THE PLAIN FACTS AND FIGURES OF PROSTITUTION.
_Statistics of Westminster_, _Brompton_, _and Pimlico_—_Methods of
conducting the nefarious Business_—_Aristocratic Dens_—_The High
Tariff_—_The Horrors of the Social Evil_—_The Broken Bridge behind the
Sinner_—“_Dress Lodgers_”—_There’s always a_ “_Watcher_”—_Soldiers and
Sailors_—_The_ “_Wrens of the Curragh_.”
LET US in the first place consider the extent to which the terrible
malady in question afflicts us. I am not aware if more recent returns
have been made than those I have at hand. Were it possible to obtain
exact statistics of this as of almost every other branch of social
economy, I should have been at the trouble of inquiring for them further
than I have; but I find that the calculations made differ so widely one
from the other, and are, as a whole, so irreconcilable with probability,
that it will be better to take an authentic return, albeit ten years old,
and make allowance for time since. The Metropolitan-Police authorities
are responsible for the accompanying figures.
It appears that at the date above indicated there were within the
Metropolitan-Police district the enormous number of 8600 prostitutes, and
they were distributed as follows:
Brothels. Prostitutes.
Within the districts of Westminster, 153 524
Brompton, and Pimlico, there are
St. James, Regent-street, Soho, 152 318
Leicester-square
Marylebone, Paddington, St. 139 526
John’s-wood
Oxford-street, Portland-place, 194 546
New-road, Gray’s-inn-lane
Covent-garden, Drury-lane, St. Giles’s 45 480
Clerkenwell, Pentonville, City-road, 152 349
Shoreditch
Spitalfields, Houndsditch, 471 1803
Whitechapel, Ratcliff
Bethnal-green, Mile-end, Shadwell to 419 965
Blackwall
Lambeth, Blackfriars, Waterloo-road 377 802
Southwark, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe 178 667
Islington, Hackney, Homerton 185 445
Camberwell, Walworth, Peckham 65 228
Deptford and Greenwich 148 401
Kilburn, Portland, Kentish, and Camden 88 231
Towns
Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham 12 106
Walham-green, Chelsea, Cremorne 47 209
Without entering into repulsive detail, I will endeavour to give the
reader some idea of the different methods under which the nefarious
business is conducted. The “houses of ill-fame” differ as widely in the
extent and quality of their dealings as the houses of honesty and fair
commerce. There are houses of “ill-fame” in the most fashionable
quarters of the town, just as there are in Wapping—houses that are let
and sub-let until they reach a rental as high as three and four hundred
pounds a-year. It is not in those aristocratic dens of infamy, however,
that women suffer most; none but the most costly wares are on sale at
such establishments, and it is to the interest of the hucksters who
traffic in them to deal with them delicately as circumstances will
permit, to humour and coax and caress them as pet animals are coaxed and
humoured. Nor would the creatures themselves tolerate anything in the
shape of brutal treatment at the hands of those who harbour them. They
“know their value,” and as a rule are exacting, imperious, and insolent
towards their “landlords.” Unlike their sister unfortunates lower sunk
in iniquity, they would experience no difficulty in procuring new
“lodgings.” The doors of a hundred establishments such as that she now
honours with residence are open to her. With a handsome face and a full
purse, the whole of the devilish crew of brothel-keepers are her slaves,
her fawning, cringing slaves, ready to lick the dust from her shoes, so
that she pays regularly her rent of ten guineas a-week, and fails not to
induce her “friends” to drink champagne at a guinea a bottle.
Possibly the gay lady may come to the “bitter end” some day, but at
present, except from the moral point of view, she is not an object for
commiseration. She at least has all that she deliberately bargains
for—fine clothes, rich food, plenty of money, a carriage to ride in, the
slave-like obedience of her “inferiors,” and the fulsome adulation of
those who deal with her for her worth. Very often (though under the
circumstances it is doubtful if from any aspect this is an advantage) she
finds a fool with money who is willing to marry her; but whether she is
content to accept the decent change, and to abide by it, of course
depends on her nature. Whether her husband adheres to his rash bargain
is a question that time only can solve. He at least, if he be a vicious
man as well as a fool, may argue that she will be little the worse than
when he found her if he leaves her; while possibly she may gather
consolation from the same method of argument.
Anyway, she has a long way to descend before she may be branded as
“common.” At present she is not even included in the police-returns.
Any blue-coated guardian of the peace, in humble hope of earning a
sixpence, would be only too eager to touch his hat to her and open her
carriage-door to-morrow, and that even at the door of her genteel
residence, which is in a neighbourhood much too respectable to permit it
to be stigmatised as a “brothel.”
The police-report just quoted specifies that the 8600 prostitutes
infesting the metropolis include 921 well-dressed and living in houses of
ill-fame. This on the face of it, however, is significant of how very
little the police really know of the matter they venture to report on.
The women here alluded to are of the unobtrusive and orderly sort, the
mainstay of whose occupation is to pass as respectable persons. They
would be the last to resort for permanent lodging at houses whose fame
was so ill that the greenest policeman on beat could point them out. It
is altogether too hard to fasten the imputation of infamous on the
holders of the houses in which this class of unfortunate seeks lodging.
In very many cases the women are actuated by a twofold reason in gaining
admission to the house of a householder who does not suspect her real
character. In the first place, and as already stated, she wishes to pass
in the immediate neighbourhood as respectable; and in the next place she
not unnaturally seeks to evade payment of the monstrously high rate of
rent that the common brothel-keeper would impose on her. Moreover, the
peculiar branch of the terrible business she essays prospers under such
management, where it would not if it were otherwise conducted. As a
body, the women in question must be regarded as human creatures who have
not gone _altogether_ to the bad; and though in grim truth it may be in
the highest degree absurd for anyone to cast herself deliberately into a
sea of abomination, and then to affect a mincing manner of seriousness,
much allowance should be made for the possibility that the fatal leap was
not taken with cool forethought, or that the urging to it was due to some
devilish genius whom there was no resisting. Anyhow, it would be hard on
them, poor wretches, to compel them to give up their endeavours to
conceal their degradation if, apart from mercenary motives, they are
heartily desirous of concealing it.
“A vast proportion of those who, after passing through the career of
kept mistresses, ultimately come upon the town, fall in the first
instance from a mere exaggeration and perversion of one of the best
qualities of a woman’s heart. They yield to desires in which they do
not share, from a weak generosity which cannot refuse anything to the
passionate entreaties of the man they love. There is in the warm
fond heart of woman a strange and sublime unselfishness, which men
too commonly discover only to profit by,—a positive love of
self-sacrifice, an active, so to speak, an _aggressive_ desire to
show their affection by giving up to those who have won it something
they hold very dear. It is an unreasoning and dangerous yearning of
the spirit, precisely analogous to that which prompts the surrenders
and self-tortures of the religious devotee. Both seek to prove their
devotion to the idol they have enshrined, by casting down before his
altar their richest and most cherished treasures. This is no
romantic or over-coloured picture; those who deem it so have not
known the better portion of the sex, or do not deserve to have known
them.”
It would soften the hearts of many, and hold the hands of those who would
break down the bridge behind the sinner, could they know the awful misery
that frequently attends the life of a fallen woman. The 921 questionably
quoted as “well dressed, and living in houses of ill-fame,” do not at all
represent the horrors of the social evil in all its ghastly integrity.
Such women are at least free to a certain extent to act as they please.
No restriction is set on their movements; they may remain at home or go
abroad, dress as they please, and expend their miserable gains according
to their fancy. But they have sisters in misfortune to whom the smallest
of these privileges is denied. They are to be found amongst the unhappy
2216 who are described as “well dressed, and walking the streets.”
Unlike the gay lady, who makes her downynest in the topmost branches of
the deadly upas-tree, and is altogether above suspicion or vulgar
reproach, this poor wretch is without a single possession in the wide
world. She is but one of a thousand walking the streets of London, the
most cruelly used and oppressed of all the great family to which they own
relationship. They are bound hand and foot to the harpies who are their
keepers. They are infinitely worse off than the female slaves on a
nigger-plantation, for they at least may claim as their own the rags they
wear, as well as a share of the miserable hut common to the gang after
working-hours. But these slaves of the London pavement may boast of
neither soul nor body, nor the gaudy skirts and laces and ribbons with
which they are festooned. They belong utterly and entirely to the devil
in human shape who owns the den that the wretched harlot learns to call
her “home.” You would never dream of the deplorable depth of her
destitution, if you met her in her gay attire. Splendid from her
tasselled boots to the full-blown and flowery hat or bonnet that crowns
her guilty head, she is absolutely poorer than the meanest beggar that
ever whined for a crust.
These women are known as “dress lodgers.” They are poor wretches who
somehow or another are reduced to the lowest depths of destitution.
Sometimes illness is the cause. Sometimes, if a girl gets into a bad
house, and is as yet too new to the horrible business to conform without
remonstrance to the scandalous extortions practised by the
brothel-keeper, she is “broken down and brought to it” by design and
scheming. A girl not long since confided to a clergyman friend of mine
the following shocking story. Rendered desperate by the threats of the
wretch who owned her, she applied to him for advice. “I was bad enough
before, I don’t deny it; but I wasn’t a thief. I hadn’t been used to
their ways for more than a month, and had a good box of clothes and a
silver watch and gold chain, when I went to lodge there, and it was all
very well while I spent my money like a fool, bought gin, and treated ’em
all round; but when I wouldn’t stand it any longer, and told her (the
brothel-keeper) plain that I would pay her the rent and no more (nine
shillings a-week for a small back room), she swore that she’d break me
down, and ‘bring me to her weight.’ I didn’t know that at the time; I
didn’t hear of it till afterwards. She was fair enough to my face, and
begged me not to leave her, flattering me, and telling me she would be
ruined when her customers found out that the prettiest woman had left
her. That’s how she quieted me, till one day, when I came home, she
accused me of robbing a gentleman the night before of a diamond
shirt-pin, and there was a fellow there who said he was a ‘detective,’
and though my box was locked he had opened it before I came home, and
swore that he had found the pin, which he showed me. It was all a lie.
I had been with a gentleman the night before, but he wore a scarf with a
ring to it; that I could swear to. But it was no use saying anything; I
was the thief, they said, and I was to be taken into custody. What was I
to do? I begged of the detective not to take me; I implored Mother H— to
intercede for me, and she pretended to. She went into another room with
the detective, and then she came back and told me that the man would take
ten pounds down to hush it up. I’ve seen that man since; he is a ‘bully’
at a bad house in the Waterloo-road, but I truly believed that he was a
private-clothes policeman, as he said he was. Of course I didn’t have
ten pounds, nor ten shillings hardly; but Mother H— said that she would
lend the money ‘on security;’ and I made over to her—sold to her, in
fact—in writing, every scrap of clothes that I had in my box and on my
back. ‘Let’s have them too, Meg,’ Mother H— said, ‘and then you’re safe
not to run away.’ I made over to her the box as well, and my watch, and
gave her an I O U besides for five pounds, and then she ‘squared’ it with
the detective, and he went off.
“That’s how I came to be a ‘dress lodger.’ She didn’t wait long before
she opened her mind to me. She up and told me that very night: ‘You’ve
got a new landlady now, my fine madam,’ said she; ‘you’ve got to _work_
for your living now; to work for _me_, d’ye understand? You can’t
work—can’t earn a penny without you dress spicy, and every rag you’ve got
on is _mine_; and if you say one wry word, I’ll have ’em off and bundle
you out.’ So what could I do or say?” continued the poor wretch, tears
streaming down her really handsome face; “all the girls there were ‘dress
lodgers,’ and I believe that they were glad to see me brought to their
level. They only laughed to hear Mother H— go on so. I’ve been a ‘dress
lodger’ ever since, not being able to get a shilling for myself, for she
takes away all I get, and besides is always threatening to strip me and
turn me out, and to sue me for the five pounds I owe her.”
My informant asked her, “How does she exercise this amount of control
over you? She is not always with you; you leave her house to walk the
streets, I suppose?”
“So I do, but not alone. Dress lodgers are never allowed to do that,
sir. I haven’t been one long, but long enough to find that out. There’s
always a ‘watcher.’ Sometimes it’s a woman—an old woman, who isn’t fit
for anything else—but in general it’s a man. He watches you always,
walking behind you, or on the opposite side of the way. He never loses
sight of you, never fear. You daren’t so much as go into a public for a
drain of gin but he is in after you in a minute, and must have his glass
too, though he isn’t allowed to do it—to have the gin, I mean; and _you_
ain’t allowed it either, not a drop, if the old woman knows it. You’re
supposed to walk about and look for your living, and the watcher is
supposed to see that you do do it—to take care that you look sharp, and
above all that you don’t take customers anywhere but _home_. And what do
you get for it all? You’re half fed, and bullied day and night, and
threatened to be stripped and turned out; and when you’re at home, the
watcher is generally hanging about, and he’ll ‘down’ you with a ‘one’r’
in the back or side (he won’t hit you in the face, for fear of spoiling
it) if Mother H— only gives him the wink, though perhaps you’ve risked
getting into trouble, and stood many a glass of gin to him the night
before.”
It is difficult, indeed, to imagine a human creature more deplorably
circumstanced than the one whose sad story is above narrated, and who is
only “one of a thousand.” There are those of the sisterhood who appear
in a more hideous shape, as, for instance, the horde of human tigresses
who swarm in the pestilent dens by the riverside at Ratcliff and
Shadwell. These may have fallen lower in depravity, indeed they are
herded in the very mud and ooze of it, but they do not _suffer_ as the
gaily-bedizened “dress lodger” does. They are almost past human feeling.
Except when they are ill and in hospital, they are never sober. As soon
as her eyes are open in the morning, the she-creature of “Tiger Bay”
seeks to cool her parched mouth out of the gin-bottle; and “— your eyes,
let us have some more gin!” is the prayer she nightly utters before she
staggers to her straw, to snore like the worse than pig she is.
Soldiers’ women are different from sailors’ women. As a rule, they are
much more decent in appearance, and they are insured against habits of
bestial intoxication by the slender resources of the men on whose bounty
they depend. It is not possible to dip very deeply into the wine-cup or
even the porter-pot on an income of about fourpence-halfpenny per diem,
and it painfully illustrates what a wretched trade prostitution may
become that it is driven even to the barracks.
Beyond the barracks; out on to the wild bleak common, where, winter and
summer, the military tents are pitched.
A year or so since there appeared in the pages of the _Pall Mall Gazette_
three graphic and astounding letters concerning the dreadful condition of
a colony of women who “squatted” amongst the furze of Curragh Common, and
subsisted on such miserable wage as the soldiers there quartered could
afford to pay them. These creatures are known in and about the great
military camp and its neighbourhood as “wrens.” They do not live in
houses, or even huts, but build for themselves “nests” in the bush. To
quote the words of the writer in question, these nests “have an interior
space of about nine feet long by seven feet broad; and the roof is not
more than four and a half feet from the ground. You crouch into them as
beasts crouch into cover, and there is no standing upright till you crawl
out again. They are rough misshapen domes of furze, like big rude
birds’-nests, compacted of harsh branches, and turned topsy-turvy upon
the ground. The walls are some twenty inches thick, and they do get
pretty well compacted—much more than would be imagined. There is no
chimney—not even a hole in the roof, which generally slopes forward. The
smoke of the turf-fire which burns on the floor of the hut has to pass
out at the door when the wind is favourable, and to reek slowly through
the crannied walls when it is not. The door is a narrow opening, nearly
the height of the structure—a slit in it, kept open by two rude posts,
which also serve to support the roof. To keep it down and secure from
the winds that drive over the Curragh so furiously, sods of earth are
placed on top, here and there, with a piece of corrugated iron (much used
in the camp, apparently—I saw many old and waste pieces lying about) as
an additional protection from rain. Sometimes a piece of this iron is
placed in the longitudinal slit aforesaid, and then you have a door as
well as a doorway. Flooring there is none of any kind whatever, nor any
attempt to make the den snugger by burrowing down into the bosom of the
earth. The process of construction seems to be to clear the turf from
the surface of the plain to the required space, to cut down some bushes
for building material, and to call in a friendly soldier or two to rear
the walls by the simple process of piling and trampling. When the nest
is newly made, as that one was which I first examined, and if you happen
to view it on a hot day, no doubt it seems tolerably snug shelter. A
sportsman might lie there for a night or two without detriment to his
health or his moral nature. But all the nests are not newly made; and if
the sun shines on the Curragh, bitter winds drive across it, with
swamping rains for days and weeks together, and miles of snow-covered
plain sometimes lie between this wretched colony of abandoned women and
the nearest town. Wind and rain are their worst enemies (unless we
reckon-in mankind) and play ‘old gooseberry’ with the bush-dwellings.
The beating of the one and the pelting of the other soon destroy their
bowery summer aspect. They get crazy, they fall toward this side and
that, they shrink in and down upon the outcast wretches that huddle in
them, and the doorposts don’t keep the roof up, and the clods don’t keep
it down. The nest is nothing but a furzy hole, such as, for comfort, any
wild-beast may match anywhere, leaving cleanliness out of the question.”
In each of these wretched lairs, the writer—who, be it borne in mind, was
an eye-witness of what he describes—goes on to inform us, companies of
these awful “birds,” varying in number from three to six, eat, drink,
sleep, cook, and receive company. As regards the furniture and domestic
utensils with which each hut is provided, “the most important piece of
furniture was a wooden shelf running along the back of the nest, and
propped on sticks driven into the earthen floor. Some mugs, some plates,
some cups and saucers, a candlestick; two or three old knives and forks,
battered and rusty; a few dull and dinted spoons; a teapot (this being
rather a rich establishment), and several other articles of a like
character, were displayed upon the shelf; and a grateful sight it was. I
declare I was most thankful for the cups and saucers; and as for the
teapot, it looked like an ark of redemption in crockery-ware. If they
were not—as I told myself when my eyes first rested on them—the only
human-looking things in the place, they did give one a comfortable
assurance that these wretched and desperate outcasts had not absolutely
broken with the common forms and habits of civilised life.
“Beneath it was heaped an armful of musty straw, originally smuggled
in from the camp stables: this, drawn out and shaken upon the earth,
was the common bed. A rough wooden box, such as candles are packed
in, stood in a corner; one or two saucepans, and a horrid old
tea-kettle, which had all the look of a beldame punished by drink,
were disposed in various nooks in the furzy walls; a frying-pan was
stuck into them by the handle, in company with a crooked stick of
iron used as a poker; and—undoubtedly _that_ was there—a cheap little
looking-glass was stuck near the roof. These things formed the whole
furniture and appointments of the nest, if we exclude a petticoat or
so hung up at intervals. There was not a stool in the place; and as
for anything in the shape of a table, there was not room even for the
idea of such a thing. Except for the cups and saucers, I doubt
whether any Australian native habitation is more savage or more
destitute: _he_ can get an old saucepan or two, and knows how to
spread a little straw on the ground. Nor were any of the other nests
(and I believe I looked into them all) better or differently
furnished. The only difference was in the quantity of crockery. In
every one the candle-box was to be found. I discovered that it was
the receptacle of those little personal ornaments and cherished
trifles which women, in every grade of life, hoard with a sort of
animal instinct. In every one an upturned saucepan was used for a
seat, when squatting on the earth became too tiresome. In all, the
practice is to sleep with your head under the shelf (thus gaining
some additional protection from the wind) and your feet to the
turf-fire, which is kept burning all night near the doorway. Here
the use of the perforated saucepan becomes apparent. It is placed
over the burning turf when the wrens dispose themselves to rest, and
as there is no want of air in these dwellings, the turf burns well
and brightly under the protecting pot. Another remembrance of a
decent life is seen in the fact, that the women always undress
themselves to sleep upon their handful of straw, their day-clothes
serving to cover them.”
The “wrens” themselves are described as being almost all young, and all,
without an exception, Irish. They range from seventeen to twenty-five
years old, and almost all come out of cabins in country places.
Occasionally a delicate-looking “wren” may be met, but as a rule they are
sturdy, fine-limbed women, full of health and strength; many are
good-looking. In their style of dress, no less than undress, they are
peculiar. “All day they lounge in a half-naked state, clothed simply in
one frieze petticoat, and another, equally foul, cast loosely over then
shoulders; though, towards evening, they put on the decent attire of the
first girl I met there. These bettermost clothes are kept bright and
clean enough; the frequency with which they are seen displayed on the
bushes to dry, shows how often they are washed, and how well. These
observations apply to the cotton gown, the stockings, the white petticoat
alone; frieze and flannel never know anything of soap-and-water at all,
apparently. The ‘Curragh-petticoat’ is familiarly known for miles and
miles round; its peculiarity seems to be that it is starched, but not
ironed. The difference in the appearance of these poor wretches when the
gown and petticoat are donned, and when they are taken off again (that is
to say, the moment they come back from the ‘hunting-grounds’), answers
precisely to their language and demeanour when sober and when tipsy.”
The communistic principle governs each “nest;” and share-and-share alike
is the rule observed. “None of the women have any money of their own;
what each company get is thrown into a common purse, and the nest is
provisioned out of it. What they get is little indeed: a few halfpence
turned out of one pocket and another when the clean starched frocks are
thrown off at night, make up a daily income just enough to keep body and
soul together.”
Inquiry careful and judicious disclosed to the daring literary
investigator that the “wrens” take it in turns to do the marketing and
keep house while their sisters are abroad “on business.” As need not be
mentioned, it is the youngest and best-looking women who engage in the
money-getting branch. Considering how severe are their privations, and
the unceasing life of wretchedness they lead, it is not without surprise
that we hear that many of the “wrens” have occupied the ground they still
squat on during the past eight or nine years. “I asked one of these
older birds how they contrived their sleeping-accommodation before
‘nests’ were invented. Said she, ‘We’d pick the biggest little bush we
could find, and lay under it, turnin’ wid the wind.’ ‘Shifting round the
bush as the wind shifted?’ ‘Thrue for ye. And sometimes we’d wake wid
the snow covering us, and maybe soaked wid rain.’ ‘And how did you dry
your clothes?’ ‘We jist waited for a fine day.’”
The above and much more information concerning the habits and customs of
these bushwomen of the Curragh was obtained in the daytime; but this was
not enough for the plucky _Pall-Mall_ adventurer. He was well aware that
the wren was a night-bird, and could only be seen in her true colours by
candle-glimmer within her nest, or by the light of the stars or moon
while abroad hunting for prey. Setting out after dark, our friend made
his way across the common towards the nests he had visited the day
before, and particularly to one known as No. 2 nest, the inmates of which
had shown themselves very civil and obliging.
“As I approached it,” says the writer, “I saw but one wretched figure
alone. Crouched near the glowing turf, with her head resting upon her
hands, was a woman whose age I could scarcely guess at, though I think,
by the masses of black hair that fell forward upon her hands and backward
over her bare shoulders, that she must have been young. She was
apparently dozing, and taking no heed of the pranks of the frisky little
curly-headed boy whom I have made mention of before; he was playing on
the floor. When I announced myself by rapping on the bit of corrugated
iron which stood across the bottom of the doorway, the woman started in
something like fright; but she knew me at a second glance, and in I went.
‘Put back the iron, if ye plaze,’ said the wren as I entered; ‘the wind’s
blowing this way to-night, bad luck to it!’ . . . I wanted to know how
my wretched companion in this lonely, windy, comfortless hovel, came from
being a woman to be turned into a wren. The story began with ‘no father
nor mother,’ an aunt who kept a whisky-store in Cork, an artilleryman who
came to the whisky-store and saw and seduced the girl. By and by his
regiment was ordered to the Curragh. The girl followed him, being then
with child. ‘He blamed me for following him,’ said she. ‘He’d have
nothing to do with me. He told me to come here, and do like other women
did. And what could I do? My child was born here, in this very place;
and glad I was of the shelter, and glad I was when the child died—thank
the blessed Mary! What could I do with a child? His father was sent
away from here, and a good riddance. He used me very bad.’ After a
minute’s silence the woman continued, a good deal to my surprise, ‘I’ll
show you the likeness of a betther man, far away, one that never said a
cross word to me—blessed’s the ground he treads upon!’ And fumbling in
the pocket of her too scanty and dingy petticoat, she produced a
photographic portrait of a soldier, enclosed in half-a-dozen greasy
letters. ‘He’s a bandsman, sir, and a handsome man he is; and I believe
he likes me too. But they have sent him to Malta for six years; I’ll
never see my darlint again.’ And then this poor wretch, who was half
crying as she spoke, told me how she had walked to Dublin to see him just
before he sailed, ‘because the poor craythur wanted to see me onst more.’
“From this woman, so strangely compounded, I learned that she had
suffered so much privation last winter, that she had made up her mind not
to stay in the bush another such a season. ‘At the first fall of snow
I’ll go to the workhouse, that I will!’ she said in the tone of one who
says that in such an event he is determined to cut his throat. ‘Why,
would you belave it, sir?—last winter the snow would be up as high as our
little house, and we had to cut a path through it to the min, or we’d
been ruined intirely.’
“. . . Presently the report of a gun was heard. ‘Gunfire!’ cried my
companion. ‘They’ll be back soon now, and I hope it’s not drunk they
are.’ I went out to listen. All was dead quiet, and nothing was to be
seen but the lights in the various bushes, till suddenly a blaze broke
out at a distance. Some dry furze had been fired by some of the soldiers
wandering on the common, and in search of whom the picket presently came
round, peeping into every bush. Presently the sound of distant voices
was heard; it came nearer and nearer, and its shrillness and confusion
made it known to me that it was indeed a party of returning wrens, far
from sober. They were, in fact, mad drunk; and the sound of their voices
as they came on through the dense darkness, screaming obscene sounds
broken by bursts of horrible laughter, with now and then a rattling
volley of oaths which told that fighting was going on, was staggering. I
confess I now felt uncomfortable. I had only seen the wren sober, or
getting sober; what she might be in that raging state of drunkenness I
had yet to find out, and the discovery threatened to be very unpleasant.
The noise came nearer, and was more shocking because you could
disentangle the voices and track each through its own course of swearing,
or of obscene singing and shouting, or of dreadful threats, which dealt
in detail with every part of the human frame. ‘Is this your lot?’ I
asked my companion with some apprehension, as at length the shameful crew
burst out of the darkness. ‘Some of ’em, I think.’ But no, they passed
on; such a spectacle as made me tremble. I felt like a man respited when
the last woman went staggering by. Again voices were heard, this time
proceeding from the women belonging to the bush where I was spending such
an uncomfortable evening. Five in all,—two tipsy and three comparatively
sober,—they soon presented themselves at the door; one of them was
Billy’s mother. At the sound of her voice the child woke up and cried
for her. She was the most forbidding-looking creature in the whole
place; but she hastened to divest herself outside of her crinoline and
the rest of her walking attire (nearly all she had on), and came in and
nursed the boy very tenderly. The other wrens also took off gown and
petticoat, and folding them up, made seats of them within the nest. Then
came the important inquiry from the watching wren, ‘What luck have you
had?’ to which the answer was, ‘Middling.’ Without the least scruple
they counted up what they had got amongst them—a poor account. It was
enough to make a man’s heart bleed to hear the details, and to see the
actual money.
“In order to continue my observations a little later in a way agreeable
to those wretched outcasts, I proposed to ‘stand supper,’ a proposition
which was joyfully received, of course. Late as it was, away went one of
the wrens to get supper, presently returning with a loaf, some bacon,
some tea, some sugar, a little milk, and a can of water. The women
brought all these things in such modest quantities that my treat cost no
more (I got my change, and I remember the precise sum) than two shillings
and eightpence-halfpenny. The frying-pan was put in requisition, and
there seemed some prospect of a ‘jolly night’ for my more sober nest of
wrens. One of them began to sing—not a pretty song; but presently she
stopped to listen to the ravings of a strong-voiced vixen in an adjoining
bush. ‘It’s Kate,’ said one, ‘and she’s got the drink in her—the devil
that she is.’ I then heard that this was a woman of such ferocity when
drunk that the whole colony was in terror of her. One of the women near
me showed me her face, torn that very night by the virago’s nails, and a
finger almost bitten through. As long as the voice of the formidable
creature was heard, everyone was silent in No. 2 nest—silent out of fear
that she would presently appear amongst them. Her voice ceased: again a
song was commenced; then the frying-pan began to hiss; and that sound it
was, perhaps, that brought the dreaded virago down upon us. She was
heard coming from her own bush, raging as she came. ‘My God, there she
is!’ one of the women exclaimed. ‘She’s coming here; and if she sees you
she’ll tear every rag from your back!’ The next moment the fierce
creature burst into our bush, a stalwart woman full five feet ten inches
high, absolutely mad with drink. Her hair was streaming down her back;
she had scarcely a rag of clothing on; and the fearful figure made at me
with a large jug, intended to be smashed upon my skull. I declare her
dreadful figure appalled me. I was so wonder-stricken, that I believe
she might have knocked me on the head without resistance; but, quick as
lightning, one of the women got before me, spreading out her petticoat.
‘Get out of it!’ she shouted in terror; ‘run!’ And so I did. Covered by
this friendly and grateful wren, I passed out of the nest, and made my
way homeward in the darkness. One of the girls stepped out to show me
the way. I parted from her a few yards from the nest, and presently
‘lost myself’ on the common. It was nearly two o’clock when I got to
Kildare from my last visit to that shameful bush-village.”