London's Underworld Part 10

"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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.s 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 ca.n.a.l 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 munic.i.p.al control and inspection, where absolute cleanliness and decency can be a.s.sured. 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.ses 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 n.o.ble 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!"

And in the underworld, amidst the dirt and squalor, the poverty, the high rents, and the poor, poor earnings of poor, poor women, there are plenty like her.

G.o.d grant that when the lads can work they will lighten her burdens and cheer her heart by working for her who had worked so hard for them.

Listen also to the story of the blouse-makers disclosed to the upper world by the Press.

"A pathetic story of poverty was told to the Hackney coroner, who held an inquiry into the death of Emily Langes, 59, a blouse-maker of Graham Road, Dalston. Death was due to starvation.

"Annie Marie, an aged sister, said they had both been in great poverty for a very long time. They had worked at blouse-making as long as they could, but that work had fallen off so much that really all they had got to live on was by selling off their home.

"They had not enough to live on, and had to pay four shillings and sixpence rent.

"The coroner: 'Selling your home will soon come to an end. You had best apply in the proper direction for help; the parish must bury her. Don't go on ruining yourself by selling off things.'

"Mr. Ingham, relieving officer for the No. 7 ward at Hackney, said that he knew the old couple. He remembered giving relief to both sisters about two months ago, but had had no application since. He offered the 'House' to the living sister.

"A juror: 'Are questions put which might upset a proud respectable old couple when they ask for relief?'

"Witness: 'Of course we have to inquire into their means pretty closely.'

"The coroner: 'It seems pretty clear that the old couple were too proud to ask for help.'

"The jury returned a verdict that Emily Langes died from exhaustion caused by want of food."

But listen again! as we stand in the land of crushed womanhood and starving childhood. We hear a gentle voice, "Mother, it is nearly one o'clock, the men have gone by from the public-house; you go to bed, dear, and I will finish the work." A feeble woman, with every nerve broken, rises from her machine, shakes her dress and lies down on her bed, but her daughter sits on and on.

Oh the sighs and groans and accents of sorrow that come upon our listening ears! Oh the weariness, the utter weariness of this land below the line!

Midnight! and thousands of women are working! One o'clock, and thousands are still at it! Two o'clock, the widows are still at work! Thank G.o.d the children are asleep. Three o'clock a.m., the machines cease to rattle, and in the land of crushed womanhood there is silence if not peace. But who is to pay? Shall we ultimately evolve a people that require no sleep, that cannot sleep if they would? Is crushed womanhood to produce human automatic machines? Or is civilisation generally to pay the penalty for all this grinding of human flesh and blood? Let me tell the story of an old machinist! I have told part of it before, but the sequel must be told. I had made the acquaintance and friendship of three old women in Bethnal Green who lived together, and collaborated in their work. They made trousers for export trade; one machined, one finished, and one pressed, brave old women all! They all worked in the machinist's room, for this saved gas and coal, and prevented loss of time. At night they separated, each going to her own room. The machinist was a widow, and her machine had been bought out of her husband's club and insurance money when he died twenty-one years before. I had often seen it, heard its rattle, and witnessed its whims.

She once told me that it required a new shuttle, and I offered to pay for one; but she said, "I cannot part with it; it will last my time, for I want a new shuttle too!"

Six months after she was found dead in her bed by her partners when they came to resume work.

Her words had come true! The old machine stood silent under the little window; its old shuttle no longer whirred and rattled with uncertain movements. It was motionless and cold. On a little bed the poor old brave woman lay cold and motionless too! for the shuttle of her life had stopped, never to move again.

The heroic partnership of the old women was broken, never in this world to be resumed, and so two old hearts sorrowed and two troubled minds wondered how they would be able to live without her.

I knew her well; it was my privilege to give her some happiness and some change from grime and gloom, to take her away sometimes from the wayward shuttle and rattling machine. I knew that she would have selected such a death could she have chosen, for she dreaded the parish. I think, too, that she would have wished for her old machine to be buried with her, and for its silent shuttle to be beside her in her coffin. To her it was a companion, and for it her husband died. Twenty-one years the machine and herself had lived with each other and for each other. Sharing with each other's toil, if not each other's hopes and fears! Working!

working! unceasingly through life--in death and rest they were not divided.

It was a blessed thing that her machine partner required no food, or life would have been even more serious than it was. But it had its whims and its moods, sometimes it resented everlasting work at three-half-pence per hour for the pair of them, and it "jibbed." But a little oil and a soothing word, and, it must be feared, sometimes with a threat, and the old thing went again.

Surely it will be sacrilege for any one else to sit upon that old chair and try to renew the life and motion of the old machine!

It is strange that this oppression of women which is the cause of my greatest sorrow should also be the cause of my keenest joy. But it is so! And why? Because I number two thousand of these underworld women slaves among my personal friends, and I am proud of it! The letters I have given are a few out of hundreds that I have received. I know these women as few know them. I know their sufferings and their virtues, their great content and their little requirements. I know that they have the same capabilities for happiness as other people, and I know that they get precious little chance of exercising those capabilities. Strange again, I get no begging letters from them, though I do from others who are better placed. I declare it to be wonderful! This endurance and patience of London's miserably paid women. I tell you that I am the happiest man alive! Why? Because during the present year a thousand of my poor friends from the underworld came up for a time and had a fortnight, a whole fortnight's rest each with food and comfort in a beautiful rest home by the sea. For kind friends have enabled me to build one for them and for them alone!

And I was there sometimes to see, and it was good for me. So Mrs. Holmes and myself make frequent visits to the rest home, and every time we visit it we become more and more convinced that not only is it a "Palace Beautiful," but that it is also a joy to the slave women who have the good fortune to spend a holiday (all too short) in it.

Gloom cannot enter "Singholm" or, if it does enter, it promptly and absolutely disappears. Ill-temper cannot live there, the very flowers smile it away. The atmosphere itself acts like "laughing gas." So the house fairly rings with merry laughter from elderly staid women equally as from the younger ones, whose contact with serious and saddening life has not been so paralysing to joyous emotions.

It did us good to hear such jolly laughter from throats and organs that, but for Singholm, must have rusted and decayed.