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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."
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