The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign Part 18

"These 30,000 are quite independent of the number of mere pauper children, who crowd the streets of Londen, and who never enter a school: but of these latter nothing will be said here.

"Now, what are the pursuits, the dwelling-houses, and the habits of these poor wretches? Of 1600, who were examined, 162 confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once, or even twice, but some of them several times; 116 had run away from their homes; 170 slept in the "lodging-houses;" 253 had lived altogether by beggary; 216 had neither shoes nor stockings; 280 had no hat or cap, or covering for the head; 101 had no linen; 249 had never slept in a bed; many had no recollection of ever having been in a bed; 68 were the children of convicts,"--Vol. i. 394.

In the towns of the manufacturing districts there are, says the same author--

"A great number of cellars beneath the houses of the small shopkeepers and operatives, which are inhabited by crowds of poor inhabitants. Each of these cellar-houses contains at the most two, and often, and in some towns generally, only one room. These rooms measure in Liverpool, from 10 to 12 feet square. In some other towns, they are rather larger. They are generally flagged. The flags lie "directly" upon the earth, and are generally wretchedly damp. In wet weather they are very often not dry for weeks together. Within a few feet of the windows of these cellars, rises the wall which keeps the street from falling in upon them, darkening the gloomy rooms, and preventing the sun's rays penetrating into them.

"Dr. Duncan, in describing the cellar-houses of the manufacturing districts, says[134]--'The cellars are ten or twelve feet square; generally flagged, but frequently having only the bare earth for a floor, and sometimes less than six feet in height. There is frequently no window, so that light and air can gain access to the cellar only by the door, the top of which is often not higher than the level of the street. In such cellars ventilation is out of the question. They, are of course dark; and from the defective drainage, they are also very generally damp. There is sometimes a back cellar, used as a sleeping apartment, having no direct communication with the external atmosphere, and deriving its scanty supply of light and air solely from the front apartment.'"--Vol. i. 447.

"One of the city missionaries, describing the state of the Mint district in the city of London, says, 'it is utterly impossible to describe the scenes, which are to be witnessed here, or to set forth in its naked deformity the awful characters sin here a.s.sumes. * * *

_In Mint street, alone, there are nineteen lodging-houses._ The majority of these latter are awful sinks of iniquity, and are used as houses of accommodation. In some of them, both s.e.xes sleep together indiscriminately, and such acts are practised and witnessed, that married persons, who are in other respects awfully depraved, have been so shocked, as to be compelled to get up in the night and leave the house. Many of the half-naked impostors, who perambulate the streets of London in the daytime, and obtain a livelihood by their deceptions, after having thrown off their bandages, crutches, &c., may be found here in their true character; some regaling themselves in the most extravagant manner; others gambling or playing cards, while the worst of language proceeds from their lips. Quarrels and fights are very common, and the cry of murder is frequently heard.

The public-houses in this street are crowded to excess, especially, on the Sabbath evening.[135]

"In the police reports published in the _Sun_ newspaper of the 11th of October, 1849, the following account is given of '_a penny lodging-house_' in Blue Anchor Yard, Rosemary Lane. One of the policemen examined, thus describes a room in this lodging- house:--'It was a very small one, extremely filthy, and there was no furniture of any description in it. _There were sixteen men, women, and children lying on the floor, without covering. Some of them were half naked._ For this miserable shelter, each lodger paid a penny.

The stench was intolerable, and the place had not been cleaned out for some time.'

"If the nightly inmates of these dens are added to the tramps who seek lodging in the vagrant-wards of the workhouses, we shall find that there are at least between 40,000 and 50,000 tramps who are daily infesting our roads and streets!"--Vol. i. 431.

In the agricultural districts, whole families, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, sleep together, and here we find a source of extraordinary immorality. "The accounts we receive," says Mr. Kay--

"From all parts of the country show that these miserable cottages are crowded to an extreme, and that the crowding is progressively increasing. People of both s.e.xes, and of all ages, both married and unmarried--parents, brothers, sisters, and strangers--sleep in the same rooms and often in the same beds. One gentleman tells us of six people of different s.e.xes and ages, two of whom were man and wife, sleeping in the same bed, three with their heads at the top and three with their heads at the foot of the bed. Another tells us of adult uncles and nieces sleeping in the same room close to each other; another of the uncles and nieces sleeping in the same bed together; another of adult brothers, and sisters sleeping in the same room with a brother and his wife just married; many tell us of adult brothers and sisters sleeping in the same beds; another tells us of rooms so filled with beds that there is no s.p.a.ce between them, but that brothers, sisters, and parents crawl over each other half naked in order to get to their respective resting-places; another of its being common for men and women, not being relations, to undress together in the same room, without any feeling of its being indelicate; another of cases where women have been delivered in bed-rooms crowded with men, young women, and children; and others mention facts of these crowded bed-rooms much too horrible to be alluded to. Nor are these solitary instances, but similar reports are given by gentlemen writing in ALL parts of the country.

"The miserable character of the houses of our peasantry, is, of itself, and independently of the causes which have made the houses so wretched, degrading and demoralising the poor of our rural districts in a fearful manner. It stimulates the unhealthy and unnatural increase of population. The young peasants from their earliest years are accustomed to sleep in the same bed-rooms with people of both s.e.xes, and with both married and unmarried persons. They therefore lose all sense of the indelicacy of such a life. They know, too, that they can gain nothing by deferring their marriages and by saving; that it is impossible for them to obtain better houses by so doing; and that in many cases they must wait many years before they could obtain a separate house of any sort. They feel that if they defer their marriage for ten or fifteen years, they will be at the end of that period in just the same position as before, and no better off for their waiting. Having then lost all hope of any improvement of their social situation, and all sense of the indelicacy of taking a wife home to the bedroom already occupied by parents, brothers, and sisters, they marry early in life,--often, if not generally, before the age of twenty,--and very often occupy, for the first part of their married life, another bed in the already crowded sleeping-room of their parents! In this way the morality of the peasants is destroyed; the numbers of this degraded population are unnaturally increased, and their means of subsistence are diminished by the increasing compet.i.tion of their increasing numbers."--Vol. i. 472.

A necessary consequence of this demoralization is that infanticide prevails to a degree unknown in any other part of the civilized world.

The London _Leader_ informs its readers that upon a recent occasion--

"It was declared by the coroner of Leeds, and a.s.sented to as probable by the surgeon, that there were, as near as could be calculated, about three hundred children put to death yearly in Leeds alone that were not registered by the law. In other words, three hundred infants were murdered to avoid the consequences of their living, and these murders, as the coroner said, are never detected."

The reader may now advantageously turn to the account of the state of education in Leeds, already given,[136] with a view to ascertain the intellectual condition of the women guilty of the foul and unnatural crime of child-murder. Doing so, he will find that out of eighteen hundred and fifty that were married there were _one thousand and twenty who could not sign their names_--and this in the centre of civilization in the middle of the nineteenth century!

But a short time since, the _Morning Chronicle_ gave its readers a list of twenty-two trials, for child-murder alone, that had been _reported_ in its columns, and these were stated to be but one-half of those that had taken place in the short period of twenty-seven days!

On the same occasion it stated that although English ruffianism had "not taken to the knife," it had

"Advanced in the devilish accomplishment of biting off noses and scooping out eyes. Kicking a man to death while he is down," it continued, "or treating, a wife in the same way--stamping on an enemy or a paramour with hobnailed boots--smashing a woman's head with a hand-iron--these atrocities, which are of almost daily occurrence in our cities, are not so much imputed crimes as they are the extravagant exaggerations of the coa.r.s.e, brutal, sullen temper of an Englishman, brutified by ignorance and stupefied by drink."

On the same occasion the _Chronicle_ stated that in villages few young people of the present day marry until, as the phrase is, it has "become necessary." It is, it continued, the rural practice to "keep company in a very loose sense, till a cradle is as necessary as a ring." On another, and quite recent occasion, the same journal furnished its readers with the following striking ill.u.s.tration of the state of morals:--

"In one of the recent Dorsetshire cases, [of child murder,] common cause was made by the girls of the county. They attended the trial in large numbers; and we are informed that on the acquittal of the prisoner a general expression of delight was perceptible in the court; and they left the a.s.sizes town boasting 'that they might now do as they liked.' We are then, it seems, with all our boasted civilization, relapsing into a barbarous and savage state of society."

Lest it might be supposed that this condition of things had been inherited, the editor stated that--

"This deplorable state of morals was of comparatively recent growth.

Old people," he continued, "can often tell the year when the first of such cases occurred in their families; and what a sensation of shame it then excited; while they will also tell us that the difficulty now is to find a lowly couple in village life with whom the rule of decency and Christianity is not the exception. It is a disgraceful fact--and one which education, and especially religious education, has to account for--that a state of morals has grown up in which it can no longer be said that our maidens are given in marriage."

Infanticide is not, however, confined to the unmarried. Burial clubs abound. "In our large provincial towns," says Mr. Kay--

"The poor are in the habit of entering their children in what are called 'burial clubs.' A small sum is paid every year by the parent, and this ent.i.tles him to receive from 3. to 5. from the club, on the death of the child. Many parents enter their children in several clubs. One man in Manchester has been known to enter his child in _nineteen_ different clubs. On the death of such a child, the parent becomes ent.i.tled to receive a large sum of money; and as the burial of the child does not necessarily cost more than 1., or, at the most, 1.10s., the parent realizes a considerable sum after all the expenses are paid!

"It has been clearly ascertained, that it is a common practice among the more degraded cla.s.ses of poor in many of our towns, to enter their infants in these clubs, and then to cause their death either by starvation, ill-usage, or poison! What more horrible symptom of moral degradation can be conceived? One's mind revolts against it, and would fain reject it as a monstrous fiction. But, alas! it seems to be but too true.

"Mr. Chadwick says, 'officers of these burial societies, relieving officers, and others, whose administrative duties put them in communication with the lowest cla.s.ses in these districts,' (the manufacturing districts,) 'express their moral conviction of the operation of such bounties to produce instances of the visible neglect of children of which they are witnesses. They often say, 'You are not treating that child properly; it will not live: _is it in the club_?' And the answer corresponds with the impression produced by the sight."--Vol. i. 433.

Commenting on these and numerous other facts of similar kind, the same author says--

"These accounts are really almost too horrible to be believed at all; and were they not given us on the authority of such great experience and benevolence, we should totally discredit them.

"But, alas, they are only too true! There can be no doubt, that a great part of the poorer cla.s.ses of this country are sunk into such a frightful depth of hoplessness, misery, and utter moral degradation, that even mothers forget their affection for their helpless little offspring, and kill them, as a butcher does his lambs, in order to make money by the murder, and therewith to lessen their pauperism and misery?"--P. 446.

How rapid is the progress of demoralization may be seen from the fact that in the thirty years from 1821 to 1851, the consumption of British spirits increased from 4,125,616 to 9,595,368 gallons, or in a ratio more than double that of the population. The use of opium is also increasing with rapidity.[137] Intemperance and improvidence go hand in hand with each other, and hence arises a necessity for burial clubs for the disposal of the children and the maintenance of the parents.

A recent English journal states that--

"It is estimated that in Manchester there are 1500 'unfortunate females;' that they lead to an annual expenditure of 470,000; and that some 250 of them die, in horror and despair, yearly. In England it is calculated that there are 40,000 houses of ill-fame, and 280,000 prost.i.tutes; and, further, that not less than 8,000,000 are spent annually in these places."

This may, or may not, be exaggerated, but the condition to which are reduced so many of the weaker s.e.x would warrant us in expecting a great decay of morality. When severe labour cannot command a sufficiency of food, can we be surprised that women find themselves forced to resort to prost.i.tution as a means of support?

A committee of gentlemen who had investigated the condition of the sewing-women of London made a report stating that no less than 33,000 of them were "permanently at the starvation point," and were compelled to resort to prost.i.tution as a means of eking out a subsistence. But a few weeks since, the _Times_ informed its readers that shirts were made for a _penny a piece_ by women who found the needles and thread, and the _Daily News_ furnished evidence that hundreds of young women had no choice but between prost.i.tution and making artificial flowers at _twopence a day_! Young ladies seeking to be governesses, and capable of giving varied instruction, are expected to be satisfied with the wages and treatment of scullions, and find it difficult to obtain situations even on such terms. It is in such facts as these that we must find the causes of those given in the above paragraph.

If we desire to find the character of the young we must look to that of the aged, and especially to that of the mothers. We see here something of the hundreds of thousands of young women who are to supply the future population of England; and if the character of the latter be in accordance with that of the former, with what hope can we look to the future?

Nothing indicates more fully the deterioration resulting from this unceasing struggle for life, than the harsh treatment to which are subjected persons who need aid in their distress. A case of this kind, furnished by the _Times_, as occurring at the Lambeth workhouse, so strongly indicates the decay of kind and generous feeling, that, long as it is, it is here given:--

"A poor creature, a young English girl--to be sure, she is not a black--a parcel of drenched rags clinging to her trembling form, every mark of agony and despair in her countenance, lifts her hand to the bell. She rings once and again, and at length the door porter appears, accompanied by a person holding a situation under the guardians--his name is Brooke--and he is a policeman. She is starving, she is pregnant, and almost in the pains of labour, but the stern officials will not take her in. Why? Because she had been in the workhouse until Tuesday morning last, and had then been discharged by 'order of the guardians.' Nor is this all. The tale of parochial bounty is not yet half told out. During that long wet Tuesday she wandered about. She had not a friend in this great town to whom she could apply for the smallest a.s.sistance, and on Tuesday night she came back to implore once more the kindly shelter of the parish workhouse. For yet that night she was taken in, but the next morning cast forth into the world again with a piece of dry bread in her hand. On Wednesday the same scene was renewed--the same fruitless casting about for food and shelter, the same disappointment, and the same despair. But parochial bounty can only go thus far, and no farther. Charity herself was worn out with the importunity of this persevering pauper, and on Thursday night the doors of the parish workhouse were finally and sternly shut in her face.

"But she was not alone in her sufferings. You might have supposed that the misery of London--enormous as the amount of London misery undoubtedly is--could have shown no counterpart to the frightful position of this unfortunate creature--without a home, without a friend, without a character, without a shelter, without a bite of food--betrayed by her seducer, and the mark for the last twelve hours of the floodgates of heaven. * * * Can it be there are two of them?

Yes! Another young woman, precisely in the same situation, knocks at the same workhouse door, and is refused admittance by the same stern guardians of the ratepayers' pockets. The two unfortunates club their anguish and their despair together, and set forth in quest of some archway or place of shelter, beneath which they may crouch until the gas-lamps are put out, and the day breaks once more upon their sufferings. Well, on they roamed, until one of the two, Sarah Sherford, was actually seized with the pangs of labour, when they resolved to stagger back to the workhouse; but again the door was shut in their faces. What was to be done? They were driven away from the house, and moved slowly along, with many a pause of agony, no doubt, until they met with a policeman, one Daniel Donovan, who directed them to a coffee-house where they might hope to get shelter.

The coffee-house did not open till 2 o'clock, when they had two hours' shelter. But at that hour they were again cast out, as the keeper was obliged to come into the street with his stall and attend to it. 'At this time (we will here copy the language of our report) Sherford's labour pains had considerably increased, and they again spoke to the same policeman, Donovan, and told him that, unless she was taken into the workhouse or some other place, she must give birth to her infant in the street.' Daniel Donovan accordingly conveyed the two unfortunate creatures to the workhouse once more, at 4 o'clock in the morning. 'The policeman on duty there,' said this witness, 'told him that they had been there before, and seemed to have some _hesitation_ about admitting them, but on being told that one was in the pains of labour, he let them in.'"

What slavery can be worse than this? Here are young women, women in distress, starving and almost in the pains of labour, driven about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, by day and by night, totally unable to obtain the smallest aid. a.s.suredly it would be difficult to find any thing to equal this in any other country claiming to rank among the civilized nations of the world.

At the moment of writing this page, an English journal furnishes a case of death from starvation, and closes its account with the following paragraph, strikingly ill.u.s.trative of the state of things which naturally arises where every man is "trying to live by s.n.a.t.c.hing the bread from his neighbour's mouth."

"It is hardly possible to conceive a more horrible case. A stalwart, strong-framed man, in the prime of life--his long pilgrimage of martyrdom from London to Stoney-Stratford--his wretched appeals for help to the "_civilization_" around him--his seven days fast--his brutal abandonment by his fellow-men--his seeking shelter and being driven from resting-place to resting-place--the crowning inhumanity of the person named Slade and the patient, miserable death of the worn-out man--are a picture perfectly astonishing to contemplate.

"No doubt he invaded the rights of property, when he sought shelter in the shed and in the lone barn!!!"

The recent developments in regard to Bethlem Hospital are thus described:--

"Some of the cases of cruelty brought to light by the examiners are almost too revolting to describe. It appears that the incurables are lodged in cells partially under ground, where their only conches are troughs filled with straw and covered with a blanket. On these miserable beds, worse than many a man gives to his horse or dog, the victims lie in the coldest weather, without night-clothes, frequently creeping into the straw in order to keep warm. These poor unfortunates also are often fed in a way as disgusting as it is cruel, being laid on their backs, and held down by one of the nurses, while another forces into the mouth the bread and milk which is their allotted food. This revolting practice is adopted to save time, for it was proved on oath that patients, thus treated, ate their meals by themselves, if allowed sufficient leisure. The imbecile patients, instead of being bathed with decency, as humanity and health demands, are thrown on the stone-floor, in a state of nudity, and there mopped by the nurses. Such things would seem incredible, if they had not been proved on oath. Some who were not incurable, having been treated in this manner, exposed these atrocities, after their recovery; and the result was an investigation, which led to the discovery of the abominable manner in which this vast charity has been administered."

These things are a necessary consequence of an universal trading spirit. For the first time in the annals of the world it has been proclaimed in England that the paramount object of desire with the people of a great and Christian nation is to buy cheaply and sell dearly; and when men find themselves, in self-defence, compelled to beat down the poor sewing-woman to a penny for making a shirt, or the poor flower-girl to a scale of wages so low that she must resort to prost.i.tution for the purpose of supporting life, they can neither be expected to be charitable themselves, nor to tolerate much charity in the public officers charged with the expenditure of their contributions. There is consequently everywhere to be seen a degree of harshness in the treatment of those who have the misfortune to be poor, and a degree of contempt in the mode of speech adopted in relation to them, totally incompatible with the idea of advance in _real_ civilization.

The facts thus far given rest, as the reader will have seen, on the highest English authority. It is scarcely possible to study them without arriving at the conclusion that the labouring people of England are gradually losing all control over the disposition of their own labour--or in other words, that they are becoming enslaved--and that with the decay of freedom there has been a decay of morality, such as has been observed in every other country similarly circ.u.mstanced. To ascertain the cause of this we must refer again to Adam Smith, who tells us that--

"No equal quant.i.ty of productive labour or capital employed in manufacture can ever occasion so great a reproduction as if it were employed in agriculture. In these, nature does nothing, man does all, and the reproduction must always be proportioned to the strength of the agents that occasion it. The capital employed in agriculture, therefore, not only puts into motion a greater quant.i.ty of productive labour than any equal capital employed in manufacture; but, in proportion, too, to the quant.i.ty of productive labour which it employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual value of the land and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. Of all the ways which a capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous to society."