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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.

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