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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!"

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