CHAPTER XIII.

|With the present chapter I bring this series to a close. I have

endeavoured briefly to present to the reader a few of the phases of

existence through which their poorer brethren pass. I have necessarily

left untrodden whole acres of ground over which a traveller, in search

of startling revelations, might with advantage have journeyed. But

startling revelations were not the object I had in view when I

undertook these sketches. My object was to skim the surface lightly,

but sufficiently to awaken in the general mind an interest in one of

the great social problems of the day. A few of the evils of the present

system of overcrowding and neglected sanitation, I have the courage to

believe, have been brought home for the first time to a world of readers

outside the hitherto narrow circle of philanthropists who take an active

interest in the social condition of the masses.

One word with regard to the many letters which have appeared in the

newspapers, and which have reached me privately. There seems a very

general and a very earnest desire among the writers to do something for

the people on whose behalf I have appealed to their sympathy.

While fully appreciating the kind-heartedness and the generous feelings

evoked, I cannot help regretting that in too many instances the idea

prevails that charity can ameliorate the evils complained of. I have

been grievously misunderstood if anything I have said has led to the

belief that all Englishmen have to do to help the denizens of the

slums and alleys is to put their hands in and pull out a sovereign or a

shilling.

It is legislation that is wanted, not almsgiving. It is not a temporary

relief, but a permanent one, that can alone affect, in any appreciable

manner, the condition of the one-roomed portion of the population of

great cities.

Charity is to be honoured wherever it is found, but charity, unless

accompanied by something else, may do more evil than good. There are in

London scores and scores of men and women who live by getting up bogus

charities and sham schemes for the relief of the poor. Hundreds of

thousands of pounds pass annually through the hands of men whose

antecedents, were they known, would make a careful householder nervous

about asking them into his hall if there were any coats and umbrellas

about.

I am not a thick and thin supporter of the C.O.S. At various times I

have been bitterly opposed both to its theories and its practices; but

it certainly has done an immense deal of good in exposing some of the

scoundrels who appeal to the best sympathies of human nature under

absolutely false pretences. .

It is not so long ago that a man who had been convicted of fraud was

found to be the flourishing proprietor of a mission to the poor, or

something of the sort--whose annual income for two years past had been

over a couple of thousand pounds, against an expenditure in tracts,

rent, and blankets of one hundred and thirty-six pounds.

In another instance, the promoter of a charity, which had been in a

flourishing condition for years, actually had his villa at St. John's

Wood, and kept his brougham--his total source of income being the

charity itself.

If I quote these cases here it is not to hinder the flow of the broad,

pure stream of charity by one single obstacle, but to show such of my

readers as may need the hint how dangerous and delusive it is to think

that careless almsgiving is in any shape or form a real assistance to.

the poor and suffering.

People who wish to do good must give their time as well as their money.

They must personally investigate all those cases they wish to relieve,

and they must set about seeing how the causes which lead to misery and

suffering can be removed.

How are the evils of overcrowding--how are the present miseries of the

poor to be removed? In what way can the social status of the labouring

classes be permanently raised? Not by collecting-cards or funds, not by

tracts or missions, but by remedial legislation--by State help and

State protection, and by the general recognition of those rights of

citizenship, which should be as carefully guarded for the lowest class

as for the highest.

We live in a country which practically protects the poor and oppressed

of every land under the sun at the expense of its own. We organize great

military expeditions, we pour out blood and money _ad libitum_ in order

to raise the social condition of black men and brown; the woes of an

Egyptian, or a Bulgarian, or a Zulu send a thrill of indignation through

honest John Bull's veins; and yet at his very door there is a race so

oppressed, so hampered, and so utterly neglected, that its condition has

become a national scandal.

Is it not time that the long-promised era of domestic legislation gave

some faint streaks of dawn in the parliamentary sky? Are we to wait

for a revolution before we rescue the poor from the clutches of their

oppressors? Are we to wait for the cholera or the plague before we

remedy a condition of things which sanitarily is without parallel in

civilized countries?

There is a penalty for packing cattle too closely together; why should

there be none for improperly packing men and women and children? The

law says that no child shall grow up without reading, writing, and

arithmetic; but the law does nothing that children may have air, and

light, and shelter.

No one urges that the State should be a grandmother to the citizens, but

it should certainly exercise ordinary parental care over its family.

To quote an instance of the gross neglect of the interests of the poor

by the State, take the working of the Artisans' Dwellings Act. Space

after space has been cleared under the provisions of this Act, thousands

upon thousands of families have been rendered homeless by the demolition

of whole acres of the slums where they hid their heads, and in scores of

instances the work of improvement has stopped with the pulling down.

To this day the cleared spaces stand empty--a cemetery for cats, a last

resting-place for worn-out boots and tea-kettles. The consequence

of this is, that the hardships of the displaced families have been

increased a hundredfold. So limited is now the accommodation for the

class whose wage-earning power is of the smallest, that in the few

quarters left open to them rents have gone up 100 per cent. in five

years--a room which once let for 2s. a week is now 4s. Worse even than

this--the limited accommodation has left the renters helpless victims

of any extortion or neglect the landlords of these places may choose to

practise.

The tenants cannot now ask for repairs, for a decent water-supply, or

for the slightest boon in the way of improvement. They must put up

with dirt, and filth, and putrefaction; with dripping walls and broken

windows; with all the nameless abominations of an unsanitary hovel,

because if they complain the landlord can turn them out at once, and

find dozens of people eager to take their places, who will be less

fastidious. It is Hobson's choice--that shelter or none--and it is small

wonder that few families are stoical enough to move from a death-trap to

a ditch or a doorstep for the sake of a little fresh air. The law which

allows them the death-trap denies them the doorstep--that is a property

which must not be overcrowded.

Now, is it too much to ask that in the intervals of civilizing the Zulu

and improving the condition of the Egyptian fellah the Government should

turn its attention to the poor of London, and see if in its wisdom it

cannot devise a scheme to remedy this terrible state of things?

The social, moral, and physical improvement of the labouring classes is

surely a question as important, say, as the condition of the traffic

at Hyde Park Corner, or the disfigurement of the Thames Embankment.

If one-tenth of the indignation which burst forth when a ventilator

ventured to emit a puff of smoke on the great riverside promenade to the

injury of the geraniums in Temple Gardens could only be aroused over the

wholesale stifling and poisoning of the poor which now goes on all over

London, the first step towards a better state of things would have been

taken.

Why does that indignation find no stronger outlet than an occasional

whisper, a nod of the head, a stray leading article, or a casual

question in the House sandwiched between an inquiry concerning the Duke

of Wellington's statue, and one about the cost of cabbage-seed for the

kitchen-garden at Buckingham Palace?

The answer probably will be, that up to a recent date the magnitude of

the evil has not been brought home to the general public or the members

of the Legislature. M.P.'s do not drive through the Mint or Whitechapel,

nor do they take their constitutional in the back slums of Westminster

and Drury Lane. What the eye does not see the heart does not grieve

after, and the conservative spirit born and bred in Englishmen makes

them loth to start a crusade against any system of wrong until its

victims have begun to start a crusade of their own--to demonstrate

in Trafalgar Square, and to hold meetings in Hyde Park. There is a

disposition in this country not to know that a dog is hungry till it

growls, and it is only when it goes from growling to snarling, and from

snarling to sniffing viciously in the vicinity of somebody's leg, that

the somebody thinks it time to send out a flag of truce in the shape of

a bone. We don't want to wait until the dog shows its teeth to know that

he has such things. We want the bone to be offered now--a good marrowy

bone, with plenty of legislative meat upon it. He has been a good,

patient, long-suffering dog, chained to a filthy kennel for years, and

denied even a drink of clean water, let alone a bone, so that the tardy

offering is at least deserved.

It would be easy to show how the amelioration of the condition of the

lower classes would be beneficial to the entire community, but it is

scarcely worth while to put the question on such low grounds. The boon

craved should come as an act of justice, not as a concession wrung from

unwilling hands by fear, or granted with interested motives.

Briefly, and narrowing the question down to its smallest dimensions,

what is wanted is this: The immediate erection on cleared spaces of

tenements suitable to the classes dislodged. A system of inspection

which would not only cause the demolition of unhealthy houses, but

prevent unhealthy houses being erected. A certain space should be

insisted on for every human being inhabiting a room--say 300 cubic feet

for each person, and this regulation should be enforced by inspection

of labouring-class dwellings, the enforcement of proper sanitary

regulations, and a higher penalty for any breach of them; the providing

of increased bath and washing accommodation in every crowded district;

the erection of proper mortuaries in every parish; and the preservation

in every district of certain open spaces to act as lungs to the

neighbourhood--all these should be items in any remedial scheme.

Beyond this, the poor should be encouraged in every possible way to

decentralize. They must at present all crowd round the big centres of

employment, because the means of travelling to and fro are beyond the

reach of their slender purses. But if a system of cheap conveyance by

tram or rail for the working-classes could be developed, they would

scatter themselves more and more about the suburbs, and by their own

action reduce the exorbitant rents they are now called upon to pay.

Again, there should be in all new blocks of tenements built for this

class accommodation for the hawkers and others who have barrows which

they must put somewhere, and who are compelled at times to house the

vegetable and animal matter in which they deal. A man who sells cabbages

in the streets cannot leave his unsold stock to take care of itself

at night, so he takes it home with him. At present he and his family

generally sleep on it in their one room, but lock-up sheds and stabling

for donkeys and ponies would obviate all the evils of the present

system. The men are quite willing to pay for a little extra

accommodation, and the removal of the mischief which comes of whole

areas polluted with decaying vegetable matter is at least worth an

experiment.

The density of the population in certain districts, and the sanitary

defects of the tenements, are, at present, absolute dangers to the

Public Health. On this ground alone it is desirable to agitate for

reform; but there is a broader ground still--humanity. It is on that

broad ground I venture to ask those who by these scant sketches of a

great evil have become in some slight way acquainted with it, to raise

their voices and give strength to the cry which is going up at last for

a rigid and searching inquiry into the conditions under which the Poor

of this vast city live.

To leave the world a little better than he found it is the best aim

a man can have in life, and no labour earns so sweet and so lasting a

reward as that which has for its object the happiness of others.

Public opinion boldly expressed never fails to compel the obedience of

those who guide the destinies of States. Public opinion is a chorus of

voices, and the strength of that chorus depends upon the manner in

which each individual member of it exerts his vocal power. How long

the scandal which disgraces the age shall continue depends greatly,

therefore, good reader, upon your individual exertions. If aught that

has been written here, then, has enlisted your sympathy, pass from a

recruit to a good soldier of the cause, and help with all your will

and all your strength to make so sad a story as this impossible when in

future years abler pens than mine shall perhaps once again attempt to

tell you

HOW THE POOR LIVE.

HORRIBLE LONDON.*

* Originally published in the Daily News.

CHAPTER I.

|A great subject, which for years journalists and philanthropists have

been vainly endeavouring to interest the general public in, has suddenly

by leaps and bounds assumed the front rank in the great army of

social and political problems. The housing of the poor has long been a

smouldering question; dozens of willing hands have sought to fan it into

a flame, but hitherto with small results. At the last moment a little

pamphlet laid modestly on the dying embers has done what all the

bellows-blowing of the Press failed to accomplish, and the smouldering

question has become a brightly-burning one. It is while the flames

are still at their height, and everyone is suggesting a remedy, that

I should like to say a few words on a subject with which I have been

practically and intimately acquainted for many years.

It is evident, after reading the many letters which have appeared in

the _Daily News_ and other journals, that the great bulk of the

remedy-suggesters are writing without the slightest personal

knowledge of the people who are to be washed and dressed, rehoused and

regenerated, and converted by the State and the Church into wholesome,

pleasant, God-fearing citizens of the most approved type. There is a

capital picture on the hoardings of London of a little black boy in a

bath who has been washed white as far as the neck with Messrs.

Somebody's wonderful soap. I do not for one moment dispute the excellent

qualities of the moral and political soaps which kindly philanthropists

are recommending as likely to accomplish a similar miracle for the

Outcast Blackamoors of Horrible London; but I am inclined to think the

advocates for these said soaps underestimate the blackness of the boy.

In the early part of the present year I spent some two months in

visiting the worst slums of London, and in investigating the condition

of the inhabitants. I not only went from cellar to attic, but I traced

back the family history of many of the occupants. I followed the workers

to their work, the thieves and wantons to their haunts, the children to

their schools, and the homeless loafers to the holes and corners, the

open passages and backyards where they herded together at night. I began

my task with a light heart; I finished it with a heavy one. In that

two months I saw a vision of hell more terrible than the immortal

Florentine's, and this was no poet's dream--it was a terrible truth,

ghastly in its reality, heartbreaking in its intensity, and the doom of

the imprisoned bodies in this modern Inferno was as horrible as any that

Dante depicted for his tortured souls. But the most terrible thing of

all was that the case of many of these lost creatures seemed utterly

hopeless. I felt this then, and, now that the Press has been flooded

with suggestions, I feel it still. In writing this I trust I shall not

be misunderstood. I have only ventured to intrude myself in this great

discussion now to point out where I think the new forces set in motion

may be most profitably employed and where they would simply be wasted.

We must remember that it is not only poverty we have to deal with in

order to metamorphose Horrible London into a new Arcadia--we have to

do battle with a hydra-headed monster called Vice, and vice is born and

bred in tens of thousands of these outcasts, whose lot we are trying to

remedy. It taints the entire atmosphere of the slums. The people I refer

to are dirty and foul and vicious, as tigers are fierce and vindictive

and cruel, because it is part of their nature. Take them from their dirt

to-morrow, and put them in clean rooms amid wholesome surroundings, and

what would be the result?--the dirty people would not be improved, but

the clean rooms would be dirtied. You cannot stamp out the result of

generations of neglect in a day, or a week, or a year, any more than

you can check the ravages of consumption with doses of cough mixture;

whether you give it to the patient a tablespoonful or a tumblerful at a

time, once an hour or once a week, the result will be the same.

The first great work of the reformers in all their schemes must be

to separate the labouring from the criminal classes. At present both

classes herd together, to the infinite harm of the former; and the poor

artisan's children grow up with every form of crime and vice

practised openly before their eyes. The pulling down of vast areas of

labouring-class accommodation to make way for Metropolitan improvements

is the cause of this commingling of the honest poor with their dishonest

brethren. The men and women earning low wages and precarious livelihoods

have been driven step by step into the Alsatias of London, because

nowhere else have they been able to find shelter. The suburbs are beyond

their means, not because of the rents, but because of the expense of

getting to and from their daily work. Take the case of the thousands of

the labouring poor who get employment at the docks. Their only chance

of being taken on is to be at the dock-gates by four or five in the

morning. Many of them are there as early as three. How could these men

get from the suburbs at such an hour, and how could they afford the

daily railway fare? Then there are the factory hands, and the men and

women and children who work at home for the City houses--they too must

be within walking-distance of the factories and warehouses. At present

their only chance is to live in the rookeries, and there they must pay

from two-and-sixpence to four shillings for a single room. And without

exception all these rookeries are largely peopled by the criminal

classes, who find their security in the surrounding filth and

lawlessness, which are so many fortifications against the enemy. The

criminal classes will oppose all efforts at their redemption, the

labouring classes will welcome them, so that, to get a good result

quickly, the latter must be the first consideration with politicians,

whatever the religious view of the subject may be.

Having separated the criminals from the workers, the next task must be

to separate the old from the young, in planning out measures of reform

and applying remedies. The condition of many of the older people, even

among the poorer workers, is almost hopeless. They could never adapt

themselves now to the life the philanthropist dreams for them.

They could not be brought to see that marriage is any better than

cohabitation, that thrift is a virtue, or that there is any higher

pleasure in life than the gratification of the animal instincts. To

gratify intellectual instincts, men must have intellects trained and

cultivated to gratify. The older denizens of Horrible London have

had their intellects dulled rather than sharpened by long years of

familiarity with want, privation, and wretched surroundings. They have

lived come-day, go-day, God-send-Sunday lives too long to be

suddenly awakened to a taste for intellectual amusements or to higher

aspirations; and, what is more, the bulk of the class I allude to are

absolutely ignorant, and can neither read nor write.

But with their children the case is different; _and here is the great

hope of the reformer. The Board schools have, through good and evil

report, sown the seeds of a new era._ Amid all the talk of the last few

weeks, few have recognised the fact that it is by the education of the

rising generation that the ground has been cleared for the brighter and

better state of things we are all hoping to see. _The children who

go back to the slums from the Board schools are themselves quietly

accomplishing more than Acts of Parliament, missions, and philanthropic

crusades can ever hope to do_. Already the young race of mothers, the

girls who had the benefit for a year or two of the Education Act,

are tidy in their persons, clean in their homes, and decent in their

language. Let the reader, who wishes to judge for himself of the

physical and moral results which education has already accomplished, go

to any Board school recruited from the 'slum' districts, and note

the difference in the elder and the younger children, or attend a 'B'

meeting, where the mothers come to plead excuses for their little ones'

non-attendance, and note the difference between the old and the young

mothers--between those who, before they took 'mates' or husbands, had

a year or two of school training, and those who had given birth to

children in the old days of widespread ignorance.

It is to the rising generation we look for that which is hopeless in the

grown-up outcasts of to-day. Even education, the greatest remedy that

has yet been applied to the evil, will be heavily handicapped if such

home-teaching is to supplement the efforts of the schools.

I have only touched lightly upon a few points which lie on the outskirts

of this great question. Knowing the nature of the task our social

reformers have undertaken, I venture most earnestly to hope that nothing

may be done hastily, or entrusted to well-meaning _dilettanti_ or

crotcheteers. Any scheme, to be successful, must embrace the entire

question. The peculiar needs and necessities of a people who are a race

by themselves must be borne in mind, and whatever is granted in the way

of amelioration must be given, not as a charity to the abject poor, but

as a right yielded at last to our long-neglected fellow-citizens.

CHAPTER II.

|In a sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, the Rev. Prebendary

Capel-Cure referred to the preceding article on 'Horrible London.' While

insisting on the necessity for State interference, the preacher went

on to say that he had read a series of papers on the 'Misery of Paris,'

published in 1881, and that the unspeakable, the nameless horrors, the

awful accumulation of guilt and filth and misery which the French writer

had seen with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears, 'made even

the dreadful revelation of the English writer seem almost trivial in

comparison.' Now, as a matter of fact, no English writer conversant with

the subject has dared to tell a plain unvarnished tale of London's guilt

and woe. There are many of us who have seen with our own eyes, and heard

with our own ears, things so revolting that we can only hint at them in

vague and hesitating language. Were I, even now that public attention

has been thoroughly aroused to a great danger, to go into the details of

ordinary life in a London slum, the story would be one which no journal

enjoying a general circulation could possibly print.

There is indeed a great danger that, in endeavouring to steer clear of

loathsome details, writers dealing with the question of the amelioration

of the condition of the poor may fail to bring home to the public the

real nature of the ills that have to be remedied. It is to the general

avoidance of offensive revelations that we owe most of the impracticable

schemes of reform with which the Press all over the country is being

flooded.

Let us 'rehouse' the poor by all means, but before we set about the task

it is imperatively necessary that we should know what kind of people we

are going to build for. Unless this is thoroughly understood, the result

of the present agitation will be simply deplorable. We shall pull down

slum after slum, not to rehouse the present inhabitants, but to drive

them into still closer and closer contact, until we have massed together

a huge army of famished and desperate men and women, ready, in the 'wild

hour' that must sooner or later come, to burst their barriers at last,

and to declare open and violent war against law and order and property.

The present terrible condition of affairs is mainly due to two

causes--over-population and the small remuneration commanded by labour,

and it is out of the former evil that the latter has grown. That drink

is the curse of poverty-stricken districts no one wishes to deny, but it

is a mistake to say that drink is the cause of poverty; as a matter

of fact, poverty is equally the cause of drink. On this part of the

question I may at some future time give the result of my experiences

among the poor. For the present I want my readers to accompany me

through a typical London slum, and to make a short study of the

inhabitants, in order that they may form their own opinion of the

remedies likely to be of permanent value.

One London slum is very like another, but for my purpose now I will

select a district in Southwark, where the houses are in such a

condition that they are bound to come down under any scheme of sanitary

improvement, however halfhearted it may be.

We enter a narrow court, picking our way with caution over the nameless

filth and garbage and the decaying vegetable matter that, flung

originally in heaps outside the doors, has been trodden about by the

feet of the inhabitants until the broken flags are almost undiscernible

beneath a thick paste of indescribable filth. The outside of the houses

prepares us for what is to come. Inside them we find the staircases

rotten and breaking away. A greasy cord stretched from flight to flight

is often the sole protection they possess. Wooden rails there may

originally have been, but the landlord has not replaced them. He does

not supply his tenants with firewood gratis. The windows are broken and

patched with paper, or occasionally with a bit of board. The roofs are

dilapidated, and the wet of a rainy season has soaked through the loose

tiles, and saturated the walls and ceilings from attic to basement. And

the rooms themselves! To describe them with anything like truth taxes

my knowledge of euphemisms to the utmost. The rooms in these houses are

pigsties, and nothing more, and in them men, women and children live and

sleep and eat. More I cannot say, except that the stranger, entering one

of these rooms for the first time, has every sense shocked, and finds

it almost impossible to breathe the pestilent atmosphere without being

instantly sick. And in such rooms as these there are men and women

now living who never leave them for days and weeks together. They are

sometimes discovered in an absolute state of nudity, having parted with

every rag in their possession in order to keep body and soul together

through times when no work is to be had.

So much for the district which is to be levelled, and the general habits

of the inhabitants who are to be 'rehoused.' Let us take a few of the

families who will have to be somebody's tenants under any scheme, and

see what their circumstances are. The cases are all selected from the

district I have endeavoured to hint at above. I will begin with the

workers:

T. Harborne, stonemason, occupies two dilapidated rooms, which are in

a filthy condition. Has five children. Total weekly income through

slackness, 8s. Rent, 4s. 6d.

E. Williams, costermonger, two rooms in a court which is a hotbed of

vice and disease. Has eight children. Total earnings, 17s. Rent, 5s. 6d.

T. Briggs, labourer, one room, four children. Rent, 4s. No furniture;

all sleep on floor. Daughter answered knock, absolutely naked; ran in

and covered herself with a sack.

Mrs. Johnson, widow, one room, three children. Earnings, 6s. Rent, 3s.

6d.

W. Leigh, fancy boxmaker, two awful rooms, four children. Earnings, 14s.

Rent, 6s.

H. Walker, hawker, two rooms, seven children. Earnings, 10s. Rent, 5s.

6d.

E. Thompson, out of work, five children. Living by pawning goods and

clothes. Wife drinks. Rent, 4s.

G. Garrard, labourer, out looking for work, eight children. No income.

Rent, 5s. 6d. Pawning last rags. No parish relief. Starving. Declines to

go into workhouse.

These people may fairly be described as workers. They will accept

employment if they can get it, but they positively refuse to go into the

workhouse when they cannot. If they fail to get the rent together, they

will go into a furnished apartment, i.e., a frightful hovel, with an

awful bed, a broken table, and one chair in it. These places can be had

by the night, and vary in price from sixpence to a shilling. They are

largely used by the criminal classes, who do not care to accumulate

household goods, which their frequent temporary retirements from society

would leave at the mercy of others.

In the same district and in the same houses, mixing freely with their

more honest neighbours, and quarrelling, fighting, and drinking with

them, we find another class whose earnings are also precarious. I will

quote one or two cases, as these people must be dislodged when the

present buildings come down:

Mrs. Smith. Husband in gaol. One room, three children. She earns 6s. a

week, and pays 2s. 6d. rent. The man has been away fourteen years for

burglary. The day of his release he came home. (The manner in which

the men coming from long terms of imprisonment find their wives is

marvellous.) The woman gave him what money she had, and he went out at

once and got drunk. In the evening he came back, quarrelled with

his neighbour, and stabbed a woman in a fight. He was taken to the

police-station, tried, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment.

F. Barker. One dreadful room, three children; father and mother both

criminals. Have been getting three and six months at intervals for

years. Sometimes both in gaol together. Their neighbours take the

children and mind them till parents come out.

W. Moggs, Raspberry Court--a sweet name for a hideous place--one room,

four children. Rent, 4s. Father professional thief. Constantly in and

out of prison.

These cases are fair samples of the class of people we call the abject

poor, people who will not go to the workhouse under any circumstances,

and who are at present herding together in the rookeries we are all

agreed must be demolished and replaced by something better. Add to them

the people carrying on objectionable trades in one or two rooms--and who

must carry them on to live wherever they go--and the reformers will have

a fair idea of the tenants for whom houses must be provided somewhere,

if their present dwellings are to be pulled down. At the first glance

it seems almost impossible to cater for them. Fancy turning these people

into nice clean rooms and expecting five per cent, for your money!

Besides, putting their habits on one side, they are never sure of

regular work. They may pay the rent one week and be penniless the next.

Then five per cent, philanthropy must turn them out, having given them a

glimpse of Paradise which will make the return to Hades a terrible trial

to those who have had their better instincts aroused.

Whichever way we look at the subject, it is fraught with difficulties,

and if we are challenged to find a remedy, we have to go into a question

which thousands of excellent people refuse altogether to discuss. The

deserving poor could all be better housed now without a single brick

being laid or a single Act of Parliament passed, if they had fewer

children. Even in the slums the rents are lower and the rooms better for

couples who have only two children. In dozens of instances where I have

asked the denizens of these hovels why they pay four and five shillings

for such vile accommodation, the answer is, 'They won't take us in a

decent place because of the children.'

I know a case now of a man who took a house for himself and family, and

found he had two rooms to spare. The house was clean and healthy, and

he had dozens of applications from would-be lodgers. But, though he was

poor--and the extra rent would have been a godsend to him--he remained

unlet for four months because all the applicants had three or four

children. His case is the case of hundreds of people who have decent

rooms to let for the labouring poor.

The large families these people invariably have not only keep them in

grinding poverty all their lives, but the overpopulation floods the

labour market and keeps the scale of wages down to starvation point.

While supply so enormously exceeds demand, how can any market be in a

healthy condition?

Men and women, and boys and girls, all eager for something to do, are

to be had by thousands, and labour is at a discount. If the supply

diminished, and hands were more in proportion to the work to be done,

labour would be at a premium.

We have reached a point when it is absolutely mischievous to ignore

this side of the question. It is not only labour that is affected by the

rapid increase in the population; half of the vice and half the crime we

deplore in these districts is traceable to the same cause. Did I wish to

imitate the French writer and plunge the reader to his eyes in horror,

I might tell how the lack of employment brings mere children in these

districts into the streets--how girls of eleven and twelve are forced

into sin by their wretched parents as the last desperate means of that

self-preservation which we are told is the first law of nature. And as

the girls in evil times sin at first for bread to eat, so the boys begin

to thieve; and we are brought face to face with the fact that we have in

our midst vast human warrens, which are simply places where thieves and

wantons are bred, and poverty and crime increase and multiply together.

I have no desire to argue a vexed question or engage in a controversy on

a subject which requires the most delicate handling, but no one who has

actual experience of outcast London can keep this one great cause of the

teeming misery and vice entirely out of sight. What the remedy for it

may be it is no part of my purpose to discuss, but here again I believe

that the great hope is in the new race that is coming to replace the

old. The next generation will be more cultured, more intellectual, and

more refined; mental faculties will be exercised which have been dormant

in the poor of to-day, and as we increase in civilization so shall we

decrease in numbers. Education will make even the lowest of our citizens

something better than they are at present--mere animal reproducers of

their species.

In the meantime, while we are waiting for that good day to dawn, we can

be helping it on. If we begin our task by catering at once for the most

hopeful class we can find, we shall make a distinct step in advance.

Weed out the slums by degrees--encourage the most decent among the

workers first, and get down to the lower strata step by step. Leave the

poor wretches who are impossible in any but rookeries a rookery or two

to finish their careers in. Encourage everything that will keep their

rents down, and encourage everything that will give labour a better

return. If the process of elimination is gradual, we shall in time

improve the condition of all who are not beyond help. As for the rest,

they will solve the riddle in time for themselves by dying off, and

leaving the ground free for the well-paid, well-educated, healthy

labourer, with two little children and a contented mind, who is the

dream of the modern social reformer.

CHAPTER III.

|A public meeting was held at 'the Farm House,' Harrow Street, in the

Mint, some time since, to take into consideration the grievances of the

poor people whose homes were about to be demolished to make way for a

new street, a railway, and some dwellings for the accommodation of a

superior class of tenants.

It is necessary for a thorough understanding of the question which is

agitating the entire community that every phase of it should be studied.

In and about the Mint, which is a notorious 'slum,' in addition to a

very large contingent of the criminal classes, there resides a colony

of industrious folks, whose livelihood must be earned in the great

thoroughfares. Hawkers of fish and fruit and vegetables, penny-toy

vendors, watercress and flower girls, cheapjacks, street stall-keepers

of all sorts and conditions, and men and women and children who work at

certain industries carried on in the neighbourhood--these are among the

deserving class of the poor, earning precarious incomes, who are about

to be driven out by a Metropolitan improvement and forced to seek

shelter in one or other of the already densely-packed districts.

The first effect on the dishoused people themselves will be disastrous.

They will not only be compelled to give up their work and their

_clientèle_ in the neighbourhood, but they will lose a privilege which

is absolute salvation to many of them. The injury is greatest to the

most industrious, because they have 'established a character' among the

little tradespeople of the district, and in the winter they obtain the

necessaries of life on credit. In the winter, times are bad for many of

the ordinary industries of the poor, and, but for the fact that local

shopkeepers will trust established tenants of decent character, hundreds

of them would be brought face to face with absolute starvation.

The 'characters' worked up in one district are useless in another,

and thus it will be seen how severe a blow to the poor dwellers in a

neighbourhood its destruction must be.

Moreover, in addition to being injured themselves, the displaced

inhabitants will injure the neighbourhoods to which they migrate. A

sudden rush will be made, say, on the rookeries of Bethnal Green or

Whitechapel--places already overcrowded. What will be the result? Where

we have one family living in a single room now, we shall presently find

two families packed, and the rush for accommodation will send the rents

of these places up another ten or fifteen per cent.

Some of the dislodged people, men and women who are never half-a-crown

ahead of the world, must, as they get no compensation for the loss they

will be put to by eviction, drift into the workhouse.

Now, the workhouse is utter ruin to the class who look for their work

daily. A man goes into the casual ward; before he leaves it in the

morning, he must do a certain amount of work. It is quite right that he

should, but what is the result? When he gets out it is too late to look

for work that day; the chance is gone. So he must come in again the next

night, and the process is repeated. This is the way habitual loafers are

too often manufactured, and one fruitful source of vagabondage is the

constant disturbance of the poor from the places where they had settled

down and started in business.

Another evil which must inevitably come of the poorest and the most

helpless being driven farther and farther back before the march of

improvement is this: They must come into closer and closer contact

with the criminal and the vicious classes. Men come into a low district

because they are poor and other neighbourhoods are beyond their means.

Many of them come honest and remain honest, but the children degenerate

rapidly under the evil influences of the place.

Take the history of the Black Gang of the Mint as an example. It is

composed of the worst desperadoes, young and old, of the metropolis. Its

ranks are thinned over and over again by the arrest and conviction of

the members, but their places are filled almost directly by the sons of

the labourers and hard-working folks of the district. This is a painful

fact which is perpetually being forced on the attention of those who

do philanthropic work in the slums. The criminal classes are daily

recruited from the children of the labouring classes, and this is mainly

due to their enforced herding together in the rookeries. But where else

are the dislodged poor with large families to go?

Those who have passed their lives among these people, and have watched

area after area of labourers' dwellings disappear, know that each fresh

clearance has a deteriorating effect on the character of the remaining

districts. Unless some scheme be devised which will check the wholesale

destruction of slum neighbourhoods and the hasty displacement of those

who cannot be accommodated elsewhere, the ultimate result must be

pestilence or revolution. We may frankly recognise the necessity of

condemning buildings unfit for habitation without denying the hardships

of the evicted tenants. All reforms injure one class at first in order

to benefit another. But while public attention is so fully aroused to

the question of 'Housing the Poor,' we may as well learn the lesson of

the past in order to avoid a recurrence of the evil. How is it a puzzled

public is asking every day that, with medical officers of health,

sanitary inspectors, inspectors of nuisances, and what not, all armed

with full powers, so many districts of labouring-class accommodation

have been allowed to drift into a state of dilapidation and filth

which renders it imperatively necessary to raze them to the ground? The

machinery to prevent such a state of things was ample. We have a right

to know why it has broken down.

I will endeavour to explain as far as I can why we have at present a

'Horrible London,' and also to suggest in what way it may be possible

to avoid having another. The clearance of vast spaces has sent

accommodation in tenement houses up to a premium, and landlords have

been able to let their rooms regardless of their condition.

The officers whose duty it is to report on sanitary neglect are

appointed by the vestry, and hold their appointments at the goodwill and

pleasure of the vestryman.

Much of the worst property in London is held either by vestrymen or

by persons who have friends in the vestry. The first thing, as a rule,

which a man does who acquires low-class and doubtful property is to try

and be elected a vestryman. What chance under such circumstances has a

vestry-appointed officer of doing his duty in a thorough and efficient

manner? His reports, if he make them, are too often burked. Messrs.

Jones and Smith and Brown are the gentlemen upon whose votes will depend

that increase of salary he is going to ask for next Christmas. And

Messrs. Jones and Smith and Brown are the gentlemen who will be put to

considerable pecuniary loss if he insists upon the unsanitary condition

of certain large blocks of property in the district.

I do not for one moment pretend that this is the case in the Mint--there

some of the vestrymen are among the most earnest agitators for a new

order of things.

But the evil exists in some of the worst districts, and to an extent

of which the public little dreams. If some of the flagrant pieces of

jobbery in this class of property, which have been the result of vestry

government, could be brought to light, the public would cease to wonder

how such a condition of things could have come to pass.

Let anyone who wishes to inform himself thoroughly on the subject walk

through any of the slums, and contrast the condition of the registered

lodging-houses with the condition of the surrounding dwellings. The

lodging-houses are almost everywhere in better repair. The floors are

scrubbed continually, the walls are fairly clean, and there is proper

sanitary accommodation. But these lodging-houses are under the control

of the police--an officer appointed by Scotland Yard inspects them, and

sees that every regulation is complied with. If the proprietor fails in

his duty he loses his license.

A portion of this very Farm House in the Mint is a common lodging-house,

and it is a place the most refined lady might enter and inspect without

the slightest repugnance.

Within a stone's-throw of it are whole streets of houses which are sinks

of all that is abominable.

If a periodical inspection of certain lodging-houses can produce such an

excellent result, it must strike an observer at the first blush that

a periodical inspection of houses let out to families would have a

similarly beneficial effect.

I may say that the idea of licensing houses let out in rooms to the

class of people whose condition we have been discussing, and placing

them under the control of a police-appointed official, is a favourite

one with many of the local agitators for reform.

For the accommodation of the doubtful class, buildings might be erected

constructed almost entirely of brick and stone and iron; wood should be

avoided wherever possible, as it harbours filth, and is easily damaged

or removed to light the fire with. The rooms should be square, and

without corner or crevice, and should have floors made of material which

could be cleansed thoroughly with a mop and a bucket of water. No human

power could ever cleanse the wooden floors of the present dens. The

water-supply in such houses would of course be an efficient one. At

present the bad water-supply is a source of the greatest evils. One

butt in a backyard frequently has to supply the inmates of half a dozen

houses, and this butt is, in nine cases out of ten, open at the top,

so that it easily becomes impregnated with objectionable matter. In one

instance a butt, when cleared out, was found to contain the dead body

of a cat, and a playful youth of the neighbourhood confessed to having

tossed it in six weeks previously. This is the water the inhabitants

not only do such washing with as they occasionally indulge in, but it is

also the liquid with which they make their tea. In its simple condition,

water, I may state, is not largely consumed by the adult population, but

the children frequently quench their thirst with it. Here at least is

one evil which may be dealt with to the advantage of the very poorest

denizen of the slums.

Another glaring iniquity in the present system is the insufficient

accommodation of a most necessary kind, and this is an evil to which the

most horrible phase of the 'domestic interior' of the slums is largely

due. The only retiring-room in one place available for the 150 people

who inhabit ten small houses is situated right away down another court,

and in some instances the only accommodation of this kind is in the

cellar of the building, and this cellar is inhabited by a family.

Such a monstrous state of things as this will, of course, never be

permitted in any new property, however low class it may be; and

any improvement in such matters as this--the water supply, and

the adaptability of the rooms to the cleaning process--will tell

advantageously on the health and cleanliness and decency of the

inhabitants.

But while these improvements are being made, the old houses which are

past repair must go, and many more are to be sacrificed to railway

schemes and to new streets.

Such, is the condition of affairs in the Mint, a district which teems

with the poor earning precarious livelihoods, and we may look forward

with interest to the views of the tenants themselves, who will be

invited to speak at a proposed meeting. It is, I believe, to be the

first of a series about to be held, at which the whole question will be

discussed. The names of Mr. Berry, a gentleman who was born in the Mint,

and carries on business there still; Mr. Hawkins, a member of the School

Board, who knows all the circumstances of the inhabitants; Mr. Hunter,

a local temperance worker; Mr. Andrew Dunn, and Mr. Arthur Cohen,

M.P., are guarantees that the discussion will be guided into practical

channels, and those who have said so much about the poor will be able to

hear what the poor have to say about themselves.

If anyone interested in the question should make his way to these

meetings and wish to see some of the property that is coming down, let

him take Gunn Street and Martin Street _en route_. Through the open

doors he will catch a glimpse of some curious interiors. He will see,

if he goes at the right time, unsold fish, grapes, vegetables, and what

not, being carried into strange backyards and queer corners, and he will

be struck with the extraordinary number of fowls, geese, and ducks which

are roaming about in the slush and the garbage, fattening themselves for

the Christmas market of the big thoroughfares, where they will doubtless

be offered by their gentle-voiced proprietors as 'prime country fed.'

As, however, the accommodation is exceedingly limited, and the 'natives'

are likely to attend in large numbers, the curious outsider had better,

for many reasons, wait until the committee carry out their announced

intention of calling a public meeting in a larger hall.

We have passed through the period in which it was necessary to arouse

general attention, and no one who reads the public journals can be

ignorant of the main facts of the case. The two great questions to which

reformers have now to find a practical answer are these: What scheme

will release this class of property from vestry control and compel a

more efficient carrying out of the ample powers the authorities now

possess? and in what way can we save the inhabitants of the scheduled

areas from the loss, the misery, and the further degradation which have

been the result of wholesale evictions hitherto?

CHAPTER IV.

|It has been asserted by several writers who have joined in the present

controversy concerning the Housing of the Poor that drink and unthrift

are the main causes of the existing distress, and some go so far as to

say that the masses live to drink, and that consequently no legislation

can improve their condition.

This is a pessimist view of the question which is by no means warranted

by the facts. To deny that the poor in the rookeries drink and are

unthrifty would be foolish. But I venture to assert, with a knowledge

of the life-histories of hundreds of these 'outcasts,' that the drinking

habits of a large percentage are due to the circumstances under which

they are at present forced to live. Temptation surely enters as largely

into drunkenness as into any other vice, and in the foul and fetid

courts and alleys of London the temptation to every kind of vice is

never absent. The complete lack of home-comforts, the necessity of

dulling every finer sense in order to endure the surrounding horrors,

the absence of anything to enter into competition with the light and

glitter of the gin-palace, and the cheapness of drink in comparison

with food--all these contribute to make the poor easy victims of

intemperance. Thousands of people do undoubtedly drink for drinking's

sake, but that is a phase of intemperance which is by no means confined

to one class. Among the poor the constant war with fate, the harassing

conditions of daily life, and the apparent hopelessness of trying to

improve their conditions, do undoubtedly tend to make them 'drown their

sorrows' and rush for relief to the fiery waters of that Lethe which the

publican dispenses at so much a glass. This is no general assertion; it

is a conclusion arrived at with a knowledge of the circumstances which

first led many of the most notorious drunkards of a slum to contract

their evil habits.

Ask any of the temperance workers in the viler districts, and they will

tell you how they have watched hundreds of decent folk come into a bad

neighbourhood and gradually sink under the degrading influences of their

surroundings. There are few men who have worked to keep their brethren

from the clutches of the drink-fiend who would not gladly hail the

advent of air and light and cleanliness, and the enforcement of sanitary

laws, as the best weapons with which to do doughty deeds in their

combats with intemperance among the poor.

Having said so much, I am prepared to admit that drink is a contributing

cause to the present condition of the poor. It is even, in a certain

degree, a cause of overcrowding.

The Bishop of Bedford, in a recent speech, expressed a desire to have

the drink statistics of a slum. I cannot give figures, but I can give

facts. The Bishop expressed a belief that the revelation would astonish

the public. I am quite sure that it will.

More than one-fourth of the daily earnings of the denizens of the slums

goes over the bars of the public-houses and gin-palaces. To study the

drink phase of this burning question, let us take the districts from

which I have drawn the facts and figures I have previously submitted.

On a Saturday night, in the great thoroughfare adjacent, there are three

corner public-houses which take as much money as the whole of the

other shops on both sides of the way put together. Butchers, bakers,

greengrocers, clothiers, furniture dealers, all the caterers for the

wants of the populace, are open till a late hour; there are hundreds

of them trading round and about, but the whole lot do not take as

much money as three publicans--that is a fact ghastly enough in all

conscience. Enter the public-houses, and you will see them crammed. Here

are artisans and labourers drinking away the wages that ought to clothe

their little ones. Here are the women squandering the money that would

purchase food, for the lack of which their children are dying. One group

rivets the eye of an observer at once. It consists of an old gray-haired

dame, a woman of forty, and a girl of about nineteen with a baby in

her arms. All these are in a state which is best described as

'maudlin'--they have finished one lot of gin, and the youngest woman is

ordering another round. It is a great-grandmother, grandmother, and a

mother and her baby--four generations together--and they are all dirty

and dishevelled and drunk except the baby, and even that poor little

mite may have its first taste of alcohol presently. It is no

uncommon sight in these places to see a mother wet a baby's lips with

gin-and-water. The process is called 'giving the young'un a taste,' and

the baby's father will look on sometimes and enjoy the joke immensely.

But the time to see the result of a Saturday night's heavy drinking in

a low neighbourhood is after the houses are closed. Then you meet dozens

of poor wretches reefing home to their miserable dens; some of them roll

across the roadway and fall, cutting themselves till the blood flows.

Every penny in some instances has gone in drink.

One dilapidated, ragged wretch I met last Saturday night was gnawing a

baked potato. By his side stood a thinly-clad woman bearing a baby

in her arms, and in hideous language she reproached him for his

selfishness. She had fetched him out of a public-house with his last

halfpenny in his pocket. With that halfpenny he had bought the potato,

which he refused to share with her. At every corner the police are

ordering or coaxing men and women to 'move on.'

Between twelve and one it is a long procession of drunken men and women,

and the most drunken seem to be those whose outward appearance betokens

the most abject poverty.

Turn out of the main thoroughfare and into the dimly-lighted back

streets, and you come upon scene after scene to the grim, grotesque

horror of which only the pencil of a Doré could do justice. Women, with

hideous, distorted faces, are rolling from side to side, shrieking

aloud snatches of popular songs, plentifully interlarded with the vilest

expressions. Men as drunk as themselves meet them; there is a short

interchange of ribald jests and foul oaths, then a quarrel and a shower

of blows. Down from one dark court rings a cry of murder, and a woman,

her face hideously gashed, makes across the narrow road, pursued by a

howling madman. It is only a drunken husband having a row with his wife.

Far into the small hours such cries will ring here, now that of an

injured wife, now that of a drunken fool trapped into a den of infamy

to be robbed and hurled into the street by the professional bully who

resides on the premises. As you pass the open doors of some of the

houses, you may hear a heavy thud and a groan, and then stillness. It

is only a drunken man who, staggering up the staircase to his attic, has

missed his footing and fallen heavily.

Spend any Saturday night you like in a slum, and then say if one-tenth

of the habitual horrors of the 'drunken night' have been catalogued

here. And all these people who have spent so much in drink are

undoubtedly among the class included in the description 'the abject

poor.'

It is not fair to prove by facts and statistics the evil of

over-population and the evil of low wages, and to shrink from revealing

the evil of drink. That has to be removed as well as the others, and

must be taken into account.

I have given here merely the experience of one Saturday night in the

districts I have taken for a test in previous articles. It is in the

same district I will find the facts to prove that the drink curse

contributes to overcrowding as well as to poverty.

Hundreds of the people crowding into a slum have no business there

at all. They should be in better neighbourhoods, inhabiting superior

houses; but they are people who have fallen on evil times, and become

gradually impoverished. People on a downward track filter through the

slums _en route_ for the workhouse.

Come to a common lodging-house, and see what class of people fill the

beds at fourpence a night. Poor labourers? Yes. Loafers and criminals?

Yes. But hundreds of men who have once been in first-class positions,

and who have had every chance of doing well, are to be found there also.

For my purpose I will merely take the cases which have drifted to the

slum lodging-house through drink.

The following have all passed recently through one common lodging-house

in one of the most notorious slums of London:

A paymaster of the Royal Navy.

Two men who had been college chums at Cambridge, and met accidentally

here one night, both in the last stage of poverty. One had kept a pack

of hounds, and succeeded to a large fortune.

A physician's son, himself a doctor, when lodging here sold fusees in

the Strand.

A clergyman who had taken high honours. Last seen in the Borough, drunk,

followed by jeering boys.

A commercial traveller and superintendent of a Sunday-school.

A member of the Stock Exchange--found to be suffering from delirium

tremens--removed to workhouse.

The brother of a clergyman and scholar of European repute died

eventually in this slum. Friends had exhausted every effort to reclaim

him. Left wife and three beautiful children living in a miserable den in

the neighbourhood. Wife drinking herself to death. Children rescued by

friends and provided for.

Brother of a vicar of large London parish--died in the slum.

These are all cases which have passed through one common lodging-house.

What would the others show, had we the same opportunity of knowing their

customers? These people have all been forced back on a rookery through

drink--sober, they need never have sunk so low as that. Now come from

the lodging-house into the hovels--the places where men, women, and

children herd together like animals.

To one fearful court we trace a master in a celebrated college, a Fellow

of the Royal Society. To another a lieutenant in the army, who ekes out

a miserable drunken existence as a begging-letter impostor. Among the

tenants of houses that are in the last stage of dilapidation and dirt,

we find the sons of officers in the army and navy, of contractors and

wealthy tradesmen. Some of them are waterside labourers, and one is

the potman of a low beer-shop. Perhaps the most terrible case that has

drifted to this slum is the wife of a West-End physician, who became one

of the lowest outcasts of the neighbourhood, and died in the workhouse.

I could multiply instances like these, but there is no necessity.

They will suffice to show that drunkenness is one of the causes of

overcrowding in poor districts.

But drinking goes on among the natives as well as among the immigrants.

It is only when one probes this wound that one finds how deep it is.

Much as I have seen of the drink evil, it was not until I came to study

one special district, with a view of ascertaining how far the charge of

drunkenness could be maintained against the poor as a body, that I had

any idea of the terrible extent to which this cause of poverty prevails.

In the street I saw evidence enough. From a common lodging-house and

from the tenement houses I have quoted the cases given above. Come to

the school and see how the drink affects the future of the children of

whom we have such hopes. Let them tell their own stories:

M. L. Father drunk; struck mother and hurt her skull. Mother went raving

mad, and has been in a lunatic asylum ever since. Father slipped off

a barge when he was drunk and was drowned. Poor old grandmother has to

keep the children.

E. S. Father gets drunk and beats mother. Is in prison now for

assaulting her. Children dread his coming back, he is so cruel to them

when he's drunk.

S. H. Has a fearful black eye. Mother and father both drink, and hurl

things at each other. Missiles often bruise and injure the children.

C. S. Mother drinks 'awful.' Dropped baby on pavement; baby so injured

it died. This is the second baby she has killed accidentally.

M. A. H. Came to school with arm broken. 'Father didn't mean no harm,

but he was tight.'

S. S. Bright, lively girl of seven. Mother drinks. Shoulders and neck

black with bruises. There is a curious domestic arrangement in this case

which is worth recording. S.'s mother lived with a man, and had several

children. The man deserted her. Mrs. S.'s sister was married to a man

named D., and had also several children. One day Mrs. D. gets eighteen

months for assaulting the police. Then D. takes compassion on his wife's

sister, and has her to live with him, and the children of both families

herd together. How the family will rearrange itself when the legitimate

Mrs. D. comes out remains to be seen.

These stories, told by the lips of little children, are terrible enough;

but the authorities of the district and those whose business takes them

constantly into the wretched homes can tell you worse.

A friend of mine, who is never tired of trying to urge the people of

this district to temperance, not long since found a man sitting up naked

on a heap of rags, shivering with the death throes on him, and crying

for water for his parched throat. His wife, in a maudlin state of

intoxication, was staring helplessly at her dying husband. A coat was

given to wrap round the poor fellow. At night, when my friend returned,

he found the man cold and dead and naked, and the woman in a state of

mad intoxication. She had torn the coat from the body of the dying

man and pawned it for drink. In these districts men and women who are

starving will get grants of bread, and some of them ask for the bread to

be wrapped in clean paper. Do you know why? That they may sell the loaf

to someone for a copper or two, and get drunk with the money. Men will

come and buy a pair of boots in the morning out of their earnings, and

pay seven shillings for them. At night they will return to the same

shop and offer to sell them back for four shillings. They have started

drinking, and want the money to finish the carouse with.

Such are a few of the facts connected with the drink phase of one London

slum. They might easily be multiplied and intensified did we pass from

the slum to the workhouse, and then to the County Lunatic Asylum; but

for my present purpose I have given the reader sufficient evidence

already. I have endeavoured to prove that drink is one cause of the

existing misery and overcrowding. But is it a cause which is more beyond

remedy than are any of the others? All honour to the brave temperance

workers who have already done so much to diminish the evil. In this

district such men are labouring night and day. No one now disputes the

good which temperate temperance can accomplish. It will strengthen the

hands of those who are trying to wean the thriftless poor from drink,

if we give the people better homes and enforce sanitary laws. The very

extent of the evil shows the necessity for immediate action. Signing

the pledge is a very good thing for drunkards to do, but in this very

neighbourhood a woman signed it twenty-three times and died drunk.

Again, all alcohol may be poison in some good people's estimation, but

there are degrees of poison. It is the vile nature of the stuff now

allowed to be sold to the poor which increases the effect of drink upon

them and makes their reclamation more difficult. And, having seen all

I have seen, and heard all I have heard, I return to my original

statement, that much of the intemperance of these people is due to their

wretched surroundings. Remedy that, and you give them a chance to be

sober. You pave the way for the brave soldiers of a good cause to fight

under more favourable circumstances. The temperance advocates have

accomplished much--they will accomplish more; but if they wish to check

the evil in its hotbed, they must be among the strongest advocates of

the proper Housing of the Poor. To say, because a certain proportion

of the poor are drunkards, it is useless to try and improve the social

condition of the masses, is like refusing to send the lifeboat to a

sinking ship because half the crew are already known to be drowned.

There are drunkards, there are criminals, there are poor labourers in

these districts who will never be 'improved.' No one who knows them has

the slightest hope for them. But Sodom was to be spared for the sake

of ten just persons; in the City of Dreadful Night, where our poor herd

together, there are hundreds of just persons. For their sakes the city

must be saved.

CHAPTER V.

|That the great 'Guilt Gardens' of London are overrun with the rankest

of weeds and the most poisonous of plants must by this time be the

conclusion of everyone who has studied the mass of literature which

the question of the Housing of the Poor has called forth. So thickly

do crime and vice and drink and improvidence twine and intertwine and

spread themselves over the soil upon the fertilizing juices of which

they flourish and grow fouler day by day, that to the casual observer

nothing else is visible. But those who have studied the horticulture of

the slums know that deep down under all the rank luxuriance of nettle

and weed there may be found many a fair flower of humanity. And the

fairest of all is the flower which is the offshoot of a weed. The

generosity of the very poor to each other is to a great extent the

outcome of their improvidence.

The poor help the poor. Nowhere are the bonds of human sympathy so

strong as down the courts and alleys whose horrors have lately been

exhibited in as fierce a light as ever beat upon a throne. We have all

painted in strong colours the vices of the people in whom such general

interest is now taken--it is only right that their virtues should be

brought into equal prominence on the canvas. To weep with those that

weep and rejoice with those that do rejoice is the best system of

co-operation as yet invented for the benefit of mankind, and it is the

system of co-operation which has long been in vogue among those whom we

are pleased to term 'outcasts.' Outcasts many of the abject poor are.

They are cast out by Dives to make room for his mansions, his marts,

and his manufactories, his railway schemes and his splendid streets,

and they are cast out by the stern philosophers who hold that before the

march of improvement all who are not fit to survive must shrink back and

hide in holes and corners till, in obedience to the law of nature, they

pass away and cumber the earth no more. But they are not outcasts to

their brethren in misfortune, or to the grade of poor immediately above

them.

The poor are kinder to each other than the rich; they are bound by

stronger ties of sympathy; their hearts respond more readily to generous

impulses. They have greater opportunities of helping each other, and

there are no barriers of pride between them. They live their lives

before each other's eyes, and their joys and sorrows are the common

property of the entire community. The rich man wraps his mantle about

him and breaks his heart, locked in the darkest room of his house; the

poor man bares his breast to the light of day, and has not a neighbour

but knows the nature of his woe and has seen every link in the chain of

circumstances that brought his trouble about. What is the fate of one

to-day may be the fate of another to-morrow. In their sympathy they are

but making common cause against a common enemy. The poor are trained by

constant association to ready appreciation of the 'points' of the human

drama always being enacted before their eyes, just as certain audiences

are trained to appreciate the points of the theatrical drama. To expect

the rich to understand and sympathize with the poor as readily as

they do with each other would be as just as to turn the old 'Grecian'

audience into the St. James's Theatre, and expect them to 'take the

points' of the latest society drama with the same readiness as the

habitués.

It may seem harsh to say that much of the generosity of the poor springs

from their improvidence, but it is true. The beggars, the lame fiddlers,

the widowed warbler of street ballads, and the crippled orphan with a

crutch and a concertina, reap their richest harvests on Saturday night

in poor neighbourhoods. Friendly leads, whip-rounds, and benefits are

nowhere so common as among the labouring classes whose earnings are

precarious. While a millionaire requires a reference from the C. O.

S. before giving the 'broken-down officer' who calls on him

half-a-sovereign, the street-hawker or the dock labourer flings his

sixpence into the hat extended for a 'poor cove' he has never seen in

his life without a second thought. A pitiful tale reaches the heart of

the poor in a moment--their tears are as easily won as their laughter.

It is the fashion to sneer at 'cheap sentiment,' and to talk about the

pathos of ordinary melodrama as 'food for the gods,' but the sneerers

forget that the mimic misery comes home to the poor as it can never do

to the rich. To the gallery people the starvation in the garret, the

separation of husband and wife, the wail of the little children for

bread, the agony of the mother over the cradle of her sick baby, the

struggle with poverty, the heartlessness of the cruel landlord who

wants the rent, and the roughness of the officials who are called in to

persecute virtue in distress, are all so many items in their own daily

life. They have been familiar with such things from their birth, and

they understand the true meaning of that which the stalls--justly

perhaps from their point of view--call 'bosh.'

Having shown, or endeavoured to show, why the poor sympathize with and

help each other, let me give a few instances to show what practical

forms their sympathies invariably take. I shall not cull them haphazard

here and there, but all from the same neighbourhood which has furnished

the bulk of the facts on which these articles are formed. My purpose

is to give the reader the complete story of a London slum and its

inhabitants, that they may consider the popular question of the day in

all its bearings. I have shown the vices of one of these districts; it

is a pleasanter task to chronicle the virtues.

The first thing which a visitor to the slums asks is, What becomes of

the children of the men and women who are sent to prison, or who are

removed to the hospitals? The answer is simple. The neighbours take them

in and take care of them. Orphans are by no means rare in the slums, but

they are almost always 'adopted.'

In the house of a Mrs. R. lived a family named Hinde. Mrs. Hinde died of

consumption, leaving four children and a husband out of work. He set out

to look for it, and Mrs. R. took the four little ones into her room to

sleep with her own six. Out of her scanty earnings she fed them too,

and when she was asked why she had taxed her limited resources to this

extent, she answered, 'Poor young 'uns! how could I see 'em a-starvin' and

their father out 0' work, and no mother!' The man is still out of work,

and Mrs. R. has thought it her duty to keep his children for over six

months.

Orphans are not only kept, but are passed on sometimes from family to

family. There is a little crippled lad I know named Dennis Sullivan.

Till lately he was kept by an old watercress-seller, who had adopted

him. A month or two since the poor old soul fell into the fire, and was

so severely burned that she died. And when the boy was to be sent to an

institution, a brother of the old watercress woman, a poor hawker, came

forward and said, 'He shan't be sent away. I'll keep him for the sake o'

the old woman as was so fond of him.'

One of the most touching cases of this kind I ever met I have alluded to

elsewhere, but for the sake of my argument I will repeat it here. A poor

woman had taken charge of three children whose father was away in the

country. She had children of her own as well. Sickness came upon her,

and a terrible disease almost disabled her. Yet she refused to let the

little ones go uncared for. Dying slowly of dropsy, she was found one

day propped up in a chair, with a wash-tub in front of her, and with

her poor weak hands making a brave struggle to wash the little ones'

clothes, that they might look clean and tidy at the school.

A servant-girl lost her place, and in the slums gave birth to an

illegitimate child. She could not keep it; she must go to service. An

old woman adopted the child, and brought it up, giving it her own name.

The mother married, and then wanted the child. The old woman had

fallen on evil days, and consented to part with it. But the real mother

ill-treated the child, and it was unhappy. Off marched the old lady, and

fetched it back again. 'I ain't got much to spare, God knows,' she said,

'but I ain't goin' to see the gal unhappy, and I'll keep her somehow.'

A maker of wooden toys deserted his child, and left it starving. A poor

woman, with eight children of her own and an income of 15s. a week,

'felt her 'art bleed for the poor little thing.' She took the child into

her own room, and her eight are now nine.

When these people have no money, and their friends are in distress, they

will often pledge their clothes rather than see misery unrelieved.

The other day, at a police-court, a woman was fined 2s. 6d., and in

default sent to the cells. Her 'pal' went out of court, took the shawl

from her shoulders, collected a few more of her garments, and, pawning

the lot, returned and liberated the prisoner. Pawning is frequently

resorted to by the women who attend each other in their confinements. In

these districts the female neighbours, be it remembered, invariably

take the place of the doctor, and their kindness and gentleness to their

suffering sisters is marvellous. They will sit by the invalid day and

night in a foul den, destitute of every comfort, and perform all

the household duties as well. They will see to the children, get the

husband's tea, and if there is, as is too often the case, a lack of all

that the sufferer needs, they will go and pledge all they have and buy

it.

These people do not inquire into a person's creed or moral character

before they hold out the helping hand. When a thief comes back to his

district from prison, his 'pals' find him money and food for weeks,

until he either gets a job or takes to his former line of business

again. A notoriously bad character has just died here. He was ill for

months, and his 'pals' kept him the whole time, and gave him a grand

funeral when he died. I have known men, out of work and ill, kept for

months and months by the subscriptions of their poor neighbours.

A street-hawker was found last Sunday sharing his dinner with a man,

his wife, and his children who lived in the same house with him, and who

were penniless. The hawker's takings on the previous Saturday had been

3s. 7d., and depending on him were a wife, two children, and a donkey.

How improvident! but--how kind!

Into the common lodging-houses many a man comes at night who has not the

fourpence to pay for his bed. He tells his story; if he is not known as

a professional cadger, and his woes appear real, round goes the hat in a

minute, and the other lodgers pay for his night's rest. In these places,

too, the lodgers divide their food frequently, and a man, seeing a

neighbour without anything, will hand him his teapot, and say, 'Here you

are, mate; here's a bull for you.' A 'bull' is a teapot with the leaves

left in for a second brew. When Mrs. Brown or Mrs. Jones loses a baby

and cannot bury it, or when Mr. Smith is in trouble and more money is

wanted than one friend or two can conveniently spare, a friendly lead is

organized and a general subscription made at a social gathering. Here is

a card announcing one of these meetings:

'A Friendly Meeting will take place at Mr. Dash's, "The Three Stars," on

Saturday evening, Oct. 27th, 1883, for the joint benefit of Mike Johnson

and Fred Miller, who, through unforeseen circumstances, have been placed

in rather peculiar difficulties, and solicit your kind assistance. They,

being good supporters of these Meetings, now hope their Friends will

rally round them on this occasion. Chairman, Charley Mackney; Vice,

Jack Dobson. Supported by the following Friends: Bros. Holland, G. Bush,

Bros. Wenham, D. Purcell, T. Bemmington, Bros. Poole, W. Haynes, F.

McHugh, J. Beecham, Ted Dobson, Peter Mason, Jack Howard, G. Wooder, Tom

Eastopp, Alf. Barron, Jemmy Welch, Jerry Casey, and a host of others.

Commence at eight o'clock.'

I do not know what the 'unforeseen circumstances' were, or the 'peculiar

difficulties.' Generally the wording is less vague. The meeting is for

'Mrs. Bousby, better known as Loo, to bury her child;' or for 'Bill

Hinkham, known as Dutchy, whose wife has died in her confinement,

leaving him with eight children;' or something of the same kind. Apropos

of the latter misfortune, it is no uncommon thing for the mothers of

the neighbourhood to suckle the babies of dead or ailing women. A

foster-mother is found in a moment, and a previous acquaintance with

the family is quite unnecessary. A woman will even lose a portion of her

work during the day for months to go and suckle a neighbour's child.

There is no difficulty in giving facts to illustrate the kindness of the

poor to each other. Such stories as I have given above abound in every

alley and every street. This virtue, of course, no more makes the poor

wholly good than do their intemperate and dirty habits make them wholly

bad. But this phase of the character of the abject poor should be made

known to those who, skimming only the surface of what has lately been

written, could never discover it for themselves. The soul of goodness

that lurks in things evil is apt to be lost sight of too often when from

pulpit and platform the vices and errors of the masses are denounced.

That a better appreciation of the fact that the poor are reckless

in their generosity and full of sympathy for each other will assist

philanthropists and politicians to arrive at a speedier solution of the

present dwelling-house difficulty, I do not pretend to say. But I do

maintain that the poor man's virtues should be as widely discussed as

his vices. If we know that beneath the rank vegetation of our guilt

gardens there grows many a fair white bud struggling for the light and

the air which would give it a better chance to blossom, that at least is

some encouragement to reformers to go vigorously to work with rake and

hoe in order to clear the noxious weeds away.

THE END.