THE PEOPLE
It was this question which started an investigation which has been
carried on for four years by a committee of the Fabian Women’s Group.
A sum of money was placed at the disposal of this committee in order
to enable them to study the effect on mother and child of sufficient
nourishment before and after birth. Access was obtained to the list of
out-patients of a well-known lying in hospital; names and addresses of
expectant mothers were taken from the list, and a couple of visitors were
instructed to undertake the weekly task of seeing each woman in her own
home, supplying the nourishment, and noting the effects. From as long as
three months before birth, if possible, till the child was a year old,
the visits were to continue. The committee decided that the wives of
men receiving over 26s. a week were likely to have already sufficient
nourishment, while the wives of men out of work or receiving less than
18s. a week were likely to be living in a state of such misery that the
temptation to let the rest of the family share in the mother’s and baby’s
nourishment would be too great. They therefore only dealt with cases
where the wages ranged between 18s. and 26s. a week. After two years’
experience they raised the higher limit to 30s.
For the convenience of visiting it was necessary to select an area. The
district described in the previous chapter was chosen because it is
within reach of the weighing centre, where each infant could be brought
once a fortnight to see the doctor and have its weight recorded. A member
of the committee who is a doctor interviewed each woman before the visits
began, in order to ascertain if her health and her family history were
such that a normal baby might be expected. It was at first proposed to
rule out disease, but pulmonary and respiratory disease were found to be
so common that to rule them out would be to refuse about half the cases.
It was therefore decided to regard such a condition of health as normal,
and to refuse only such cases of active or malignant disease in the
parents as might, in the doctor’s opinion, completely wreck the child’s
chance of a healthy life.
Drink, on the other hand, the committee had expected to find a normal
condition, and had proposed the acceptance of moderate drinking.
Experience, however, went to prove that married men in full work who keep
their job on such a wage do not and cannot drink. The 1s. 6d. or 2s.
which they keep for themselves has to pay for their own clothes, perhaps
fares to and from work, smoking and drinking. It does not allow much
margin for drunkenness. A man whose wife declared him to be “spiteful” on
Saturday nights was certainly the worse for drink on Saturday nights; but
never once during sixteen months of weekly visiting did he omit to bring
his wife her full allowance. He had kept his job for many years, and the
explanation is that he was given tips at the theatre for which he worked.
The tips he, not unnaturally, considered to be peculiarly his own.
One other man, who could make fair wages when in work, turned out
thoroughly unsatisfactory. He was not a drunkard, but he would have been
if he could have afforded it. Otherwise the record is fairly clear.
Men who earned overtime money or who received tips might spend some of
it on beer, but the regular wage was too close a fit to allow of much
indulgence. Many of the men were teetotallers, and some did not even
smoke.
It was found to be necessary, in order to secure the success of the
investigation, to inaugurate a system of accurate accounts. In no case
were these accounts already in being, and it was therefore the task
of the visitors to teach each woman in turn to keep a record of her
expenditure for the week. As the greater part of this volume is to do
with these weekly budgets, this is a good opportunity to explain why they
are credible evidence of real conditions.
A working man’s wife in receipt of a regular allowance divides it as
follows: Rent; burial insurance; coal and light; cleaning materials;
clothing; food. A short experience in helping her to sort her items
on paper shows the investigator how to prove their accuracy. Rent is
easy. There is always the rent-book if the family deals direct with the
landlord; and if the rooms are sublet from the real tenant, the woman who
sublets them is only too anxious to explain either that rent is owing or
that it is paid regularly, and how much a week it is. Burial insurance
is easy. The insurance-book tells the whole story. With regard to such
items as coal, gas, soap, and food, experience enables an intelligent
investigator to compare accounts of women who do not know of one
another’s existence in such a manner as to know, almost before the woman
has spoken, what she is likely to be spending. If a woman says that she
is buying 1 cwt. of coal a week in the winter, and paying 1s. 6d. for it,
dozens of other accounts of which she knows nothing corroborate her. If
she says she is burning 1¾ cwt. in the winter, and spending 2s. 7½d., the
price is known to be correct; it only remains to question the quantity.
In one case the reason is that the rooms are basement rooms, very damp
and very dark. In another there are eight children, with a very large
copper fire to be kept going on washing-days. In a third no gas is laid
on, and all the cooking has to be done by the stove. All these conditions
are there to be seen. With regard to food the same test applies. Is
the budget peculiar, or does it bear out thirty others, allowing, of
course, for difference in size of family and in size of income? If it
is peculiar, why? The explanation is generally simple and obvious. In
cases where there is no explanation—of which there have been two only—the
family is not visited any further. As a matter of fact, the budgets have
borne out each other in the most striking manner. There seems to be so
little choice in the manner of keeping a family on 20s. a week.
The women were with one consent appalled at the idea of keeping accounts.
Not that they did not “know it in their heads,” as they anxiously
explained; but the clumsy writing and the difficult spelling, and the
huge figures which refused to keep within any appointed bounds, and
wandered at will about the page, thoroughly daunted them.
Eight women were found who could neither read nor write. They said that
it was not thought of much consequence when they were girls; but they
evidently found it extremely humiliating now, from the difficulty with
which the acknowledgment of their disability was pumped out of them. Of
these eight, three had husbands who undertook the task for them. The
men’s handwriting was excellent, the figures and spelling clear and
correct, but at first details were lamentably absent. “Groceries,” even
“sundries,” were common entries, and, as the scribe was always away at
work, the visitor was left to the mercy of bursts of memory on the part
of the mother, whose anxious efforts to please at any cost might land
everybody concerned in further difficulties. The only method in such
cases was to make her sit down and shut her eyes, pretend the visitor was
her “young man” (generic term for husband), and think it out all over
again. Pencil in hand, the eager listener caught and made accounts out
of such recollections as these: “’E give me twenty-two bob a Satterday.
After I put Ernie ter bed I went shoppin’ in the Walk.” Long pause.
“I know I got ’arf a shoulder er mutton at 1s. 9d., an’ 3 pounds er
pertaters, and they was 1½d., an’ a cabbage w’ich ’e said was as fresh as
a daisy, but it turned out to be all fainty like w’en I come to cook it.”
When the record is taken down in proper form, it is compared with the
masculine accounts. If the two agree, jubilation; if not, why not? And we
begin all over again. After a few weeks of such experiences the husband
always reformed.
Other illiterate women employed an eldest child of perhaps ten or eleven
years of age. In these cases a certain kind of painstaking accuracy could
be relied upon, but, far from resorting to masculine short-cuts, these
little secretaries usually went to the other extreme, and gave way to a
prolix style, founded, doubtless, on the maternal manner of recollecting.
One account, kept in large copybook hand by Emma, aged eleven, began as
follows: “Mr G’s wages was 19 bob out of that e took thruppons for es
diner witch is not mutch e bein sutch a arty man. The rent was six and
Mrs G payed fower an six because Bobby’s boots was off is feet and his
knew ones was one an six witch makes six and that leaves 12 an 9 and out
of that,” etc. It took four pages of painstaking manuscript in a school
exercise-book to complete one week. This serial story had to be reduced,
though with regret, to the limits of ordinary accounts.
Other young scribes had special tricks, such as turning their fractions
upside down or running two or more words into one. “Leggerbeef” and
“dryaddick” recurred week after week in one book, and “lberpeces” in
another. The first two only had to be pronounced to solve their own
riddle, but the third had to be worried through recollection after
recollection till it turned out to mean “1 lb. of pieces,” or 1 lb. of
scraps of meat.
The women who kept their accounts for themselves were found to be better
arithmeticians than they were writers. Their addition had a disconcerting
way of being correct, even when the visitor seemed to get a different
total. But, then, the spelling was sometimes beyond the sharpened wits
of the most experienced Fabian women to comprehend. Great care had to
be taken not to hurt their feelings as they sat anxiously watching the
visitor wrestling with the ungainly collection of words and figures.
“Coull” did not mean coal, which appeared as “coles” quite clearly lower
down. It was Lambeth for cow-heel. “Earrins too d” meant “herrings, 2d.”
“Sewuitt” is simple, more so than “suit,” a common form of “suet”; but
“wudanole” and “curince” gave some trouble. They stood for “wood and oil”
and “currants.” Seeing the visitor hesitate over the item “yearn 1d.,”
the offended mother wrote next week “yearn is for mending sokes.”
Some of the women—in fact, the majority—wrote a good hand and spelled
fairly well. Those who had before marriage been in work where anything of
the kind was expected of them—such as that of a tea-shop waitress or of
a superior domestic servant—quickly turned into interested and competent
accountants. But the older women, and those who had had no reason to
use a pencil after leaving school, had completely lost the power of
connecting knowledge which might be in their minds with marks made by
their hand on a piece of paper. These women were curiously efficient in a
kind of mental arithmetic, though utterly at sea directly pencil touched
paper. On the whole, accounts came into being sooner than at first sight
seemed possible.
The women were suspicious and reserved. They were all legally married
women, because the hospital from whose lists their names had been taken
dealt only with married women. They conquered their reserve in most
cases, but not in all. Some were grateful; some were critical. At the
beginning of each case the woman seemed to steel herself to sit patiently
and bear it while the expected questions or teaching of something should
follow. She generally appeared to be conscious that the strange lady
would probably like to sit in a draught, and, if complimented on her
knowledge of the value of fresh air and open windows, she might repeat
in a weary manner commonplaces on the subject which had obviously been
picked up from nurse, doctor, or sanitary inspector.
They spoke well of their husbands when they spoke of them at all, but it
is the children chiefly who fill their lives. The woman who said, “My
young man’s that good ter me I feel as if somethink nice ’ad ’appened
every time ’e comes in,” was obviously speaking the simple truth, and she
was more articulate than most of the others, whose “’E’s all right” might
mean as much. Another woman introduced the subject as follows: “’E’s a
good ’usbin. ’E ain’t never kep’ back me twenty-three bob, but ’e’s that
spiteful Satterday nights I ’as ter keep the children from ’im.” “And
what do _you_ do?” asked the interested visitor. “Oh, me? That’s all
right. I’m cookin’ ’is supper,” she explained, as though to a child.
On the whole they seemed to expect judgment to be passed on the absent
man according to the amount he allowed them. Many were the anxious
explanations when the sum was less than 20s.—that it was “all ’e got,” or
that “’e only keeps one and six, an’ ’e buys ’is cloes ’isself, an’ ’e’s
teetotler an’ don’t ’ardly smoke at all.” The idea among them, roughly
speaking, seemed to be that if he allowed less than 20s. explanations
were required; if 20s., nothing need be said beyond “It ain’t much, but
you can’t grumble.” If over 20s., it was rather splendid, and deserved
a word of notice about once in six weeks, when it would be good manners
for the visitor to say, “I see Mr. A. never fails to bring you your
twenty-two,” and Mrs. A. would probably answer, “’E’s all right,” but
would look gratified.
The homes are kept in widely different states of order, as is to be
expected. There is the rigidly clean and tidy, the fairly clean and
tidy, the moderately clean but very untidy. The difference depends on
many factors: the number of children, the amount of money to spend, the
number of rooms, the personality of the husband and the personality of
the wife. Six or eight children give a great deal of work, and leave
very little time in which to do it. In a family of that number there is
nearly certain, besides the baby, to be an ex-baby, and even perhaps an
ex-ex-baby, all at home to be looked after all day long and to create
fresh disorder every minute. The amount of money to spend affects
cleanliness very closely. It decides the number of rooms; it decides
the amount of soap and of other cleaning materials and utensils; and it
probably decides the question of water laid on or water to be carried up
from the backyard, and, when used, down again. A family of four children
in one room is a problem. Two may be at school part of the day, but two
will be at home all the time, and there will be no moment when the mother
can put them to sleep in another room and get rid of them while she
washes and cleans. Her chance of peace or method is small with the always
recurring work of the dinner to cook and the utensils to wash, with the
children ever present in the same room.
But the personality of the parents is, of course, the chief cause of
order or disorder. A man who loves order has a great influence for
order, and a man who likes to go to bed in his boots and spit on the
floor has an almost overwhelming influence in the other direction. He
may be an equally good fellow in all other respects, but his wife, if
she has a tidy nature, may quarrel bitterly with him; whereas if she
is more easy-going she may remain his good friend, through not feeling
constant irritation and insult because of his ways. It is a fact that a
woman the law of whose being is cleanliness and order at all costs may,
to a slovenly man, make a most tiresome wife. Her little home may be
shining and spotless—as far as anything can be shining and spotless in
Lambeth—at the cost of all her vitality and all her temper. She herself
may, as a result of her desperate battle with dirt and discouragement,
be a scold and an unreasonable being. She cannot be got away from in
two rooms where a light and fire can only be afforded in one, and she
may be the greatest trial in an always difficult life. In such homes as
£1 a week can buy in London, the women who do not insist upon doing the
impossible, and fretting themselves and everybody else because it is
impossible, often arrive at better results—with regard at least to the
human beings about them—than the women who put furniture first and the
peace of the family second. And this even if the rooms in their charge do
look as though their dark places would not bear inspection. The mother
who is not disturbed by a little mud on the floor has vitality left to
deal with more important matters.
To manage a husband and six children in three rooms on round about £1 a
week needs, first and foremost, wisdom and loving-kindness, and after
that as much cleanliness and order as can be squeezed in. The case where
the man loves order and the woman is careless may also be prolific of
strained relations between the parents. But a steady woman who is not as
tidy as her husband might wish has many ways of producing a semblance of
order which makes for peace while he is there, and the friction is less
likely to be intense. Of course, if both parents are orderly by nature
all is well. The home will be clean, and the children will be brought up
in tidy ways, much to their advantage. But if there are to be constant
and bitter recriminations over the state of the house, better, for the
man’s sake, the children’s sake, and the woman’s sake, a dingy room where
peace and quiet are than a spotless abode where no love is.