London's Underworld Part 9

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, cla.s.sify them, note their disabilities!

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 pa.s.s! 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 pa.s.ses, 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 h.o.a.ry 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 pa.s.sions, 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 f.e.c.kless 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 cla.s.ses.

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 cla.s.s. With cla.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions: 2,277 had been treated in reformatories; of these he says 51 were insane and sent to lunatic asylums, 315 others were p.r.o.nounced 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 cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.s of wild, hopeless women.

But I pa.s.s on to the second cla.s.s, those who by misfortune have become submerged. This, too, is a large cla.s.s, and a cla.s.s 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, circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sionate devotion, and they wait, hope, starve and despair.

Often misfortune has come upon them when the days of youth were pa.s.sed, 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 gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.ne, 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 pa.s.sionate, yearning, importunate cry everlastingly comes from them for drink.

Now with Dante we are walking in h.e.l.l; 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 h.e.l.l you may find them, consigned to a moral death from which there is no resurrection.

And the idle, the vicious, the l.u.s.tful 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, b.e.s.t.i.a.lity 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 st.i.tch 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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!