|The difficulty of getting that element of picturesqueness into these
chapters which is so essential to success with a large class of English
readers becomes more and more apparent as I and my travelling companion
explore region after region where the poor are hidden away to live as
best they can. There is a monotony in the surroundings which became
painfully apparent to us, and were our purpose less earnest than it is,
we might well pause dismayed at the task we have undertaken.
The Mint and the Borough present scenes awful enough in all conscience
to be worthy of earnest study; but scene after scene is the same. Rags,
dirt, filth, wretchedness, the same figures, the same faces, the same
old story of one room unfit for habitation yet inhabited by eight
or nine people, the same complaint of a ruinous rent absorbing
three-fourths of the toiler's weekly wage, the same shameful neglect by
the owner of the property of all sanitary precautions, rotten floors,
oozing walls, broken windows, crazy staircases, tileless roofs, and
in and around the dwelling-place of hundreds of honest citizens the
nameless abominations which could only be set forth were we contributing
to the _Lancet_ instead of writing a book--these are the things which
confront us, whether we turn to the right or to the left, whether we
linger in the Mint or seek fresh fields in the slums that lie round
Holborn, or wind our adventurous footsteps towards the network of dens
that lie within a stone's throw of our great National Theatre, Drury
Lane.
The story of one slum is the story of another, and all are unrelieved by
the smallest patch of that colour which lends a charm to pictures of
our poorest peasantry. God made the country, they say, and man made
the town; and wretched as is the lot of the agricultural labourer,
the handiwork of Heaven still remains to give some relief to the
surroundings of his miserable life. Field and tree and flower, the green
of the meadow and the hedge, the gold and white of buttercup and daisy,
the bright hues of the wild cottage garden--it is in the midst of these
the pigsties of the rustic poor are pitched, and there is scope for the
artist's brush. But in the slums he can use but one colour; all is a
monotone--a sombre gray deepening into the blackness of night. Even the
blue, that in the far-off skies seems to defy the man-made town to
be utterly colourless, is obscured by the smoke belched forth from
a hundred chimneys; and even the sun, which shines with systematic
impartiality on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, is foiled in
its efforts to get at these outcasts by the cunning builders, who have
put house so close to house that even a sunbeam which had trained down
to the proportions of Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt, and then been flattened by
a steam-roller, could not force its way between the overhanging parapets
with any chance of getting to the ground. So what sunshine there is
stops on the roofs among the chimney-pots, and is the sole property of
the cats of the neighbourhood, who may be seen dozing about in dozens,
or indulging in a pastime which they have certainly not learnt of their
masters and mistresses, namely, washing their faces.
The cat-life of the slums is peculiar. Dogs are rare, but the cats are
as common as blackberries in September. Not over-clean and not over-fat,
the cats of the slums yet seem perfectly contented, and rarely leave the
district in which they have been reared. They ascend to the roof early
in the day, and stay there long after darkness has set in, and in the
choice of a local habitation they show their feline sense. The rooms of
their respective owners offer neither air nor sunshine, and when 'the
family' are all at home it is possibly the inability of finding even a
vacant corner to curl up in that drives Thomas to that part of a house
which the people of the East consider the best, but which the people of
our East have never sought to utilize.
The cats of the slums are certainly domesticated: they marry and have
families, and the kittens are the only really pretty things we have seen
since we started on our explorations.
The young of most animals are interesting and picturesque; but a kitten
is perhaps the prettiest of all; and a painful contrast is there between
the sallow dirty face, the sunken eyes and wizard features of a baby we
see sitting on a doorstep nursing one, and the dainty face, blue eyes,
and plump, pretty figure of the kitten. The mother of the latter has
set an example in the matter of philoprogenitiveness and domestic
forethought which the mother of the former would do well to imitate.
There are not wanting those who believe that for the present generation
of poor little can be done--I mean, of course, the poor who are sunk in
the misery and degradation of slum life. Dirtiness is ingrained in them,
and if they had decent habitations provided for them to-morrow, they
would no more live in them than a gipsy could settle down under any but
a canvas roof.
Thrift they do not understand, and are too old to be taught; and
ordinary decency is a thing of which they have about as much conception
as they would have of the aestheticism of Mr. Oscar Wilde or the
philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
I am not of the school which says that the regeneration of the masses is
hopeless, but I freely confess that the great chance of bringing about a
new and better order of things lies among the children who are to be the
mothers and fathers of the future. In the old Biblical times water and
fire were the elements which solved the knotty problem of regenerating
a seething mass of humanity sunk in the lowest abysses of vice and
degradation. The deluge that shall do the work now must come of the
opening of the floodgates of knowledge. Already, in tiny rivulets as
yet, the waters are trickling even into the darkest corners of our great
cities. The flood can never rise high enough to cleanse those who have
grown up ignorant--at best it can but wet their feet; but the children
cannot escape it--the waters will gather force and volume and grow into
a broad glorious river, through which the boys and girls of to-day will
wade breast high until they gain the banks of the Promised Land. It is
this river of knowledge which the modern wanderers in the wilderness
must ford to reach the Canaan which the philanthropist sees waiting for
them in his dreams.
The first working of the Education Act was fraught with countless
difficulties. It was no light task to catch the children of a shifting
race, to schedule street Arabs and the offspring of beggars and
thieves and prostitutes. But in the course of a few years almost every
difficulty has been conquered, and now there is hardly a child above a
certain age--no matter how wretched its condition may be--that is not
brought within the beneficial influence of education.
True that many of them come shoeless, ragged, and starving, to learn the
three 'R's,' to burthen their scanty brains with sums and tasks while
their stomachs are empty and their bodies weakened by disease and
neglect; but they have at least their chance. Let us take a school
where, perhaps, the poorest children come--a school recruited from such
homes as we have familiarized you with in previous chapters--and see the
little scholars at their dainty tasks.
Here is a child who is but one remove from an idiot. The teacher has a
hard task, for the Government inspector expects all the scholars to make
the same progress. This poor waif--the offspring of a gentleman whose
present address is Holloway Gaol, and a lady who has been charged
seventy-three times with being drunk and incapable--must pass a certain
standard before she can leave school; in her case, if she lives, she
will pass out by age, for statistics show that no system can make this
class of intellect retain a lesson. It is sowing seed upon a rock, and
there will be no harvest; but the child has just sufficient intelligence
to escape the asylum, and between the asylum and the school there is no
half-way house.
Some benefit, at least, she derives from the discipline, the care,
and the motherly sympathy of a kind head-mistress, who takes a strong
personal interest in her little charges.
For so many hours a day at least the child escapes the ghastly
surroundings of the den which is her 'home.'
Side by side with her sits a pretty, intelligent little girl of nine.
This child's eyes are bright with intelligence, the features are
pleasing and regular. As she is called forward, she rises and smilingly
comes towards us. There is none of that stolid indifference, that
mechanical obedience to a command which distinguishes too many of the
little ones who are here in obedience to the laws. This girl learns
quickly, and has had all the better qualities brought out. She is neat,
and takes a pride in her personal appearance. She has learnt to be
ashamed of dirt, and she is ambitious to be high up in her class.
Ambition is the one quality which will help above all others to lift
the poor out of degradation. The older race have it not; hence they
are content with their present positions, only seeking to gratify their
daily appetites, and caring not a fig for the morrow. This child will do
well, whatever she undertakes; and it is such as she who will survive in
the battle of life, and become the mothers of a better and more useful
class.
Yet hers is a sad enough story. Her father was a boatman, and in a
drunken rage struck his wife down with a boat-hook.
Hers was the common offence of asking for money. The blow injured the
woman's brain, and from that day to this she has been in a lunatic
asylum. The father disappeared after the crime, and the child's
grandmother took the orphan with living parents in, and out of her
scanty earnings kept her. One day this year the old lady passed some men
carrying a body found in the river to the dead-house. Curiosity induced
her to go in with the crowd, and the face of the dead man was that of
her son.
A back-street tragedy--common enough, with a varied plot and incidents
in these parts, but, as it stands, the life-story of this child.
'And your granny keeps you now?' says the teacher, as she concludes the
little history, and turns to the girl.
'Yes, teacher; and when I grow up I'm going to keep granny.'
So may it be!
There are some hundred girls in the room. Some of them come from decent
homes, and some from cellars; many of their histories are romances; but
they are romances which mostly tend one way--to show the misery, the
guilt, and the poverty in which they have been reared; and to recount
them would be but to dwell upon a note which perhaps I have touched too
often already.
There are brighter stories, too, to be told of their parents, but none
so bright as they will be able to tell of themselves when, after years
of discipline and culture, they go forth to lead lives which with their
fathers and mothers were impossible.
Close to the school where the elder girls are educated, and in the same
building, is the department for infants. Here the children under seven
are prepared to pass into the upper department.
Directly we enter we are struck with the appearance of these children.
Bad faces there are among them--bruises and scars, and bandages and
rags--but the bulk of these younger children have a generally _better_
appearance than their little neighbours.
There is a theory in the school, and it is borne out to a certain extent
by fact, that some of the youngest and best-looking are the children of
girls who just got the benefit of the Education Act before they were
too old, and who in their young married life have reaped the benefit
of those principles of cleanliness and thrift which the Board School
inculcates. The young mothers are already a race far ahead of the older
ones in this district, and the children naturally benefit by it. It must
be borne in mind that the girls of this class marry or take a mate at
a very early age. Many of them have three or four children by the
time they are twenty, so that they would have been brought under the
influence of the present Education Act. These young women, too, live
in a better way; their room is tidier and cleaner, there is a little
coquetry in them, and they have a sense of shame which renders them
excellent service. They are anxious about their children's education,
they recognise the advantage the discipline and instruction have been
to them, and the general tone of their lives is every way a distinct
advance on the old order of things.
I quote these facts because they so fully bear out the theory that
Education must be the prime instrument in changing the condition of
the poor for the better, whatever results it may have later on upon the
condition of the labour market, and the political and social questions
of the future. The many theories which are put forward about the result
of educating the masses, it is not my province here to discuss; nor
need I consider those doctrines which are closely akin to Socialism, and
which are the favourite arguments of a school of advanced thinkers when
discussing the future condition of the masses.
I have only to confine myself to the facts before me, and I think this
great improvement in the children of the young mothers a most important
one.
The best examples are in a room which is a kind of _crèche_. Here the
babies can be left by the mothers who have to go out to work, and
the tiny mites are looked after with motherly care by a kind-hearted
creature whose lot I do not envy. Fancy forty infants, some of them
little over two years old, to take care of for eight hours a day!
Mothers will appreciate the situation better than I can describe it.
Look at the babies at dinner. They have brought their bread and butter
with them, and they sit at the little low table enjoying it thoroughly.
In the winter, when work is scarce, alas! baby's bread and butter is not
always so thick as it is today. Sometimes baby has only a dry crust. But
there is a lot of the best sort of Christian character knocking about
in the Great City, and an excellent society, which provides dinners
for poor Board School children, has done much to alleviate this painful
state of things. A starving body, a famished child; there is no fear of
imposture here; and if anyone who reads these chapters wishes to support
a truly admirable movement, where there is no fear of abuse, he or she
may imitate Captain Cuttle, and, _having found a good thing, make a note
of it_.
In addition to the dining and play-table there is a long bed in the
room. There the tired babies sleep eight or ten in a row sometimes, and
forget their baby troubles. The _crèche_ is a boon and a blessing to the
poor woman who going out to work has a choice of keeping an elder girl
at home to nurse the baby and be summoned for it, or locking the said
baby up alone in a room all day with the risk to its life and its limbs
inevitable to such a course, not to mention the danger of fire and
matches and fits.
It is therefore with grief I hear that there are to be no more built in
Board Schools, and that the cost of maintaining those existing must in
future be defrayed by voluntary contributions. The Government objects to
the _crèche_ department on economical grounds.
The lady who manages the infants old enough to learn has no easy task,
but the order is perfect, and the children drill like little soldiers.
Here, too, the stories of many of them reveal a depth of misery not
often sounded except in the police-courts.
Here I see a bright, pretty, golden-haired girl of five who rather
upsets my pet theory. She ought to be ugly and dull, if there is
anything in breed. Her mamma is seldom out of prison for more than a
week. Mamma, not having learned Latin, does not know the difference
between _meum_ and _tuum,_ and is an incorrigible shoplifter and thief.
When she is enjoying her liberty, too, she has a habit of tumbling about
which is not conducive to health. She has fallen out of a window and
damaged the pavement below, and once with a baby in her arms she fell
down the stairs of this very school.
When they picked her up the baby's collar-bone was broken, but she was
sound enough to exclaim, 'If it hadn't ha' been for that blessed baby
I'd a broken my neck, I would.'
It isn't every mother who is philosopher enough to recognise the use of
a baby in breaking her fall downstairs.
The father of this little girl is a respectable man; but he has to go a
long way for work, and when papa is in the country and mamma is in gaol,
some good Sisters of Charity have taken the child and found it a home.
We have made our notes, and the children file out of school to dinner
and to play.
One sturdy little chap takes his sister's hand and leads her out like a
little father. He has over half a mile to take her home. We are told
it is a beautiful sight to see him piloting her across the great
thoroughfares when the traffic sweeps wildly up and down, and never
leaving go the little hand that is placed so trustingly in his till home
is reached and the dangers of the streets are over. They are a pretty
pair as they toddle ont hand in hand, and they form a pleasant picture
in this brief sketch of the little scholars who come daily from the
garrets and, cellars of the slums to get that 'little learning' which in
their cases is surely the reverse of a 'dangerous thing.'