is but the natural outcome of conditions like these. "Marriage," it has
been said, "as an institution, is not fashionable in these districts."
And this is only the bare truth. Ask if the men and women living
together in these rookeries are married, and your simplicity will cause
a smile. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. Nobody expects that they are. In
exceptional cases only could your question be answered in the
affirmative. Incest is common; and no form of vice and sensuality causes
surprise or attracts attention. Those who appear to be married are often
separated by a mere quarrel, and they do not hesitate to form similar
companionships immediately. One man was pointed out who for some years
had lived with a woman, the mother of his three children. She died and
in less than a week he had taken another woman in her place. A man was
living with a woman in the low district called "The Mint." He went out
one morning with another man for the purpose of committing a burglary
and by that other man was murdered. The murderer returned saying that
his companion had been caught and taken away to prison; and the same
night he took the place of the murdered man. The only check upon
communism in this regard is jealousy and not virtue. The vilest
practices are looked upon with the most matter-of-fact indifference.
The low parts of London are the sink into which the filthy and
abominable from all parts of the country seem to flow. Entire courts are
filled with thieves, prostitutes and liberated convicts. In one street
are 35 houses, 32 of which are known to be brothels. In another district
are 43 of these houses, and 428 fallen women and girls, many of them not
more than 12 years of age. A neighbourhood whose population is returned
at 10,100, contains 400 who follow this immoral traffic, their ages
varying from 13 to 50; and of the moral degradation of the people, some
idea may be formed from an incident which was brought to our notice. An
East-end missionary rescued a young girl from an immoral life, and
obtained for her a situation with people who were going abroad. He saw
her to Southampton, and on his return was violently abused by the girl's
grandmother, who had the sympathy of her neighbours, for having taken
away from a poor old woman her means of subsistence.
The misery and sin caused by drink in these districts have often been
told, but these horrors can never be set forth either by pen or artist's
pencil. In the district of Euston Road is one public-house to every 100
people, counting men, women and children. Immediately around our chapel
in Orange Street, Leicester Square, are 100 gin-palaces, most of them
very large; and these districts are but samples of what exists in all
the localities which we have investigated. Look into one of these
glittering saloons, with its motley, miserable crowd, and you may be
horrified as you think of the evil that is nightly wrought there; but
contrast it with any of the abodes which you find in the fetid courts
behind them, and you will wonder no longer that it is crowded. With its
brightness, its excitement and its temporary forgetfulness of misery, it
is a comparative heaven to tens of thousands. How can they be expected
to resist its temptations? They could not live if they did not drink,
even though they know that by drinking they do worse than die. All kinds
of depravity have here their schools. Children who can scarcely walk are
taught to steal, and mercilessly beaten if they come back from their
daily expeditions without money or money's worth. Many of them are taken
by the hand or carried in the arms to the gin-palace, and not seldom may
you see mothers urging and compelling their tender infants to drink the
fiery liquid. Lounging at the doors and lolling out of windows and
prowling about street corners were pointed out several well-known
members of the notorious band of "Forty Thieves," who, often in
conspiracy with abandoned women, go out after dark to rob people in
Oxford Street, Regent Street and other thoroughfares. Here you pass a
coffee-house, there a wardrobe shop, there a tobacconist's, and there a
grocer's, carrying on a legitimate trade no doubt, but a far different
and more remunerative one as well, especially after evening sets
in,--all traps to catch the unwary. These particulars indicate but
faintly the moral influences from which the dwellers in these squalid
regions have no escape, and by which is bred "infancy that knows no
innocence, youth without modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in
nothing but suffering and guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on
the name we bear."
Another difficulty with which we have to contend, and one in large
measure the cause of what we have described, is the