morning
service is read by the chaplain; the prisoners sing, and as they
sing there is such a volume of sound that we cannot fail to be
touched with it.

We enter the pulpit, and as we stand and look down upon that
sea of upturned faces, we see a sight that is not likely to be
forgotten.  There, in front of us, right underneath the pulpit,
are rows of young men under twenty-two years of age; we look at
them; they are all clad in khaki, and we take a mental sketch of
them.

One or two among them are finely developed young men, but the
great bulk we see are small in stature and weak in body.  Some of
them have a hopeless expression of countenance that tells us of
moral and mental weakness.

We note that most of them can have had but little chance in life,
and that their physical or mental infirmities come from no fault
of their own.  They have all been to school; they have started in
life, if it can be called starting, as errand boys, paper sellers
in the streets, or as street merchants of some description.  They
have grown into early manhood, but they have not increased in
wisdom or stature.  They have learned no occupation, trade or
handicraft; they have passed from school age to early manhood
without discipline, decent homes or technical training.

When at liberty their homes are lodging-houses or even less
desirable places.  So they pass from the streets to the police,
from police-courts to prison, with positive regularity.

They behave themselves in prison, they obey orders, they do the
bit of work that is required of them, they eat the food, and they
sleep interminable hours away.

At the back of the young men we see row after row of older men,
and their khaki clothing and broad arrows produce a strange
impression upon us; but what impresses us most is the facial and
physical appearance of the prisoners.

Cripples are there, twisted bodies are there, one-armed men are
there, and blind men are there.  Here and there we see a healthy
man, with vigour and strength written on his face; but the great
mass of faces strikes us with dismay, and we feel at once that
most of them are handicapped In life, and demand pity rather than
vengeance.

We know that they are not as other men, and we realise that their
afflictions more than their sins are responsible for their
presence in that doleful assembly.

Yet some of them are clever in crime, and many of them persistent
in wrong-doing, but their afflictions were neglected in days when
those afflictions should have been a passport to the pity and
care of the community.

We see men who have grown old in different prisons, and we know
that position in social and industrial life is impossible for
them.

We see a number whom it is evident are not mentally responsible,
for whom there is no place but the  workhouse or prison; yet we
realise that, old as they are, the day of liberty must come once
more, and they will be free to starve or steal!

We know that there are some epileptics among them, and that their
dread complaint has caused them to commit acts of violence.

We see among them men of education that have made war upon
society.  Drunkards, too, are there, and we know that their
overmastering passion will demand gratification when once again
the opportunity of indulging in its presented to them.  So we
look at this strange mass of humanity, and as we look a mist
comes over our eyes, and we feel a choking sensation in our
throats.

But we look again, and see that few throughout this great
assembly show any sense of sorrow or shame.  As we speak to them
of hope, gladness, of manliness, and of the dignity of life, we
feel that we are preaching to an east wind.  Come round the same
prison with me on a week-day; in one part we find a number of men
seated about six feet from each other making baskets; warders are
placed on pedestals here and there to keep oversight.

We walk past them, and notice their slow movements and see
hopelessness written all over them.  They are working "in
association," they are under "observation," which, the governor
tells us, means that they are suspected of either madness or
mental deficiency.

As we look at them we are quite satisfied that this suspicion is
true, and that, if not absolutely mad, they are mentally
deficient.

If absolute madness be detected, they will be sent to asylums.
If feeble-mindedness be proved, they will again be set at
liberty.  Their names will be placed on a list, and they will be
declared "unfit for prison discipline," but nothing more will be
done.  They will be discharged to prowl about in the underworld,
to commit other criminal acts and to be returned again and again
to prison, to live out hopeless lives.

And there is another cause, almost as prolific in producing a
prison population.  For while the State has been, and still is,
ready to thrust afflicted youth into prison, it has been, and
still is, equally ready to thrust into prison the half-educated,
half-fed, and half-employed young people who break its laws or
by-laws.  It is true that the State in its irony allows them the
option of a fine; but the law might as well ask the youths of the
underworld to pay ten pounds as ask them to pay ten shillings;
nor can they procure all at once the smaller sum, so to prison
hundreds of lads are sent.

Does it ever occur to our esteemed authorities that this is a
most dangerous procedure!  What good can possibly come either to
the State or to the youthful offender?

What are the offences of these boys?  Disorder in the streets,
loitering at railway stations, playing a game of chance called
"pitch and toss," of which I have something to say in another
chapter, gambling with a penny pack of cards, playing tip-cat,
kicking a football, made of old newspapers maybe, playing
cricket, throwing stones, using a catapult, bathing in a canal,
and a hundred similar things are all deemed worthy of
imprisonment, if committed by the youngsters of the world below
the line.

Thousands of lads have had their first experience of prison for
trumpery offences that are natural to the boys of the poor.  But
a first experience of prison is to them a pleasant surprise.
They are astonished to find that prison is not "half a bad
place."  They do not object to going there again, not they!  Why?
Because the conditions of prison life are better, as they need to
be, than the conditions of their own homes.  The food is better,
the lodging is better, the bed is decidedly better, and as to the
work, why, they have none worthy of the name to do.  They lose
nothing but their liberty, and they can stand that for a week or
two, what matters!

Well, something does matter, for they lose three other things of
great moment to them if they only knew; but they don't know, and
our authorities evidently consider these three things of no
moment.  What do they lose?  First, their fear of prison;
secondly, their little bit of character; thirdly, their work, if
they have any.  What eventuates?  Idleness, hooliganism and
repeated imprisonments for petty crime, until something more
serious happens, and then longer sentences.  Such is the progress
of hundreds whom statisticians love to call "recidivists."

Am I wrong when I say that the State has been too ready, too
prompt in sending the youths of the ignorant poor to prison?  Am
I wrong in saying that the State has been playing its "trump ace"
too soon, and that it ought to have kept imprisonment up its
sleeve a little longer?  These lads, having been in prison, know,
and their companions know, too, the worst that can happen to them
when they commit real crime.  Prison has done its worst, and it
cannot hurt them.

If prisons there must be, am I wrong in contending that they
should be reserved for the perpetrators of real and serious
crime; and that the punishment, if there is to be punishment,
should be certain, dignified and severe, educational and
reformative?  At present it includes none of these qualities.

To such a length has the imprisonment of youths for trumpery
offences gone, not only in London, but throughout the country,
that visiting justices of my acquaintance have spent a great deal
of money in part paying the fines of youths imprisoned under such
conditions, that they might be released at once.  Here we have a
curious state of affairs, magistrates generally committing youths
to prison in default for trumpery offences, and other magistrates
searching prisons for imprisoned youths, paying their fines,
setting them free, and sending on full details to the Home
Secretary.

It would be interesting to know how many "cases" of this kind
have been reported to the Home Secretary during the last few
years.  Time after time the governors of our prisons have called
attention to this evil in their annual reports.  They know
perfectly well the disaster that attends the needless
imprisonment of boys, and it worries them.  They treat the boys
very kindly, all honour to them!  But even kindness to young
prisoners has its dangers, and every governor is able to tell of
the constant return of youthful prisoners.

I do not like the "birch" or corporal punishment at all.  I do
not advocate it, but I am certain that the demoralising effect of
a few' days' imprisonment is far in excess of the demoralisation
that follows a reasonable application of the birch.

But the birch cannot be applied to lads over fourteen years of
age, so it would be well to abolish it altogether, except in
special cases, and for these the age might with advantage be
extended.  And, after all, imprisonment itself is physical
punishment and a continued assault upon the body.  But why
imprison at all for such cases?  We talk about imprisonment for
debt; this is imprisonment for debt with a vengeance.  Look!  two
lads are charged with one offence or two similar offences; one
boy is from the upperworld, the other from below the line.  The
same magistrate fines the two boys an equal amount; the one boy
pays, or his friends pay; but the other goes of a certainty to
prison.  Is it not absurd!  rather, is it not unjust?

But whether it is absurd or unjust the result is certain
--mathematically certain--in the development of a prison
population.

During my police-court days I have seen hundreds of youths
sitting crying in their cells consumed with fear, waiting their
first experience of prison; I have seen their terror when first
entering the prison van, and I know that when entering the prison
portals their terror increased.  But it soon vanished, for I have
never seen boys cry, or show any signs of fear when going to
prison for the second time.  The reason for this I have already
given:  "fear of the unknown" has been removed.  This fear may
not be a very noble characteristic, but it is part of us, and it
has a useful place, especially where penalties are likely to be
incurred.

For many years I have been protesting against this needless
imprisonment of youths, and now it has become part of my duty to
visit prisons and to talk to youthful prisoners, I see the
wholesale evil that attends this method of dealing with youthful
offenders.  And the same evils attend, though to perhaps a less
degree, the prompt imprisonment of adults, who are unable to pay
forthwith fines that have been imposed upon them.

It is always the poor, the very poor, the people below the line
that suffer in this direction.  Doubtless they merit some
correction, and the magistrates consider that fines of ten
shillings are appropriate, but then they thoughtlessly add "or
seven days."

Think of the folly of it!  because a man cannot pay a few
shillings down, the State conveys him to prison and puts the
community to the very considerable expense of keeping him.  The
law has fined him, but he cannot pay then, so the law turns round
and fines the community.

What sense, decency, or profit can there possibly be in
committing women to prison, even for drunkenness, for three, five
or seven days?  How can it profit either the State or the woman?
It only serves to familiarise her with prison.

I could laugh at it, were it not so serious.  Just look at this
absurdity!  A woman gets drunk on Thursday, she is charged on
Friday.  "Five shillings, or three days!"  On Friday afternoon
she enters prison, for the clerk has made out a "commitment," and
the gaoler has handed her into the prison van.  Her "commitment"
is handed to the prison authorities; it is tabulated, so is she;
but at nine o'clock next morning she is discharged from prison,
for the law reckons every part of a day to be a complete day; and
the law also says that there must be no discharge from prison on
a Sunday, and to keep her till Monday would be illegal, for it
would be "four days."  How small, how disastrous, and how
expensive it is!

If offenders, young or old, must be punished, let them be
punished decently.  If they ought to be sent to prison, to prison
send them.  But if their petty offences can be expunged by the
payment of a few shillings, why not give them a little time to
pay those fines?  Such a course would stop for ever the
miserable, deadly round of short expensive imprisonments.  I have
approached succeeding Home Secretaries upon this matter till I am
tired; succeeding Home Secretaries have sent memorandums and
recommendations to courts of summary jurisdiction till, I expect,
they are tired, for generally they have had no effect in
mitigating the evil.

Magistrates have the power to grant time for the payment of
fines, but it is optional, not imperative.  It is high time for a
change, and surely it will come, for the absurdity cannot
continue.

Surely every English man and woman who possesses a settled home
ought to have, and must have, the legal right of a few days'
grace in which to pay his or her fine.  And every youthful
offender ought to have the same right, also, even if he paid by
instalments.

But at present it is so much easier, and therefore so much
better, to thrust the underworld, youthful and adult, into prison
and have done with them, than it is to pursue a sane but a little
bit troublesome method that would keep thousands of the poor from
ever entering prison.



CHAPTER XIII

UNEMPLOYED AND UNEMPLOYABLE

My life has been one of activity; from an early age I have known
what it was to be constantly at work.  To have the certainty of
regular work, and to have the discipline of constant duty, seem
to me an ideal state for mind and body.  Labour, we are sometimes
told, is one of God's chastisements upon a fallen race; I believe
it to be one of our choicest blessings.  I can conceive only one
greater tragedy than the man who has nothing to do, and that is
the man who, earnestly longing for work, seeks it day by day, and
fails to find it.

Imagine his position, and imagine also, if you possibly can, the
great qualities that are demanded if such a man is to go through
a lengthened period of unemployment without losing his dignity,
his manhood and his desire for work.

I can tell at a glance the man who has had this experience.
There is something about his face that proclaims his
hopelessness, the very poise of his body and his peculiar
measured step tell that his heart is utterly unexpectant.  To-
morrow morning, and every morning, thousands of men will rise
early, even before the sun, and set out on their weary tramp and
hopeless search for work.  To-morrow morning, and every morning,
thousands of men will be waiting at various dock-gates for a
chance of obtaining a few hours' hard work.  And while these
wait, others tramp, seeking and asking for work.

Wives may be ill at home, children may be wanting food and
clothing, but every day thousands of husbands set out on the
interminable search for work, and every day return disappointed.
Small wonder that some of them descend to a lower grade and in
addition to being unemployed, become unemployable.

Look at those thousands of men clamouring daily at our dock-
gates; about one-half of them will obtain a few hours' hard work,
but the other half will go hopeless away.  They will gather some
courage during the night, for the next morning they will find
their way to, and be knocking once more at, the same dock-gates.
It takes sterling qualities to endure this life, and there can be
no greater hero than the man who goes through it and still
retains manhood.

But it would be more than a miracle if tens of thousands of men
could live this life without many of them becoming wastrels, for
it is certain that a life of unemployment is dangerous to
manhood, to character and health.

As a matter of fact the ranks of the utterly submerged are being
constantly recruited from the ranks of those who have but casual
work.  During winter the existence of the unemployed is more
amply demonstrated, for then we are called upon to witness the
most depressing of all London's sights, a parade of the
unemployed. I never see one without experiencing strange and
mixed emotions.  Let me picture a parade, for where I live they
are numerous, and at least once a week one will pass my window.

I hear the doleful strains of a tin whistle accompanied with a
rub-a-dub-dub of a kettledrum that has known its best days, and
whose sound is as doleful as that of the whistle.  I know what is
coming, and, though I have seen it many times, it has still a
fascination for me, so I stand at my window and watch.  I see two
men carrying a dilapidated banner, on which is inscribed two
words, "The Unemployed."  The man with the tin whistle and the
man with the drum follow the banner, and behind them is a company of
men marching four abreast.  Two policemen on the pavement keep
pace with the head of the procession, and two others perform a
similar duty at the end of it.

On the pavement are a number of men with collecting boxes, ready
to receive any contribution that charitably inclined people may
bestow.  They do not knock at any door, but they stand for a
moment and rattle their boxes in front of every window.

The sound of the whistle and the drum, and the rattle of boxes
is, in all conscience, depressing enough, but one glimpse at the
men is infinitely more so.

Most of them are below the average height and bulk.  Their hands
are in their trousers pockets, their shoulders are up, but their
heads are bent downwards as if they were half ashamed of their
job.  A peculiar slouching gait is characteristic of the whole
company, and I look in vain for a firm step, an upright carriage,
and for some signs of alert manhood.  As they pass slowly by I
see that some are old, but I also see that the majority of them
are comparatively young, and that many of them cannot be more
than thirty years of age.  But whether young or old, I am
conscious of the fact that few of them are possessed of strength,
ability and grit.  There are no artisans or craftsmen among them,
and stalwart labourers are not in evidence.

Pitiful as the procession is, I know that it does not represent
the genuine and struggling unemployed.  They pass slowly by and
go from street to street.  So they will parade throughout the
livelong day.  The police will accompany them, and will see them
disbanded when the evening closes in.  The boxes will be emptied,
the contents tabulated, and a pro rata division will be made,
after which the processionists will go home and remain unemployed
till the next weekly parade comes round.

Unemployable!  yes, but so much the greater pity; and so much
more difficult the problem, for they represent a very large
class, and it is to be feared a growing class of the manhood of
London's underworld.

We cannot blame them for their physical inferiority, nor for
their lack of ability and grit.  To expect them to exhibit great
qualities would be absurd.  They are what they are, and a wise
country would ponder the causes that lead to such decadent
manhood.  During my prison lectures I have been frequently struck
with the mean size and appearance of the prisoners under twenty-
two years of age, who are so numerous in our London prisons.
From many conversations with them I have learned that lack of
physical strength means also lack of mental and moral strength,
and lack of honest aspiration, too!  I am confirmed in this
judgment by a statement that appeared in the annual report of the
Prison Commissioners, who state that some years ago they adapted
the plan in Pentonville prison of weighing and measuring all the
prisoners under the age of twenty-two.

The result I will tell in their own words:  "As a class they are
two-and-a-half inches below the average height of the general
youthful population of the same age, and weigh approximately
fourteen pounds less."

Here, then, we have an official proof of physical decadence, and
of its connection with prison life.  For these young men, so
continuously in prison, grow into what should be manhood without
any desire or qualification for robust industrial life.

I never speak to them without feeling a deep pity.  But as it is
my business to interest them, I try to learn something from them
in return, as the following illustration will show.

I had been giving a course of lectures on industrial life to the
young prisoners in Wormwood Scrubbs, who numbered over three
hundred.  On my last visit I interrogated them as follows--

"Stand up those of you that have had regular or continuous work."
None of them stood up!  "Stand up those of you who have been
apprentices."  None of them stood up!  "Stand up those of you who
sold papers in the street before you left school."  Twenty-five
responded!  "How many sold other things in the streets before
leaving school?"  Thirty!  Seventeen others sold papers after
leaving school, and thirty-eight sold various articles.
Altogether I found that nearly two hundred had been in street
occupations.

To my final question:  "How many of you have met me in other
prisons?"  Thirty-five stood up!  I give these particulars
because I think my readers will realise the bearing they have on
unemployment.

Surely it is obvious that if we continue to have a growing number
of physically inferior young men, who acquire no technical skill
and have not the slightest industrial training, that we shall
continue to have an increasing number of unemployed
unemployables.


CHAPTER XIV

SUGGESTIONS

I propose in this last chapter to make some suggestions, which, I 
venture to hope, will be found worthy of consideration and 
adoption.

The causes of so much misery, suffering and poverty in a rich and 
self-governing country are numerous; and every cause needs a 
separate consideration and remedy.

There is no royal road by which the underworld people can ascend 
to the upperworld; there can be no specific for healing all the 
sores from which humanity suffers.

Our complex civilisation, our industrial methods, our strange 
social system, combined with the varied characteristics mental 
and physical of individuals, make social salvation for the mass 
difficult and quite impossible for many.

I shall have written with very little effect if I have not shown 
what some of these individual characteristics are.  They are 
strange, powerful and extraordinary.  So very mixed, even in one 
individual, that while sometimes they inspire hope, at others 
they provoke despair.

If we couple the difficulties of individual character with the 
social, industrial and economic difficulties, we see at once how 
great the problem is.

We must admit, and we ought frankly to admit the truth, and to 
face it, that there exists a very large army of people that 
cannot be socially saved.  What is more important, they do not 
want to be saved, and will not be saved if they can avoid it.  
Their great desire is to be left alone, to be allowed to live 
where and how they like.

For these people there must be, there will be, and at no far 
distant date, detention, segregation and classification.  We must 
let them quietly die out, for it is not only folly, but suicidal 
folly to allow them to continue and to perpetuate.

But we are often told that "Heaven helps those who help 
themselves"; in fact, we have been told it so often that we have 
come to believe it, and, what is worse, we religiously or 
irreligiously act upon it when dealing with those below the line.

If any serious attempt is ever made to lessen the number of the 
homeless and destitute, if that attempt is to have any chance of 
success, it will, I am sure, be necessary to make an alteration 
in the adage and a reversal of our present methods.

If the adage ran, "Heaven helps those who cannot help 
themselves," and if we all placed ourselves on the side of 
Heaven, the present abominable and distressing state of affairs 
would not endure for a month,

Now I charge it upon the State and local authorities that they 
avoid their responsibilities to those who most sorely need their 
help, and who, too, have the greatest claim upon their pity and 
protecting care.  Sometimes those claims are dimly recognised, 
and half-hearted efforts are made to care for the unfortunate for 
a short space of time, and to protect them for a limited period.

But these attempts only serve to show the futility of the 
efforts, for the unfortunates are released from protective care 
at the very time when care and protection should become more 
effectual and permanent.

It is comforting to know that we have in London special schools 
for afflicted or defective children.  Day by day hundreds of 
children are taken to these schools, where genuine efforts are 
made to instruct them and to develop their limited powers.  But 
eight hundred children leave these schools every year; in five 
years four thousand afflicted children leave these schools.  
Leave the schools to live in the underworld of London, and leave, 
too, just at the age when protection is urgently needed.  For 
adolescence brings new passions that need either control or 
prohibition.

I want my reader's imagination to dwell for a moment on these 
four thousand defectives that leave our special schools every 
five years; I want them to ask themselves what becomes of these 
children, and to remember that what holds good with London's 
special schools, holds good with regard to all other special 
schools our country over.

These young people grow into manhood and womanhood without the 
possibility of growing in wisdom or skill.  Few, very few of 
them, have the slightest chance of becoming self-reliant or self- 
supporting; ultimately they form a not inconsiderable proportion 
of the hopeless.

Philanthropic societies receive some of them, workhouses receive 
others, but these institutions have not, nor do they wish to 
have, any power of permanent detention, the cost would be too 
great.  Sooner or later the greater part of them become a costly 
burden upon the community, and an eyesore to humanity.  Many of 
them live nomadic lives, and make occasional use of workhouses 
and similar institutions when the weather is bad, after which 
they return to their uncontrolled existence.  Feeble-minded and 
defective women return again and again to the maternity wards to 
deposit other burdens upon the ratepayers and to add to the 
number of their kind.

But the nation has begun to realise this costly absurdity of 
leaving this army of irresponsibles in possession of uncontrolled 
liberty.  The Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the 
Feeble-minded, after sitting for four years, has made its report. 
This report is a terrible document and an awful indictment of our 
neglect.

The commissioners tell us that on January 1st, 1906, there were 
in England and Wales 149,628 idiots, imbeciles, and feeble- 
minded; in addition there were on the same date 121,079 persons 
suffering from some kind of insanity or dementia.  So that the 
total number of those who came within the scope of the inquiry 
was no less than 271,607, or 1 in every 120 of the whole 
population.

Of the persons suffering from mental defect, i.e.  feeble-minded, 
imbeciles, etc., one-third were supported entirely at the public 
cost in workhouses, asylums, prisons, etc.

The report does not tell us much about the remaining two-thirds; 
but those of us who have experience know only too well what 
becomes of them, and are painfully acquainted with the 
hopelessness of their lives.

Here, then, is my first suggestion--a national plan for the 
permanent detention, segregation and control of all persons who 
are indisputably feeble-minded.  Surely this must be the duty of 
the State, for it is impossible that philanthropic societies can 
deal permanently with them.

We must catch them young; we must make them happy, for they have 
capabilities for childlike happiness, and we must make their 
lives as useful as possible.  But we must no longer allow them 
the curse of uncontrolled liberty.

Again, no boy should be discharged from reformatory or industrial 
schools as "unfit for training" unless passed on to some 
institution suitable to his age and condition.  If we have no 
such institutions, as of course we have not, then the State must 
provide them.  And the magistrates must have the power to commit 
boys and girls who are charged before them to suitable industrial 
schools or reformatories as freely, as certainly, as 
unquestioned, and as definitely as they now commit them to 
prison.

At present magistrates have not this power, for though, as a 
matter of course, these institutions receive numbers of boys and 
girls from police-courts, the institutions have the power to 
Refuse, to grant "licences" or to "discharge."  So it happens 
that the meshes of the net are large enough to allow those that 
ought to be detained to go free.

No one can possibly doubt that a provision of this character 
would largely diminish the number of those that become homeless 
vagrants.

But I proceed to my second suggestion--the detention and 
segregation of all professional tramps.  If it is intolerable 
that an army of poor afflicted human beings should live homeless 
and nomadic lives, it is still more intolerable that an army of 
men and women who are not deficient in intelligence, and who are 
possessed of fairly healthy bodies should, in these days, be 
allowed to live as our professional tramps live.

I have already spoken of the fascination attached to a life of 
irresponsible liberty.  The wind on the heath, the field and 
meadow glistening with dew or sparkling with flowers, the singing 
of the bird, the joy of life, and no rent day coming round, who 
would not be a tramp!  Perhaps our professional tramps think 
nothing of these things, for to eat, to sleep, to be free of 
work, to be uncontrolled, to have no anxieties, save the 
gratification of animal demands and animal passions, is the 
perfection of life for thousands of our fellow men and women.

Is this kind of life to be permitted?  Every sensible person will 
surely say that it ought not to be permitted.  Yet the number of 
people who attach themselves to this life continually increases, 
for year by year the prison commissioners tell us that the number 
of persons imprisoned for vagrancy, sleeping out, indecency, 
etc., continues to increase, and that short terms of imprisonment 
only serve as periods of recuperation for them, for in prison 
they are healed of their sores and cleansed from their vermin.

With every decent fellow who tramps in search of work we must 
have the greatest sympathy, but for professional tramps we must 
provide very simply.  Most of these men, women and children find 
their way into prison, workhouses and casual wards at some time 
or other.  When the man gets into prison, the woman and children 
go into the nearest workhouse.  When the man is released from 
prison he finds the woman and children waiting for him, and away 
they go refreshed and cleansed by prison and workhouse treatment.

We must stop for ever this costly and disastrous course of life. 
How?  By establishing in every county and under county 
authorities, or, if necessary, by a combination of counties, 
special colonies for vagrants, one for males and another for 
females.  Every vagrant who could not give proof that he had some 
definite object in tramping must be committed to these colonies 
and detained, till such time as definite occupation or home be 
found for him.

Here they should live and work, practically earning their food 
and clothing; their lives should be made clean and decent, and 
certainly economical.  For these colonies there must be of course 
State aid.

The children must be adopted by the board of guardians or 
education authorities and trained in small homes outside the 
workhouse gates this should be compulsory.

These two plans would certainly clear away the worst and most 
hopeless tribes of nomads, and though for a short time they would 
impose considerable pecuniary obligations upon us, yet we should 
profit even financially in the near future, and, best of all, 
should prevent a second generation arising to fill the place of 
those detained.

The same methods should be adopted with the wretched mass of 
humanity that crowds nightly on the Thames Embankment. 
Philanthropy is worse than useless with the great majority of 
these people.  Hot soup in the small hours of a cold morning is 
doubtless comforting to them, and if the night is wet, foggy, 
etc., a cover for a few hours is doubtless a luxury.  They drink 
the soup, they take advantage of the cover, and go away, to 
return at night for more soup and still another cover.  Oh, the 
folly of it all!

We must have shelters for them, but the County Council must 
provide them.  Large, clean and healthy places into which, night 
by night, the human derelicts from the streets should be taken by 
special police.

But there should be no release with the morning light, but 
detention while full inquiries are made regarding them.  Friends 
would doubtless come forward to help many, but the remainder 
should be classified according to age and physical and mental 
condition, and released only when some satisfactory place or 
occupation is forthcoming for them.

The nightly condition of the Embankment is not only disgraceful, 
but it is dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the community.

It is almost inconceivable that we should allow those parts of 
London which are specially adapted for the convenience of the 
public to be monopolised by a mass of diseased and unclean 
humanity.  If we would but act sensibly with these classes, I am 
sure we could then deal in an effectual manner with that portion 
of the nomads for whom there is hope.

If the vast amount of money that is poured out in the vain effort 
to help those whom it is impossible to help was devoted to those 
that are helpable, the difficulty would be solved,

So I would suggest, and it is no new suggestion, that all 
philanthropic societies that deal with the submerged should unite 
and co-ordinate with the authorities.  That private individuals 
who have money, time or ability at their command should unite 
with them.  That one great all-embracing organisation, empowered 
and aided by the State, should be formed, to which the man, woman 
or family that is overtaken or overwhelmed by misfortune could 
turn in time of their need with the assurance that their needs 
would be sympathetically considered and their requirements wisely 
attended to.

An organisation of this description would prevent tens of 
thousands from becoming vagrants, and a world of misery and 
unspeakable squalor would be prevented.

The recent Report on the Poor Law foreshadows an effort of this 
description, and in Germany this method is tried with undoubted 
success.

Some day we shall try it, but that day will not come till we have 
realised how futile, how expensive our present methods are.  The 
Poor Law system needs recasting.  Charity must be divorced from 
religion.  Philanthropic and semi-religious organisations must be 
separated from their commercial instincts and commercial greed. 
The workhouse, the prison, the Church Army and the Salvation 
Army's shelters and labour homes must no longer form the circle 
round which so many hopelessly wander.

No man or set of men must be considered the saviour of the poor, 
and though much knowledge will be required, it perhaps will be 
well not to have too much.

Above all, the desire to prevent, rather than the desire to 
restore, must be the aim of the organisation which should embrace 
every parish in our land.

Finally, and in a few words, my methods would be detention and 
protective care for the afflicted or defective, detention and 
segregation for the tramps, and a great charitable State-aided 
organisation to deal with the unfortunate.

Tramps we shall continue to have, but there need be nothing 
degrading about them, if only the professional element can be 
eliminated.

Labour exchanges are doing a splendid work for the genuine 
working man whose labour must often be migratory.  But every 
labour exchange should have its clean lodging-house, in which the 
decent fellows who want work, and are fitted for work, may stay 
for a night, and thus avoid the contamination attending the 
common lodging-houses or the degradation and detention attending 
casual wards.

There exists, I am sure, great possibilities for good in labour 
exchanges, if, and if only, their services can be devoted to the 
genuinely unemployed.

Already I have said they are doing much, and one of the most 
useful things they do is the advancement of rail-fares to men 
when work is obtained at a distance.  A development in this 
direction will do much to end the disasters that attend decent 
fellows when they go on tramp.  Migratory labour is unfortunately 
an absolute necessity, for our industrial and commercial life 
demand it, and almost depend upon it.  The men who supply that 
want are quite as useful citizens as the men who have permanent 
and settled work.  But their lives are subject to many dangers, 
temptations, and privations from which they ought to be 
delivered.

The more I reflect upon the present methods for dealing with 
professional tramps, the more I am persuaded that these methods 
are foolish and extravagant.  But the more I reflect on the life 
of the genuinely unemployed that earnestly desire work and are 
compelled to tramp in search of it, the more I am persuaded that 
such life is attended by many dangers.  The probability being 
that if the tramp and search be often repeated or long-continued, 
the desire for, and the ability to undergo, regular work will 
disappear.

But physical and mental inferiority, together with the absence of 
moral purpose, have a great deal to say with regard to the number 
of our unemployed.

If you ask me the source of this stunted manhood, I point you to 
the narrow streets of the underworld.  Thence they issue, and 
thence alone.

Do you ask the cause?  The causes are many!  First and foremost 
stands that all-pervading cause--the housing of the poor.  Who 
can enumerate the thousands that have breathed the fetid air of 
the miserable dwelling-places in our slums?  Who dare picture how 
they live and sleep, as they lie, unripe sex with sex, for mutual 
taint?  I dare not, and if I did no publisher could print it.

Who dare describe the life of a mother-wife, whose husband and 
children have become dependent upon her earnings!  I dare not!  
Who dare describe the exact life and doings of four families 
living in a little house intended for one family?  Who can 
describe the life, speech, actions and atmosphere of such places?  
I cannot, for the task would be too disgusting!

For tens of thousands of people are allowed, or compelled, to 
live and die under those conditions.  How can vigorous manhood or 
pure womanhood come out of them?  Ought we to expect, have we any 
right to expect, manhood and womanhood born and bred under such 
conditions to be other than blighted?

Whether we expect it or not matters but little, for we have this 
mass of blighted humanity with us, and, like an old man of the 
sea, it is a burden upon our back, a burden that is not easily 
got rid of.

What are we doing with this burden in the present?  How are we 
going to prevent it in the future?  are two serious questions 
that must be answered, and quickly, too, or something worse will 
happen to us.

The authorities must see to it at once that children shall have 
as much air and breathing space in their homes by night as they 
have in the schools by day.

What sense can there be in demanding and compelling a certain 
amount of air space in places where children are detained for 
five and a half hours, and then allow those children to stew in 
apologies for rooms, where the atmosphere is vile beyond 
description, and where they are crowded indiscriminately for the 
remaining hours?

This is the question of the day and the hour.  Drink, foreign 
invasion, the House of Lords or the House of Commons, Tariff 
Reform or Free Trade, none of these questions, no, nor the whole 
lot of them combined, compare for one moment in importance with 
this one awful question.

Give the poor good airy housing at a reasonable rent, and half 
the difficulties against which our nation runs its thick head 
would disappear.  Hospitals and prisons would disappear too as if 
by magic, for it is to these places that the smitten manhood 
finds its way.

I know it is a big question!  But it is a question that has got 
to be solved, and in solving it some of our famous and cherished 
notions will have to go.  Every house, no matter to whom it 
belongs, or who holds the lease, who lets or sub-lets, every 
inhabited house must be licensed by the local authorities for a 
certain number of inmates, so many and no more; a maximum, but no 
minimum.

Local authorities even now have great powers concerning 
construction, drains, etc.  Let them now be empowered to make 
stringent rules about habitations other than their municipal 
houses.  The piggeries misnamed lodging-houses, the common 
shelters, etc., are inspected and licensed for a certain number 
of inmates; it is high time that this was done with the wretched 
houses in which the poor live.

Oh, the irony of it!  Idle tramps must not be crowded, but the 
children of the poor may be crowded to suffocation.  This must 
surely stop; if not, it will stop us!  Again I say, that local 
authorities must have the power to decide the number of 
inhabitants that any house shall accommodate, and license it 
accordingly, and of course have legal power to enforce their 
decision.

The time has come for a thorough investigation.  I would have 
every room in every house visited by properly appointed officers. 
I would have every detail as to size of room, number of persons 
and children, rent paid, etc., etc.; I would have its conditions 
and fitness for human habitation inquired into and reported upon.

I would miss no house, I would excuse none.  A standard should be 
set as to the condition and position of every house, and the 
number it might be allowed to accommodate.  This would bring many 
dark things into the light of day, and I am afraid the reputation 
of many respectable people would suffer, and their pockets too, 
although they tell us that they "have but a life-interest" in the 
pestiferous places.  But if we drive people out of these places, 
where will they go?

Well, out they must go!  and it is certain that there is at 
present no place for them!

Places must be prepared for them, and local authorities must 
prepare them.  Let them address themselves to this matter and no 
longer shirk their duty with regard to the housing of the poor. 
Let them stop for ever the miserable pretence of housing the poor 
that they at present pursue.  For be it known that they house 
"respectable" people only, those that have limited families and 
can pay a high rental.

If local authorities cannot do it, then the State must step in 
and help them, for it must be done.  It seems little use waiting 
for private speculation or philanthropic trusts to show us the 
way in this matter, for both want and expect too high an interest 
for their outlay.  But a good return will assuredly be 
forthcoming if the evil be tackled in a sensible way.

Let no one be downhearted about new schemes for housing the poor 
not paying!  Why, everything connected with the poor from the 
cradle to the grave is a source of good profit to some one, if 
not to themselves.

Let a housing plan be big enough and simple enough, and I am 
certain that it will pay even when it provides for the very poor. 
But old ideals will have to be forsaken and new ones substituted.

I have for many years considered this question very deeply, and 
from the side of the very poor.  I think that I know how the 
difficulty can be met, and I am prepared to place my suggestions 
for housing the poor before any responsible person or authority 
who would care to consider the matter.

Perhaps it is due to the public to say here that one of the 
greatest sorrows of my life was my inability to make good a 
scheme that a rich friend and myself formulated some years ago. 
This failure was due to the serious illness of my friend, and I 
hope that it will yet materialise.

But, in addition to the housing, there are other matters which 
affect the vigour and virility of the poor.  School days must be 
extended till the age of sixteen.  Municipal playgrounds open in 
the evening must be established.  If boys and girls are kept at 
school till sixteen, older and weaker people will be able to get 
work which these boys have, but ought not to have.  The nation 
demands a vigorous manhood, but the nation cannot have it without 
some sacrifice, which means doing without child labour, for child 
labour is the destruction of virile manhood.

Emigration is often looked upon as the great specific.  But the 
multiplication of agencies for exporting the young, the healthy, 
and the strong to the colonies causes me some alarm.  For 
emigration as at present conducted certainly does not lessen the 
number of the unfit and the helpless.

It must be apparent to any one who thinks seriously upon this 
matter that a continuance of the present methods is bound to 
entail disastrous consequences, and to promote racial decay at 
home.  The problem of the degenerates, the physical and mental 
weaklings is already a pressing national question.  But serious 
as the question is at the present moment, it is but light in its 
intensity compared with what it must be in the near future, 
unless we change our methods.  One fact ought to be definitely 
understood and seriously pondered, and it is this:  no emigration 
agency, no board of guardians, no church organisation and no 
human salvage organisation emigrates or assists to emigrate young 
people of either sex who cannot pass a severe medical examination 
and be declared mentally and physically sound.  This demands 
serious thought; for the puny, the weak and the unfit are 
ineligible; our colonies will have none of them, and perhaps our 
colonies are wise, so the unfit remain at home to be our despair 
and affliction.

But our colonies demand not only physical and mental health, but 
moral health also, for boys and girls from reformatory and 
industrial schools are not acceptable; though the training given 
in these institutions ought to make the young people valuable 
assets in a new country.

The serious fact that only the best are exported and that all the 
afflicted and the weak remain at home is, I say, worthy of 
profound attention.

Thousands of healthy working men with a little money and abundant 
grit emigrate of their own choice and endeavour.  Fine fellows 
they generally are, and good fortune attends them!  Thousands of 
others with no money but plenty of strength are assisted "out," 
and they are equally good, while thousands of healthy young women 
are assisted "out" also.  All through the piece the strong and 
healthy leave our shores, and the weaklings are left at home.

It is always with mixed feelings that I read of boys and girls 
being sent to Canada, for while I feel hopeful regarding their 
future, I know that the matter does not end with them; for I 
appreciate some of the evils that result to the old country from 
the method of selection.

Emigration, then, as at present conducted, is no cure for the 
evil it is supposed to remedy.  Nay, it increases the evil, for 
it secures to our country an ever-increasing number of those who 
are absolutely unfitted to fulfil the duties of citizenship.

Yet emigration might be a beneficent thing if it were wisely 
conducted on a comprehensive basis, which should include a fair 
proportion of those that are now excluded because of their 
unfitness.

Are we to go on far ever with our present method of dealing with 
those who have been denied wisdom and stature?  Who are what they 
are, but whose disabilities cannot be charged upon themselves, 
and for whom there is no place other than prison or workhouse?

Yet many of them have wits, if not brains, and are clever in 
little ways of their own.  At home we refuse them the advantages 
that are solicitously pressed upon their bigger and stronger 
brothers.  Abroad every door is locked against them.  What are 
they to do?  The Army and Navy will have none of them!  and 
industrial life has no place for them.  So prison, workhouse and 
common lodging-houses are their only homes.

Wise emigration methods would include many of them, and decent 
fellows they would make if given a chance.  Oxygen and new 
environment, with plenty of food, etc., would make an alteration 
in their physique, and regular work would prove their salvation. 
But this matter should, and must be, undertaken by the State, for 
philanthropy cannot deal with it; and when the State does 
undertake it, consequences unthought-of will follow, for the 
State will be able to close one-half of its prisons.

It is the helplessness of weaklings that provides the State with 
more than half its prisoners.  Is it impossible, I would ask, for 
a Government like ours, with all its resources of wealth, power 
and influence to devise and carry out some large scheme of 
emigration?  If colonial governments wisely refuse our inferior 
youths, is it not unwise for our own Government to neglect them?

In the British Empire is there no idle land that calls for men 
and culture?  Here we in England have thousands of young fellows 
who, because of their helplessness, are living lives of idleness 
and wrongdoing.

Time after time these young men find their way into prison, and 
every short sentence they undergo sends them back to liberty more 
hopeless and helpless.  Many of them are not bad fellows; they 
have some qualities that are estimable, but they are 
undisciplined and helpless.  Not all the discharged prisoners' 
aid societies in the land, even with Government assistance, can 
procure reasonable and progressive employment for them.

The thought of thousands of young men, not criminals, spending 
their lives in a senseless and purposeless round of short 
imprisonments, simply because they are not quite as big and as 
strong as their fellows, fills me with wonder and dismay, for I 
can estimate some of the consequences that result.

Is it impossible, I would ask, for our Government to take up this 
matter in a really great way?  Can no arrangement be made with 
our colonies for the reception and training of these young 
fellows?  Probably not so long as the colonies can secure an 
abundance of better human material.  But has a bona-fide effort 
been made in this direction?  I much doubt it since the days of 
transportation.

Is it not possible for our Government to obtain somewhere in the 
whole of its empire a sufficiency of suitable land, to which the 
best of them may be transplanted, and on which they may be 
trained for useful service and continuous work?

Is it not possible to develop the family system for them, and 
secure a sufficient number of house fathers and mothers to care 
for them in a domestic way, leaving their physical and industrial 
training to others?  Very few know these young fellows better 
than myself, and I am bold enough to say that under such 
conditions the majority of them would prove useful men.

Surely a plan of this description would be infinitely better than 
continued imprisonments for miserable offences, and much less 
expensive, too!

I am very anxious to emphasise this point.  The extent of our 
prison population depends upon the treatment these young men 
receive at the hands of the State.

So long as the present treatment prevails, so long will the State 
be assured of a permanent prison population.

But the evil does not end with the continuance and expense of 
prison.  The army of the unfit is perpetually increased by this 
procedure.  Very few of these young men--I think I may say with 
safety, none of them--after three or four convictions become 
settled and decent citizens; for they cannot if they would, there 
is no opportunity.  They would not if they could, for the desire 
is no longer existent.

We have already preventive detention for older persons, who, 
having been four times convicted of serious crime, are proved to 
be "habitual criminals."  But hopeless as the older criminals 
are, the country is quite willing to adopt such measures and bear 
such expense as may be thought requisite for the purpose of 
detaining, and perchance reforming them.

But the young men for whom I now plead are a hundred times more 
numerous and a hundred times more hopeful than the old habitual 
criminals, whose position excites so much attention.  We must 
have an oversea colony for these young men, and an Act of 
Parliament for the "preventive detention" of young offenders who 
are repeatedly convicted.

A third conviction should ensure every homeless offender the 
certainty of committal to the colony.  This would stop for ever 
the senseless short imprisonment system, for we could keep them 
free of prison till their third conviction, when they should only 
be detained pending arrangement for their emigration.

The more I think upon this matter the more firmly I am convinced 
that nothing less will prevail.  Though, of course, even with 
this plan, the young men who are hopelessly afflicted with 
disease or deformity must be excluded.  For them the State must 
make provision at home, but not in prison.

A scheme of this character, if once put into active and thorough 
operation, would naturally work itself out, for year by year the 
number of young fellows to whom it would apply would grow less 
and less; but while working itself out, it would also work out 
the salvation of many young men, and bring lasting benefits upon 
our country.

Vagrancy, with its attendant evils, would be greatly diminished, 
many prisons would be closed, workhouses and casual wards would 
be less necessary.  The cost of the scheme would be more than 
repaid to the community by the savings effected in other ways. 
The moral effect also would be equally large, and the physical 
effects would be almost past computing, for it would do much to 
arrest the decay of the race that appears inseparable from our 
present conditions and procedure.

But the State must do something more than this; for many young 
habitual offenders are too young for emigration.  For them the 
State reformatories must be established, regardless of their 
physical condition.  To these reformatories magistrates must have 
the power of committal as certainly as they have the power of 
committal to prison.  There must be no "by your leave," no 
calling in a doctor to examine the offender.  But promptly and 
certainly when circumstances justify the committal to a State 
reformatory, the youthful offender should go.  With the certainty 
that, be his physique and intellect what they may, he would be 
detained, corrected and trained for some useful life.  Or, if 
found "quite unfit" or feeble-minded, sent to an institution 
suitable to his condition.

Older criminals, when proved to be mentally unsound, are detained 
in places other than prisons till their health warrants 
discharge.  But the potential criminals among the young, no 
matter how often they are brought before the courts, are either 
sent back to hopeless liberty or thrust into prison for a brief 
period.

I repeat that philanthropy cannot attempt to deal with the 
habitual offenders, either in the days of their boyhood or in 
their early manhood.  For philanthropy can at the most deal with 
but a few, and those few must be of the very best.

I cannot believe that our colonies would refuse to ratify the 
arrangement that I have outlined, if they were invited to do so 
by our own Government, and given proper security.  They owe us 
something; we called them into existence, we guarantee their 
safety, they receive our grit, blood and money; will they not 
receive, then, under proper conditions and safeguards, some of 
our surplus youth, even if it be weak?  I believe they will!

In the strictures that I have ventured to pass upon the methods 
of the Salvation Army, I wish it to be distinctly understood that 
I make no attack upon the character and intentions of the men and 
women who compose it.  I know that they are both earnest and 
sincere.  For many of them I have a great admiration.  My 
strictures refer to the methods and the methods only.

For long years I have been watchful of results, and I have been 
so placed in life that I have had plenty of opportunities for 
seeing and learning.  My disappointment has been great, for I 
expected great things.  Many other men and women whose judgment 
is entitled to respect believe as I do.  But they remain silent, 
hoping that after all great good may come.  But I must speak, for 
I believe the methods adopted are altogether unsound, and in 
reality tend to aggravate the evils they set out to cure.  In 
1900 I ventured to express the following opinion of shelters--

"EXTRACTS FROM 'PICTURES AND PROBLEMS '

"I look with something approaching dismay at the multiplication 
of these institutions throughout the length and breadth of our 
land.  To the loafing vagrant class, a very large class, I know, 
but a class not worthy of much consideration, they are a boon. 
These men tramp from one town to another, and a week or two in 
each suits them admirably, till the warm weather and light nights 
arrive, and then they are off.

"This portion of the 'submerged' will always be submerged till 
some power takes hold of them and compels them to work out their 
own salvation.

"But there is such a procession of them that the labour homes, 
etc., get continual recruits, and the managers are enabled to 
contract for a great deal of unskilled work.

"In all our large towns there are numbers of self-respecting men, 
men who have committed no crime, save the unpardonable crime of 
growing old.  Time was when such men could get odd clerical work, 
envelope and circular addressing, and a variety of light but 
irregular employment, at which, by economy and the help of their 
wives, they made a sort of living.  But these men are now driven 
to the wall, for their poorly paid and irregular work is taken 
from them."

In 1911 A. M. Nicholl, in his not unfriendly book on GENERAL 
BOOTH AND THE SALVATION ARMY, makes the following statement, 
which I make no apology for reproducing.

His judgment, considering the position he held with the Army for 
so many years, is worthy of consideration.  Here are some of his 
words--

"From an economic standpoint the social experiment of the 
Salvation Army stands condemned almost root and branch.  So much 
the worse for economics, the average Salvation Army officer will 
reply.  But at the end of twenty years the Army cannot point to 
one single cause of social distress that it has removed, or to 
one single act which it has promoted that has dealt a death-blow 
at one social evil....

"A more serious question, one which lies at the root of all 
indiscriminate charity, is the value to the community of these 
shelters.  So far as the men in the shelters are benefited by 
them, they do not elevate them, either physically or morally.  A 
proportion--what proportion?--are weeded out, entirely by the 
voluntary action of the men themselves, and given temporary work, 
carrying sandwich-boards, addressing envelopes, sorting paper, 
etc.; but the cause of their social dilapidation remains 
unaltered.  They enter the shelter, pay their twopence or 
fourpence as the case may be (and few are allowed to enter unless 
they do), they listen to some moral advice once a week, with 
which they are surfeited inside and outside the shelter, they go 
to bed, and next morning leave the shelter to face the streets as 
they came in, The shelter gets no nearer to the cause of their 
depravity than it does to the economic cause of their failure, or 
to the economic remedy which the State must eventually 
introduce....

"The nomads of our civilisation wander past us in their fringy, 
dirty attire night by night.  If a man stops us in the streets 
and tells us that he is starving, and we offer him a ticket to a 
labour home or a night shelter, he will tell you that the chances 
are one out of ten if he will procure admission.  The better 
class of the submerged, or those who use the provision for the 
submerged in order to gratify their own selfishness, have taken 
possession of the vacancies, and so they wander on.  If a man 
applies for temporary work, the choice of industry is 
disappointingly limited.  One is tempted to think that the whole 
superstructure of cheap and free shelters has tended to the 
standardisation of a low order of existence in this netherworld 
that attracted the versatile philanthropist at the head of the 
Salvation Army twenty years ago....

"The general idea about the Salvation Army is, that the nearer it 
gets to the most abandoned classes, the more wonderful and the 
more numerous are the converts.  It is a sad admission to pass on 
to the world that the opposite is really the case.  The results 
are fewer.  General Booth would almost break his heart if he knew 
the proportion of men who have been 'saved,' in the sense that he 
most values, through his social scheme.  But he ought to know, 
and the Church and the world ought to know, and in order that it 
may I will make bold to say that the officials cannot put their 
hands on the names of a thousand men in all parts of the world 
who are to-day members of the Army who were converted at the 
penitent form of shelters and elevators, who are now earning a 
living outside the control of the Army's social work."

But the public appear to have infinite faith in the 
multiplication and enlargement of these shelters, as the 
following extract from a daily paper of December 1911 will show--

"'Since the days of Mahomet, not forgetting St. Francis and 
Martin Luther, I doubt if there is any man who has started, 
without help from the Government, such a world-wide movement as 
this.'

"This was Sir George Askwith's tribute to General Booth and the 
Salvation Army at the opening of the new wing of the men's 
Elevators in Spa Road, Bermondsey, yesterday afternoon.  The task 
of declaring the wing open devolved upon the Duke of Argyll, who 
had beside him on the platform the Duchess of Marlborough, Lady 
St. Davids, Lord Armstrong, Sir Daniel and Lady Hamilton, 
Alderman Sir Charles C. Wakefield, Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., Sir 
George Askwith, and the Mayor of Bermondsey and General Booth.

"The General, who is just back from Denmark, spoke for three- 
quarters of an hour, notwithstanding his great age and his 
admission that he was 'far from well.'  The Elevator, as its name 
implies, seeks to raise men who are wholly destitute and give 
them a fresh start.  The new wing has been erected at a cost of 
L10,000, and the Elevator, which accommodates 590 men and covers 
two-and-a-half acres, represents an expenditure of L30,000, and 
is the largest institution of its kind in the world.

"'The men,' said the General, 'are admitted on two conditions 
only, that they are willing to obey orders, and ready to work. 
Before he has his breakfast a man must earn it, and the same with 
each meal, the ticket given him entitling him to remuneration in 
proportion to the work he has done.  If the men's conduct is 
good, they are passed on to another of the Army's institutions, 
and ultimately some post is secured for them through the 
employers of labour with whom the Army is in touch.'"

I believe General Booth to be sincere, and that he believes 
exactly what he stated.  But even sincerity must not be allowed 
to mislead a generous public.  Employers of labour do not, 
cannot, and will not keep positions open for General Booth or any 
other man.  Employers require strong, healthy men who can give 
value for the wages paid.  Thousands of men who have never 
entered shelters or prison are not only available but eager for 
positions that show any prospect of permanence, whether the work 
be heavy or skilled.  For work that requires neither brains, 
skill or much physical strength, thousands of men whose 
characters are good are also available.  I venture to say that 
General Booth cannot supply the public with a reasonable list of 
men who, having passed through the shelters, have been put into 
permanent work.

For every man and woman who is seeking to uplift their fellows I 
have heartfelt sympathy.  For every organisation that is 
earnestly seeking to alleviate or remove social evils I wish 
abundant success.  Against the organisations named I have not the 
slightest feeling.  If they were successful in the work they 
undertake, no one in England would rejoice more than myself.  But 
they are not successful, and because I believe that their claim 
to success blinds a well-intentioned and generous public, and 
prevents real consideration of deep-seated evils, I make these 
comments and give the above extracts.

I question whether any one in London knows better than myself the 
difficulty of finding employment for a man who is "down," for I 
have written hundreds of letters, I have visited numerous 
employers for this one purpose; I have begged and pleaded with 
employers, sometimes I have offered "security" for the honesty of 
men for whom I was concerned.

Occasionally, but only occasionally, was I successful.  I have 
advertised on men's behalf frequently, but nothing worthy of the 
name of "work" has resulted.  I know the mind of employers, and I 
know their difficulties; I have been too often in touch with them  
not to know.  I have also been in touch with many men who have 
been in the shelters, elevators, bridges, labour homes and tents; 
I know their experience has been one of disappointment.  I have 
written on behalf of such men to the "head-quarters," but nothing 
has resulted but a few days' work at wood-chopping, envelope 
addressing, or bill distributing, none of which can be called 
employment.

Day after day men who have been led to expect work wait, and wait 
in vain, in or about the head-quarters for the promised work. 
that so rarely comes.  For these men I am concerned, for them I 
am bold enough to risk the censure of good people, for I hold 
that it is not only cruel, but wicked to excite in homeless men 
hopes that cannot possibly be realised.

This point has been driven home to my very heart, for I have seen 
what comes to pass when the spark of hope is extinguished. 
Better, far better, that a man who is "down " should trust to his 
own exertions and rely upon himself than entertain illusions and 
rely upon others.

And now I close by presenting in catalogue form some of the steps 
that I believe to be necessary for dealing with the terrible 
problems of our great underworld.

First:  the permanent detention and segregation of all who are 
classified as feeble-minded.  Second:  the permanent detention 
and segregation of all professional tramps.  Third:  proper 
provision for men and women who are hopelessly crippled or 
disabled. Fourth:  establishment by the educational authorities, 
or by the State of reformatory schools, for youthful delinquents 
and juvenile adults regardless of physical weakness, deprivations 
or disease.  Fifth:  compulsory education, physical, mental and 
technical, up to sixteen years of age.  Sixth:  the establishment 
of municipal play-grounds and organised play for youths who have 
left school.  Seventh:  national and State-aided emigration to 
include the best of the "unfit."  Eighth:  the abolition of 
common lodging-houses, and the establishment of municipal 
lodging-houses for men and also for women.  Ninth:  the 
establishment of trade boards for all industries.  Tenth:  proper 
and systematic help for widows who have young children.  
Eleventh:  thorough inspection and certification by local 
authorities of all houses and "dwellings" inhabited by the poor.  
Twelfth:  housing for the very poor by municipal authorities, 
with abolition of fire-places, the heating to be provided from 
one central source.  The housing to include a restaurant where 
nourishing but simple food may be obtained for payment that 
ensures a small profit.  Thirteenth:  more abundant and 
reasonable provision of work by the State, local authorities and 
for the unemployed.  Fourteenth:  a co-ordination of all 
philanthropic and charity agencies to form one great society with 
branches in every parish.

Give us these things, and surely they are not impossible, and 
half our present expensive difficulties would disappear.  Fewer 
prisons, workhouses and hospitals would be required.  The need 
for shelters and labour homes would not exist.  The necessity for 
the activities of many charitable agencies whose constant appeals 
are so disturbing and puzzling, but whose work is now required, 
would pass away too.

But with all these things given, there would be still great need 
for the practice of kindness and the development of brotherly 
love.  For without brotherly love and kindly human interest, laws 
are but cast-iron rules, and life but a living death.  What is 
life worth?  What can life be worth if it be only self-centred? 
To love is to live!  to feel and take an interest in others is to 
be happy indeed, and to feel the pulses thrill.

And I am sure that love is abundant in our old country, but it is 
largely paralysed and mystified.  For many objects that love 
would fain accomplish appear stupendous and hopeless.  What a 
different old England we might have, if the various and hopeless 
classes that I have enumerated were permanently detained.  For 
then love would come to its own, the real misfortunes of life 
would then form a passport to practical help.  Widows would no 
longer be unceremoniously kicked into the underworld; accidents 
and disablements would no longer condemn men and women to live 
lives of beggary.  Best of all, charitable and kindly deeds would 
no longer be done by proxy.  It is because I see how professional 
and contented beggary monopolises so much effort and costs so 
much money; because I see how it deprives the really unfortunate 
and the suffering poor of the practical help that would to them 
be such a blessed boon, that I am anxious for its days to be 
ended.  May that day soon come, for when it comes, there will be 
some chance of love and justice obtaining deliverance for the 
oppressed and deserving poor who abound in London's dark 
underworld.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of London's Underworld, by Thomas Holmes

