Glimpses into the Abyss Part 1

Glimpses into the Abyss.

by Mary Higgs.

PREFACE.

The author has conducted social research for a number of years on an original plan.

Securing a lodging where a dest.i.tute woman could be accommodated, and providing cleansing and dress, she has steadily taken in through a period of six years every case of complete dest.i.tution that came to her, willing to undergo remedial treatment. The work grew; accommodation for four was provided, with two paid helpers. The small cottage used acts as a social microscope, every case being personally investigated as to past life, history, and present need, and dealt with accordingly. The writer, as Secretary to the Ladies' Committee of Oldham Workhouse, next became personally acquainted with the working of the Poor-law and studied it by means of books also. By degrees the Rescue work came to cover Police-court and Lodging-house work, and, as there was no other Shelter in Oldham, cases of all sorts came under her notice. She thus studied personally the microbes of social disorder.

By degrees she came to understand the existence of certain "cla.s.ses"

(cla.s.sifying them much as observation led her to cla.s.sify objects observed in physical studies). Also, she clearly perceived that causes were at work leading to rapid degeneration, and was led to pre-suppose currents working for social destruction.

She then commenced investigating remedial agencies and interrogating social observers. She found among them a similar experience of great waste and lack of salvage through defects not to be remedied by private action.

This led her more and more to consider national aspects of the question.

She visited personally Hadleigh Farm Colony, questioned experts at West Ham, visited and interrogated Police, Prevention of Cruelty to Children officers, Vigilance officers, and others; and by degrees obtained a ma.s.s of information. But still the root problems of poverty remained dark to her, and she became convinced that nothing but accurate and scientific exploration of the depths would reveal the currents leading to degradation.

After the idea dawned upon her, some months elapsed before she felt able to arrange to face the ordeal, but during this time proofs acc.u.mulated of the uselessness of any other methods. She reflected that exploration was the method of science, and became herself an explorer of "Darkest England." The results amply justified the experiment. She has now carried through the following explorations, each time with increasing knowledge:--

(_a_) A tour through West Yorkshire, embracing one munic.i.p.al, one common lodging-house, two tramp wards, and a women's shelter.

(_b_) An investigation into a Lancashire tramp ward.

(_c_) Investigation of a Salvation Army Women's Shelter.

(_d_) An investigation into the lodging-house conditions in a neighbouring town.

(_e_) An investigation into conditions in women's lodging-houses in a Lancashire centre.

(_f_) Investigation into a London casual ward; also enquiry and investigation as to women's lodging-houses in London.

These investigations have placed her in possession of facts which form the basis of the introductory essay.

In addition, however, her possession of experience and knowledge have opened to her many sources of information not available to the general public. She has received much private information embodied in these pages, and has had the privilege of attending and taking part in official discussions. Also by visits to a common lodging-house she obtained much light on the views of the cla.s.s that occasionally find themselves in the tramp ward. She has also collected information from the Press, and studied the literature obtainable which threw light on vagrancy legislation in other countries.

Recently she has visited Denmark and had the privilege of investigating the working of the Poor-law system. The official view was obtained, and workhouses, etc., visited, and the system seen in operation. But also by a visit to Salvation Army Headquarters in Copenhagen, and from other sources, she obtained as thorough an idea as possible of the actual working of the nation's remedies for poverty. Also the connection of the Poor Law with the Munic.i.p.ality was studied.

She also undertook a literary investigation into deterioration of human personality, viewed from the psychological, medical, and religious points of view, writing an essay which won the Gibson Prize at Girton (1905).

It seemed to be the necessary corollary to the acquisition of a wide collection of facts to form some unitary theory capable of correlating them.

A very simple theory, which will be found to accord with Plato's diagnosis of the degeneration of a State or an individual, with Meyer's "Disintegrations of Personality," and with James' "Phenomena of Religious Experience," therefore underlies this essay; but it is apart from its objects to do more than state it. It is enunciated more fully in an article in the _Contemporary Review_, now out, ent.i.tled "Mankind in the Making." It is this:--

(_a_) The psychology of the individual retraces the path of the psychology of the race.

(_b_) In any given individual the _whole_ path climbed by the foremost cla.s.ses or races may not be retraced. Therefore numbers of individuals are permanently stranded on lower levels of evolution. _Society can quicken evolution_ by right social arrangements, scientific in principle.

(_c_) Granted that any individual attains a certain psychical evolution in _normal_ development, either evolution or devolution lies before him.

Wrong social conditions lead to widespread devolution. The retrograde unit retraces downwards the upward path of the race, and can only be reclaimed along this path by wise social legislation, bringing steady pressure to bear along the lines of evolution, (barring extraordinary religious phenomena, which often reclaim individuals or communities).

(_d_) Society has now arrived at a point of development when these facts must be recognised, and the whole question of the organisation of humanity put on a scientific basis. It will then be possible to reduce the sciences of sociology and psychology to scientific order, and our national treatment of such questions as vagrancy will be no longer purely empirical.[1]

NOTE.--The Committee on Vagrancy, before which the author appeared as a witness (see Appendix IV.), was sitting during the months occupied in the writing of this book. Its conclusions, with which the author is in substantial agreement, are therefore added in the form of notes and appendices.

This Preface was not originally written as such, but formed the introduction to the Gamble Prize Essay, in connection with which the essayist was required to furnish a history of personal research in connection with the subject chosen.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See pp. 83-86.

CHAPTER I.

VAGRANCY.

INTRODUCTION.

The word "vagrancy," from the Latin _vagare_, to wander, now implies a crime against civilised society (Vagrancy Report, p. 3, footnote). Laws to restrain or abolish it form part of the code of European and other civilised States.

Nevertheless, the _fact_ of vagrancy is one deep rooted in human nature.

The tendency to it recurs both in the individual and in the race. In one stage of development the child, unless restrained by watchful care, is essentially a vagrant, and a "roaming fit" seizes many of us at times.

Before considering therefore historically, the legislation and remedies applied to the _crime_ of vagrancy, it will be well to dwell briefly on the underlying reasons for it.

I. VAGRANCY AS AN UNDERLYING SOCIAL FACTOR.

If we take the history of any country we find that human life has covered it at different times much as geological strata cover the face of the earth. In Victoria Cave, Settle, for instance, human remains and relics of the corresponding animal and social life were actually found stratified. If you take the lowest stratum of society in any country the aboriginal man was, and still is, in countries where aborigines survive, a vagrant. The nomad is the foundation stone of human society. He is therefore a _survival_, and should be treated as such.[2] So long as mankind was nomad, the only way in which a man could be a vagrant in the modern sense of the term would be by some crime that excluded him from the companionship of his fellows like that of Cain. A man with his hand against every man would be a vagrant. A whole tribe might become vagrant relatively to other tribes, as the Bushmen of South Africa, or the gipsies of all countries.

As civilization proceeded they remained as representatives of a prior stratification of humanity.

As by degrees men became pastoral and acquired flocks and herds, the man of no possessions would be relatively left behind as the unabsorbed nomad. But the world was wide, the best land alone was appropriated, and even when England had become largely agricultural there was plenty of room for Robin Hood and his merry men, and doubtless countless others, to lead the nomad life.

Though the great majority of the population was settled on the land, there was an amount of authorised travelling that, relatively to the facilities for travel, was considerable. Pilgrimages to shrines and military expeditions and merchants' journeys led many on to the roads with money in their pouch, and the less wealthy could make use of the hospitality of abbeys. Fuller describes the old abbeys as "promiscuously entertaining some who did not need and more who did not deserve it"

("Church History," ed. 1656, p. 298). Even the funds of the Church did not suffice for the number of people roaming the country in idleness and beggary, as by degrees the country became settled, land enclosed, and the opportunity for sustenance by a vagrant life less and less certain.[3]

As far back as the reign of Richard II., in 1388, it became necessary for the protection of society to legislate against vagrancy.[4] The natural thing when society was almost wholly agricultural, and stationary in villages or towns, was to legislate against and forbid vagrancy. Beggars impotent to serve were to remain where the Act found them, and be there maintained or sent back to their birthplace. This is the germ of the law of settlement, by which every Englishman was supposed to have a birthright in his native parish. The laws were made stricter and stricter, yet vagrancy did not cease, even when the penalty was whipping, loss of ears and hanging for the third offence.[5]

Even now society does not recognise that units squeezed out of true social relationships _must_ become vagrants, as surely as soil trodden on the highway becomes dust.

The amount of vagrancy, _i.e._ of those obliged to revert to primitive conditions, depends as surely on the drying up of means of sustenance as the highway dust on the absence of refreshing showers.

Any change in society that displaces a large number of units is sure to result in increase of vagrancy. Of those forced out many cannot regain a footing if they would.[6]