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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!
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